Someone recently asked me how a certain card game was played.  “What’s the best hand?” she asked.  “What do you mean?” I asked back.  (Note that people don’t like to be asked questions back…)  She eventually asked what the best starting hand was.  Again, I said “best for what?”  Exasperated, she says “For winning!”
Cards, like life, isn’t that simple. Â There’s a saying in Texas Hold ’em that a pair of aces (the “best” starting hand) either wins a small pot or loses a big one. Â With even a little experience, the reason for this becomes clear: before any of the community cards are dealt, AA is the strongest hand. Â Nothing beats it. Â But after the community cards are dealt, there are many possible hands that might beat it. Â People who blindly continue to believe they have the strongest hand, people who get attached to their position, end up losing a lot of money to people who had “inferior” cards at the start of the deal.
So as with all things, the strength of a starting position doesn’t necessarily determine the outcome. Â The “best” starting hand always depends on what happens after the game begins. Â Almost always, the biggest pots are taken down by those who start with “inferior” cards. Â And luck rarely has much to do with that.
What’s the first thing you do? Â Check your email? Â See who needs you? Â Whose problems need solving? Â Maybe you “warm your brain up” by checking news, or gossip, or sports, or playing a game. (hint: you’re really warming your brain up for future procrastination)
Like throwing rocks into virgin snow, you’ve wasted your best opportunity to carve out a fresh trail. Â To start something new.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and more have made their fortunes by being the first thing people do when they start their day. Â There’s good reason for this: how you start your day dictates how you spend your day. Â Get you at the beginning, and its easier to suck people back countless more times throughout the day.
If you want to create something, start fresh. Â Don’t read about what someone else did yesterday, or someone else response. Â Don’t wait for everyone else to carve up the trails. Â Go ski powder.
Van Halen epitomized 80’s bands. Â They were loud, fast, and big. Â Their hair was big, their sound was big, their fans were big, and their shows were big. Â Really big. Â So big, that their contract rider spanned a dozen pages, and famously contained the “no brown M&Ms” clause. Â But, as David Lee Roth explains in his memoir, the prohibition on the chocolate-shaded candies wasn’t justsome impetuous, rockstar-diva demand:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets.
We’d pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.  The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.
When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error… Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.â€
Those problems could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena. Â Ironically, that problem itself could have been prevented had the local promoters used their own checklist. Â But because of Van Halen’s M&M litmus test, they caught the error before any harm could be done.
There’s a reason pilots and surgeons use checklists. Â They’re incredibly valuable, especially when you’re under any sort of stress: it’s neigh impossible to forget something when its printed right on the thing you reference every day. Â I see checklists slowly gaining ground in fields that never used them before, but probably too slowly. Â You can devise a checklist for just about every process. Â Do it. Â Develop a system and use a checklist to adhere to that system. Â You’ll be glad you did.
Everyone needs a mental break at some point during the day. Â It’s biological: mammals are programmed to experience two intensely sleepy periods during the day, the first between 2 and 4 am, and the second between 1 and 3 pm. Â This is a result of an afternoon “quiescent phase in our physiology, which diminishes our reaction time, memory, coordination, mood and alertness.” Â This is why it’s really easy to waste massive amounts of time after lunch.
Instead of struggling through that time, half-trying to get some work done, half-mindlessly surfing the internet, or playing ping pong, or doing whatever it is you do to procrastinate, plan ahead and dedicate this time to something that requires no real effort or deep thought, but still produces some results.
Plan to use this time for doing things like cleaning out your email inbox or getting some filing done. Â Plan to use this time for scheduling meetings, or trips, or an event. Â Plan to use this time for things like researching new projects or gathering new ideas. Â Whatever you choose to do, plan it out ahead of time. Â Sit down at the beginning of the day, or the week, and decide what you’ll do during your procrastination period to be productive.
David Ogilvy was the “Father of Advertising”.  In 1962,  Time magazine called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry”.  He, and his eponymous advertising firm, were responsible for some of the world’s most iconic advertising campaigns, like “Don’t leave home without it.”
If you watch the first season of Mad Men, the main character, Don Draper, is portrayed in the same light as Ogilvy probably was. Â Don would stare out the window minutes before a client meeting for which he hadn’t prepared, and these flashes of brilliance would just wash over him. Â He’d spit out the finished product, no editing required, and wow not only the client, but everyone who worked with him.
But as Ogilvy himself explains, that’s not how it works, even for the King of Madison Avenue:
April 19, 1955
Dear Mr. Calt:
On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:
1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.
2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.
3. I am helpless without research material—and the more “motivational” the better.
4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.
5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down ever concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.
6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.
7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)
8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.
9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.
10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.
11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)
12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.
Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.
When starting something, whether it’s an exercise routine or a new sleep schedule, or quitting something, like cigarettes or whiskey, conventional wisdom says to do it slowly. Â Cut back, or build up, gradually. Â Eat 100 less calories each day, or do an extra 10 pushups each day.
This can be effective. Â It can also be torturous. Â It’s only 11am. Â Did I hit my cigarette limit for the whole day yet? Â How many calories was in that muffin? Â This is tedious, tiresome, and draining. Â Those thoughts are always in the back of your mind. Â Every time you walk past the office kitchen. Â Every time the bartender or waitress comes by. Â Every time you see a commercial for whatever it is you want or don’t want to do.
Equally effective, and less torturous, is doing, or quitting immediately. Â I do 250 pushups every day. Â I don’t drink whiskey on weekdays. Â I don’t go to sleep after 10pm. Â I don’t smoke/browse the internet/eat sugar before noon/4pm/8pm. Â Simple rules. Â No decisions to be made. Â No brain cycles wasted.
If you’ve ever looked for a job, you’ve undoubtedly been advised that the best way to get a one is through your network. Â If you don’t have a network, all experts agree you need to get out and build one. Â This advice is both excellent and hopelessly useless.
It’s excellent because leveraging your network is the best way to accomplish just about anything. Â Whether it’s getting a new job, or getting your kid into an exclusive school, or getting movie recommendations, or dinner reservations, or anything, getting help from people who know and care about you simply can’t be beat.
But it’s also hopelessly useless because most people have no idea how to network. Â 99% of the people who write these kinds of columns haven’t ever waltzed into a new position because of their network. Â You know this because they give ridiculous advice, like telling you to go to industry conferences or meetings or simply “networking events”. Â And that’s it. Â That’s the end of their networking advice advice. Â But these kinds of networking events, by themselves, are essentially useless for building the kind of network that actually matters.
Why?  First of all, unless you put in serious preparation time before the event, and then effort to engage people at the event, you’re unlikely to form anything but superficial connections with people.  People don’t mix at mixers.  They tend to find the people they came with, or the people they already know, and stick to them throughout the event.
Second, even if you do make some connections at one of these events, what does that mean? Â You’ve had some conversations, shared some ideas, maybe even provided others with some value. Â Then you exchanged business cards and went home. Â You think someone is going to even remember your face, let alone your name, based on that? Â You think someone is going to go out on a limb and recommend you for a job after that? Â Maybe if you’re Bill Clinton. Â But for most people, it’s just not enough.
But that’s where most career advice stops. Â Get out and network! Â Ridiculous. Â Obviously, meeting and connecting with people is the first step, but there’s a dozen more behind it.
To build a network you need to build relationships.  All relationships are built on providing value.  The more value you provide, the stronger the relationship, and the more the other party is willing to do for you.  This is as true of intimate personal relationships, where most of the value (likely) comes from emotional support, as it is of business relationships, where most of the value comes from sharing ideas that grow business/profits, reduce stress, increase joy or time . . . and emotional support.  Find ways to provide people with value.  You don’t need to go to conferences or conventions to do this.  Start with the people you already know.  Start taking people you want to know out for coffee or lunch.
Meeting people is easy. Â Because it’s easy, it doesn’t mean much. Â What builds networks is value. Â Consistently provide people with value, and they become friends. Â And friends will do anything for you.
Fresh out of law school, it’s easy to forget that, compared to the general population, you are already something of an expert. You have the tools to search for, read, and understand just what the hell that legalese actually means. But, because you’re thrust into a world where the people you work for and interact with might have 30 years of experience in their field, because they’re actual experts, we feel lost and clueless.
But, surely that feeling will pass once we gain more experience, right?
In some respects, yes. Many problems will be trivially easy to solve because you will have seen them before. But someone who has been around for 30 years, and charging an expert’s rate for their time, probably isn’t dealing with many routine problems. Instead, they’re dealing with new problems, hard problems, cutting edge things that haven’t been done before. And they likely feel just as lost as the attorney fresh out of law school.
Q: What’s it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics?
A: You are comfortable with feeling like you have no deep understanding of the problem you are studying. Indeed, when you do have a deep understanding, you have solved the problem and it is time to do something else. This makes the total time you spend in life reveling in your mastery of something quite brief. One of the main skills of research scientists of any type is knowing how to work comfortably and productively in a state of confusion. More on this in the next few bullets.
The whole post over on Quora is worth reading. It specifically answers the question as it pertains to math, but it holds for just about every field. Definitely worth the read.
The term gets thrown around a lot, almost in an ironic, joking way today.
People used to scale mountains to listen to the wise man speak. Â They used to wander through countryside to have their questions answered by the swami or the scientist. Â People used to sail across seas to access libraries that held only a few thousand scrolls.
Even ten years ago, if you wanted answers to a question, or wanted to learn some skill, the knowledge was harder to find.  You might have reached for an encyclopedia or reference book, or called or emailed a knowledgeable friend, or physically gone somewhere in search of someone or something who possessed that knowledge.  Information that was online was often spotty, or viewed with suspicion.  If it wasn’t in a book, if it didn’t come from the expert’s mouth, how did we know it was right?
Now, most research starts and stops online. Â Wikipedia can settle nearly any dispute that arises over drinks. Â Khan Academy and MIT and Stanford online courses can teach you just about anything you want to know. Â There’s a youtube video that explains and demonstrates just about any physical skill you could ever hope to acquire. Â Even obscure, niche topics can be engaged in at the deepest level. Â Experts of every field you can imagine routinely publish articles and blog posts and tweets on their subjects. Â They post in forums and answer questions by email. Â All of this knowledge is just a few keystrokes away.
It’s amazing to think that all of this knowledge either didn’t exist or was shielded from the world just a decade ago. Â We really are in the age of information. Â Now that it’s out there, freely accessible for all, it’s even more amazing to think what’s coming in the next decade.
The wise man lacks nothing but needs much, whereas the fool needs nothing but lacks everything.
This isn’t as highfalutin as it sounds.
The fool needs nothing, because he doesn’t know how to use anything. Â And, being a fool and not knowing how to use anything, he lacks everything.
The wise man needs much: he needs his body, his mind, his tools, material to manipulate, etc. Â But he lacks nothing, because lacking something would imply that thing is a necessity, and nothing, to the wise man, is a necessity.
We have now, as a society, reached a point of near constant and total connectedness.  We have phones that travel with us, wherever we go.  We can access the entirety of human knowledge on those phones.  Our cars connect to orbiting satellites to guide us, and radar stations to advise us of traffic problems.  Hell, even our refrigerators are now connected to the internet.  If Pascal thought we were easily distracted back before steam power was even dreamt about, he would certainly blush at the incalculable opportunity for distraction our devices provide us with today.
And, as we’ve all undoubtedly thought by now, this constant connectedness, and constant distraction, is bad for us. Â Constant interruption, so easily facilitated by that constant connectedness, prevents deep, complex thought. Â So, of course, we should try to limit this constant interruption and distraction.
But before we can figure out how to do that, we should first ask why we have the urge to distract ourselves in the first place.
There are many reasons we procrastinate, some might even be good. Â But one of the reasons people distract themselves with news is that people like to be up to date on the latest goings-on in the world. Â It gives people something to talk about. Â It makes some people feel educated, or enlightened, or superior, to those who aren’t in the know. Â This attitude has become so ingrained in us that we’re actually pushed to buy products so we’re not the last ones to know:
But this treadmill never ends. Â In the age of 24 hour political coverage, sports coverage, science coverage, gossip coverage, local news, etc., etc., you could literally never stop consuming “news”. Â Devouring everything in your chosen stream leaves you feeling empty and stuffed, all at once.
That emptiness is there for a reason: it’s reminding you of the value you’re destroying by feeding at the endless buffet of data. Â You’re not accomplishing anything. Â You’re not learning, or building, or creating anything. Â In fact, tomorrow, all that news will be stale, and you’ll be no better off than you were yesterday. Â If that news isn’t stale, if it’s actually important, you’ll no doubt have heard about it from some source other than your local anchorman or your favorite news aggregator.
The easy answer is to simply stop. Â Quit watching the news and sports and political coverage,. Â Quit reading whatever news or entertainment channels you read every day. Â Recognize the reasons you’re wasting time watching or reading about things and people you don’t care about and have no impact on your life. Â You’ll soon realize you haven’t fallen behind at all.
Why does it matter who wins the South Carolina primary next week? Â Why, after votes in only two other states, would a win for Mitt Romney make him the prohibitive favorite? Â It’s an interesting psychological question that reaches far beyond politics.
People want to vote for the person they think other people in their situation, with their beliefs, would vote for. Â People also want to work for the company they think other people would work for in their situation. Â They want to buy the clothes, the cars, the vacations, and the houses they think people in their circle would have bought. Â They want to send their kids to the schools their friends would send their kids to, if they could. Â How much of this is conscious and how much is subconscious doesn’t really matter. Â It still works out this way.
People have an overwhelming desire to fit in. Â Even in America, where we have this narrative about rooting for the underdog, most of us do so because everyone else is doing so. Â If you were born and raised in the Bronx, you don’t root for the Padres or the Marlins when the Yankees face them in the World Series. Â Even if you don’t give a shit about baseball, everyone in your circle is cheering for the Yankees, so you cheer for the Yankees.
If you do any sort of sales or marketing, this is important to recognize. Â If you look like the one that everyone else picks, you’ll likely end up being the one everyone else picks.
Why was Steve Jobs so good at what he did? Â Not because he was a perfectionist.
For all the talk of Steve Job’s perfectionism in the weeks and months after his death, most people tended to gloss over the cornucopia of shit products Steve Jobs managed to put out during his life.  Even Malcom Gladwell falls into this trap, saying of Jobs, “He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was.”  Gladwell specifically mentions Job’s obsession over the title bars on the original Macintosh, forcing his developers to go through dozens of iterations.  Not only is Gladwell wrong about Job’s perfectionism, he takes away from one of the reasons Jobs was so successful.
Anyone who used various versions of the Macintosh OS prior to OSX and grew accustomed to seeing the beach ball spin endlessly, seemingly for no reason, understands that not everything Jobs touched was magic.  Even if we only look at Apple hardware, there are still more than a few bad products.  The one-buttoned mouse that Apple held on to for so long was always annoying.  The puck mouse was downright homicide-inducing.  The iTunes phone was terrible.  AppleTV has been less than stellar.  And that’s just a few of the bad products.  None of Apple’s products are perfect, or even close to it.
But that’s exactly the point.  Even Steve Jobs, noted tyrannical perfectionist, not only developed products that weren’t perfect, but actually shipped them.
Because real artists ship.
You could always refine a product. Â Do more market testing, see if consumers like it. Â Refine some more. Â Test again. Â Keep shaving and buffing and polishing and rounding off and perfecting it. Â There’s always a bit more to do before something is ‘perfect’, if only because your tastes change between ‘now’ and ‘perfect’. Â It’s this reason that perfectionism is the ultimate refuge of the scared. Â If you’re busy making it perfect, you never have to show it to the world. Â You never have to put yourself, and your ideas, and your work on the line. Â It’s the height of self-delusion to say you’ll ship when it’s perfect, because deep down, you know it will never be perfect. Â And that’s the scary part. Â Perfectionism is the perfect vehicle for self-sabotage.
But, back in the real world, at some point, your work is ‘good enough’. Â Steve Jobs was really good at identifying when that point came. Â Even when something was shit, sometimes that was good enough. Â Either because of technological limitations, or because it was still better than anything else out there, or because it was simply time to move on.
That last criteria is important to recognize, when it hits.  If you’re up against a deadline, self-imposed or otherwise, it’s often easy to tell when it’s time to move on.  Your time is up. Move on.  But, when there is no deadline, or the deadline is flexible, it’s harder.  In those cases, evaluate what kind of gains you’re likely to make through further refining, then decide whether to keep pushing, or simply move on.  If a year of refining will only push your product from dog-shit up to rabbit-shit, what’s the point? Stop being scared, ship it and move on to something that will yield more important gains.
Why does the Mandarin Oriental cost five times as much per night as the Holiday Inn three blocks away? Â Why is a BMW three times as much as a Ford? Â Why is dinner at Cut ten times more expensive than dinner at Sizzler?
It’s impossible to point to any one thing.
It’s the culmination of a million little decisions. Â At the Mandarin Oriental, it’s the multi-lingual doorman who knows how to properly address you in your native tongue. Â The rounded corners of the marble desk at the lobby check-in. Â The embossed paper your hotel bill is printed on and the weighty pen you’re handed to sign it with. Â The elevators with wood and inlaid stone floors, and polished, art-deco buttons. Â The heft and sound-proofing of your bedroom door. Â The size of the crown molding. Â The type of sheets and placement of the bed. Â The selection of soaps and bath products in the bathroom. . . .
When you look at just the individual items on the list, the price difference sounds laughable. Â Who would pay for such trivialities? Â But the Mandarin Oriental is full, and customers rave, and return.
It’s the culmination of these tiny, individually insignificant details that result in an extraordinary experience.
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