Notes

We live in a great world. A world where you can stick a needle into your arm, sync it up to your phone, and crush your belief that donuts are good for you. Or in the case of my girlfriend the opposite, but we come to that shortly. In fact, she was the one who came up with the idea of tracking blood glucose with a CGM (continuous glucose monitor). She gifted me one and so for 14 days we’ve been able to compare our blood glucose levels after every meal, snack, and activity. Normal couple stuff. Here’s what I’ve learned. ...

SBF was convicted by now on several criminal offenses. Before that, he was everyone’s darling and visionary in the crypto space. Michael Lewis got a lot of heat for portraying SBF in a too-favorable light in his book “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon”. I don’t see what gave people that impression (besides maybe the last chapter). SBF is destroyed in this book. People believe he is a con man and a malicious actor. Lewis’s book spends most of its pages describing the terrible bookkeeping and management practices as well as SBF’s philosophy of risk-taking. I guess this is where the emotional responses come from, Lewis portraying SBF first and foremost as incompetent and only partly as a criminal. ...

Behold the ultimate guide for having cringe-worthy meetings! Embrace these surefire techniques to guarantee a meeting so horrible, it’ll leave everyone involved yawning or pulling their hair out in despair. Step 1: Meeting Preparation Come completely unprepared. Let’s just show up and see what happens. After all, that’s the best way to get nothing done! Surprise agendas are the best, right? Pop it in the chat a hot second before we start, or better yet, let’s wing it without one! Objectives, who needs them? Let’s aim to “discuss stuff” or “get feedback” and leave it at that. Under no circumstances answer any of these questions: What is your opinion on the matter at hand? What specific actions do you want to happen in the meeting? What tangible outcome do you want to be the result of this meeting? Why is this valuable? Step 2: Meeting Content Boring is the new exciting. Let’s make our meeting feel like a soul-sucking corporate manual. Start strong then…oh look, a squirrel! Keep ’em guessing with half-baked ideas. Leave a lot of key details out. Mix facts, fiction, and nonsense liberally. Nothing succeeds like not knowing what the fuck is going on and pretending you do. Step 3: Run the Meeting Warm-ups are for athletes. Don’t greet your colleagues and don’t give an overview. Dive into the chaos head-first and let’s get lost together. If it feels rushed and frantic, even better. Punctuality is overrated. Let’s start late, end later, and leave everyone wondering if time is a social construct. Do not conclude anything from the meeting. Decisions? Actions? Due dates? We’ll figure it out…eventually. Or not. Cool-downs are for yogis. “Hey, we’ve got 5 minutes left, let’s start wrapping up”? Skip it. Let’s end in a hurried frenzy. And finally, you know when meetings can be a way for smart people to come together and have a great impact, collaborate, learn, have fun…? ...

There’s too much focus on individual performance, not enough on group performance. However, the most challenging work today is done in groups because problems are too complex for one person. Cognitive Diverse Groups Perform Better Cognitive diverse groups have less blindspots We look at the world through limited frames (see [[Mental Model]] and [[Framing]]), which make our perspective uniquely biased and contain blind spots. We are oblivious to these blind spots (= perspective blindness), which makes us underestimate how much we can learn from people with different perspectives. ...

Book Cover Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance? Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner answered such questions in their controversial books “Freakonomics” and “Superfreakonomics”. They have a unique way of looking at problems and often find surprising insights and solutions to common problems. In “Think Like a Freak”, they write about the principles and concepts behind their thinking. Thinking like a freak means… ...