All Or Somethin: On all-stars, assholes, monsters, and a gun to your head
For about thirteen years my best friends and I have gotten together to write out our goals and share them with each other. It started with Tim Ferriss's Dreamline Exercise. Goals around what you want to be, do, and have. Actionable next steps. We never really did the money math but the exercise stuck.
Somewhere along the way we made a day of it. Workout in the morning. Breakfast. Borrowed office space. Four to five hours going through each other's goals. Poking holes, asking questions, playing devil's advocate, finding ways to help. Cap the night with dinner and a fun activity. We set the next date before we leave. I look forward to it every time.
The real magic is the monthly virtual call though. One hour. Progress, setbacks, pivots, accountability. I always hustle ahead of these to show some semblance of progress. It's built-in accountability with people who will push you, ask great questions, and crack jokes the whole time like the guys in the Muppet balcony.
Our six-month meeting just wrapped and I've been rather introspective about what I can accomplish in the next six months. Coming out of it I always feel a certain kind of energy. This time it hit different. I'm actually thinking big for the first time in a while.
[LISTEN] The Problem With All-Stars — Adam Grant, WorkLife
A couple years ago I gave a presentation to our leadership team arguing that a company full of all-stars is actually a disaster. Everyone in the room thought they wanted the best of the best. I told them what they actually wanted was Shane Battier.
Most people have never heard of Shane Battier yet he won two NBA championships. He never led his team in scoring. Never led his team in assists. Never led his team in anything you'd find on a stat sheet. Michael Lewis called him the no-stats all-star. Statisticians spent years trying to figure out what he actually did. The box score had nothing. But every team he joined got better and every team he left got worse. You couldn't see it in the stats. You could only see it in the final score. That was the whole thing.
Some highlights:
- Teams of 10 are better off with six stars than eight. Too many alphas and everyone wants the ball. Fewer assists, worse shots, less trust. The math is brutal.
- Shane didn't stop Kobe from scoring. He just made Kobe work harder to get there. Subtle. Invisible. Invaluable.
- Butler University asks every recruit one question: would you rather score 20 and lose or score 5 and win? The answer tells you everything about whether someone belongs on your team.
➡️ LISTEN HERE
[READ] On Being a Dad — Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson breaks down pretty much every topic under the sun. Economics, culture, AI, politics. This week he wrote about fatherhood and it stopped me mid-scroll.
“One thing they don't tell you about parenthood is that your daughter might turn you into a monster. It's 8am, and the coffee is getting cold, and you find yourself stalking around the kitchen island table, fingers curled into claws, lower jaw extended, teeth bared, foot stomps heavy, voice roaring and phlegmy, an ogre hunting prey, and your two-year old daughter is squealing as she tries to escape."
If you have kids you already know exactly what he's talking about. This is a quick but insightful piece.
➡️ READ IT HERE
[WATCH] Why American News Is So Negative — Wendover Productions
Voltaire is credited with saying the most important decision you will ever make is to be in a good mood. I think about that a lot when I open the news.
A friend told me years ago that he subscribes to a monthly news magazine instead of following the daily cycle. By the time it arrives half the things he would have raged about for a week either resolved themselves or turned out to be less catastrophic than the headlines made them sound. He stays informed. He stays sane. I never forgot that.
This video explains why the rage machine exists in the first place. The short version: we evolved to respond more strongly to threats than opportunities. It kept us alive on the savanna. Now it keeps us glued to things that are making us worse at assessing actual risk.
A few things worth knowing:
- International COVID coverage averaged around 50% negative. US coverage hit 87%. That gap is not an accident.
- The media doesn't just reflect reality. It distorts it like a funhouse mirror. The longer you look, the more you forget what normal looks like.
- The negativity bias isn't just cultural. It's in our DNA. Which means fighting it takes actual intention.
Last issue Kevin Hart talked about building a force field around the things that matter. This video is the science behind why you need one.
[READ] The Asshole Principle — The Lake Street Journal
Here's a phenomenon every golfer knows but nobody has named. Show up to a course with fewer than four people and you get paired with strangers. Almost every time those strangers turn out to be decent. Cool. Sometimes even wonderful. And yet every single group in front of and behind you is full of assholes.
Same golf course. Same pool of people. Completely different experience depending on whether you're sharing a cart with them or watching them from a distance.
"It isn't the fact that, by some divine intervention, you always get paired with the only other golfer who isn't an asshole. It's the idea that it's hard to hate up close."
Share a cart, share a conversation, share some shanks into the sawgrass and the outgroup becomes the ingroup almost instantly.
The piece takes it somewhere bigger from there. Ray Dalio, a Heineken commercial, and one of the more quietly convincing arguments for why the world might not actually be full of difficult people. Worth sitting with this week if you've been finding people difficult lately.
➡️ READ IT HERE
Question I'm Pondering This Week:
In Fight Club, Tyler Durden drags Raymond K. Hessel out of a convenience store at gunpoint and tells him if he's not on his way to becoming a veterinarian in six weeks he's going to kill him. My favorite scene in any movie. It pairs well with this from Peter Thiel:
"If you had a gun to your head, why can't you accomplish your 10 year goal in 6 months?"
And if you want a softer version, James Clear has this:
"Instead of working toward retirement, work toward your ideal lifestyle. There is usually a path to get there in a few years instead of a few decades."
What's your six month gun-to-your-head goal?