Marc Collado

The Wizard of Menlo Park

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The phonograph keynote

When Edison first presented the phonograph to Scientific American, the audience was stunned by its ability to say a simple “hello.” This moment parallels modern-day tech keynotes, like Apple product launches, where innovation shocks the public, only to become normalized rapidly.

It serves as a reminder that today’s jaw-dropping advancements will likely seem trivial or outdated soon. Just as Scientific American was amazed by the phonograph, today’s innovations will eventually lose their novelty as we integrate them into our daily lives.

Within a few years, we might view current interfaces as primitive, much like how the phonograph’s early days now seem simplistic compared to streaming services or AI assistants.

Spotify’s grandfather

It’s fascinating that as early as the 19th century, people like Joseph Hippel envisioned telephones being used to stream music into homes, much like modern music streaming services.

Edison’s phonograph ultimately paved the way for this concept, although he didn’t immediately grasp its potential for music distribution. His initial focus remained on telegraphy.

Focus on the market’s needs

Edison’s first invention, the legislative vote recorder, was a technical marvel but failed because he didn’t understand the needs of its market. Politicians rejected it as they preferred slower voting processes that allowed time for lobbying.

This failure taught Edison that even the most brilliant innovations must align with user needs.

Edison as the first celebrity inventor

Before Edison, celebrities were primarily political and military figures. Edison pioneered the modern concept of a celebrity inventor, a role he leveraged by constantly engaging with the media.

He understood the power of public interest in his work, which helped him secure financial backing and public support for his inventions. It was this blend of technological achievement and media savviness that made him one of the first true celebrity figures in the way we understand fame today.

This is akin to today’s tech figures, such as Elon Musk, who masterfully use public attention and media to fuel their businesses.

ICE vs. electric car

The relationship between Thomas Edison and Henry Ford was one of mutual admiration and deep friendship that lasted over several decades.

While Edison initially supported the idea of electric cars, it was Ford’s success with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that shaped the automotive industry. Despite this, Ford never stopped admiring Edison and continued to support his work and legacy.

One notable collaboration came in 1914 when Ford helped finance Edison’s research into electric car batteries. However, the collaboration didn’t yield the results they had hoped, and electric cars didn’t take off as they had envisioned at that time.

Her, not Ready Player One

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

https://player.rss.com/focaterra/1157848?theme=color&v=2

We once thought we were building a future straight out of Ready Player One. However, it turns out, our future is shaping up to be more akin to the movie Her.

A paradigm shift around the corner

The driver for a generational change is a paradigm shift. The history of computing is essentially a chain of these shifts, each triggered by a groundbreaking technological advancement within its underlying foundation. These pivotal moments don’t just tweak the status quo; they redefine how we interact with technology.

From mainframes to personal computers (PCs), from desktop applications to the web, first on PCs, and then on mobile. Each new technological wave enables the upcoming paradigm and causes a seismic shift in human-computer interaction (HCU), spurring the rise of fresh tools and new entrants to the market.

Easier, closer

At the core of every shift there is a central theme: frictionless interaction and deeper human-tech integration. Technology keeps coming closer to our bodies and becoming more user-friendly.

Even though mobile seems today like the endgame, it just takes a technological breakthrough to bring about new product possibilities we’re not even dreaming of. Imagine trying to conceptualize the personal computer back in the ’60s, or an iPhone in the ’90s; our forecasts are often limited by the lens of the present. We might now be at the same point.

We may think we’re predicting the future, but we’re just projecting our current toolkit into the future. We’re missing the foundational shift that will pave the way for what’s next. It’s also why sci-fi movies from the last century are cluttered with cables and machinery. They were simply extrapolating from what they knew.

A false start

That being said, industry incumbents, like Apple and Meta, are keenly aware of history’s cyclical nature. Their eyes are set on the next paradigm shift, and both seem to think it’ll be a VR wonderland straight out of Ready Player One. But here’s the catch: VR might add more friction than it removes, making it a counterintuitive successor to our handy mobile devices.

Now, skip VR; it’s advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial Intelligence that may be the real game changers.

AI-driven social networks are already remodeling our digital friendships — removing the need for humans to create the content that populates our feeds. While multi-modal interactions with platforms like ChatGPT offer a user experience that’s more human-like than ever before.

They’re steering HCU towards an era of synthetic social networks and ambient computing.

Ambient computing

For startups looking to gain a foothold, LLMs offer the first opportunity since the dawn of the iPhone to capture user attention and to replace the phone as the de facto device.

This is precisely why Meta’s smart glasses — not the Oculus headset — are their ticket to a frictionless, immersive user experience. By folding AI into everyday items, Meta is streamlining product design in an unprecedented way.

A device that can master multi-modal input might very well be the heir to the smartphone throne and pave the way to a the new paradigm. One that aims to make technology so integral to our surroundings that we forget it’s even there.

It’s the next frontier, challenging the continuous computing emerged from the smartphone and leading to a computing that fuses with our environment. The advent of AI isn’t just an incremental update; it’s a revolutionary shift and probably the next chapter in the ongoing story of human progress.

23.29: Notes on Montaigne

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Earlier this year, all thanks to a nudge from Jesús Salido, I got hooked on The Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Right off the bat, I felt like the french philosopher was speaking my language. I mean, this guy from the Renaissance was dropping life truths and principles that still hit home today.

However, The Essays are long and kind of a tough read. That’s why I jotted down some key takeaways, akin to the quick summaries I whipped up for both Nietzche and Yuval Noah Harari.

Here’s a closer look at some of his most prominent ideas. This is Michel de Montaigne for the rest of us.

Action, honor, and truth

While many envision Montaigne as a cultured man, sequestered in his library, it’s essential to recognize him as deeply involved in the political happenings of his time.

I have an open disposition, apt to build trust at first encounters. Authenticity and truth are accepted in any era.

Montaigne was also a lover of genuine conversation. He was not one to engage in debates with the intent to conquer but rather to understand. He believed that sincerity and staying true to one’s word had more merit.

If moral conviction doesn’t drive us to honesty, practical reason should.

Embracing human nature

Montaigne championed the idea of relativism, suggesting that truths are not absolute but subject to individual perceptions. His writings betray a deep-seated skepticism, doubting the very foundation of human reasoning.

What do I know?

Montaigne urged us to come to terms with our human condition, embracing our imperfections and the unpredictability of life. He subscribed to Heraclitus’s idea that everything is in a constant state of flux, making the pursuit of absolute truth elusive. His motto was, “What do I know?”, reminding us of the ever-changing nature of reality.

Aging and mortality

Montaigne likened aging to a slow, piece-by-piece death. He believed that as we grow older and experience life’s gradual losses, the finality of death becomes less shocking. Thus we shouldn’t reflect on it as a big event, but rather as the last stage of this gradual process.

He draws parallels between the potency of youth and the waning strength of old age, using metaphors like a falling tooth as a sign of both aging and impending mortality.

To philosophize is to learn to die.

However, death was a recurring theme in Th Essays, viewing it as an inevitable part of existence. He admired the stoic attitudes of peasants who faced the devastations of wars and plagues with a calm reminiscent of Socrates drinking hemlock.

The natural state

In his travels, Montaigne encountered diverse cultures, leading him to challenge the ethnocentrism of his contemporaries. He argued against the notion of cultural superiority, emphasizing mutual respect and understanding. At his core, he was a humanist. He celebrated individual freedom, the dignity of each person, and the potential within every human being.

The men and women of the New World lived better before Columbus discovered them.

Montaigne had an idealized view of the New World, seeing it as closer to the natural state than the Old World. He believed that the closer one is to this natural state, the better.

He also expressed concerns about the possible imbalance arising from the convergence of two worlds at distinct developmental stages.

Montaigne held a skeptical view on progress, seeing history as a cycle rather than a straight line. Some of his ideas even seem to draw inspiration from Taoism.

Changing the state of things risks making it worse rather than better.

His skepticism led him to uphold traditions, even if they seemed arbitrary.

Montaigne encouraged returning to natural behavior, criticizing societal constructs that deviate from it. He denounced the cruelty he witnessed, particularly in religious wars, emphasizing the sanctity of life above all.

Apunts de la WWDC

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

https://player.rss.com/focaterra/987037?theme=color&v=2

Vision Pro

És probablement el producte “menys polit” que mai ha llançat Apple. Sí que és cert que hem vist “jugades semblants” com podrien ser l’iPhone o l’Apple Watch en el seu moment, però cap en un estat de maduresa tan inicial com aquest.
Vision Pro no les hem d’entendre com un complement de l’iPhone, com ho pot ser l’Apple Watch o els AirPods, sinó com el futur i potencial relleu del Mac.
Filosòficament ens el volen vendre com un producte al qual mirem a través i no a si mateix. Malgrat aquesta afirmació és tecnològicament incorrecte — doncs el Vision Pro projecta la realitat exterior que les seves càmeres capturen cap a una pantalla opaca situada a la part interior del dispositiu — la il·lusió que vol transmetre és que en tot moment estem percebent el món exterior a través d’un vidre.
El dispositiu tècnicament qualificaria de realitat virtual. Però posa tant èmfasi en voler-nos fer creure que, el seu mode per defecte és el d’augmentar-la. Malgrat tot, durant la presentació en cap moment es fa esment de la “realitat augmentada” o “realitat virtual” sinó que ens introdueixen al concepte “spatial computing”.
Malgrat que a nivell tecnològic hi siguem molt lluny, la raó de l’anterior és que la visió futura per aquest producte són unes ulleres de l’estil “Google Glass”. Doncs amb les Vision Pro, estem intentant creuar aquest abisme tecnològic i social, accelerant el progrés entre el món actual i aquest hipotètic escenari futur. De la mateixa manera que un mòdem de 28k obrí pas i allisà el camí cap a una xarxa 5G.
Inicialment, els casos d’ús que vaticinen són productivitat, probablement l’únic que pot arribar a justificar aquest elevat preu, i entreteniment passiu, on el subjecte participa de manera estàtica en un esdeveniment o joc.
Els espais d’ús que mostren mai tenen lloc en emplaçaments exteriors, sinó a casa, l’oficina, o un avió. Deixant ben clar aquest no és un producte pensat per a la mobilitat ni la interacció social en espais oberts.
El que inevitablement ens porta a parlar de l’aïllament inherent en l’ús d’aquestes tecnologies. Malgrat que Apple ha intentat fer molt èmfasi en aquesta “transparència” i la (falsa) sensació que en tot moment estem percebent l’exterior, la veritat és que hi ha un punt de raresa en el fet d’experimentar una realitat diferent de la gent del teu voltant.
Què estàs veient mentre m’estàs mirant? Aquest concepte és molt evident ja avui, per exemple, amb els AirPods. Quan algú es dirigeix a nosaltres i es crea aquell moment “incert / violent” on els subjectes no saben si estem atenent o estem experimentant una conversa diferent a través dels nostres auriculars de la que ells no en són partíceps.
És un producte del qual Apple té molt a aprendre i no té clar el cas d’ús guanyador. És semblant al que va passar amb l’iPhone (que es va posicionar inicialment com un iPod, un telèfon i un comunicador d’Internet, i acabà sent l’últim); o l’Apple Watch (que es va posicionar inicialment com una peça de joieria, un dispositiu de precisió temporal, una eina de productivitat o un fitness tracker, i acabà sent l’últim).

Curiositats de l’esdeveniment

Ni una paraula de la intel·ligència artificial. En el seu lloc “transformers”, o “lleguatges generatius”.
L’Apple Watch és clarament la plataforma que lidera quant a interfície d’usuari. A més, a més, el producte clarament cada vegada més està heretant funcionalitats només vistes abans en Garmin o dispositius esportius d’aquest estil.
Apple continua fidel als llançaments de programari per cicles, a l’estil hardware, en detriment d’una cadència contínua.
Actualment, Apple manté fins a sis plataformes de manera simultània: macOS, iOS, ipadOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS; i després productes sense UI com AirPods o HomePod, que tenen el seu propi model d’interacció.
La polinització de funcionalitats entre plataformes fa que algunes de més madures, com macOS, perdin simplicitat.

La carta als Reis de macOS

👍 Resolt a macOS Sonoma

Enllaços interns entre notes a Apple Notes
Silenciar els AirPods directament des de l’auricular
Autocompletat de codis 2FA des del correu
Gestió millorada de PDFs
Hem matat Electron amb Safari web apps?

👎 Encara no resolt

Drecera per canviar l’idioma del corrector
Compartir un enllaç d’un arxiu des del Finder de manera “senzilla”
Recordar per defecte com se sol contactar una persona
Gestió d’invitacions del calendari a Apple Calendar
Sincronitzar preferències d’aplicacions entre iOS i macOS

AI and the status quo

Sat, 20 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

While I’ve often held and shared a degree of skepticism towards emerging tech trends — take web3, virtual reality, or autonomous vehicles, for example — this time, with the raise of AI it’s different.

Unlike with, for example, web3, this time around the big names in tech aren’t just watching from the sidelines, but flooding the space with a boatload of investment and and re-routing their strategic paths to get on the AI train.

They are very interested in seeing this shift happen and we’ve recently seen companies like Microsoft, Google, or Facebook abruptly changing their roadmap to join the AI ride and that’s mainly of two reasons.

First, because the AI domination is a matter of raw compute power and default consumer touch points. Therefore its success will only cement its dominance.

Unlike with web3 or virtual reality, AI’s prominence is aligned with FANGA’s business model because at the end of day, once the technology has been commoditized, it’ll all come down to who can foot the bill for these products — think owners of data centers.

Moreover, consider who already owns the default choices and products that billions of users won’t forsake. Consumer behavior is usually static and gravitates towards familiarity. When somebody is already accustomed to a product — say Google Docs or Microsoft Excel — it is very difficult to make them change and go somewhere else. The consumer benefit has to be insanely better, which it is not often the case. However, you layer a new feature on top of an already known product, give it enough time and value, and eventually users will embrace it.

This presents a challenge for OpenAI, though it’s equally a testament to its accomplishments thus far. A fitting analogy here is Apple Maps, which initially lagged behind Google Maps, but just by the fact of being the default choice on iOS, it so far remains the most used mapping solution for the platform.

Second, because the end game of this AI play looks a lot like a thick foundational infrastructure layer with thin applications built on top.

If this sounds a lot like the Internet as it is today — with thick protocols and big tech riding on top of them — it is because AI won’t create new players like the Internet did, but only perpetuate the status quo. Historically, big tech companies have benefited from Internet’s decentralized, free, and open protocols — such as TCP/IP or SMTP — and created their business models on top. Shaping the Internet as the centralized entity that we all know today.

It then follows that this time around, the ones with the compute power and the data centers won’t only host the party and own the AI models, but also cater to the most common and horizontal use cases. Simultaneously, the entities with niche data will devise vertical applications on thinner layers atop this foundation.

Long story short, I’m not sure if LLMs are part of a technological revolution akin to the Internet. But I wouldn’t underestimate either the power of defaults and the ripple effect of substantial capital infusion in this space. It will undoubtedly shape user behavior and bolster the rule of default products.

AI is here to stay

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I am almost 36 years old now, and very pragmatic and skeptical when it comes to adopting new technology. I am not active on social media and don’t even have a Facebook account. I have never used, and am not sure if I understand, platforms like Snap or TikTok. I used to be an early adopter in my teens, but over time I lost the fear of missing out and learned to appreciate tools for their outcomes, not their allure.

Perhaps this is because in my short lifespan, I’ve seen many tech waves come and go. Some have been transformational, like the iPhone, while others promised to change the world forever but quickly faded away, like NFTs or VR.

However, this time around, with all the developments in the world of artificial intelligence, I feel that the impact will be both different and truly transformational.

The idea of AGI is something that has come and gone many times, and it’s a topic that has interested me for a long time. Its implications on different layers, such as privacy, job automation, creativity, and overall societal transformation, have the potential to change the world as we know it.

Why I think that’s the case?

The acceleration of AI developments is starting to reveal a truly exponential growth. There was a time when between product breakthroughs we’d had to “wait” years. Now this is coming down to months, even days. This means that the pace of innovation is likely to increase at an unprecedented rate, with new products being developed and released at an ever-increasing speed.
Recent layoffs have left thousands of tech-minded people unemployed, probably seeking to start new venture.
What these AI-enabled tools do, among many other things, is to lower the barrier of entry — in terms of skills, capital requirements, and human resources — to create a new product. For example, starting from scratch and recreating any existing product today, might cost several orders of magnitude less and scaling could not even require deep technical chops.

For the first time, by leveraging AI’s capabilities and offloading some tasks where it clearly outperforms humans, I believe we’re on the verge of the renaissance man, a solo founder of the modern era.

However, despite the fact that we often make stupid societal decisions, progress is generally making the world a better place. But as good as an AI-driven scenario could get, the potential for negative outcomes of such God-like technology, if poorly managed, can lead to a “game over” of sorts.

Because of this, I’ve decided that I want to spend more time around this technology, get my hands dirty with it, blog about its possible applications and dangers, share its latest developments, and create some AI-enabled products or tools that could amplify our human nature, cognition, expand our capabilities, and above all, make the world a better place.

En resum, Silicon Valley Bank

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

https://player.rss.com/focaterra/871138?theme=color&v=2

El resum següent és un acompanyament de l’episodi, llistant, resumint i, si cal, aprofundint en cada bloc temàtic del que parlem. T’ajudarà a fer mès amè l’episodi i entendre alguns dels conceptes més tècnics amb els quals podries no ser familiar.

Avisos i curiositats

Aquesta és una història que canvia cada minut que passa. Doncs tota notícia esdevé obsoleta el mateix moment de la seva publicació. En aquest cas, les notes a continuació recullen només els esdeveniments previs al 15 de Març. Per tant, no ens fem “responsables” de que nous fets entrin en contradicció amb els comentaris esmentats en l’article.
Com que aquesta és la mateixa setmana que Microsoft ha anunciat GPT-4 hem fet un experiment. De la mà d’aquest resum escrit “a l’antiga” — el que també es coneix com “del nostre puny i lletra” o “de la manera que ho hem fet des que s’inventà la mecanografia” — hem generat també un altre resum més curt “a la futura”.

Resum “a la futura”

Hem generat una transcripció del arxiu d’àudio amb Whisper.
Hem agafat aquest text i li hem demanat a ChatGPT que ens generi un resum de la transcripció — també generada per intel·ligència artificial.
Per comparar i jutjar quin és millor, trobaràs el resultat al final de la versió escrita “a l’antiga”.

Ara si, dit això, ja podem començar.

El context

El passat 10 de març, després d’anunciar la venda forçada d’una part de la seva cartera d’obligacions a llarg termini i la impossibilitat de fer front a les retirades de fons dels seus clients, el Silicon Valley Bank va col·lapsar. Per cert, si això us sona a xinès, seguiu llegint, tot tindrà sentit en un parell de paràgrafs.
Malgrat que la crisi va esclatar tot d’una la setmana passada, la causa subjacent de tot plegat es va anar gestant en els últims anys i era coneguda des de fa mesos.
- La causa és l’extrema exposició del banc a un balanç ple d’actius de baix interès a llarg termini.
- L’activador de la fallida va ser el que es coneix com un “bank run” o una massiva retirada de diners per part dels clients, diners amb els quals el banc havia comprat aquests actius.
- El catalitzador de tot plegat: Internet.
Els clients de SVB no eren particulars ni grans empreses, sinó més aviat startups.
- Per a aquestes, el col·lapse de SVB significa la impossibilitat de dur a terme l’operativa diària de qualsevol empresa, ja sigui per pagar nòmines, proveïdors o disposar de crèdit.
- Malgrat que això canviarà en els propers paràgrafs, per a elles, el límit de 250.000 dòlars que la FED garanteix a tots els dipòsits tampoc els seria suficient. La majoria d’elles tenien dipòsits per sobre d’aquest llindar, ja que l’operativa diària d’una empresa generalment requereix més capital.

La història

Tot comença a gestar-se a partir dels volts del 2017 amb un quadre macroeconòmic caracteritzat per una enorme quantitat de diners “gratuïts” en circulació, propiciat per una continuada política monetària de tipus zero, fins i tot negatius, i la creença que tot plegat “sempre” seguiria així.
Els fons de capital risc, amb gran quantitat de liquiditat en cartera, comencen a “regar” l’espai tecnològic, donant lloc als “unicorns”, rondes de finançament impossibles i valoracions milionàries sense precedents.
Com qualsevol persona carregada de bitllets, els nous “unicorns”, armats de capital líquid, havien de dipositar aquests diners en algun lloc. Casualment, aquest lloc va ser el SVB, el banc “creat” especialment per a ells.
Com dèiem, ja es va anunciar fa mesos que el banc estava exposat a “aguantar” aquestes obligacions a llarg termini. No obstant, com que la regulació bancària permetia que aquests actius no actualitzessin el seu valor en el balanç, les alarmes no havien de saltar a menys que molta gent volgués treure els diners de cop, cosa que ha passat.

Rendiment vs. viabilitat

Pel que fa al paper, el banc no ha fet res “malament”. Ha fet el que sol fer un banc, el seu model de negoci, que no és altre que invertir els diners dels seus dipositaris (anotats al passiu del balanç del banc) i generar-ne rendiment.
- Els SVB els va invertir en lletres i deute del tresor Americà a llarg termini. A més llarg termini, més gran és el teu compromís amb l’obligació, més gran és el risc, i per tant més alt és el tipus que ofereixen. Com que en aquells moments els tipus d’interès eren quasi zero, només els bons a molt llarg termini oferien un rendiment per a ells acceptable.
Aquest tipus d’actius també tenen un mercat secundari, és a dir, es poden comprar i vendre en qualsevol moment. Si els tipus no canvien, el seu preu generalment no fluctua gaire. Si els tipus canvien, el seu valor s’ajusta en funció de si el tipus que ara s’ofereix és més alt o més baix.
En pujar bruscament els tipus, el mercat secundari per aquests títols cau en picat, ja que ara pots aconseguir un major rendiment directament amb el deute emès directament pels bancs centrals.
Això no sol ser un risc sistèmic per a un banc, ja que a menys que molta gent volgués treure els diners de cop i el banc necessiti “liquidar” aquests actius, el banc simplement assumeix que les seves inversions tindran el rendiment previst al venciment. Un rendiment menor del que podria aconseguir ara, certament, però el que ja tenia projectat si més no.

El “bank run”

Durant la setmana passada, un grup de “founders” i experts de Silicon Valley van anunciar que retiraven els diners i van aconsellar la resta del sector, que en cas d’estar exposat, fes el mateix.
Per poder fer front a aquestes retirades, el banc anuncià Dimecres que venia, per tant assumia la pèrdua, de part d’aquesta cartera a llarg termini. Dijous cauria un cinquanta per cent al mercat. Divendres un seixanta.
Tot plegat fa saltar totes les alarmes i es crea un efecte dominó. El que es coneix com un “bank run”.
Aquest ha estat el primer “bank run” empès per les xarxes socials. Un món compulsiu, irracional, on les retirades es poden generar sense fricció, de forma remota, immediata i “en un sol click”; sense necessitat de personificar-se a la finestreta del banc.
En un escenari com aquest el banc té dues opcions, cap d’elles té bon acabar:
- Seguir liquidant actius per fer front als pagaments, assumint més pèrdues, seguir descapitalitzant-se fins que… bé, fins que tècnicament es produeix una insolvència.
- Si algú encara està disposat a invertir, aixecar diners al mercat a una valoració “de broma” motivada per l’anterior.
- Aturar les retirades de dipòsits, fent saltar encara més alarmes i estenent el pànic a encara més inversors que optaran per reclamar els seus dipòsits.
Qualsevol de les tres, desembocarà en un rescat bancari que segurament pagarem “entre tots” o en una fallida que depenent de la dimensió del banc corre el risc de ser sistèmica, com el 2008.

Resum “a la futura”

Avui parlem del Silicon Valley Bank i del què ha passat. Aquest no és un episodi d’actualitat, jo crec que és més un episodi de punt de vista històric, perquè és extremadament interessant.

Estem davant d’un dels majors drames financers de l’època moderna, 100%, un especialment molt relacionat amb tecnologia perquè ens toca molt de prop. Si algú ha baixat de la parra o de la figuera i no sap de què estem parlant, el 16è banc en capitalització bancària als Estats Units, ha fet fallida i ha acabat per ser intervingut.

A partir del 2017, en un escenari de tipus zero, és a dir que el diners eren gratuïts, literalment, va haver-hi una estesa i una empastifada de pasta en el món del VC acollonant, es van regar les startups i el món tecnològic de diners d’una manera increïble en el període aquest de 2017-2020, abans del Covid.

Què fa una empresa d’aquest calibre? Els va portar a un banc. Particularment, els van dipositar en aquest Silicon Valley Bank, que és, si ets enginyer com l’Àlex, és de la caixa enginyer, si ets una startup, ets del Silicon Valley Bank. Era un banc que tenia aquest perfil de clients sobretot.

El negoci d’un banc és molt senzill. Té diners i aquests diners no estan al seu actiu, estan al seu passiu. Aquests diners han de fer alguna cosa, els han de posar a fer funcionar, a rentar d’alguna manera. Perquè si no, ens trobem, i sobretot això és important, és que no hi ha d’haver diners, cosa que no és el cas. El banc va fer el que tocava, però va anar al mercat financer i resulta que allà no s’ho donaven interessos perquè els interessos eren a tipus zero.

Aquest punt és molt important. Si havies comprat un bono a 10 anys que rendeix el 2%, ara ja no val això. Aquest actiu perd valor. Aquest punt és crític. Aquest banc estava ple de tickets d’aquests a 10 anys. Han pujat els tipus d’interès i aquest actiu ara no val un duro. Això no és un problema si no necessites el líquid. Si necessites el líquid i el vens, les pèrdues són enormes.

Això és el que es diu duration mismatch en el món anglosaxó. Tens actius però si no vens i pots esperar a venciment, no has d’acceptar la pèrdua en el balanç. Tot va sobre el pla que tenies o pots vendre. Aquesta situació també es pot donar al revés. Si haguessis comprat a tipus molt alts i els tipus baixessin, aquest bono valdria més ara.

Influencers — updated 2025.09

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The following list features authors and personalities I’ve explored through books, blogs, and podcasts. However, my greatest lessons have come from my real-life mentors. Perhaps they’ll have their own list someday.

Modern thinkers

Deep learners

Tech insiders

Lifestyle optimizers

Human behavior - psychology and economics

Human performance - health and fitness

Physicists

Stoics in the XXI century

Classics

The Psychology of Money

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone has their own way of seeing the world. What I think is wild might be normal for someone else. Your background can really change how you look at investing and how much risk you’re willing to take. So, don’t judge other people’s investment choices, because they might not see things the same way as you do.

Becoming wealthy and staying wealthy are two distinct games. Achieving wealth can be a stroke of luck or a result of ingenuity. However, maintaining wealth requires discipline, frugality, and long-term planning.

Enough. At a party hosted by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut told his friend Joseph Heller that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in one day than Heller had earned from his hugely successful novel Catch-22 throughout its entire history. Heller’s response?

Yes, but I have something he will never have — enough.

The importance of compounding. There is an old riddle about a lily pad in a pond.

The lily pad doubles in size every day and after 30 days it covers the whole pond. On what day does the lily pad cover half the pond?

Many people would say “day 15” because that’s what our minds think of first. But the answer is actually day 29.

A more interesting question is, how much of the pond would be when the lily pad have covered on day 15? The answer is .0031%. On day 24 it will cover more than 1%. On the day 29 it will cover half of it.

This riddle is tricky because the lily pad’s growth is exponential, not linear. Our minds struggle with exponential models and we understand linear growth better because it is easier to estimate. Exponential growth is hard to envision and our estimates don’t usually work, but this is exactly how compound interest works, thus take it into account when thinking of your investments.

Long tails. In addition to compounding, long tails also play a significant role in the wealth narrative.

In a venture capital portfolio, it is assumed that after distributing funds across multiple investments, most of them will fail. However, returns from a couple of “unicorn” investments will compensate for all the fund returns. Similarly, consider what would have happened if ten of the more than 15 billion people who have lived on Earth during the XIX and XX centuries had not existed. The course of history would have been completely different.

The dynamics of investing are no different, so keep compounding and long tails in mind when thinking about wealth.

Remember to pay yourself first. While it’s easy to fall into the trap of debt and unnecessary spending, doing so means that a large percentage of your hard-earned money goes towards paying off those debts. This can leave you with less income than you deserve, even before you get a chance to enjoy it.

If you take this argument to the extreme, you may not even have enough money to cover your daily expenses, let alone save for the future. So, to stay afloat and ensure that you can grow your savings account, it’s important to prioritize yourself and your financial well-being.

Don’t waste your time pursuing the wrong things. People often desire admiration and respect, believing that they can obtain it by acquiring extravagant possessions, such as jewelry, fancy cars, or huge houses. But owning these things doesn’t necessarily follow admiration and respect. Seeing a Ferrari on the road might make you appreciate the car’s engineering and craftsmanship, but it won’t necessarily make you think the driver has “made it.”

In fact, owning a Ferrari is often the opposite of accumulating wealth. It only means that the person has 500K less in their bank account, or worse, is in debt.

A margin of safety. When it comes to investing, it’s always important to remember to have a margin of safety and room for error. While being a risk-seeker is important, it’s equally important to be cautious and avoid getting knocked out of the game.

This is an idea also present across all Nassim Taleb’s work and The Value Investor, that at the end of the day, the most important thing is to keep playing.

Investing is a long-term game. It’s easy to get caught up in short-term market fluctuations, but it’s important to keep a level head and not panic. Stay the course and stick to your long-term plan.

There is also no such thing as a completely safe investment, and you should always be prepared for the possibility of losing money. However, with proper planning, long-term perspective, and a margin of error, can be a powerful tool for building wealth over time.

You must fail often to reap extraordinary rewards. Personal finance is akin to a venture portfolio. The few investments that succeed typically account for the majority of the returns. This may seem counterintuitive and even intimidating, but diversifying your investments across different baskets can mean that most of them fail, while the few that succeed will more than make up for the losses.

Assets don’t always have a rational price. Even bubbles can be rationalized at any given time, since nobody wants to be stuck with an overvalued asset. Ultimately, the price depends on various factors, such as the type of investor and the time horizon.

What may be a good choice for a day trader may not be the best option for a long-term holder. These two investors don’t know each other and are playing different games, yet on the same board. Therefore, it’s essential to know your goals and evaluate what makes sense for you at any given point in time.

I am a passive investor, optimistic in the worlds ability to generate real economic growth, and I’m confident that over the next thirty years that growth will accrue to my investments.

Stories people tell. The economic landscape in late 2009 was much better than it had been two years prior. In 2007, the economy was thriving, prices were rising, and prospects were promising. However, by 2009, it seemed like everything was going downhill. Stories and narratives often influence market sentiment, even when metrics point in a different direction.

The Return of the Solo Founder

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

The term Renaissance man or polymath — inspired by Renaissance creators — is often used to designate a breed of people whose skills span across a wide range of domains. Two of the highest examples from that time were Leonardo da Vinci, a painter but also a scientist, philosopher, engineer, and mathematician; and Michelangelo, an extraordinary sculptor, painter, architect and poet.

However, the complexity of today’s products can make it difficult for individuals to become proficient in multiple areas. Starting and running a successful business often requires a team with specialized skills and expertise. This is especially true for technology companies, which often required a combination of software developers, designers, and marketers to bring a product to market.

For example, developing a complex software product may require expertise in multiple programming languages, as well as a deep understanding of user experience design and data analytics. Similarly, marketing a product may require a combination of creative thinking, data analysis, and social media savvy. As a result, many businesses rely on teams of specialists to handle these tasks.

The Solo Founder

This trend, though, is about to change and bring back the figure of the Renaissance man for the modern era — the solo founder.

New tools have made it easier for people to handle a wider range of tasks and responsibilities — handing-off to the repetitive and time-consuming tasks, or simply the ones that aren’t their strong suit.

Additionally, the increasing availability and accessibility of online learning resources has made it easier for curious minds to continuously improve their skills and knowledge. By leveraging these resources, solo founders can quickly become proficient in multiple areas, even if they do not have formal training or education.

Now is an exciting time to be a solo founder.

The Rise of AI

Advances in AI and other technological tools have made it possible for individuals to create products and businesses that may have previously required a team. One of the key benefits of these tools is their ability to automate certain tasks and processes, freeing up time and resources for founders to focus on other areas of their business.

In addition to automation, AI tools can also provide solo founders with access to advanced capabilities that may have been out of reach in the past. For example, a solo founder with limited design skills can use AI-powered design tools to create professional-quality graphics and marketing materials. Similarly, AI-powered language translation tools can be used to expand their reach and connect with global markets.

On top of that, the rise of the gig economy and the increasing popularity of remote work have made it easier than ever to build a network of freelancers and contractors to help with specific tasks or projects, rather than having to build a full-time team. These tools can also help solo founders scale their businesses more efficiently, as they can handle a larger volume of work without requiring additional human labor.

Overall, the combination of automation, advanced capabilities, and the gig economy has made it easier for solo founders to build new thriving businesses. As a result, now is an exciting time for entrepreneurs, creators, and product generalists to pursue their passions and turn their ideas into reality.

Conclusion

Of course, this post was entirely, but this sentence, generated, in less than ten minutes, using ChatGPT — a chatbot developed by OpenAI.

La mètrica de l'originalitat — part II

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

https://player.rss.com/focaterra/675172?theme=color&v=2

Aquesta vegada, la situació és ben curiosa perquè tot apunta que la piràmide del coneixement s’ha invertit. Puix que en temps passats, la canalla solia recórrer al progenitor en la cerca de saviesa i experiència. Però avui dia, tota aquesta revolució digital ha agafat, fins i tot, a aquestes velles generacions a contrapeu.

Tot el jovent nascut en l’última dècada — coneguts també com a generació Alpha — han crescut en un món eminentment digital. On el contingut generat per algoritmes d’intel·ligència artificial no és una anècdota, sinó una capa omnipresent que impregna la nostra realitat. Per ells, realitat no són només arbres i carrers. També contingut d’un esdeveniment fictici curosament col·locat al bell mig de la seva experiència digital.

Una realitat que ha vingut per quedar-se. Una realitat, però, que ha vingut tan de pressa que no ha donat espai als progenitors per fer entendre a la canalla que, aquella pseudorealitat autogenerada, no forma part del món dels àtoms, sinó dels 1s i 0s.

Per exemple, anys enrere vam inventar el foc. Amb la gran diferència, però, que llavors podíem recórrer amb èxit als experts per saber si aquell giny ens cremaria. En canvi, avui hem inventat la intel·ligència artificial i no tenim a qui recórrer per determinar la veracitat d’una conversa entre Joe Rogan i Steve Jobs.

As soon as it works, no one calls it AI any more.

—— John McCarthy

I no oblidem que aquesta és només la versió preliminar d’aquesta tecnologia. La joguina que ha sortit a les notícies. L’afer es magnifica quan — tal com preveia John McCarthy, un dels pares de la disciplina — en tan bon punt la tecnologia funcioni, mai més ningú es referirà a ella com intel·ligència artificial. Passarà silenciosament al segon pla; a formar part del que denominarem el nou normal; on aquesta pseudorealitat ja no serà distingible.

Arribats aquest punt, en funció de la gravetat dels efectes de segon ordre que tot plegat pugui tenir, no ens hauria de sorprendre veure regulació governamental. Una situació a l’estil GDPR o les marques d’aigua en contingut publicitari amb les que ja tots som familiars.

Una idea que a tots ens sona intervencionista i que atempta contra la innovació. Doncs proposar la mà legislativa com a solució a un problema que encara no tenim no és atractiu. Però assegut en aquesta cadira i jutjant pels esdeveniments passats, no se m’acut una sortida millor per posar anticipar una realitat que inevitablement arribarà.

La mètrica de l'originalitat — part I

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

https://player.rss.com/focaterra/667060?theme=color&v=2

Un debat tan llarg de fet, que aquesta és només la primera part de la gravació — la setmana vinent en publicarem la segona part.

Per començar i anar obrint boca, primer aterrem els fonamentals, els bàsics. Si resulta que precisament avui baixes de l’hort i no has sentit res sobre la generació d’imatges amb intel·ligència artificial, pots començar per aquí — ben segur aquest esdevindrà el teu nou passatemps de la setmana.

Es tracta de Midjourney, un servidor de Discord que t’entregarà imatges generades per la seva intel·ligència a mesura que xateges amb ella. Tu li formules el que vols i ella et contestarà en forma de quatre petits suggeriments. A partir d’aquí, pots continuar provant sort, iterar el model, quedar-te amb la imatge que t’agrada, o simplement aprendre dels “prompts” de la resta d’usuaris amb qui compartiràs servidor.

Seguim l’episodi parlant de la volatilitat i aquesta societat líquida en què vivim. Ens referim a com Internet crea cicles de valor i tendències de les quals avui tothom parla, però demà ningú recorda. Un bon exemple en són els NFTs. Una revolució fa uns mesos, un desert avui dia.

El qual ens porta a parlar de dues conseqüències en què això inevitablement desemboca.

Primera, es redueix exponencialment la quantitat de temps que necessitem per tele-transportar algú del passat al present i pateixi un atac de cor d’incredulitat. El que eren mil·lennis durant el paleolític, segles durant l’època antiga, passen a ser comptades setmanes en el món contemporani.
Segona, les feines del futur s’aglutinen als extrems. Especialistes a una banda, generalistes i emprenedors a l’altre. La franja del mig, probablement, quedarà desdibuixada i obsoleta perquè no serà capaç d’adaptar-se al canvi constant ni crear nous projectes.

Però no tot són males notícies i, com sempre, tanquem amb un punt per l’esperança.

Doncs no sabem si la generació d’imatges amb intel·ligència artificial ens deixarà o no sense feina. Però en tal cas, sempre podem optar per reciclar-nos com a dissenyadors de miniatures per vídeos de xarxes socials. Un bon exemple de mercat que abans no estava disponible perquè literalment no existia i ara està explotant pel canvi constant que experimenta la societat. Sabem quant durarà? No. Només sabem que és una porta que s’obre de la mà de noves oportunitats. Probablement se saturarà i es tancarà aviat. El que sabem de segur és que demà, al costat d’aquesta, se n’obrirà una altra.

Finalment, tanquem amb un concepte que desgranarem a l’episodi de la setmana vinent: la mètrica de l’originalitat. Per fer-ne cinc cèntims i picar la curiositat de l’oient, bàsicament la idea és entendre com la intel·ligència artificial optimitza un problema quan la mètrica no és quantificable — en aquest cas, la creativitat humana.

Podem apuntar a molts exemples on la intel·ligència artificial ha sobrepassat ja les capacitats humanes: escacs, Go (el joc), fins i tot en la detecció de càncers a través del processament de ressonàncies magnètiques.

Malgrat això, en tots ells, aquesta intel·ligència sempre ha disposat d’una mètrica quantificable sobre la que optimitzar. Dona-li suficient corpus de data i una mètrica sòlida al model i… acabes d’engreixar les xifres de l’atur del mes vinent.

La IA se sent còmode allí on sap jugar. Ho converteix tot en un problema matemàtic. Justament allò que a nosaltres ens costa horrors, a ella li surt de forma inherent. Ara bé, què passa quan la mètrica no és quantificable amb una xifra? Aquí ja no se sent tan còmode. Sempre necessitarà un humà al costat per ajudar-la a entendre si els seus resultats van ben encaminats o no. És aquí on s’obre la porta de l’esperança i potser una oportunitat per homes i màquines per col·laborar plegats.

Ho parlem el següent episodi.

Hola des de Foc a Terra

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

🎙 Foc a Terra és un podcast amb Àlex R. Bacardit i Marc Collado.

Un podcast de minories, per al gran públic, que t’acostarà — en català — a la tecnologia tal com raja.

Per saber-ne més, pots visitar a la nostra web oficial. Finalment, no dubtis en seguir-nos a Twitter i subscriure’t per ser el primer a escoltar-nos.

Una mica de context

L’Àlex és d’aquelles persones que tan bon punt la coneixes inevitablement penses: algun dia muntarem “alguna cosa” junts. Feia temps que ens seguíem els passos, amb l’Àlex. Malgrat això, no acabàvem de trobar mai ni el què, ni el com, ni el quan. Doncs bé, tot apunta que el meu torn ha arribat i “alguna cosa” ja té nom i cognoms: es diu Foc a Terra i és un podcast de minories, per al gran públic que t’acostarà a la tecnologia en català i tal com raja.

Avui és un dia especial per @lexrodba i per mi. Doncs us volem presentar un nou projecte personal amb què hem estat treballant els últims mesos.

Diem hola 👋 a @foc_a_terra, un podcast de minories, per al gran públic, que t'acostarà — en català — a la tecnologia tal com raja.
— Marc Collado (@MarcCollado) January 24, 2022

Per què?

Jo personalment, estic una mica desencisat amb el món. Sembla que tots plegats hàgim acceptat la tecnologia com un destí inevitable del progrés. Sense preguntar massa hem obert la porta de bat a bat a una bateria de productes i serveis transformadors. Falsament etiquetats com a “innovadors”, aquests han reconfigurat silenciosament els pilars de la societat.

En molt poc temps ha canviat absolutament tot: hàbits, oci, rutines, relacions socials… Innumerables alteracions en menys temps del que qualsevol espècie necessitaria per aclimatar-se a una nova realitat. A més a més, no fa la pinta que tot plegat vulgui reprimir-se. Ans al contrari, cada dia que passa la tendència s’accelera.

I malgrat la seva rellevància, quasi ningú en parla d’això. Com si no estigués de moda o no anés amb nosaltres. Tots plegats hem acatat com si no hi hagués res a fer. Submisos, com si aquest fos un final ineludible que una capriciosa entitat divina ha dictat per nosaltres.

En aquest context hi manca educació. Cal explicar a tothom que aquest assortiment tecnològic no és neutre ni inofensiu, i té greus conseqüències. Algú s’ha de preguntar com pot ser que hàgim girat la societat com un mitjó i ningú hagi aixecat la mà per, almenys, contar què està passant.

Foc a Terra

Un paper que les grans corporacions catalanes semblen haver-hi heretat a desgana, un regal no desitjat, com si els hi fes nosa. I el resultat? Per una banda, una diarrea informativa, capitanejada per uns auto proclamats “experts”; una narrativa poc elaborada, simplista, que t’acusa d’analfabet per sobre l’espatlla. Per l’altra, una constel·lació desdibuixada de “freaks” que haurien d’aixecar més la veu; gent ben versada i que saben el que diuen; però poc preocupats pel com i que pequen d’emprar un llenguatge massa especialitzat i poc accessible.

Doncs hi ha un buit que va tot sol: falten veus de “freaks” que vulguin comunicar per a les masses.

I com que sembla que ningú no ho vol fer… dos “freaks” d’estar per casa amb moltes ganes de comunicar a la resta de mortals et presentem Foc a Terra: un podcast de tecnologia, de minories, per al gran públic. Mitjançant contingut proper, pretenem acostar-te la tecnologia i les noves tendències, sense embuts ni sensacionalismes en un format didàctic i divulgatiu.

Prenent el relleu històric dels populars Fireside chats (d’aquí el nom Foc a Terra) l’Àlex i jo t’acompanyarem cada dilluns mentre tu condueixes, planxes, o camines cap a la pròxima reunió. Una xerrada setmanal, crítica, entretinguda, i polèmica. Guiada per dos apassionats tecnològics, que t’ho explicaran tot sense filtres, tal com raja.

Ah, sí, i per si no ho havies notat, exclusivament en català.

Why We Get Fat

Sat, 13 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

It is surprising how little we know about nutrition. We all need food to survive, however, we still haven’t comprehended its inner mechanics.

Nutrition has become a myth, cult, and dogma more than science. That’s precisely what makes it so difficult to even discuss it. Why We Get Fat is not a diet book, but a biological one and the science of what’s happening in our body that makes us fat.

Conventional wisdom

We are causal-seeking machines. We demand immediate, direct explanations of all events happening around us. The effortless the evidence and the more compelling the narrative, the better. The problem is that when media, lobbies, and governmental interests get in the way, these explanations can depart from reality.

We’ve grown being told that we remain lean because we’re virtuous and we get fat because we lack self-control. That we are the only ones to blame. That obesity is caused by overeating. That nutrition can be solely explained by the first law of thermodynamics — reducing an extremely complex process to a simple “calories-in, calories-out” story.

But all thermodynamics says is that if something gets more or less massive, then more or less energy has to enter than leave it. It says nothing about why. It says nothing about cause and effect.

While there are some bits of truth here and there, the oversimplification of the argument makes us draw the wrong conclusions.

Cause and effect, reversed

Conventional wisdom argues that fat accumulation is driven by a simple energy balance, what we call “calories-in, calories-out”. However, this narrative is flawed. Cause and effect are reversed.

We don’t get fat because we overeat, we overeat because we are getting fat.

Think about it in another way: picture a kid growing. She definitely consumed more calories than she expended. Yet you’d never tell that she gained weight because she ate too much or exercised too little, but because she was growing. Her body demanded those calories and it found a way to get them: either by increasing the appetite or reducing energy expenditure.

We can conclude that anything that makes us grow, also makes us overeat — because the body requires it.

The same goes for exercising. There has been a prevailing narrative that exercise will make us leaner. This belief is rooted in the observation that people who are lean tend to be more physically active than those of us who aren’t. This is true. However, again, it gets cause and effect backward. This observation tells us nothing about whether “runners” would be fatter if they didn’t run.

On top of that, calories burned from exercising not only represent an extremely small fraction of our daily expenditure but will also lead to more appetite. In other words: it takes a lot of running to burn an extra slice of cake.

We ended up buying into this “exercise more and eat less” narrative because it feels intuitive and reinforces our beliefs.

Estrogen, insulin, LPL, HSL, and CHOs

Obesity is nothing but a disorder of excess fat accumulation.

🧪 An experiment was made in the early 1970s. George Wade studied the relationship between sex hormones, weight, and appetite by removing the ovaries from rats — deregulating de activity of estrogen.

Rats eat too much, the excess calories find their way to the fat tissue, and the animal becomes obese. Which would fit the “calories-in calories-out” story. But…
After putting them on a strict diet, rats still got just as fat, just as quickly.
If rats were injected with estrogen, it resulted in normal behavior.

Estrogen inhibits an enzyme called LPL. Which is a key factor in partitioning fat among different body tissues. Wade’s rats overate because they were losing calories into fat cells that were needed in other places. The fatter the rats got, the more they had to eat to feed the non-fat cells. The body became unable to regulate its fat tissue, creating a cycle of getting fatter and fatter.

❓ A series of questions are worth asking:

What regulates fat accumulation? As it turns out, insulin does. In a nutshell, higher levels of insulin signal the body to store fat. Lower levels of insulin lead to its release.
If insulin happens to regulate fat, what triggers the secretion of such hormone? In part, CHOs do. Higher levels of CHOs in the bloodstream -> follow the release of insulin -> follow the accumulation of fat.
What regulates LPL on fat cells? The presence of insulin. The more insulin our body secretes, the more active the LPL becomes on the fat cells, and the more fat gets stored in fat cells.
What else? Insulin also suppresses an enzyme called HSL, which works to make fat cells “leaner”. It does so by breaking down triglycerides into their component fatty acids so that they can escape into circulation. The more active HSL is, the more fat we liberate and can burn from fuel.

Fat regulation

Fat is carefully regulated throughout the body. That’s the reason we don’t get fat in the back of our hands or in the forefront. It is also heavily determined by our genetics.

Moreover, a simplistic approach on the matter quickly reveals the silliness of the “calories-in, calories-out” framework.

1 kilogram of fat contains 7.500 calories. If we only overeat, on average, by 20 calories a day — which is an overly optimistic assumption — after 25 years, we’d add up to 20 kilograms. Now think of all the food decisions we make in a day and how unattainable it would be, without scientific instrumentation, to balance out food. If these assumptions were right, it’d be impossible for any human to remain lean.

A framework to master the world

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

The framework I use to learn new things and expand my understanding of the world is something that has always been on my mind. To some extent, akin to Neri Oxman’s idea (picture below) around the structure of knowledge. However, I’ve never taken the time to verbalize nor articulate its rationale.

Developing a strategy for continuous learning is useful because there is always too much to learn. The corpus of available information is overwhelming and almost infinite.

On top of that, if your curious mind tends to wander, you might find yourself seduced by the allure of novelty; following the path of the least resistance instead of doubling down on already acquired skills.

When it comes to learning, starting from scratch always seems easier. That’s because of the faux feeling of progress; similar to the oversized gains that come with your firsts weeks at the gym.

This is probably the reason why generalists and restless minds tend to jump across themes without a clear agenda. Because of this, it can be difficult to assess where to direct our attention. Here’s precisely where the framework might be useful.

My hypothesis goes like this:

To “master the world” one needs to develop a deep understanding of how both humans and things work — both at a micro and a macro lens.

The former revolves around how persons behave, both within groups and individually. The latter is about the rules of nature and stuff we invent, both on a macro and a micro level.

When it comes to learning, the common pattern is to focus on professional or personal development. However, the strategy that I’m going to explain approaches learning in a more old-fashioned manner.

At the start, it might seem boring and static, but give it enough time and you’ll start connecting the dots and reap the benefits of timeless wisdom.

How humans (and societies) behave

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

—— Mark Twain

Like it or not, despite living at the pinnacle of the most advanced society the humankind has ever seen, behind every single invention there is a human that made it. Hence, to successfully navigate this world, we need a deep understanding of how humans work.

I associate the micro to single humans and the macro to societies.

We can learn the micro through psychology; paying special attention to human biases and statistics. And macro through history; which will inevitably stumble upon the arts, economics, politics, or philosophy.

How things (and the world) work

The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.

—— William Gibson

I mentioned a few lines above that there is always a person behind each invention.

However, it is also true that technology permeates each layer of our world. It already governs almost each interaction and corner of our life; and the trend is only accelerating. Hence, it is safe to assume that learning how to deal with such change and speaking “machine language” will become a cornerstone of our societal development.

As with people, I tend to make a distinction at the micro and the macro level for how things work; from quantum mechanics up to the gravitational theories.

We can learn how the world and things work by learning physics. This branch will also feature a few supporting disciplines, such as math, algebra, or calculus. Again, it is nice to study them as well, however, I’d use them only to advance faster and better understand physics.

(Bonus) Interpersonal skills

Last but not least, I found interpersonal skills a useful tool to navigate society. These include, but are not limited to, a wide range of disciplines such as writing, public speaking, negotiation, empathy… Scott Adams has an entire repertoire at How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

The Little Book of Stoicism

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Arete

Stoics had a curious approach to a life well-lived, because they argued that it is in our nature to thrive in life. In other words, living with Arete is to complete our nature, like a grape when it matures.

We all have the potential to live a happy, virtuous life led by reason, based on rationality. Living with Arete is the perfection of our nature, to become the best we can be.

They also use the idea of “living in agreement with nature”. The potential to thrive in life resides inside. Hence it is our nature to complete what has been planted within us and bring our potential to life.
To thrive in life is not something to be imposed or forced, it is what nature wants us to do — to become the highest version of ourselves.
They used different expressions to refer to the same thing: living in agreement with nature, being virtuous, or living how nature wanted us to live.

The sage

There are no perfect humans, that’s why the stoics used the Sage to depict an ideal character to look upon. The embodiment of perfection, virtue, and a source of inspiration.

The Sage mastered the four-character traits adopted from the Socratic philosophy, which they refer to as the four cardinal values:

Wisdom: how to act appropriately. It includes values such as perspective, good sense, or healthy deliberation.
Justice: how to act well in our relationship with others. It includes values such as good-heartedness, fairness, or integrity.
Courage: how to act when facing fearful situations. It includes values such as honesty, perseverance, or confidence.
Self-discipline: how to act right despite temptation. It includes values such as orderliness, self-control, or humility.

Unlike an artisan or a craftsman that uses wood or bronze, for the Stoics, life is the raw material for their practice in the art of living.

Focus on what you control

Some things are up to us, others are not. Stoics encouraged us to focus on what we control. To do this, they described three levels of influence:

High influence: our choices, actions, or judgment.
Partial influence: our health, or body.
No influence: the weather.

We can’t control random events, yet we can control our reactions to them. Which remains the core principle of Man’s Search for Meaning, and also influenced The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

It makes no sense to focus on the desired outcome because it’ll always depend on things we can’t control. It is better to focus on the process, preparation, and training.

Best practices

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

—— Hamlet

Accept, embrace, and love whatever happens. We don’t get to choose the cards we’re dealt, but how we play them is totally up to us. One can never tell if anything is good or bad, only time will tell. This idea is also related to The Obstacle is the Way, which stands behind the motto of “what stands in the way becomes the way”.

Nature has granted the use of life like a loan, without fixing any day for repayment.

—— Marcus Tullius Cicero

Memento mori is a symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death, but also a core concept of stoicism. We should be reminded of the impermanence of people, health, or possessions. Everything is a loan from nature, and at some point, the lender will want it back. Hence it is a fool’s errand to pretend that anything will last forever.

We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.

—— Archilochus

To prepare for the eventual repayment, Stoics suggest practicing the techniques of negative visualization, such as contemplating our own dead, voluntary discomfort (temporary poverty or get into uncomfortable situations). These activities will expand our comfort zone and get us ready for the day.

Following a minimal lifestyle is also part of this theme. We shall accept wealth, enjoy it, yet not cling to it. Being indifferent to riches will help us prepare for the moment when things are taken away from us.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

—— Marcus Aurelius

Preparing for the day ahead was a common practice among Stoics. Not only by sticking to a strict morning routine but also by journaling and reviewing our actions at dawn. We shall start by focusing on just a few things, doing less, but better; tackling the most important duty first; dismissing the unimportant, such as the news, gossip, or social media; and spending time on what matters.

We shall always strive to seek wisdom. Being disciplined and doing what needs to be done. Never think of what others will think of us, dismissing fame and riches, to become a restless student.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

—— Mike Tyson

This principle is akin to the one described before around focusing on what we control and our reaction to events. It comes in many ways, but in the end, its core teaching tells that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind.

It is not what happens to us that matters, but our reaction to it.
We get disturbed by our opinion of the event, not by the event itself.
The Universe is not against us. It is not the other person’s actions that harmed us, but our interpretation of it. Our reaction to anything decides whether harm has occurred or not.
Things don’t happen against us, they just happen — anger is a pointless reaction. We shouldn’t give the circumstances the power to rouse anger, the circumstances don’t care at all.
Getting angry at a situation doesn’t change or improve a situation, on the contrary, it only magnifies the damage done to us.

We suffer more from imagination than from reality.

—— Seneca.

What we fear won’t happen in reality, but we’re held back and paralyzed by our fears. It is a projection into the future about something we don’t control that causes a lot of worries. We might be attached to something we don’t control, such as a loved one, a salary… yet we can’t desire things that are not up to us to keep.

Those who do not desire something outside their control can’t be anxious.

What we fear is a product of our imagination, not reality. We just think reality will be bad, but most of the time, it won’t. We shall stop, and beat fear with preparation and reason.

How To Live

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

These books notes are special for many reasons. First of all because, a while ago, I promised myself that I wouldn’t read a “self-help” book again. Yet this one is special for many reasons.

First of all, it comes right from Derek Sivers, one of my favorite authors, and also the one advocating for the very quote that presides this Books section.

If more information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

Second, because the book looks a lot like the compendium of good habits and routines I wish I had written myself. It is actionable, yet full of contradictory advice. This might sound counterintuitive because you’d expect some kind of direction from such a book, but in the end, you’ll see, it clicks.

Third, because it is well written, concise, and to the point. I can’t emphasize this enough. Each word seems to have been carefully chosen. There’s not a single misplaced sentence, not even the slightest useless or cosmetic adjective that doesn’t add to the conversation. Derek has mastered the art of writing in the way we speak.

And finally, this is a book you would love to revisit often. The way it is structured invites you to come back for more. Straight to a single chapter seeking advice on a particular problem. It is direct, actionable, and because it often contradicts itself, you might each time discover something new.

For example, imagine you come across a given chapter its ideas you already agree upon. The read becomes effortless because it matches your preconceived views of the world — a.k.a. confirmation bias. Yet next to it comes a chapter that states the contrary. A cognitive dissonance starts to manifest within. Carrying on with the book becomes more challenging, even painful. You skim through each paragraph to get over it as if those ideas weren’t speaking to you.

That’s mostly how you read it the first time. You devour the chapters that confirm your views of the world and look past the ones that don’t.

However, and here comes the twist, this dynamic changes when you read it for a second. Like a good song, it grows on you, and start to appreciate the nuggets you might have disdained before. That’s what I found to be the most interesting facet of the book. The contradictions, somehow, start making sense. This might sound counterintuitive, but in the end, it is what life is all about, contradictions — isn’t it?

That’s why instead of making the usual book review — there are really good ones floating out there — I made the unusual. A selfish table of contents with a trivial legend, to keep coming back to it and re-read the chapters in clusters.

It is a little bit twisted, but here’s how it works:

Each title represents a cluster, and its number and name map to the chapter that most aligns with its core idea.
Then within each cluster, the chapters that also reinforce (=), contradict (!), or become neutral but somehow relate (~), to the core idea.

This map suffers from an extreme personal bias. Each cluster could have been re-written from the opposite point of view inverting the symbols for each chapter, yet I surfaced the ones that matched my preconceptions of the world the time I read it.

1. Be independent

~ 21. Reinvent yourself regularly

2. Commit, 15. Learn, and 23. Create

= 8. Master something
- ! 9. Let randomness rule
= 14. Value only what has endured
- ! 13. Chase the future
= 16. Follow the great book
~ 6. Intertwine with the world
! 3. Fill your senses
! 7. Make memories

4. Do nothing

= 24. Don’t die
- ! 25. Make a million mistakes
~ 12. Be a famous pioneer
~ 26. Make change

5. Think super-long-term

= 10. Pursue pain
= 18. Prepare for the worst
~ 20. Get rich
~ 27. Balance everything
! 11. Do whatever you want now

19. Live for others

= 22. Love
~ 17. Laugh at life

The Shallows

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This post has become an unexpected part II of Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Here, the author dissects the very same topic as Postman did, but with the added benefit of having lived through the Internet era.

Written more than three decades ago, the core idea captured in Amusing Ourselves to Death remains astonishingly relevant. Although Postman’s historical landscape ended up at the adage of television, it closely depicts our current state of affairs. At the time of its publication, it might have been perceived as an overstatement, yet with the benefit of hindsight, it has fallen short of dystopia.

Along these lines, I recently stumbled upon The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. His book can be considered a legitimate extension of Postman’s words.

These are some scattered notes I took from the book, plus additional thoughts of mine inserted here and there.

In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.

Carr makes a similar case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic ― a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. In other words, the medium defines the message, and culture is recreated anew by every medium of communication.

Similarly, he explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. Yet, in stark contrast, the Internet encouraged the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from random sources. This is important because every technology has an inherent bias. It has within its physical form a predisposition toward being used in certain ways and not others. The Internet has nurtured our society with a world of addiction, shallowness, and short attention spans.

As the very excerpt of the book depicts, the Internet’s ethic has become that of an industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption. This is to say that the Internet is remaking us in its image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

And here it comes the most mind blowing revelation: this societal shift has deeper implications, even in our bodies. As it turns out, the actions and habits we partake in the real world can make real physical changes to our psyche. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. Hence the technologies we use to find, store and share information can reroute our neural pathways.

This might have something to do with my inability to focus — which initially attracted me to The Shallows. The book revealed that I’m not alone. Unlike before, when we get immersed in a book and focus on it entirely, we no longer focus for long anymore. The Internet not only has dramatically shortened our attention spans but got us addicted in ways we didn’t see coming.

For most of us who transitioned from an “analog youth” to a “digital adulthood”, we are now able to focus less and get distracted more easily. The Internet has changed our brains in terms of adaptation. Continually surfing the web gets us to like it more, regardless of how much you must have hated it from the start — it never stops.

Our brains now live in a permanent state of distraction. For our ancestors, maximum concentration and focus were required for reading. This is why reading helped humans develop the productivity of their brains massively. Unfortunately, we no longer enjoy these quiet spaces in our lives.

One of the reasons mentioned in Amusing Ourselves to Death to justify the printed word domination was its lack of competition. The printed matter was virtually all that was available. However, nowadays it is the Internet the one that enjoys domination since it has been embedded in almost any aspect of our life.

This ubiquity has only worsened by its highly addictive nature. The level of interactivity people experience is continuously engaging our reward system, making us very aware and conscious of our social status. On top of that, the Internet has a way of capturing our attention and not stopping there; it will indefinitely scatter our interests into endless dimensions so that we’ll be drawn to a lot of things.

21.25: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Ideas I’ve shared

Peter Attia has had a huge influence on the development of my nutritional and fitness regimes. I’ve always liked his pragmatic point of view and data-driven approach to science. For example, his elegant three-dimension nutritional framework gracefully depicts the levers at reach for dietary regulation. This time around, in his latest appearance in the Tim Ferriss Show, he nerds out about the structural benefits of improving movement by focusing on the four components of exercise: stability, strength, aerobic efficiency, and anaerobic performance.
Do you know that feeling when somebody acutely writes down something you had a sense of but always struggled to pin down? This is exactly what Julie Zhuo has done in her recent post at Future, the brand new a16z’ publication. In there, she goes deep into what she calls Product Thinking, or the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people.

Things I was into

This week I’ve been over the moon, not just figuratively, but almost literally. This is because I’ve finally completed the LEGO NASA Apollo Saturn V. For almost three months I’ve indulged myself with a single building chapter each week to lengthen its construction delight. To set the mood, I also re-listened to The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon, an Audible Original about the story of John C. Houbolt.

#TIL the Space Task Group was initially favoring direct ascent, instead of Lunar orbit rendezvous, as the procedure for landing humans on the Moon. It was only after engineer John Houbolt' endless perseverance — and public discredit — that it was taken into consideration.
— Marc Collado (@MarcCollado) August 8, 2019

From time to time I revisit this classic of mine. I’d say I’ve been struggling with this for years now. Yet whenever I feel like some of us are spending more than 60 hours a week solely optimizing for the only asset we shouldn’t care as much and already have more than we need to (capital L) Live, I pull this one out to bring some sanity across the board.

We buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.

—— Fight Club

21.24: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Ideas I’ve shared

For a few years, I’ve been advocating for the protection of user privacy and very outspoken about the harm that an economy based on data is causing to society. However, I didn’t know about the existence of this publication, yet its content around the perils of an economy governed by data is very insightful and worth reading.
Speaking of another recurrent topic of mine: side-projects… More often than not, I find myself rambling with friends about their value, how to nourish them and balance all out with demanding jobs while retaining a well-rounded life… This is the best recollection of all these “strong opinions” I’ve read so far.

The idea of “better” always depends on what you compare it with. Imagine a bear is chasing both you and your friend out in the woods. You don’t want to run faster than the bear, but your friend.

An extremely insightful podcast with Noam Bardin about the early days at Waze and a very interesting discussion around the product life cycle. Waze let it evolve in two axes, ensuring both alignments with the KPIs and the kind of users that were driving growth:

Maturity: figure out what matters most at each stage (what would delight users) and make sure to align all the efforts with your main KPIs.
Type of user: the people using the product at the beginning might not be the same ones that later on. For example, early adopters caring about GPS signal strength, yet laggards might prefer a cool avatar for the car.

Things I was into

[…] These all loop back on each other: being more practiced at your work attracts more people around you, and more people increases your chances of stumbling into the next great opportunity, where you’ll grow faster. In the end, you’re going to find yourself on a curve that bends upwards.

One of the areas I’ve been taking for granted and overlooked for a long time has been deliberately cultivating a network of friends and acquaintances. Although I’m proactively working on improving it, this post nicely drives the idea home by framing our trajectory as a compounded story — one that we struggle with when we project it from our current position.

Random thoughts

Every year, one way or another, I take a look at the silliest WWDC announcements that nobody, but me, cares about. Up until this day, inexplicably, Apple still bundles a preview page among their marketing material with an endless list of all the features and a short paragraph with its description. I wonder how much traffic this page will end up acquiring… Anyway, this year, here are my five (petty) picks for macOS Monterrey:
- iCloud+ and its ability to personalize your email address with a custom domain name. Would that mean no need for hosting email somewhere else and stop paying for the email service altogether?
- Photos got a significant update that now includes a richer Info pane where you can edit the date and time when a photo was taken.
- Are both AirPlay to the Mac and Universal Control Apple’s answers to the entry-level display?
- Custom mouse pointers: supposedly now you can customize the outline and fill color of the mouse pointer […]. Does this mean I can now get the iPad pointer on the Mac?
- If Automatic window resizing, all the features under Window Management, and its automation through Shortcuts mean that I’ll finally get a streamlined process to manage windows in and out of an external display… that’s the best feature Apple has given to the human race in decades.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ A few weeks after its publication, this post gained an unexpected part II, courtesy of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Where the author dissects a related idea, but with the added benefit of having lived through the Internet era.

Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing.

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Despite having been written more than three decades ago, it is astonishing how relevant its core ideas still remain. It faultlessly depicts our current society — a canary in the coal mine of sorts. Presumably, at the time of its publication, it might have been perceived as an overstatement, yet with the benefit of hindsight, it has fallen short of dystopia.

The book warns us of how each medium, like language itself, defines and ultimately shapes cultures. It makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, expression, culture, or sensibility. It uses television as the foundation for its sharp criticism, yet one can safely replace it with social media and the outcome would still ring true.

The author walks us through the evolution of culture from the oral tradition; then the printed word, that encouraged rationality — the sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters an analytic management of knowledge; then the telegraph, for instant communications, with an abundant flow of information that had nothing to do with those to whom it was addressed; to finally arrive at television, which uses as the pinnacle to analyze most of our societal diseases.

TV is turning all public life (education, religion, politics, journalism) into entertainment. Multitasking is standard. Communities have been replaced by demographics. Silence has been replaced by background noise. It’s a different world.

Despite its age, the point remains and it is more relevant than ever, we just made it exponentially worse with modern technology. This is one of those books where the author could be brought to the present and amuse himself with our current state of affairs. He would not believe how right he was — with the little information he hold at the time — but most important, how extreme and pernicious his analysis turned out to be.

The medium defines the message

In today’s world it is implausible to imagine an overweight president. The shape of a man’s body is largely irrelevant to the shape of his ideas when he is addressing a public in writing or on the radio. But television gives us a conversation in images, not words; discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery.

Public figures were known largely by their written words, not by their looks or even their oratory. Today, we may have reached the point where cosmetics has replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control.

Another example, the idea of the “news of the day” was entirely created by the telegraph, which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. Cultures without speed-of-light media do not have “news of the day”.

The clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation. Culture is recreated anew by every medium of communication — from painting to hieroglyphs to the alphabet to television. Variations in the structures of languages result in variations in our world view. How people think about time and space, about things and processes, will be greatly influenced by the grammatical features of their language.

Here are two examples:

🕰 How the clock creates the idea of “moment to moment.” A piece of power machinery whose ‘product’ is seconds and minutes — disassociating time from human events. Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God’s conception, or nature’s. It is man conversing with himself through a piece of machinery he created. The clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events: the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God’s supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment.
👓 The invention of eyeglasses suggested the idea that human beings need not accept as final either the endowments of nature or the ravages of time. Eyeglasses refuted the belief that anatomy is destiny by putting forward the idea that our bodies as well as our minds are improvable. There is a link between the invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century and gene-splitting research in the twentieth.

We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as “it” is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture.

The uprising of the printed word

Thou shalt not write down thy principles, still less print them, lest thou shall be entrapped by them for all time.

Between 1640 and 1700, the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was somewhere between 89 percent and 95 percent.

It is in the eighteenth century that capitalism is demonstrated to be a rational and liberal system of economic life, that religious superstition comes under furious attack, that the divine right of kings is shown to be a mere prejudice, that the idea of continuous progress takes hold, and that the necessity of universal literacy through education becomes apparent. Learning became book-learning and empowered people regarding their social status.

America was founded by intellectuals. The Founding Fathers were sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation. A rare occurrence in the history of modern nations from which it has taken us two centuries and a communications revolution to recover.

The printed word domination was partially possible because of its lack of competition. Printed matter was virtually all that was available. It is also the difference between living in a culture that provides little opportunity for leisure, and one that provides much. There were no movies to see, radio to hear, photographic displays to look at, records to play. There was no television.

The typographic mind

The resonances of the lineal, analytical structure of print, and in particular, of expository prose, could be felt everywhere. Even in how people talked.

Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, print put forward a definition of intelligence that gave priority to the objective, rational use of the mind and at the same time encouraged forms of public discourse with serious, logically ordered content.

Language and public discourse used to resemble pure print. That the audience was able to process it through the ear is remarkable only to people whose culture no longer resonates powerfully with the printed word.

Here’s a relate from an arrangement of a political debate: provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to rebut Lincoln’s reply. This debate was considerably shorter than those to which the two men were accustomed.

The idea may be banal, the fact irrelevant, the claim false, but there is no escape from meaning when language is the instrument guiding one’s thought. Though one may accomplish it from time to time, it is very hard to say nothing when employing a written English sentence.

The newspaper

In 1786, Benjamin Franklin observed that Americans were so busy reading newspapers and pamphlets that they scarcely had time for books.

Newspapers assumed that potential buyers were literate, rational, analytical. Indeed, the history of newspaper advertising in America may be considered as a metaphor of the descent of the typographic mind, beginning, as it does, with reason, and ending, as it does, with entertainment.

In 1704 when the first paid advertisements appeared in an American newspaper, The Boston News-Letter. One of them offered a reward for the capture of a thief; another offered a reward for the return of an anvil that was “taken up” by some unknown party. The third actually offered something for sale.

As late as 1890, advertising, still understood to consist of words, was regarded as an essentially serious and rational enterprise whose purpose was to convey information and make claims in propositional form. Advertising was intended to appeal to understanding, not to passions.

By the turn of the century, advertisers no longer assumed rationality on the part of their potential customers. Advertising became one part depth psychology, one part aesthetic theory.

The telegraph

The moment transportation and communication could be disengaged from each other, space was not an inevitable constraint on the movement of information.

A continent-wide conversation became possible: the telegraph erased state lines, collapsed regions, and, by wrapping the continent in an information grid, created the possibility of a unified American discourse.

The telegraph made information into a commodity: we made possible the communication from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas may have nothing important to communicate.
Context-free information: the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity.
Most of our daily news is inert: consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.
Abundance of irrelevant information: it dramatically altered the information-action ratio. In contrast, in both oral and typographic cultures, information derives its importance from the possibilities of action.

As Thoreau implied, telegraphy made relevance irrelevant. The telegraph made public discourse essentially incoherent. It brought into being a world of broken time and broken attention. It made the country into one neighborhood, but one, populated by strangers who knew nothing but the most superficial facts about each other.

For the first time in human history, people were faced with the problem of information glut. We were sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply.

The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. On the other hand, a book is an attempt to make thought permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past.

Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them.

The photograph

The name “photography” — which oddly means “writing with light” — was given to this process by the famous astronomer Sir John F. W. Herschel.

Photography and writing do not inhabit the same universe of discourse. Pictures need to be recognized; words need to be understood. Photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea.

The words “true” and “false” come from the universe of language, and no other. When applied to a photograph, the question, “is it true?” means only “is this a reproduction of a real slice of space-time?”

Advertisers had discovered that a picture was not only worth a thousand words, but, where sales were concerned, was even better. For Americans, seeing, not reading, became the basis for believing.

It is true enough that the photograph provides a context for the sentence you have been given, and that the sentence provides a context of sorts for the photograph, and you may even believe for a day or so that you have learned something. But if the event is entirely self-contained, devoid of any relationship to your past knowledge or future plans, then the appearance of context provided by the conjunction of sentence and image is illusory, you will have learned nothing.

New technologies had turned the age-old problem of information on its head: where people once sought information to manage the real contexts of their lives, now they had to invent contexts in which otherwise useless information might be put to some apparent use. For example: the crossword puzzle, the quiz shows, the Trivial Pursuit… Each of these supplies an answer to the question, “what am I to do with all these disconnected facts?”

The television

We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant. Therein is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.

There is a distinction between a technology and a medium. A technology is to a medium as the brain is to the mind. Like the brain, a technology is a physical apparatus. Like the mind, a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put.

Every technology has an inherent bias. It has within its physical form a predisposition toward being used in certain ways and not others. Only those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a technology is entirely neutral.

It is possible for a technology to be so used that its potentialities are prevented from developing and its social consequences kept to a minimum. There are many places in the world where television, though the same technology as it is in America, is an entirely different medium from that which we know.

Television offers viewers a variety of subject matter, requires minimal skills to comprehend it, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification. The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining.

Education as entertainment

Television serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse and turns them into entertainment packages.

Parents embraced “Sesame Street” because it allowed them to justify their children to sit transfixed in front of a television screen for unnatural periods of time. Eager to hope that television could teach their children something other than a commercial.

Yet “Sesame Street” undermines what the traditional idea of schooling represents. Its core contribution to educational philosophy is the idea that teaching and entertainment are inseparable. This entirely original conception is to be found nowhere in classic educational discourses.

Television, by its power to control the time, attention and cognitive habits of our youth, gained the power to control their education. Nowadays, the major educational enterprise now being undertaken is not happening in the classrooms but in the home, in front of a television screen.

The consequences of this reorientation are to be observed in the refashioning of the classroom into a place where both teaching and learning are intended to be vastly amusing activities. However, the name we may properly give to an education without prerequisites, perplexity and exposition is entertainment.

Orwell vs. Huxley

To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.

[…] Introduce the alphabet or the printing press with movable type to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance.

Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.

As mentioned in the very beginning of the summary, there are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first — the Orwellian — culture becomes a prison. In the second — the Huxleyan — culture becomes a burlesque.

What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth.

Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology. This, in spite of the fact that before our very eyes technology has altered every aspect of life in America during the past eighty years.

For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.

Tribe

Fri, 14 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Societal tradeoffs

For some reason, we place so much value on modern societies, yet in some way, they can be considered “antihuman”.

Western society is built on respect for individual rights. Very few things are as highly valued as the freedom to pursue our own goals and ambitions without outside interference.

As a modern society, we’ve traded affluence and safety for freedom and independence. Property made us live individually, yet alone. We enjoy unprecedented levels of wealth, comfort, and independence. Yet we lack freedom — something tribal societies know something about.

Our financial independence enabled solitary lives, which in turn led to higher rates of unhappiness, depression, and suicide. Rugged individualism often looks better on screen than it does in reality. We sometimes forget that the “me” needs a “we” to thrive. And that’s the cause of all sorts of problems.

We can go on an entire life mostly encountering complete strangers.

There are examples of societies built around an entirely different set of principles. Take the Kung nomads of the Kalahari Desert worked no more than 12 hours a week to support their lifestyle. They took turns to hunt and gather food. Once they returned to camp, they divided the spoils equally among themselves. Nobody had very much, but everyone had enough. Compare it to a Western lifestyle: the average office worker spends more than 40 hours a week at the office. While we might be a lot richer than the Kung, we enjoy far less leisure time and personal freedom.

On top of that, from an evolutionary perspective, we haven’t evolved for the individualist lifestyle. It takes at least 25.000 years for a species to genetically adapt to a new environment. Material wealth allows us to lead independent lives, true, but we crave the kind of communities our ancestors lived with. Although we live in industrialized and technologically complex societies, we’re still hardwired to be hunter-gatherers.

Consumerism has created an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight deficient, sleep-deprived, inequitable, competitive, and socially isolated society.

There’s a high price to be paid for this mismatch: pathological loneliness. Western societies are afflicted by the highest levels of mental illness in the history of humanity.

There are some extreme occasions, however unfortunate, where chaos wipes out the societal constructs and our communal roots take over. For example, natural disasters bring us together. They tend to simplify things and return people to a more natural way of living. On the other hand, modern life destroys the social bonds that used to glue humans and their societies together.

When a natural disaster strikes these bonds reappear. People realize that their survival depends on cooperating with others. Divisions based on wealth and race suddenly become insignificant.

Justice and dishonesty

It’s easy enough to condemn wars from the safety of a couch thousands of miles away, but experiencing them for yourself is a different matter altogether.

Wars and natural disasters — counterintuitive as it might sound — can also have positive social and psychological effects. Communities come together and forget their differences in trying times. People are often happier and more purposeful. That’s because extreme events simplify life and revive the social bond. But that doesn’t last once peace is restored. Individualism replaces solidarity, and many suffer the effects of loneliness and isolation.

I haven’t covered this end of the book at all, but the author goes deep into PTSD. It illustrates how some traits are anything but helpful when it comes to life in modern Western society. That’s something soldiers returning from conflicts often learn the hard way. Readjusting to normality can be a daunting task.

Related to the societal “resets” we experience in extreme situations, wars create special bonds, and that makes returning to normal life especially hard for veterans. Tragedy and war cement deep bonds and bring people together in a way that modern society can’t match.

Curiously, almost five years ago, on a radically different note I went about how harsh environments can promote strong fellowship:

I used to take these relationships for granted until somebody unexpectedly told me the reason why: the harshest and rough environments become the catalysts for the strongest relationships to develop. In my story, sailing in the ocean.

The book takes “harsh” to the extreme with war context. Take soldiers, camaraderie defines their experience of the army. Their bond with fellow soldiers makes them members of a tribe. For many of them, it is the first time in their lives that they collaborate as equals rather than competing against one another. It turns out, that’s one of the things soldiers love about the army.

Constant danger from a common enemy creates a degree of intimacy between people that’s unusual in other contexts. Survival means trusting others with your life.

The absence of tight social bonds also makes returning home hard for soldiers. There’s a stark contrast between their lives in the army and everyday life back home. They suddenly find themselves in a society divided into small and isolated family units lacking a communal spirit.

Creative Selection

Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

A small group of people built a work culture based on applying the seven essential elements through an ongoing process of creative selection.

The demo is the self-selecting process (32 to 37).

Demo often and open your work to open, honest, and specific feedback.
Brainstorming is overrated and usually a waste of time.

“Signing in the Rain”: what Richard did with the Konqueror code from KDE (60 to 66).

Maximize impact and minimize distractions by identifying the important - passable - ignorable.
Understand what’s important and double down on those.
Then spent no time or altogether “fake” the details that won’t add value at the end.

1% inspiration, 99% perspiration (83 to 87).

Ideas are nothing without the hard work to make them real.
Once something works, we take it for granted. Take the web browser or the lightbulb.

The Page Load Test (4: One Simple Rule).

Focus on a single KPI and improve it on each iteration.
No feature would merge if it decreased the PLT — no exceptions.
Turn this routine into a culture.

Lift as you climb (5: The Hardest Problem).

People matter more than programming, or anything else.
Manage through example and involvement with the product’s team.
Think of Rush drivers’ room when Hunt won over the situation through peer support.

Taste is developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole (183).

Developing taste: to go beyond the simple “I like it”, you must develop the judgment of a “refined-like” response. Evaluating actively and finding the self-confidence to form opinions with your gut that you can also justify with your head.
Finding balance: search for equilibrium, making the correct choices. On one side, the refined-like response is often a local determination made early in the design process. A single decision made in isolation. Then, once these granular decisions have been incorporated into the whole larger system, they no longer stand-alone. The small-scale contributions must also contribute to a scheme larger than themselves — attempting to create a pleasant and integrated whole.
This entire cycle removed the arbitrariness from the taste. It gave taste a purpose, a rationale beyond self-indulgence, an empathetic end.

The intersection between technology and liberal arts.

Creative selection: two sides of the same coin — make use of recurrent demos to balance out heuristics (subjective) and algorithms (objective).
The seven essential of the Apple development approach:
- Inspiration: thinking big ideas and imagining what might be possible.
- Collaboration: working together with other people and seeking to combine complementary skills.
- Craft: applying skills to achieve high-quality results and always striving to do better.
- Diligence: enduring the hard work and never resorting to shortcuts.
- Decisiveness: making tough decisions and refusing to delay or procrastinate.
- Taste: developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole.
- Empathy: see the world from other people’s perspectives.

21.16: notes on Spring Loaded

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Apple Podcasts

Arguably one of the most relevant announcements from yesterday’s event went by as a 70ish second side note from Tim Cook. I’m probably biased because I’ve got personal stakes on the matter, but Apple’s involvement will be one of the most relevant affairs that have happened to podcast industry almost since its inception.

AirTags

Opening Apple’s Find My network to third parties last month was one of the boldest moves Apple has done to enhance the potential of an unexploited feature. I was so bullish on the software-only play that I was convinced physical AirTags would never see the light — as if there was no need for them anymore.

On top of that, Apple is not known to sell low-priced items. Yet here they are. And in retrospect, I’d say it is both obvious and such a brilliant move. AirTags not only hold the potential of enhancing Apple’s Find My network reach — to an extend a competitor as Tile would never gain — but also can unleash a massive accessory ecosystem around them. In other words, a moneymaker.

Apple TV

In a similar fashion as AirTags, I was convinced the Apple TV was already dead. Plenty of new TVs are already shipping with AirPlay and Apple TV+ built-in. Then why creating an expensive device that doesn’t add almost anything new to the mix? Just to fix the controversial remote?

The new Apple TV sole value prop is about pushing the boundary on what would be already considered, by most, ultra-high video/audio quality. Haven’t they learned anything about the HomePod story? It was canceled exactly for the same reason: up to a certain point — which is lower than one might presume — almost nobody cares about ultra-high video/audio quality. In other words: a Google Chromecast is good enough and costs a fraction of an Apple TV.

iMac

Design: maybe I’m the only one, but I love the new iMac design. The chin I believe is part of an iconic shape and has its reasons to live on. About the white borders… they are screaming iMac Pro down the line. That one for sure will come in black.

TouchID: staying away from opinionated comments around design, it is curious that Macs still doesn’t feature FaceID. Wouldn’t it be a natural fit for them? Is it just about the fact that people use to cover webcams with tape because of privacy concerns that hold the feature back?

Colors: I was skeptical about colors because of the complexity that would add to the accessory ecosystem. 7 colors mean 35 additional SKUs ranging from trackpad, mouse, and keyboard. Again, wrong, never underestimate Apple’s ability to manufacture different versions of a product. They are supply chain masters. Curiously enough, they are still not for sale separately.

Ports: USB-A is officially dead. Magsafe is somehow back. The Ethernet implementation is kind of a hack, yet brilliant.

Display: the only product I was wishfully (but unrealistically) expecting was the same iMac, but without the M1 — aka. a LED Cinema Display or low-end Pro Display XDR. Maybe that’s the reason iMacs still have a chin, to make some design room for a chin-less display. No surprise here, that will never happen folks 😢.

iPad

Now that the M1 spans across the entire iPad — MacBook — iMac lineup, I don’t understand the value proposition for an iPad Pro anymore. The featured use cases feel so strained and out of touch that I don’t think this product speaks to anybody but people who want the best iPad.

It features all the goodies MacBooks lack: a decent camera, cellular connectivity, FaceID, an amazing display, ~~touch input~~. Yet it lacks the only thing that makes the product underwhelming: macOS. How come if both share the same internals, why not mix them all and create the perfect computing experience for the rest of us?

Never Split the Difference

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Negotiation is not a battle, but a process of discovery — our goal is to uncover as much information as possible.

Mirroring

What — the art of insinuating similarity to facilitate bonding.

Goal — seek to discover and identify what our opponent wants. Keep people talking and they will reveal things they’d never had otherwise.

How — start with I’m sorry, repeat their last three words, and pause, silence.

Why — We suffer from a cognitive bias for consistency. We fear what’s different and are drawn to similarities. These calibrated questions give the opponent the illusion of control while it buys us time to make them feel safe, build trust, and disarm them.

Techniques

Do not commit to assumptions in advance, use a hypothesis to test during the negotiation.
Smile: it creates bonding and puts our opponent in a positive frame of mind.
Use silences and slow the conversation down: keep them talking and reveal their secrets.
There are three voices we can use: late-night FM DJ, positive and playful, and assertive.

Labeling

What — surface our opponent’s emotions by making them say it out loud to you.

Goal — see what’s behind your opponent’s feelings and emotions so she’ll reveal something we can use.

How — list their fears by repeating emotions back using the words it seems like, it looks like. We must pay attention, ask what they are feeling, and make a commitment to understanding their world. We are not agreeing with their ideas, just acknowledging the opponent’s situation.

Why — when we closely observe a person’s face, and tone of voice, our brain tends to align with them in a process called neural resonance.

Techniques

Active listening and tactical empathy and: the more you know about someone, the more power you have over them.
Listen: emotions are the means, let our opponent state and “put a name” on their emotions.

Getting to the No

What — a “No” is the beginning of every negotiation, asking too quickly for a “Yes” paints us as an untrustworthy salesman.

Goal — make them believe that your idea was theirs in the first place, don’t beat them with logic.

How — purposely mislabel one of their emotions or ask a ridiculous question that can only be answered negatively. Is now a bad time to talk is better than do you have a few minutes to talk.

Why — the moment your opponent disagrees, they feel in control, and draw their own boundaries. This is because they are defining their desires by saying what they don’t want.

That’s right

What — “that’s right” are the words leading to behavioral change.

Goal — make your opponent say “that’s right”. We do that by building trust and convincing them that we understand their dreams and feelings, only then we uncover what truly motivates and drives them.

How — getting to “that’s right” in five steps:

Use pauses and silences, slow down, let them talk.
Mirroring — repeat back.
Labeling — it seems, it looks like.
Paraphrase back their words.
Summarize: labeling + paraphrasing — identify, re-articulate, and emotionally affirm the world according to them.

Why — it creates a subtle epiphany on your opponent where he agrees on a point without the feeling of having to give in. He embraces and believes the idea is his as if the idea has suddenly come up out of his free will.

Techniques

“That’s right” is better than “yes”. But beware that a “yes” is nothing without a “how”.
“You’re right”, however, are the worst, meant for you to shut up, and do not trigger a behavior change.

Bend their reality

No deal is better than a bad deal.

Never split the difference

Do not compromise, do not settle. Compromise is driven by fear of losses or to avoid pain. We compromise because it is easy, to be safe.

There are no such things as win-win solutions — they satisfy neither of the two sides. Don’t end up wearing different color shoes.

Deadlines

Make time your ally and don’t get tricked by thinking that getting a good deal now is preferable than a better deal later on. We tend to rush when we see a deadline approaching. Deadlines are often arbitrary, flexible, and hardly ever trigger the consequences we think they will.

Use them in your favor, for example, some corporate salesmen work quarterly.

Irrational decisions

We’re not rational actors. We’re governed by emotion. All negotiations are driven by some hidden (irrational) motivations we need to uncover. Don’t approach a negotiation thinking the other guy thinks like you — that’s not empathy, but projection.

Both offerers making an offer over one dollar, and receivers turning down any offer below one dollar, made an emotional choice.

Usually, people don’t buy “the product”, but an underlying solution to a problem they might have. Not a locksmith, but security.

Decision-making is also driven by Kahneman’s prospect theory. Which describes how individuals are drawn to sure things over probabilities, even when the probability is a better choice. People will take greater risks to avoid losses than to achieve gains.

Frame the negotiation in terms of the potential loss they might incur if they don’t “cooperate”. We tend to overvalue what’s ours.

Anchor emotions: set the stage by lowering their expectations (paint a really bad scenario) and explicitly state everything your opponent might fear.
Let the other go first, most of the time, but be prepared to handle a low anchor. If you’re dealing with a rookie drop an anchor first.
Use ranges backed by external sources: people in these firms usually get between X and Y. But expect they’ll come to the lower end.
Show your counterpart that there is something to lose by inaction — appeal to the fear of losses.
Pivot to non-monetary terms.
Use odd numbers — it seems that you know what’s you’re talking about.
Use gifts — people feel obliged to repay the kindness.

The F*** word

The negative emotional value of unfairness outweighs the rational value of the money.

People usually use the F word to surface injustice and put you on the defensive.

If you find yourself on the receiving end, don’t let emotion sink in, take a deep breath and restrain your desire to concede. I apologize, let’s go back to the point where I treated you unfairly and we’ll fix it.
Mirror the “fair” followed by a label.
Open the negotiation with: I want you to feel you’re treated fairly at all times, so stop me at any time you feel like you’re treated unfairly and we’ll address it.

Create the illusion of control

What — use open-ended, calibrated questions to guide and ease the direction of the conversation towards your goals w/o the other person noticing.

Goal — implicitly ask these questions to create the illusion of control on the other side, which will encourage them to speak at length, revealing important information along the way.

How — avoid closed requests such as ”can, is, or do” — or anything that can be responded with ”yes, or no” — and prefer ”how, what, why (use this with caution), where, when, or who”. As seen before, use labeling (”perhaps, it seems”) to ease their responses.

Why — w/o accusing of anything you are pushing them to understand and solve our problem. The key idea is that by asking these questions, we are creating an environment where we are making them active participants in the problem-solving process. In other words, with this illusion of collaboration, w/o noticing, they are now vested into finding a solution to our problem — which they’ll now believe to be theirs as well.

Examples of open-ended questions

What’s most important to you?
How can I make this better for us?
What is that brought us into this situation?
How would you like me to proceed?
What are we trying to accomplish here?
How am I supposed to do that?

Guarantee execution

Yes is nothing without how.

A deal is nothing without implementation

The use of how questions to subtly say “no” will buy us time, while leading and stirring the conversation towards our needs.

We can’t help it, we are problem solvers and we like to help, hence how will push our counterpart to articulate a solution thinking it was their idea. This is also why negotiation is known as “the art of someone else have your way”.

How will we know we are on track?
How will we address things once we realize we’re off track?

Other negotiation techniques

Always beware of the bigger picture and context of the negotiation. You’ll never know who’s whispering to the decision maker’s ear. Try to understand the other side’s ultimate motivations.
Spot inconsistencies using the 7 (words), 38 (tone), (55) body language framework.
Look for 3 yes in a different way. Make your opponent agree three times to the same idea. Differentiate between the yeses (commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit).

21.11: notes on Yuval Noah Harari

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Any system that demands perfection, won’t work.

Adapt — we don’t know which skill will be useful in 10 years.

Know thyself — for the first time, algorithms could potentially know us better than ourselves.

This was not a problem in the XV century, because an external agent could not know more than we did about ourselves — no matter how little we did know. Today, however, an algorithm can potentially know us better than we do.
We trust algorithms to tell us what to watch next, who to be friends with, which mode of transport to pick, what music to listen to…
The tipping point for algorithm-driven products won’t come when these products make perfect decisions, rather when they make just better decisions than we do. The bar is not high.
For the first time, the combination of biology, data, and computing power makes it possible.
Desire vs. truth — we fool ourselves and say we want something yet do the opposite.
🤏 Tip: know you better, through meditation for example.

To hack humans at scale, two things are required:

First, a lot of data. This route was previously blocked because you couldn’t get countless “KGB agents” wandering around writing down reports on each citizen. Second, a mechanism to analyze all this data. Once the data was gathered, you needed clerks to make sense of those reports.
Nowadays, the first is called “smartphone”, the second machine learning and AI.

A society built on top of incompatible ideas rooted into the 18th century — assumptions like “the customer is always right” or “voters know best”.

Our society is founded on top of the assumption that our “heart’s feelings” are the ultimate authority. But what happens when these feelings are driven by an external agent?
Free will — human choices are not this sacred arena that can’t be hacked. This has never been true, and before nobody had the technology to hack human beings at scale. Nowadays, corporations — sitting on top of a vast corpus of data — can predict and manipulate our will (see the previous point).
We invented these illusions we all agree upon money, nations, religion… they are not bad per se. They are “good” if they serve us and have a positive outcome, but we have to discard them the moment we become their slaves.

The best way to unite people is to find a common enemy.

For the first time we face the problem of becoming irrelevant — which is worse than slavery. Because under slavery, you still required somebody to do the work. But irrelevant means you are no longer needed.

Maybe philosophers will become much valuable than engineers.

💡 Scary idea: ubiquitous AI that monitors everything and creates a real-time profile of you that can be used as a resume, grades for education…

This can even be magnified with COVID and classes taken over Zoom. Problems Yuval thinks are relevant: nuclear warfare, technological disruption (AI), climate change.
They need global solutions, there is no way we can solve this problem but in a global scope.

UBI has a problem with the ‘U’ and with the ‘B’, the I is fine.

For major impact, join an organization — fifty people working together towards a single goal will have way more impact than fifty scattered individuals.

21.09: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

🥱 If you’ve been procrastinating on the expansion of your social and intellectual range, this is the ultimate resource to get you started. A bold critique on modern society and how we are boring each other out by repeating the same stories over and over.
⏰ Speaking of procrastination… Time Billionaires surely will reset your mind for the best when it comes to thinking of finite resources, in particular, time and money.

A million seconds is like 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. […] There is a difference between a time billionaire and a dollar billionaire. One has financial resources and the other has life resources. Our society overvalues the former, but undervalues the latter.

Having a billion dollars is great, but having a billion seconds is priceless. There is no amount of money in the world that can purchase immortality. Remember — the time billionaire always dies with zero.

🎁 Usually, links don’t relate to each other, but again, the latter is somehow linked to this idea that most people say they “want” something, when in fact, they want “the consequences” of that something. Posterchild example: I want to be rich (hard work) vs. I want the consequences of being rich (the yacht). This excellent post beautifully captures the idea, playing around with the verbs “be” and “do”.
🔮 Now coming from the other end. If you had “infinite” resources and no need to think of money in the long run, how would you use your time? What would you do? I think startup studios would be my (current) answer to the question.

Think of the studio model as a powerful de-risking machine. The main way it de-risks is through diversification. Studios improve their chances of success by taking a bunch of shots on net rather than just one.

🪴 This comparison between products and gardening profoundly resonated with the way I understand products myself. This philosophy would set the tone across all the projects at a hypothetical startup studio.
🗜 What if all software companies in the future become either suppliers or marketing businesses? This is what Blake Robbins suggests in Modern Suppliers — a bold insight on the very Internet’s fabric and its consequences in the long run.

21.07: notes on the Metaverse

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

❓ What the Metaverse is not

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

—— Albert Einstein

There are many competing visions for how we’ll get and build the Metaverse: a persistent, infinitely-scaling virtual space with its economy and identity system. One of the problems with forecasting the Metaverse is that we are trying to describe something that still doesn’t exist. We don’t know how it’ll look like. This is comparable to predicting the Internet in the 50s, or TikTok during the 90s. Most of the technology was already there, yes; we knew some of its components, yes; but it was difficult to anticipate the second-order effects.

This time around, we might inadvertently feel more confident. Our ability to render fictional narratives has vastly improved. That served as a double-edged sword. For example, Ready Player One has strongly, influenced what most people already think of the Metaverse. A massive virtual space, entirely user-generated, mixed with technologies such as AR glasses, blockchain, or digital avatars.

While all of those are interesting elements, that’s basically like saying that Google, or the iPhone, is the Internet. It’s not entirely wrong, but it misses the idea that the Internet itself is a series of physical pipes, standards, protocols, technology, and ideas that were formalized into infrastructure. All of this infrastructure has not been put in place for the Metaverse, yet.

🛵 w/o interoperability everything falls apart

This might sound obvious, but its importance can’t be dismissed. As its name suggests, the Internet is an interconnected network. This interconnection is partially achieved by the hyperlink — which glues it all together.

Such interoperability is not currently possible for this hypothetical Metaverse. However, it remains a necessary condition. This would mean, for example, that a skin you bought in Fortnite, you can use in Minecraft.

As of today, things that you build in one place can’t go somewhere else. Think of moving Facebook’s friends, or eBay’s reputation. Portability matters and it is not implemented even today across current platforms.

On the other hand, one of the most depicting examples I’ve seen so far of interoperability is the construction of a museum showcasing the digital art you bought across the Internet.

🌦 Physics and economics, the underlying technology

The best we can currently describe the Metaverse is a persistent, synchronous, live, living universe, that will grant its members a sense of presence and agency. It would be like participating in a new bottom-up global economy.

This represents a subtle but important shift in how we socialize and play: from purposeful interactions centered around activities (think of videos in the case of YouTube) to spontaneous interactions focused on people. In other words: a new world must be created, with its laws and rules.

This brings us to another foundational element that first needs to be addressed: forward-compatible code and physics. This is not only necessary to set the world “in motion” according to a shared set of rules, but also to safely “upgrade” its mechanics in the future.

Users will not only become participants, but active contributors in such world / economy. Then we must take into account all the user-generated possibilities that could occur in such a world. The good news is that despite we still don’t know its ultimate shape, (again) we can point out some of its components: Unity or Unreal.

⏱ How and when we’ll get there

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

—— Ernest Hemingway

There will never a moment in time where we say, “this was before, and this is post Metaverse.” Yet technologically, we are far from it. There is a lot of infrastructure work to do.

Here are some examples of how the world looks like today from this standpoint (the first two already discussed above).

Standards, protocols, and agreements — a common language. We are not even there in terms of data portability or even plain image formats on the Internet.
Forward-compatibility evolution. The metaverse is understood to be a persistent simulation. Over time it has to be continuous, but we also want it to evolve, to do more things. A world, where now and then the physics are upgraded.
Mass concurrency. We’re talking about existence moving online or the economy moving online. As of today, Fortnite can’t run more than 50 participants at a time in each room — and not all of which are even running in identical synchronicity.
Real-world connection and virtual seamlessness. Experiences will become immersive and interactive, much like in the real world. Despite we’ve seen unprecedented, accelerating progress from the first movies to VR’s state of the art, we need a digital world indistinguishable from reality.
Frictionless creation of content. Assuming an entirely UGC world means that the content creation barrier must be lowered. This can only happen with the assistance of AI-enabled tools.

🤔 Incentives to join in the first place

The incentives for a single company to join will become obvious in retrospect. However, a tension between contribution to the Metaverse and self-interest will remain. Parties will be required to make a long-term commitment to a “larger pie”.

A bet on interoperability instead of driving standards and experiences — walled gardens.
Optimizing for TAM and prefer having larger TAMs (where they can’t control if they win or lose) over closed, smaller ecosystems.

🏁 Who is leading the way

Epic (creator of the Unreal engine) has the lead in the west. Few companies are dead set on creating the underlying infrastructure that will allow for massive “TAM” creation. The company continues to build technology, grow capabilities… while giving away more and more of its value for free. Its focus is not margins but contributing to a potential Metaverse worth trillions.

Tencent (in China) is probably the closest we have to the Metaverse. Not only has the scale, the technology, the consumer attention, or the social platforms (i.e. Hooyah the Twitch of China), but they publish almost everything that happens virtually.

21.06: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Found on the news

We’ll probably never know who was the PM behind this feature, but it is genius. It solves a problem affecting almost every iPhone user through the purchase of another Apple device. I’m sure the guy has now an office next to Phil and Craig.

Ideas I’ve shared

Because of the overabundance of content on the Internet, more often than not, we’re trapped in an information consumption overload. We skim over an article, watch a video, read a book, listen to a podcast… yet we don’t stop and think. I’d argue that plain thinking has become one of the most underrated skills in modern society.
Eunoia and words that don’t translate. For example, Schadenfreude refers to the pleasure one takes from watching others’ misfortunes. There’s no word in English that directly maps to this idea. However, I referred to Schadenfreude on countless occasions. Eunoia is the ultimate aggregator for all these concepts that have a unique meaning in their own language.

#TIL Tsundoku (積ん読) a specific Japanese term that captures this phenomenon of acquiring books, and letting them pile up at home without never reading.
— Marc Collado (@MarcCollado) August 6, 2019

In times of Notions, Airtables, or Codas, trying to come up with the next productivity bundle, this is the most creative use of Google Docs I’ve seen so far.

Things I was into

Products come and go. Human needs never change. Every day I’m more convinced that, beyond solving for a real problem and market readiness, timing remains the single most important factor to determine product success.
This week at Safareig we spoke about Substack and how the dynamics of the Internet are shifting towards a creator-led economy. Even one in which the creators accrue more value and influence than the very platforms its content lives. It is a time for tools, not networks.

Random thoughts

☎️ One of the factors pushing kids back to school during Covid’s time was the lack of Internet access at their homes. While this fact won’t come as a surprise to some of you, it made me realize that we’ve probably been living in a “connectivity bubble” for longer than most. Shouldn’t it be universal Internet access a fundamental right nowadays?
💅 This podcast raised an interesting point about the mental models we generate around office spaces. For example, why is it not OK to work on a side-project while in the office at 11am on a random Tuesday? Somehow we come up with these artificial social contracts in which we blend time, space, and duty under a rigid pattern. I don’t have the answer, but I presume it is mostly because of how we construct our personal values.

The Tipping Point

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Behavior is contagious; little changes can have disproportionate effects; and, sometimes, there is no proportion between cause and consequence. These are all characteristics of social epidemics.

Social epidemics show us that ideas spread as viruses do. For some reason messages, movements, products, and other behaviors, suddenly, become very popular.

Yet this phenomenon doesn’t happen gradually, but in fact, many changes in society are so sudden that they almost seem to happen overnight. This critical moment is what we call the Tipping Point.

Usually, when it tips, it is because something happens in some of these three agents of change:

The law of the few — the people who cause them and the fact that some matter more than others.
The stickiness factor — the content of the epidemic i.e. the thing being spread: Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.
The power of context — the environment in which the epidemic takes place i.e. culture, weather, even how many witnesses are watching an event.

Law of the few

Word of mouth remains the most important form of human communication. And a handful of people wield a disproportionate amount of power. Hence the success of a social epidemic is dependent on the involvement of people with a rare set of social gifts.

Connectors: people with a special gift to bring the world together. The six degrees of separation don’t mean that we are equally linked, but that a few people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through these special few.

The Small-world experiment demonstrated that half of the letters were given to the stockbroker by just three people.

Yet it is not only that they know a lot of people, but the kind of people they know. Connectors span across different subcultures and manage to occupy many niches in society. They’ve possessed a mix of curiosity, sociability, and energy that will bring people together.

When it comes to discovering new information, weak ties matter more than your close friends — since the latter will probably share most of your tastes and interests. We rely on connectors to find opportunities in worlds we don’t belong.

Mavens: however, for a message to spread, it needs to be discovered first. Here’s where Mavens enter the picture: if Connectors are people specialists, Mavens are information specialists.

A Maven is someone who accumulates knowledge and has information on a wide array of products. They are more than experts, though, because they are socially motivated and ultimately care about helping people make the right decisions.

They like to be helpers in the marketplace. Then it is not about what they know, but how they know it and how they pass it along — because they want to help. Their honest disinterest is what makes their message spread.

Salesmen: one thing a Maven is not, is a persuader. But for a social epidemic to start, a lot of undecided people will need to be persuaded. Here’s where salesmen enter the picture: persons with a special ability to understand social and cultural micro-rhythms.

William S. Condon discovered that conversations go beyond words and span into a physical dimension through a deeper layer called conversational synchrony. When two people talk, the tone, speech rate, latency, and other patterns harmonize.

Salesmen, public speakers, or musicians, with higher persuasive powers, can bring people to sync with their rhythms — they know when the crowd is with them.

The stickiness factor

Messages need to be memorable. For a message to spread, it has to have the right people carrying it. But the message itself must also be “sticky”. People must like the message, be able to remember it, and lead to action.

Stickiness however often has very little to do with cleverness, inventiveness, or even logically convincing information. While people might like to believe that they remember the most interesting ideas, they’re often likely to remember the simplest and stickiest.

Appealing to the emotional, irrational self can be more persuasive than a logically sound argument. Whatever people might think about themselves, in reality, it’s often the simplest, cheesiest, least original content that becomes the most popular.

The power of context

The Broken Windows Theory and the Power of Context are two versions of the same argument: small environmental details — such as graffiti in the subway — can have major effects on public behavior. In other words, it suggests that people’s environments are more influential in determining their actions than people’s personalities or innate psychologies.

An even more infamous example that the physical environment can have an almost overpowering influence on behavior can be found on the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Maybe the root cause for context — despite not explicitly mentioned in the book — can be traced back to Fundamental Attribution Error and the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are.

Adding to the power of context, Gladwell argues that you’d be better off in a nice neighborhood, but within a troubled family, than the other way around.

💡 Fun fact I didn’t know: the idea of “network effect” — despite being popularized by Robert Metcalfe — was later used by Kevin Kelly to predict the evolution of the fax machine.

Addiction, Apps, and Values

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Last year I showed up for a trip to Baeza — a remote place in Andalucia — to redeem my yearly visit to one of my closest friends. At some point, we were strolling around his house and bumped into his father’s library. Thousands of books were precisely arranged on beautiful wooden shelves. He has read them all — he said. In his late sixties, he has read a vast collection of books. Mastering disciplines ranging from physics to poetry along the way. The long-life learner’s wildest dream, my dream.

A dream I’m not achieving. Not even by a stretch. Distracted, in my mid-thirties I find myself cruising almost half of my existence unable to fill a single shelf with the ones I’ve already read.

My friend’s father is an extremely literate person, however, he doesn’t sport any superpower. His secret weapon is not the latest productivity app. On the contrary, it is the lack of exposure to the attention economy that has allowed him to build this admirable legacy.

On the other end, especially after the pandemic, I’m struggling to manage my concentration and focus. More and more, I spend long periods scrolling through the phone or glued to the computer screen wandering with no purpose.

I’m no stranger to how technology is playing tricks on our minds through a combination of both intermitting positive reinforcement and social approval. We care too much about what others would think and our minds are hardwired to quickly respond to social-validation feedback loops.

Eight years ago I was already crafting strategies to keep notifications at bay. However, it was just recently that I started feeling particularly helpless and needed a drastic change.

Goals, systems, and frameworks

Aware of its downsides, I consider myself a goal-oriented person. And despite putting systems in place, I’ve always strived for goals.

A goal-driven person is a loser by definition because she always lives in a state of pre-success. On top of that, the moment the goal is achieved, the motivation also fades away.

—— Scott Adams

That being said, after reading Cal Newport’s last book, I started to approach the attention problem from a “job to be done” perspective — which neatly aligns with my utilitarian product mindset. It is about distilling what’s truly valuable for you and aligning your lifestyle around it. Lifestyle, of course, includes social media patterns.

So ask yourself: what do you want most in life, then identify which attention-grabbing products, if any, can help achieve such goals. From this point of view, we stop using them mindlessly — which fosters the addiction pattern — but to our advantage, with a clear goal in mind, the job to be done of sorts.

Under this premise, I designed a framework and aligned it with the products I use — each one with its goal and usage policy. It revolves around three axes:

Prioritizing human connection.
Taking care of oneself.
Building great products.

Here it goes.

Cultivate meaningful relationships

Above all, caring for family and friends. But also often meeting with new people. Helping others achieve their goals. Teaching, mentoring, giving back to the community, and passing along what I’ve learned so far.

The tools I use that reinforce this value are:

WhatsApp: is not meant to replace real conversations, but to reach out under necessary circumstances, and coordinate in-person meetings.
LinkedIn: for discovering new people and staying connected to my loose network.

Keep a mens sana in corpore sano

A healthy body and a sharp mind are essential to perform for a long time. It might seem like a selfish goal, but being energized is also beneficial for the ones around you. Exercising and being a long-life learner has always been something I’ve strived for. Not only for the healthy rewards but because I enjoy it.

The tools I use that reinforce this value are:

Kindle: for reading books.
Audible: for listening to audiobooks.
Email newsletters, RSS feeds, and podcasts: I put these three in the same category because they share some traits. On one hand, they are a mechanism to prevent mindless browsing. Bringing the news to you, not the other way around. Nevertheless, when it comes to managing them, the overwhelming amount of content available and my completionist nature don’t come in handy. Hence its usage must be limited to time-capped checks.

Build great products

I think of my work as a legacy of sorts. I care about creating something that has the potential to impact people’s lives, even if it’s just a little. Far from grandiose aspirations, through the products I create, I want my contributions to become the seeds of a better world.

The tools I use that reinforce this value are:

Slack: this is the only app able to send silent notifications during work hours to communicate with the team.
GSuite and Notion: apps and tools to “get the job done”.
Visual Studio Code: the go-to text editor to write and code.

Buckets for 2021

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Where to start, what to say… it has been quite a year. From the outside, it has become almost conventional wisdom that, as a society, we’ve collectively hit pause — that we’ve skipped an entire year; yet from the inside, a lot has happened, there are so many things to unpack. However, at least we can still agree that we didn’t see that one coming.

Now looking back at my 2020 and it seems I’ve crossed almost no item from the list. I did other things, true, but at some point, the year took a detour from the original plan and it ended up not working out as intended. Or not in the way I had originally wanted or envisioned it from the outset.

Before jumping in, though, two things need to be addressed. They might seem related but aren’t. The first is how we tend to blame or use COVID as a wild card to give grounds for failed intentions — when some can be better explained by lack of action. The second relates to how the “newly designed” yearly personal goal setting scheme didn’t work, and what to do about it.

But first, some background.

This section started out as a “pure” /now page, inspired by Derek Sivers and the nownownow project.
By the end of 2018, seeking a more permanent log and enhanced accountability, the ephemeral section was revised and turned into a quarterly theme. Blending the idea of the Now project with a goal-setting ledger.
Finally, it was only last year when the quarterly cadence was deprecated in favor of a one-off, released at the dawn of each year.

TL;DR: it didn’t work.

I can rationalize and invent an excuse for every single item on that list. Gamestry’s growth exceeded our wildest expectations and ended up managing rather than coding; I spent three months under lockdown and couldn’t reach the 1.500km running mark; I could go on and on, but that’s not the point.

COVID changed a lot of rules. It prevented us from doing certain activities, such as gathering together or traveling. That’s all true. However, most items on the list remained unchecked not because of COVID, but the decisions I made and how I ended up investing my time.

This brings me to the second point: the plan didn’t work. Don’t get me wrong though, I remain extremely proud of 2020. It has brought plenty of joy, amazing projects, and experiences I didn’t even expect. Overall, I’d say it has been a good year. Great in many ways, but not if we evaluate it from the perspective of early 2020 resolutions.

Good planning without good work is nothing.

—— Dwight D. Eisenhower

So, who’s to be blamed? Were resolutions poorly set? Or it was just me letting the urgent, unimportant things, take the lead and determine my fate? Probably a combination of both. But does it matter?

Again, I’m happy about how 2020 turned out to be. I wouldn’t exchange it for any other outcome.

First and foremost, for what didn’t happen: I still have my health and I wasn’t “hit” by COVID in any (undesirable) way. I didn’t get the virus, and neither did my family, nor close friends.
I spent the entire lockdown at my parents’ place, away from the city. Because of it, I was blessed with “extra” time with them that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Also because I forgot my running shoes at home I started running barefoot again, and for months, I was also able to ride my bike on empty roads.
The bet on Gamestry, in retrospect, turned out to be an amazing decision — especially given the circumstances and the fragile moment it was made.
Out of the blue, Safareig — one of the most exciting side-projects I’ve embarked on recently — launched back in September.

Despite this, I can’t stop but wonder how my one-year-young self would have felt about it. What I know for sure is that the 2020 Marc, then considered the items on the list to be his top priorities. The most important things 2020 Marc must work on during the upcoming year. Yet somehow, throughout the year, those priorities were altered. And since I can’t point to a single event that determined their demise, I assume they faded gradually.

This probably means that the cause of their deviation wasn’t important, but just a consequence of walking the path of least resistance. No matter what, the outcome remains the same: they failed. For this reason, at the outset of the year and after mulling over it, I’m taking a different approach to goal setting.

Some things haven’t changed, though. I still abide by Jocko Willink’s quote about resolutions:

I think resolutions are, for the most part, little feel-good statements that people use to justify a delay in execution.

—— Jocko Willink

That’s why instead of resolutions, this year I’d like to set — what I call — areas of interest, buckets, or themes. These are different from resolutions because they are not dogmatic about their outcome, they remain open-ended, and simply set the stage to determine what’s considered to be important. And yes, I made the name up.

Right now, I’ve got four of those, in no particular order:

Taking care of myself: every single day, with no exception, both physically and mentally. Although my opinions around health have evolved throughout the years, I still believe this is the single most important lifestyle intervention one can do to lead a better life.
Sharpening the ax: never stop learning new things. Learning has always remained one of my top priorities, but it has also been the first one to be dropped on a busy day. I want to treat it as non-optional. No matter if it comes from reading books, courses, or just watching a documentary. It has to become a sacred daily ritual, allocate time to do it, and don’t make room for exceptions.
Prioritizing what’s important: doing less, but better. I won’t allow myself to be spread too thin. I’ll commit to and work on just a handful of projects — direct to them all my energy.
Connecting (again) with real-life: after a year composed of mostly WFH days, it has become almost too easy, too comfortable to even bother going outside and participating in the real world. The combination of loneliness and fourteen solid hours a day in front of the screen has done nothing but nurture the confirmation bias we all live in. I want to reverse this trend, meet people, expose myself to new experiences and realities.

This is how I want to approach the goal-setting this 2021. I don’t want to commit to specific objectives, because they’ll certainly become outdated the moment I write them down. Instead, I want to remain more open, allow for some serendipity — something I have never indulged myself with.

I hope these buckets will help me navigate the uncertainty that comes from the process. Ensure that regardless of the unexpected, I’ll remain true to what’s important, committed to the vision.

I’ll probably go into more detail about each area of interest in upcoming posts, but to recap, this is how 2021 looks like from the outset:

Drop the yearly Now project in favor of: a canonical Now page that will be ephemerally updated throughout the year. This section will be followed by a series of personal, more introspective posts. For this reason, I’ll retroactively move all of them from the blog to the Now page and stop using the main feed for such purposes.
Stop using the yearly cadence and start issuing more regular updates to the Now section. I’d also like to play around with Buster Benson’s idea of annual reviews on the day of your anniversary.
Finally, set four directional themes for 2021: taking care of myself, sharpening the ax, prioritizing what’s important, and connecting with real life.

That being said, let’s all hope for a wonderful new year 🤞.

20.51: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 20 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts or ideas I come across and pin down during the week.

Things I’ve shared

If you organize your reading this way, your bookshelf won’t be arranged by genre like a typical bookstore. Rather than having sections sorted by author, you will instead have sections for addressing different problems, likely sorted by clusters of books in order that you encountered them.

I’ve always struggled to remember things from books. I’ve tried all the tools, even considered building one. However, this approach to reading is a neat technique for grouping information — more likely to stick in the long term.

If you’re a knowledge worker, think of training and improving as an athlete.

Tyler Cowen shared similar advice for reading. In this funny podcast he acknowledges that it took him 57 years to “learn how to read”, and also advocates for compounded reading. Here are some notes I took from the interview:
- If you don’t like a book, immediately discard it.
- Reading compounds: read a lot and connect disparate ideas.
- Focus reading: start with a question in mind and read by trying to solve your own problem.
- Read books in clusters: by author, by topic, by historical period…
- Get into the author’s mind: wrap up with his YouTube videos, interviews…
- Learn from topics that don’t interest you: pick “the best book on X” and despite you don’t like the topic, any “best on X” will be an amazing read.
I try to stay away from yearly recaps or resolutions, but this is somehow different. Plenty of thoughtful advice for a better life — my “resolution” would be to re-read it often throughout the year.
For unknown reasons, my minimalist side has accentuated recently. I liked Tips For a Better Life mentioning one of my favorite principles (Sturgeon’s Law) — an adage that states that most things are unimportant and ninety percent of everything is crap.

Things I was into

People do not remember what you say, they remember how you say it.

—— Donald Trump

Not that I consider Trump to be a role model… but I found his Netflix documentary to be quite interesting. I didn’t know about his background story, but what fascinated me the most was the way he understood how to bend reality to convey ideas.

Which brought me back to an interview with Daniel Ek and his obsession to optimize meetings. One does not think of meetings as something susceptible to optimization. But he realized that as an executive he spent most of his time in meetings. Hence the refining of these rituals was one of the most impactful things he could act on to boost his outcome.

Random thoughts

🗳 How come electronic voting is not a thing? Our government is pushing for an election in a couple of months when, at the same time, they are also restraining almost all retail, restaurants, and other social activities. Am I the only one who thinks this is a contradiction in itself? Politicians are pushing for a self-serving election, putting the entire population at risk solely for its own benefit. Despite trying hard, I still don’t understand.

20.49: notes on The Attention Economy

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts I came across while preparing for the episode 13 of Safareig.

Marketplaces of human futures

The Internet has enabled a new breadth of “free” products with an unprecedented reach. Run by organizations with a business model solely predicated on keeping people engaged, they are competing in the business of selling attention.

The reason why we don’t pay upfront for these products is because they are not actually free. It all comes at a price, and sometime, somewhere, somebody ends up paying for it. In this case, advertisers are the ones paying for the service.

We’ve all heard the cliche: “if you are not paying for the product, you are the product.”

However, I’ve always found this idea a too simplistic resolution to a very complex problem. I like better Jaron Lanier’s re-phrasing of the term: “it is the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in our behavior and perception that is the product”.

Now we are getting somewhere: these products have grown around marketplaces that trade with human futures.

The interesting part though is to understand how these markets operate: through the collection of massive amounts of data they recreate models of ourselves; this model, a digital avatar of sorts, is then used to make predictions about what we’re going to do next; and finally, they end up selling certainty, the certainty that an ad that will be placed.

It inevitably reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari’s advice when it comes to preparing for the future: “know thyself.”

Algorithms could potentially know us better than ourselves. They don’t need to be or understand us perfectly, just better than we do. Historically, this hasn’t been much of a problem because an external agent could not know more than we did — no matter how little we did know. But nowadays, for the first time in history, any algorithm can potentially know, predict, and manipulate our will.

Magic tricks at scale

We don’t understand where our mind is vulnerable, and tech companies are using all we know about psychology to exploit vulnerabilities in the human brain. The brightest engineers and designers are now being employed by these companies to make technology more persuasive.

We live in an unsolicited, continuous A/B test run on society. We are being played by a technology tapping into our minds’ flaws, which end game is to hack people’s psychology and ultimately modify our behavior.

In other words, we can affect real-world behavior and emotions without ever triggering our awareness.

We’ve moved away from Steve Jobs’ idea about tech being a “bicycle for the mind”, a tool of sorts. Social media is not a tool waiting to be used, instead, it is constantly demanding more of our attention.

A dopamine-driven culture

Social media is built on top of an evolutionary, hard-wired need for connection. Our communication is now based on third-party decisions ruling over who to connect with.

However, we have not evolved to be aware of what thousands of people think of us. We conflate this ceaseless social validation with true value.

There is an unambiguous link between mental health problems (anxiety, depression, even suicide) and social media abuse.

We are playing cards with AI. Think of it as a game between our primal brain vs. an exponentially-growing technology pointed at you all the time. Who’s gonna win this game?

Algorithms that shape our reality

All these products are usually designed by small teams — mostly comprised of white males in their late twenties — who are making decisions on behalf of two billion people.

Algorithms are opinions embedded in code; they are not objective; they are optimized to some definition of success. However, few people understand how they work, but even so, once programmed we can’t fully predict how they will end up behaving.

We think we are in control, yet, we see what algorithms want us to see. We all live in our particular Truman Show. An entire subjective reality attuned to our tastes and preferences, a machine for confirmation bias.

We ask ourselves: how come all these people are so stupid? Aren’t they seeing the same information as I do? And the fact is that they don’t. Which brings us to fake news, conspiracy theories, and polarization in society.

Truth is boring, and algorithms were designed to give us more of what we want, to maximize for profit. Hence, we get more fake, polarizing information, which consequently spreads faster than truth.

The dark side of these tools is their potential abuse (by large organizations) to influence and control behavior at scale. For example, to modify the course of an election, or destabilize and erode the fabric of society.

Tech is not an existential threat. It is the tech’s ability to bring up the worst of society. The worst of society being the existential threat.

Its consequence, beyond polarization, is that we can’t agree on what’s true. We don’t even have a shared understanding of reality anymore.

The way out

There is no “quick fix” to the problem. AI is not the solution. AI can’t distinguish between true and fake news. AI doesn’t have a better proxy than a click. We can’t rely on the same technology to solve the problem itself has created.

Tech companies are trapped by their own business model and shareholder pressures. Their very financial incentives prevent them from addressing their flaws. The bigger it gets, the harder it is to change and put the genie back in the bottle.

At the end of the day financial incentives rule the world. Any solution must start by realigning financial incentives. However, as long as the industry continues unregulated, we are worth more staring at a screen than going outside and living our lives.

The Paradox Of Choice

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The secret to happiness is low expectations.

Think of this book as if Thinking Fast And Slow and Stumbling On Happiness had a child. Most books around randomness, decision making, or brain mechanics are a byproduct or are referencing Thinking Fast And Slow. Its relevance in the study of human behavior can’t be overstated.

The Paradox Of Choice has been on my reading list for quite a while. Precisely, since the day I watched its corresponding — and now widely popular — TED talk. It seemed its time never came because I presumed it would become “yet another” take on the happiness-productivity dilemma.

And still, I don’t think it is worth your time if you’ve recently read Thinking Fast And Slow or related titles. Stick with the TED talk instead. However, I found interesting and novel ideas in it; which helped me crystallize some behavioral experiments I already encountered elsewhere.

Here’s an attempt to pin down some of the ideas that stuck.

The key idea, or the “paradox”, can be boiled down into how today’s amount of choices can lead to frustration and the inability to decide, making us less happy overall.

We claim we want freedom, but we might have gotten a little too much. That’s because having so many choices makes it harder to choose at all and raises the chances we’ll make a mistake.

On top of that, more opportunities increase the associated opportunity costs. Being aware we’ve missed out on other options, we’d probably feel stressed and less satisfied with our choice.

Next up, a summary of the key biases related to choices.

Tyranny of small decisions: a situation in which many decisions, individually small in size and time perspective, cumulatively result in a larger and significant outcome which is neither optimal nor desired.

The book references the Tragedy of the commons: a situation in a shared-resource system where individuals, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action.

Another one is the difference between expected, experience, and remembered utility. When it comes to remembering something we tend to recreate our own story — self-selecting its peaks and lasts moments. From here, the book starts revising some of Kahneman’s theories through novel examples and their connection to decision making.

Availability bias: we see what there is. The experience of familiarity has a simple but powerful quality of “pastness” that seems to indicate that it is a direct reflection of prior experience.

The frequency in which we encounter certain ideas messes up with how we experience the true nature of reality. Curiously, it predicts the entire phenomena of fake news almost fifteen years before they took off.

Paraphrasing here: as the number of choices continues to escalate, the amount of information we need escalates with it. Hence we find ourselves relying on second-hand information, rather than personal experience. In parallel, telecommunications have become more global, and we end up relying on “the same” second-hand information. So, we end up in a situation where the media tells everyone the same story; hence everybody has the same biased information; which makes it less likely that individual biased understandings will be corrected by others. When you hear the same story wherever you look, you assume it must be true, and the more people believe it is true, the more likely they are to spread and repeat it.

Anchoring: it is fascinating how emotions can be primed by events of which you are not even aware. In this case, depending too heavily on the initial piece of information (considered to be the “anchor”) to make subsequent judgments.

It also works with pricing theory. A hypothetically lowered-priced product can seem a bargain among an extremely expensive product line. It made me think of why the 2020 iPad Air or Apple Watch SE exist. I had a hard time figuring this out during the It’s Almost Time special episode at Radio Lanza. But anchoring makes them seem reasonable options within the product line, while still remaining expensive devices.

Framing is also closely related to this idea: where people decide on options based on whether they are presented with positive or negative connotations — i.e. as a loss or gain.

I quite liked the example of gas stations, where two exact price schemes were presented as “discount for cash” or “surcharge for credit”. The reference point becomes the anchor price (or reference) over which we cement our decisions.

These biases seem intimately related — because they are. They all fall (again) under Kahneman’s prospect theory. Which describes how individuals assess their loss and gain perspectives asymmetrically.

The theory starts with the concept of loss aversion, from the observation that people react differently between potential losses and potential gains. For example, we prefer a small (but sure) gain, to a larger (but uncertain) one. So far so good. However, when it comes to losses, it is the contrary, we take the chance. In other words, we are risk-averse for potential gains, but risk-takers for potential losses.

This subtle idea is the cornerstone that supports a wide array of behavioral concepts concerning our misleading perception of reality. I believe Thinking Fast And Slow does a better job covering all of them. However, it is surprising how relevant they are when it comes to making decisions and how we go about our choosing policies.

Going down this bottomless rabbit hole, we can uncover plenty of common biases. For example, the fact that we are more sensitive to losses than wins (both being equal in size) makes us (illogically) value more what is ours. We place additional value and generate an irrational attachment to our things when faced with the situation of losing them.

These mental models go on and on. There are enough of them to cover entire books. Nonetheless, to bring the focus back to choices and wrap this summary up, let’s go around the fundamental, unique ideas I found in the book.

The freedom to choose we so longed for years is one of the main roots of our unhappiness today.

The paradox of choice we’ve embedded in our society manifests itself as a tension between free choice (autonomy) and rising expectations (societal pressure). Too many choices produce an overall feeling of distress — usually magnified by a mixture of regret, comparison with others, hedonic adaptation, or status concerns.

The book proposes several strategies to go around this problem.

Choose when to choose. Think of which choices really matter and double down on those. From there, navigate the rest with an autopilot mindset. We all have an amount of willpower available, do not deplete it with meaningless choices.
Be a satisficer instead of a maximizer. In a world of endless choices, the maximization strategy is a granted recipe for depression. Do this by limiting your choices, staying with what you have instead of succumbing to an unsolicited urge for upgrading.
On the same note, be grateful for what you have. Make a habit of reminding yourself how good things are. The hedonic treadmill has become second nature to us. Valuing what we have is the best way to keep adaptation at bay.
However, remain a chooser, not a picker. Do not become a passive selector and spectator of society. Invent your own reality and become the master of your decisions.
Do not regret: we tend to compare our current state of affairs with all the available outcomes that didn’t materialize. But the world doesn’t work like this. You can’t know what would have happened.

I usually don’t review books that are closely related to other readings I’ve already posted. Yet I connected so deeply with some ideas in the book — like the difference between maximizers and satisficers and its link to anxiety and depression — that I thought it was worth sitting down and write a few lines about how that felt.

At the end of the day, we’ve all won the lottery of birth — just by not being born five hundred years ago. Still, nobody is happy. We remain mere, passive spectators in one of the most depressing societies humanity have ever seen.

I always have had a hard time understanding this disappointing paradox; and this book has again sparked some of these ideas around this problem.

Finally, if there is one takeaway maximizers like me should get from The Paradox Of Choice is to allow for serendipity. An idea that terrifies me, because it runs so counter to my own rational nature. However, deep down, I believe that serendipity holds a source of creativity and we should embrace it more often.

Audience

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Create an audience

Recently, at an informal gathering with friends, we found ourselves discussing the distinction between mission and vision. Don’t ask me why any group ends up discussing such affairs — you don’t want to know.

Besides the fact that none of us knew anything about what we were talking about, which is kind of embarrassing, at some point it became my turn. I was asked about my stakes on the matter — and how we were positioning Gamestry in this regard. Back then, my answer was rather sparse. Which on one hand concerned me, but on the other, both inspired and challenged me to meditate on it and come up with a better one.

In short, this article is the answer I should have given.

At Gamestry our mission is to help creators build an audience. Hence all of our resources and efforts must be directed towards their empowering — so they can focus on what matters, their audience.

Long story short, our North Star has inevitably become to create an audience for our creators.

Two sides of the same coin

When it comes to the creation of an audience, there are two key, interconnected components we need to consider:

(1) The creation of content: that’s because the content is the prima materia through which creators will ultimately monetize.

An important consideration that can’t be overstated is that to boost this loop, creators must be also incentivized to become consumers themselves. Product-wise, these can be achieved through engagement tokens or similar reward mechanisms that encourage the consumption of content on the creator side, and vice-versa.

(2) The consumption of such content: to catalyze the consumption side, consumers must derive, pleasure, and status from it.

Doubling down on the aforementioned consideration, consumers must be able to acknowledge how their commitment translates into value. Product-wise, the value looks something like engagement tokens or similar reward mechanisms that can be later used within the platform to, for example, purchase exclusive items or showcase their status.

The behavioral fuel that makes it happen

The nurturing of this tight loop between content creation and consumption is not something we expect to happen out of the blue. On the contrary, it has deep roots at Gamestry and they are backed by both quantitative data and qualitative user research.

Over time we’ve learned two key insights that most of our users share across the board.

Farmer behavior: an obsessive drive towards the achievement and pursue of the desired goal or given outcome.
Online reputation: a ceaseless seek of status beyond rationality that serves as a “badge of honor” within a community they care about.

The subtle acumen of this reasoning is that they use the farmer’s behavior to boost their reputation. Hence the process itself can be hacked and catalyzed through gamification.

If done properly, embedded gamification within the platform will leverage the farmer’s behavior to deliver attuned rewards that will drive online reputation. Ultimately incentivizing more farmer behavior, and so forth.

Tying all up

Up until here, on one hand, we’ve got the two necessary ingredients required to build an audience: the creation and consumption of content. On the other, the fuel that stirs the platform: the farmer behavior and online reputation — properly magnified through gamification.

Putting it all together, to create an audience, we shall put our fuel to work so it can turn the content loop into an unstoppable flywheel. To do that, we align both user’s and creator’s incentives and surface the mechanisms that will show that there are other ways to acquire status:

The creation of content will also drive status, the moment others engage.
The consumption of content will also drive status, through the reward system embedded in the platform.

As a final remark, it is important to note that this fuel — applied here to the loop — can also be used to help drive other behaviors across the platform.

20.43: notes on TikTok

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts I came across while preparing for the episode 8 of Safareig.

TikTok’s background

The history got started with Musical.ly in 2014, in Shanghai. Alex Zhu and Luyu “Louis” Yang had launched an educational short-form video app that hadn’t gotten much traction. Then they pivoted to lip-synch music videos and launched in the United States market, where it became very popular. Mostly among teenagers that started using the app for creating and sharing song covers.

Musical.ly may as well be the first Chinese app to break the Western social and cultural barrier. However, there are only so many teenage girls in the United States. When they saturated that market, usage, and growth flatlined.

Later ByteDance cloned the idea in China with an app called Douyin. Ironically, it became more popular than its American competitor — which ended up acquiring. Under ByteDance’s ownership, Musical.ly got rebranded as TikTok.

The algorithm

TikTok is not your typical western social network. It can be considered a true mobile-first, user-generated platform. However, its approach looks more like YouTube, rather than Facebook.

Social graphs — the ones Facebook or Twitter are built on top of — are more rigid because of its path-dependency on your friends or followers. They fail to quickly iterate and refine recommendations as your tastes evolve.

It is its fundamental structure that sets TikTok apart. It is not based (and by extension not limited by) on who you follow or who your friends are. Instead of being friend-dependent, the app learns as you mindlessly scroll and engage — no need to search, friend, or share.

Looking at it from a pure algorithmic design perspective, TikTok’s will be thought of as an explore algorithm — one that tries to broaden your exposure to more than just what you’ve shown you like. While YouTube’s (exploit algorithm) will give you more of what you like.

Yet any AI researcher would agree that TikTok’s algorithm has no special “sauce”. What makes TikTok special is the ability to combine its algorithm with the data on which it is being trained. There is not much data available about user preferences, but TikTok’s algorithm can quickly create it and act on it.

The algorithm excels at incentivizing the user to create its own training data through a closed-loop. Unlike western social networks (overwhelmed by a myriad of CTAs) TikTok is presenting one video at a time — and learning from it. It is tracking each interaction with each video, which gives an unambiguous data point to nurture the algorithm.

TikTok helps its algorithm (through human-assisted tagging and user feedback) “see” the video.

The creator

TikTok makes, what used to be pro workflows, very accessible and easy to use. Things like effects, editing music… are effortlessly available to creators. A lot of people ask why YouTube hasn’t already tackled this opportunity. This is something we are quite familiar with at Gamestry. YouTube has become so vast that it can’t create vertical experiences that fit each use case on the platform.

Network effects on creativity: how each creator makes others more creative.

Bypassing the blank canvas: start by remixing others’ ideas, make duets, re-use other videos as “components”.
Distribution: instead of creating content “in the dark”, know how to be promoted through featured challenges or trending hashtags.

Update: I wrote an entire post about how to retain and help creators thrive within your product.

Deep Work

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I’ll live the focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task — it is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive economy.

Our culture is pushing us toward shallow, distracted work. Hence we end up doing email during interrupted time-chunks. And it gets worse, the more time you spend in a state of shallowness, the more you reduce your capacity to perform deep work.

For this reason, we’ve even come up with the idea of busyness as a proxy for productivity. Where in the absence of clear indicators, we reverse toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.

People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy.

Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate.

Yet here’s a curious paradox: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

Our work culture’s shift toward the shallow is exposing a massive personal opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth.

Talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels. A bunch of mediocre writers does not add up to a master writer. There’s a premium to being the best.

Deliberate practice

If you’re trying to learn a complex new skill, you should aim for deliberate practice without distraction. Focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction.

This repetitive use of a specific circuit will end up cementing the skill.

Focus your attention on the specific skill you’re trying to improve.
Receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keeping your attention exactly where it’s most productive.
Repeat.

Keep repeating this pattern and you’ll get better at learning: to learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.

Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.

The goal is to achieve Eudaimonia: a state in which you’re achieving your full human potential, also human flourishing, prosperity, and ‘blessedness’.

Deep work is the only choice in an ever-demanding society. If you’re comfortable going deep, you’ll be comfortable mastering the increasingly complex systems and skills needed to thrive in our economy.

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

Habits and routines

The amount of willpower you get during the day is limited. Move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.

Waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan.

Be smart about your habits and choose a strategy that fits your circumstances. Avoid distractions and create your own philosophy for integrating deep work into your professional life.

Commit to a particular pattern for scheduling this work and develop rituals to sharpen your concentration before starting each session.

An example that would better fit our current society would be the bimodal philosophy: typically deployed by people who cannot succeed in the absence of substantial commitments to non-deep pursuits.

Build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work and treat your work as your craft, your masterpiece.

Execution

Be selective about the work you pursue: identify a small number of ambitious outcomes.

Focus on the Wildly Important: say “no”. The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.
Act on the Lead Measures (not lag measures) to track your success — i.e. tracking deep work hours.
Keep a compelling scoreboard: helps calibrate expectations for how many hours of deep work were needed per result.
Create a cadence of accountability: a weekly review in which you make a plan for the work week ahead.

Seek time to release your mind — some decisions are better left to the unconscious. For decisions that involve large amounts of information and multiple vague, and perhaps even conflicting, constraints, use your unconscious.

Develop a shutdown ritual after the workday. Once you’ve hit your work capacity for the day, stop. No email, no mindless tasks, nothing. You’re beyond the point where you can continue to effectively work deeply.

However, if after the “shut down”, you keep interrupting your evening to check email, you’re robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration.

Once your workday shuts down, you cannot allow even the smallest incursion of professional concerns, or blue-lighted screen, into your field of attention.

We spend much of our day on autopilot — not giving much thought to what we’re doing with our time.

We’ve lost our ability to be bored. If every moment of potential boredom is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where it’s not ready for deep work — even if you regularly schedule a time to practice this concentration.

The craftsman approach to tool selection: identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.

Creators as Business Potential

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Here’s a fact, almost a law: on the Internet, the big gets bigger. It then follows that the longer an incumbent has sustained its growth and dominance over an industry, the more difficult is to challenge its status quo.

Last January, after raising our series A, we set out to challenge this fundamental principle. We aimed to create a platform that would empower the long tail of creators. A place where an unknown creator — as long as she creates great content — can thrive, build an audience, and turn her passion into a sustainable lifestyle.

We were naively assuming that we could change how the Internet works. However, our thesis was sustained by a set of cornerstone ideas that turned this wishful narrative into an actionable reality.

To start with, the problem: gaming creators are struggling on YouTube and other incumbent platforms. In a nutshell, to make money, the “growth at all cost” dynamic driving YouTube forced niche creators towards publishing click-bait content.
On top of a problem for creators, a reasonable business case can also be made in favor of the industry. What for YouTube has for long remained an ignored and niche market, it is not anymore. Gaming has earned its place in the world and gamers have become one of the single largest cohorts on Earth.
Given this reality, it is fair to assume that by leveraging a vertical platform focused solely on gaming, we’ll be able to:
- First, build unique features and put ourselves in a position to create an unmatchable experience for both the creator and the viewer.
- Second, recreate an environment where creators can build audiences and profit from small niches; and fans can show appreciation, and feel closer to their idols. Which will ultimately lead to better monetization mechanisms that will connect them in novel ways.

While this might sound like a plan, I assume most of you still remain unconvinced because, so far, the plan lacks its key component: the “how”. In this post, I’m not going to spell out the specific features that will make it happen. Mainly because the output is still very fragile and lacks the product consistency to be presented.

However, I wanted to outline the broader strokes of the plan to, at least, rough out the path that eventually is going to take us there.

The ultimate goal is to generate enough organic engagement and optimize the user flows within the platform to uplift creators with smaller audiences. The strategy is sustained by three pillars that work in conjunction:

Boosting discoverability by going vertical and non-live: each minute 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube, which implies 82 years of content every single day — this is just one platform. The volumes and the growth are massive, but the problem is not only quantity. The material uploaded ranges from cooking lessons to physics and, of course, with very different degrees of quality. Then, how do you put all that in front of the viewer?
Rewarding quality over clicks: YouTube solves it with a click-based algorithm. It not only frustrates creators but also narrows the results for the viewers to the most recent and “successful”, then makes them decide based on just the title and a thumbnail.
Becoming creator-centric: content creators are the undisputed stars of this show. They drive audiences, they are the creative minds behind the show. But with the rise of video streaming creators are realizing that being a creator is not only a hobby, but can also become a business.

We go vertical and non-live

Going vertical — in this case for gaming and GenZ entertainment content — lets us benefit from several advantages that seem simple, yet differential. Fellow gamers are naturally segmented, this allows us to focus and become domain experts, ultimately understanding how to structure and present content. Once a user arrives at Gamestry, we already know she is a gamer expecting to find gaming content on our platform.

Nevertheless, vertical platforms already exist. However, they are mostly focused on live stream content. Unfortunately, a live stream requires the viewer to be there at an exact moment. It comes as no surprise that the vast majority of the audience and content out there is non-live. Non-live allows us to understand and categorize content in a way that is simply impossible for live streams. Trying to solve for discoverability, we are convinced that non-live is the way to go.

We not only believe that all of the value we can offer to our customers comes from this trade-off, but it also enables a wide range of product functionalities that, otherwise, wouldn’t be possible.

In other words, by leveraging a gaming niche, we can build features and make certain design assumptions to put ourselves in a unique position to create an unmatched experience for both the creator and the viewer.

Tying all this back to the product, the vertical approach enables one of our product principles: meticulous categorization. The fact that we know in advance the nature of our content permits a specific solution for their gaming needs. It makes for a better experience — easier for the user to browse and discover content in ways that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

Categorization allows us to customize the experience for each game, adapting the content showcase to particular occasions, special events — in response to quick shifts on the market — but most importantly, recommending the content you’re most interested in. It all leads to a customized, tailored gaming experience, made specifically for you.

We reward quality over clicks

Engagement, not clicks, is the best proxy to user happiness. A high completion rate tells more about how interesting a video was than how many people clicked on it.

As mentioned above, the Internet is flooded with content, so in a world in which the supply of video is guaranteed, the most valuable commodity is viewers’ time. The question is, how can viewers cope with such a flow of content? How can they make the best use of time distinguishing the pieces that matter within this ocean of possibilities?

Quality is the only answer. Following the steps of diligent categorization comes another product principle at Gamestry: surfacing high-quality content. Over time, we’ve managed to sustain a sustained positive engagement trend through unique product discoverability — powered by our enriched content.

Since we are a vertically integrated platform we already know a few valuable data points that will help our users connect and engage with the content in advance. But why stop here? We believe in engagement, and not clicks, as the best proxy to user happiness, and we have been at work to embed this pattern right into our product.

This also ties back to the creators’ experience. The quality — and thus the success — of content they upload depends on a wide range of factors, not just clicks. A view is not a view at Gamestry.

By doing this, we enter into a positive feedback loop where our creators are motivated to upload higher-quality content, focusing on engagement as opposed to clickbait enhancers such as thumbnails and catchy titles. Thus attacking one of their main anxieties as creators, where they aren’t left wondering why they’re making great content and not getting views. This leads to the next point.

We are creator centric

Today, creators hold an important role in the lives of viewers. Their engaging content captures viewers’ hearts and more importantly, their time. Once a viewer finds a creator they truly connect with, they will certainly follow them regardless of the platform.

As current platforms don’t put creators at the focal point of their business model, we are in front of a unique opportunity to bring on these creators and become the platform to create a rock-solid relationship with them.

The best thing we can do to attract them is simply to help them. In other words: a successful creator-centric platform will expand the pie instead of eating it.

From a product standpoint, we see creators as business potential. The creator economy has enabled any of us to become creators and directly connect to large audiences. The immediate consequence of all this is that, at some point, all creators will become businesses themselves.

With the rise of the creator economy, creators have started to see their activity as a business, but this has also forced a lot of them to deal with business proposals, legal contracts, hiring agents, paying salaries, taxes… all on top of creating top-quality content. We are flipping this problem on its head, by offering personal and integrated services that will help creators thrive.

This implies that a brand new economy will emerge to serve these “creators as a business”. Services that were long thought exclusively for business will start to emerge around creators. The opportunity is not only huge but untapped.

Failing to serve this new breadth of creators is not only shortsighted, but it fails to tackle the larger picture. At Gamestry creators are treated as a business, with all of its implications. The very moment this happens, a new world of possibilities opens up.

At the end of the day, you didn’t go into business to stress over money — quite the opposite — so we’ve got that covered. Businesses rely on third parties all the time to handle their chores and focus on their craft, hence why not assume that the same will happen around independent creators? From taking care of payouts, taxes, affiliates, authors… that’s our thing, you do yours.

Gamestry offers an optimized and transparent way for viewers to discover content and connect with their favorite creators. It also empowers professional creators to boost their careers.

20.39: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts or ideas I come across and pin down during the week.

Found on the “news”

This week I found nothing on the news. Basically because I don’t read the news — which reminds me that, in fact, this section is kind of pointless. Thinking of removing it for the upcoming versions.

Things I’ve shared

Timeless:
Science, math, philosophy, rhetoric. First principles. Creating art & business. Family & lifelong friends. Habits to calm mind & body.

Temporary:
Politics, news, entertainment. Memorizing facts. Hourly work. Transactional relationships. Drugs & doctors for mind & body.
— Naval (@naval) August 1, 2019

The playbook has always taught us that you make another person like you by asking about their interests, praising them… However, Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, goes even beyond. He proposes this idea of messing up with people — deliberately making you look dumber, by stating a wrong fact, for example — and giving them a chance to correct you. The act of “correcting you” makes them feel better and more at ease with you. Source: The Time Ferriss Show
Having beautiful, inspiring things around is a delightful feeling. This brand is the pinnacle of this idea — but beware, if you’re easy on the “buy button” this website can potentially evaporate your savings.

Things I was into

How are you complicit in recreating the very conditions you say you don’t want.

—— Jerry Colonna

The way Carl Jung used the idea of Metanoia. I’ve always thought of the term as clarity of vision, a way to unlock and achieve your human potential. Jung’s approach is even more interesting — he developed the usage to indicate a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself from conflict and being reborn in a more adaptive form.
Never thought that archaeological records could be susceptible to bias. However, since a great deal of archaeology is state-sponsored, it usually ends up as a narcissistic exercise in self-portraiture. In other words, the way archaeological evidence is gathered, tends to leave systematic holes in our knowledge. Source: Devon Zuegel

Random thoughts

5️⃣ Romans did plenty of things right. However, their numeral system was not among their greatest hits. As a kid, you learn the numbers by ascending order: first, the 1, then, the 2… you get the gist. But because of the subtractive notation in the Roman numeral system, if you wanted to understand 4 (IV), you first needed to know about five (V), which if you think about it, doesn’t make much sense.
🎧 Huet, who was deemed the most read person in his day, had a servant follow him with a book to read aloud during meals and breaks — one could argue that the guy somehow pioneered Audible but 500 years ago.

20.38: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts or ideas I come across and pin down during the week.

Found on the “news”

This week has been mostly about the Apple Event. All my thoughts here.
Oh, no, there’s more. Game changer. Notion now supports in-line sub-pages. Quote from the changelog: before, sub-page links had to be their own standalone content blocks on their own lines. Now you have the option to nest a sub-page right inside a paragraph.

Things I’ve shared

This wasn’t Big Sur’ week. Not yet. However, one doesn’t need an excuse to geek out with the system preferences.
Speaking of preferences. I’ve always thought there should be a hidden toggle (buried five levels deep under the Settings > Accessibility menu, don’t care) that defers your update cycle until the .1 comes out. This week I learned that Apple has, for years, implemented a better, subtler approach to do precisely that.
A priori not sure how to feel about resonating with most of this Nerd Urban Dictionary set of words.
If only I could play Factorio on that, I might even consider buying one.

Things I was into

The modern mind is overstimulated and the modern body is understimulated and overfed. Meditation, exercise, and fasting restore an ancient balance.

Been thinking a lot about this ☝️ lately. We have over-complicated society to an extent that we’ve lost touch with the most fundamental stuff our ancestors had already figure out.
One of the main reasons why we tend to over-eat (over-everything, for that matter) is no other than our primate wiring still being anchored in a world of scarcity. There are plenty of lessons to be learned in this episode of Solvable with Tristram Stuart.
Even applied for the private beta of Levels — a CGM to track your blood glucose in real-time.

Random thoughts

🎲 Why most of the classic board games haven’t been “upgraded” with AR capabilities? Think of the potential applications and the enhanced experience. Picture a (say, trivial, chess…) board with an AR-enabled mobile device placed on top of a tripod in front of each player. The AR layers a new “world” on top of the board that only the player sees, but still both devices are interconnected. You keep the offline experience and adds a set of features that are literally not possible in “our reality”.
🔍 The marketing team of Elastic is one of the more undervalued assets out there. Listen to any conversation around an application lacking the search feature. Rest assure it will inevitably end up with the random guy next to you claiming “easy, just implement Elastic Search and you’re good to go”.

20.37: random thoughts of the week

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts or ideas I come across and pin down during the week.

Found on the “news”

Google is — or was — literally subsidizing the development of competing browsers.
Amazon’s workers hanging smartphones on trees next to delivery stations remind me of the Flash Boys’ storyline. Where traders were laying off fiber cable across the country and placing their order handling hardware next to the stock exchanges.
We westerns know nothing about how to optimize mobile experiences nor the opportunities arising around e-commerce — and I also realized I know nothing about China.

Things I’ve shared

Remind yourself of this next time you want to upgrade your smartphone — aren’t we just paying for minor, incremental upgrades?
No idea if this works or not, but it is definitely a clever implementation of text-to-speech using artificial intelligence.
Happy Sharing — or Xiangwushuo, is a point-based secondhand sharing platform that helps people swap used items online.

Things I was into

Wabi-sabi occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West. In stark contrast with the Industrial Age, that embodied an ethos based on the pursuit of a “like-new” state, the Digital Age embodies a Wabi-sabi approach to technology. Source: Breaking Smart
Static vs. dynamic stability and why fighter aircrafts are designed to be dynamically unstable.

Random thoughts

💩 Why our toilets do not analyze our poop if the gut is considered to be the “second brain”?
🎙️ There should be way to quickly highlight, transcribe, and log audio clips from Audible or podcasts.
🌬 Why simple fan selector rotary switches (the thing that turns it on) step from being stopped to its maximum in the first shift — further decreasing its power with the following shifts?

Hola des de Safareig

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

🎙 Safareig és un podcast amb Ramon Gilabert i Marc Collado.

El teu aperitiu setmanal on analitzem com la tecnologia està canviant la societat que ens envolta. Cada dilluns, en 20 minuts, i exclusivament en català.

Per saber-ne més, pots visitar a la nostra web oficial. Finalment, no dubtis en seguir-nos a Twitter i subscriure’t per ser el primer a escoltar-nos.

The backstory

Almost every week, Ramon and I used to devoutly meet for breakfast and ramble about how technology is shaping our society. From there, the conversation could potentially detour to topics ranging from product, design, artificial intelligence, education… you’d never know.

Then COVID happened. It not only stopped Radio Lanza but also halted the ritual. As much as I like the remote culture, one must admit, the offline breakfast experience is unmatchable.

Fast forward to July, as soon as COVID would permit it, Ramon and I picked up on the offline breakfasts. It was right at the end of that very first re-encounter that I suddenly said: “man, we should start a podcast”.

🐣 Safareig és un podcast que neix de la mà del Marc i d'en Ramon, dos apassionats de la tecnologia i del producte amb un fort interès en l'anàlisi pragmàtic o idealista de com aquests estan afectant la societat. 🧶 pic.twitter.com/FNUMTUwzCN
— Safareig (@safareigfm) December 15, 2020

As simple as it gets — this is the behind-the-scenes story of how Safareig came to be.

The deal

Despite we ended up putting a lot of thought into the podcast structure and value proposition, at first, we didn’t even need to think about what we would do. It was all about recording those conversations and framing them into little nuggets of digestible content.

Safareig is a weekly podcast, about how technology is changing our current societal landscape. Every Monday, we’ll release a new episode. No more than twenty minutes each. And of course, in Catalan — keep reading for more on the latter.

Barcelona

We all know tech is permeating every corner of our society. Even the most conservative outlets, those that thought tech had nothing to do with them, are awaking to this new reality.

Aiming to become a relevant player in the industry, Barcelona has been betting on this revolution for the last few years. Hence, the city has attracted several startups and talent from around the world. Recreating the conditions to breed and nurture a strong local ecosystem along the way.

This transformation has reshaped Barcelona’s labor market in many ways. The strong demand for tech-related jobs has grown, which has raised the attention of both insiders and newcomers alike. Those that found themselves stuck in other industries have seen an opportunity to advance in their careers.

As a result, you end up not only with a larger cohort of tech enthusiasts but also one that is more heterogeneous and diverse.

Local vs. global

The ones that have been living here for long enough are well aware that such diversity hasn’t always been ruling over the city.

Historically, Barcelona has been more concerned with local issues, such as nationalisms, convoluted relations with the central government, or the survival of Catalan in a global, hostile environment… This city, however, has suddenly been turned into an all-embracing melting pot.

These tensions between the local nuances and the global landscape, the decaying factories and the nascent tech startups, the natives and the outlanders… they all make it a unique place for Safareig to emerge. A multidisciplinary, curious, and energized take on how technology is reshaping society. A place to talk about these issues, from a local standpoint, with a global horizon.

Fem safareig

Safareig is a Catalan noun that refers to the place where one goes to wash their clothes. These spaces are nowadays private. A handful of decades ago, those where communal spaces people joined to wash their clothes. Since the washing itself can be thought of as a semi-distracted activity, safareig became the quintessential place for gossiping.

The by-product activity taking place at the safareig gave name to the expression “fer safareig”. Which roughly translates to “do, or make, safareig”. This is the core idea Safareig is trying to capture. A communal space for critical introspection. Somewhere to slow-down, and mull over the current state of affairs with a critical, but creative lens.

You’ll hear us talk about how technology is transforming our current society. From culture, education, design, politics, arts… you name it.

You’ll hear us going deep. Asking “why” countless times. Avoiding the headlines. Staying away from the surface. Dissecting each topic from multiple angles, painstakingly considering all its implications.

And that’s the deal with Safareig; that’s what we envision when we think of “fer safareig”, and we’d love for you to join.

20.35: notes on Caffeine

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts or ideas I come across and pin down during the week.

Notes on Michael Pollan’s Audible Original 1,3,7-Trimethylxanthine or How Caffeine Created the Modern World.

We humans, seem to have a unique desire to complicate things.

Caffeine was a molecule originally develop as a mechanism for the plants to “defend” themselves against insects and other natural agents.

Which party is then getting the best part of this symbiotic arrangement? Or, how much credit should we give us for a plant that we use might be actually using us.

Arabs delivered the grains roasted so Europe couldn’t steal the “recipe”.

In the 1660 a dutch businessman stole some and brought it to the Netherlands. Distributed through the company of East India Company, it ended up in Java, where it was also grown — hence Mocha, Java.

It seems as if during the the 1600s each citizen was culturally required to daily consume one item from “each side” of the colonies — which in the case of Britain were tea and sugar.

From a cultural and societal standpoint, the coffee industry was deeply ingrained with slavery and oppression.

Coffee created a culture that coffee itself maintained.

Appeared by the time clocks incorporated the minute hand — not by chance.
Brought focus beyond circadian rhythms — allowing for the “night shift”.
Replaced alcohol in factories and pubs as a cultural drug.

How come it gives us energy since it doesn’t have any calories? Does coffee break the law of thermodynamics 🤯

#TIL sleep is mainly controlled by three compounds:

- Adenosine: accumulated during the day and cleared overnight — blocked by ☕
- Cortisol: what keeps us awake — reverse lifecycle as ☝🏻
- Melatonin: makes us feel sleepy — blocked by blue light and 💻
— Marc Collado (@MarcCollado) August 9, 2019

Caffeine is a tiny molecule that fits nicely into one of the receptors of our CNS. Hence blocking the neuromodulator that would naturally bind to that receptor to activate it.

This neuromodulator is called adenosine — a depressor that also slows down the pace at which neurons fire, which removes “the brakes” that enable sleep. As adenosine builds up in the brain we start to fill more unfocused and sleepy 😴 — the so called sleep pressure.
Caffeine prevents adenosine of doing its job by getting in its way. But, adenosine is still there, it just can’t bind to its receptors.

During deep sleep low frequency waves are sent back from the frontal cortex in a process to sync the many brain cells. A sort of clean up for the mind, moving today’s learnings to a more permanent storage.

There is a global lack of sleep both in terms of quantity and quality across society. Caffeine is the tool we use to fix the problem it creates by itself. It hides the problem from our awareness.

We use caffeine to fix the sleepiness produced by the poor quality of our sleep, in itself, produced by coffee.

Coffee is not creating “free energy” — it is just borrowing it from the future. And we will eventually pay it, with interests, that can be measured in terms of quality of sleep.

Caffeine is just a way to achieve a certain state of mind.

Leaving the Mac behind

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Mactracker is kind enough to remind me that the first Apple product I’ve ever owned was a precious, gold, first-generation iPod Mini. That was back in 2004. Three years had to go by until I decided to treat myself with a Mac. A stunning, white, Intel-based iMac — 20-inch late-2006 for the nerds out there.

However, this post is not an exhibit of my unbroken devotion to the Mac — a topic I can go on for hours. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. But let’s not detour from the main thread, which is no other than explaining the rationale behind my first challenge for Radio Lanza v2.

Marc’s challenge #1: leave the Mac behind and make of the iPad his main computing device by the end of the year 🤯.

The fine print: this doesn’t mean I’ll throw the Mac away at once, but put myself in a position to effortlessly pull the trigger at any time during 2021. The project is more about attuning workflows to a mobile-friendly world, rather than simply throwing a laptop away.

Why do it

The reasons why are better detailed in the episode itself, but here’s the bullet list:

An aging platform. macOS has its roots anchored many years ago. Hence not taking into account modern computing paradigms such as mobility, touch screens, or ubiquitous connectivity. There have been efforts to calibrate for the modern times, true. It has recently received plenty of love, also true. However, it was not designed around these assumptions; it feels like bending an oak tree; and, like it or not, the Mac as a platform is slowly, but surely, fading away.
On the other hand, iOS belongs to a ~~superior~~ newer breed of devices with optimized interaction patterns and input mechanisms.
Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. We live in a ~~mobile-first~~ mobile-only world. Mobile has leapfrogged the desktop and for most mobile will be their ~~first~~ only device. In a mobile-dominated world, volume drives eyeballs, money, and developers’ attention. This ensures a richer platform in the long-term — however not absent of debate.
Lifestyle and minimalism. When faced with a random chore, I sometimes ask myself: “what would this look like if it were easier?” or “is there a simpler way to do it?“. The iPad is the answer to how computing should look like if it were easier and also sits better with my minimal approach to life.

This is one of the most bittersweet decisions I have ever made. It is a big deal. We are creatures of habit. I spend an unreasonable amount of time in front of the screen, hence the transition will imply a great deal of unlearning and cognitive unloading — if such a thing exists. However, it is a decision for the best. It is about time to leave the Mac and jump for once into the iPad van-wagon.

To track down the transition, I’ve jotted down the tasks, actions, workflows, and apps I regularly use or perform on the Mac. I’ve broken them down into “best”, “same-same”, and “still unsolved” categories — depending on how seamless its transition I predict could be.

Each item hides a lot of complexity in itself. This is just the bulleted version for the sake of simplicity. The full-fledged explanation is better described in the aforementioned Radio Lanza episode.

Better with iPad

Developer love: both from Apple and third-party developers.
The neatness and security of iOS (or “it just works”): an Electron-free platform in which apps are “native” and controlled by a “trusted” party through a standardized process. Not absent of debate, of course.
A simpler platform that fits my minimalist view of computing.
Fewer distractions and binging since the focus is on one task at a time.
One thing, one app: with macOS, some things are in the browser, others have its own ~~Electron~~ app… it is difficult to keep track and bring order to this chaos .
Enhanced and less abstracted input mechanisms.
Pencil: ability to readily create sketches and drawings.
Trackpad: I love its re-definition of the pointer-based interface.
The hardware: better front camera, long-lasting battery, stunning display… in short, it inherits all the iPhone goodies.
Cellular connectivity and mobility.
Integration with iPhone: assuming you’ve got one already, dealing with an iOS-only environment makes things simpler.
Apple scripts vs. Siri shortcuts: I have “collected” a lot of Apple Scripts and they probably won’t map 1:1 with Siri shortcuts. However, the future looks brighter in Siri-land (see the first point).

Same-same with iPad

These are more or less similar experiences with the iPad. Still, using a more modern tool not only makes them “better”, but also augur them a more promising roadmap ahead.

Communication: email, Messages, Slack, Discord… you get the idea.
Web browsing and media consumption: the iPad was built around this idea.
Writing: it also benefits from the focus mentioned above.
Notification management.

Unsolved with iPad

Finally, here’s the list that details the main flows that do not still have (or at least I haven’t yet researched enough) a clear-cut replacement for iOS.

Note that in the “unsolved” categories there are more apps than “jobs-to-be-done”. This reminds me of how spoiled we are from the tools we’ve been using for a long time without even questioning if we were just becoming masters of the wrong thing.

Web development: VSCode and Terminal for JavaScript and Python web programming. This is a world that still relies heavily on the idea of a local machine. There are many tools and initiatives out there that are trying to recreate online-based IDEs, but I’m still not sure if they are ready to go all-in with them.
Figma: here’s where both our team and I draw, sketch, prototype, and design the Hi-Fi assets that will be finally handed off to devs. This is a massive workflow that doesn’t have its own iOS app.
Notion: maybe the biggest one. Rarely happens, but Notion feels like the product that was deliberately designed around and for you. It is not that there is no iOS app, however, its capabilities have nothing to do with its desktop-based counterpart.
Setup with extended display: working with a large, second monitor and a standing desk is my thing. Maybe the whole point of “mobility” is about getting rid of this idea and embrace a single display setup. This one I haven’t figure out yet.
Podcast recording and editing.
Mail.app rules: despite iCloud has server-based mail rules, it is mind-blowing that the default iOS email client doesn’t have this feature — while its macOS counterpart does.

And here it goes the last thought: writing this post has served me well to structure my mind around all the “things to do” before jumping off the macOS platform. But most importantly, to discover that my beloved Mactracker, has an iOS counterpart 🙂.

20.34: notes on Nietzsche

Sun, 23 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts or ideas I come across and pin down during the week.

Notes on Nietzsche’s thoughts and ideas collected from the episodes 90 to 94 of the Philosophize This! podcast.

Historically, to cope with our painful reality we’ve manufactured and bought into the idea of an ideal vs. real-world duality.

The platonic view of the world of forms, where there is the idea of a “perfect triangle”; and what we actually get in the world, imperfect representations of such a triangle.
The New Testament’s beliefs about the flesh, where we suffer and endure; and heaven, where we’ll eventually end up if we behave in the former.

Given this duality, one can’t empirically refute God. Nietzsche goes beyond these assumptions and proclaims that “God is dead”. His way to bring up the reasons why people had to invent these stories to deal with this void, unfortunate reality.

Christianity has convinced us that passivity and complacency are good values to live by. It reinforces the idea that we must behave in this impermanent world to buy ourselves a ticket for eternity. Turning our natural impulses and urges into evil.

For example, if used correctly, envy can be positive and become a healthy driver. It can be taken as guidance to direct us where we want to be. On top of that, it is very personalized and can teach a lot about who we are.

Negative emotional states are opportunities to learn and grow as individuals.

Nietzsche is angry we’ve become a heard.

Awaiting for a superior entity to tell us what to do and how to act, we rely on narcotics of all kinds to borrow happiness from our tomorrows.

For example, he points at alcohol. Which assesses through a cost-benefit analysis to conclude that its only “benefit” is that it briefly solves all of our problems.

The first part ☝️ has been all about society telling us what we shouldn’t do. Now we turn the attention to what we should do. A good place to start is to ask ourselves — why we do the things we do.

An Aristotelian approach: we pursue what makes us happy. However, why we keep engaging with things that make us unhappy?
A Schopenhauer approach would instead state that we ultimately pursue a will to live, to survival. Jealousy, guilt… are primal instincts and inherited mechanisms to keep ourselves alive. However, why we keep engaging in risky activities that could potentially kill us?

Nietzsche argues that what drives us is the will to power: becoming who we truly are, self-expression, not being slaved.

The will to power is one of the most misunderstood concepts of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche is not a nihilist. His entire body of work is a refutation of nihilism, a recipe to make our life as meaningful as possible.

People who achieve this will to power can self-overcome societal preconceptions and express themselves fully. However difficult, because our culture is full of ideas that enslave us (see part one ☝️).

Here comes the tricky part: navigating a Universe where all agents are exerting their will to power, we’ll bump into a conflict between one another.

In other words, bad things will happen to you because we don’t have total control over the external world.

The default answer to this problem has always been: stay away from the things that are not in our control, instead, focus on the things we control, our own mind. The way to get better at it is to strengthen our minds. The ultimate goal is to arrive at a Sage state where you have removed yourself from all the material attachments.

Yet this is not how life works. Because we can’t fully detach from the external world, since we live in it.

We ought to exert our will to power: work tirelessly, rise above our circumstances, become as powerful as we can, to achieve as much control of our own fate.

🖇️ Related to the circle of influence from Stephen Covey’s habits.

Instead of meditating the evil away, why not embrace it? In a world where everybody takes the path of least resistance; where we keep hearing about all the things people want to do, but never even start; why don’t they do it? Because of fear and laziness. Because the world is full of mediocre people, who don’t take action and never try-hard.

⚡ For those who want true fulfillment and happiness out of life, Nietzsche suggests we take calculated risks, live dangerously, and embrace the pain. Hardship and pain are the only paths to personal growth.

🖇️ Related to this quote from Can’t Hurt Me:

Make your resolution to exceed God’s expectations. Make God “write more lines” on the book about what we could have been. Surprise God to the point where s/he says “I didn’t see that coming, I didn’t even think he was capable of that”.

Instead of running away from pain, instead of trying to manufacture the most comfortable life, instead, embrace pain — an opportunity to become the best person we can possibly be.

According to Nietzsche, everything in this world can be ultimately categorized as being good or evil. The person who first articulated this idea of good vs. evil was Zoroaster.

Zoroaster lived in the mountains and, at the age of 30, descended to a town called the Motley Cow to teach their citizens about the Übermensch. However, people laughed at him.

Life is a constant struggle towards a state of being he calls the Übermensch. If you keep progressing as a human being, you’ll cycle through three stages:

Camel: we’re all born camels, and 99.99% of people will remain camels. This camel is a metaphor that is meant to represent the societal weights we carry around. People discussed in the first part — not living beyond what they’ve been told to do. Camels do not ask themselves “why am I doing this” or “what I want to do”. Instead, they follow conventional wisdom or whatever everybody else does.
Lion: lives in a transitional stage of self-awareness. The Lion acknowledges some of these “weights” that have been imposed, but still has a long way to go. The Lion has to recognize all these traditions and respect them for what they are. It can ultimately decide to stick to it, but now he does it because of an inner will.
Child: after transitioning from this passive-nihilism state of the Lion, where we say “no” to everything, we move into the Child by becoming the best version of ourselves, the person that we truly want to be. We are all born with a seed inside of us. This seed holds our potential. It is our job to nurture it, unlock it.

Our higher self speaks demandingly.

To find your goals in life, ask yourself what you’ve truly loved up until this point in your life.

Radio Lanza v2

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

It has been a long time since Jimmy and I released the last episode of Radio Lanza. Almost nine months have passed since we published our 2020 — Futurospectiva. Paradoxically, an episode that was about our plans for the upcoming year — both at a personal and professional level, but also for the podcast itself.

Long story short, most of those plans — especially the ones concerning Radio Lanza — have remained as, well… plans, and never came to fruition.

At this point in time, the reasons why don’t matter much. A mixture of our current personal and professional state of affairs; COVID-19 didn’t help, either; but most importantly, we failed to find a niche for our content.

Radio Lanza started out early in 2019 as a “step-by-step” guide on how to launch your own venture. A collection of resources — from product, hiring, growth, you name it — to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to the market. A process both Jimmy and I had gone through several times and knew a thing or two about.

A show that wants to inspire and encourage you to launch your new project. Also, an excuse for us to geek out on a weekly basis, and share our strong, controversial opinions around the products we love.

The idea stuck and, early on, we received encouraging feedback from our incipient audience. Even some listeners reached out requesting specific themes we could cover.

Pick one, choose your own adventure, or listen through. Radio Lanza’s end game would look like an approachable cookbook to launch your own company.

As it turns out, creating a podcast is not only about hitting the record button, start talking, and wishing for the best. Well, sometimes that might be the case. Yet, we wanted to do something else. Rather than ramble about whatever occupied our minds, we wanted to create a piece of content that endured the test of time and served as a reference for wannabe entrepreneurs. The kind of toolkit our younger selves would have loved to listen to.

However, by the end of 2019, we started testing alternative formats: special episodes around timely topics, interviews featuring experts, commenting on the news… and we lost focus.

We tried to regain control with a new meta-formula: documenting our own journey, as we launched — for real — a project we both had an interest in.

Then COVID-19 happened. The rest is history.

Radio Lanza v2

Fast forward to today, mid-2020: Radio Lanza is back. And ~~we hope~~ it is here to stay.

But again, we didn’t want to start talking without direction. We wanted to create timeless content that would serve future generations.

So, what is it about this time? Radio Lanza v2 will revolve around learning new things and acquiring new skills.

Jimmy and I are known for constantly having on-going side-projects and carrying out new experiments. We have successfully achieved some, we have also dropped plenty of them.

Side-projects are hard. Usually, they are the first thing we retire from our to-do list. Lack of time, interest, motivation, or resources… there are endless ~~excuses~~ reasons why we give up on them.

However, side-projects all have something in common: they are a great source for learning and we have a lot of fun planning and executing on them.

With Radio Lanza v2, we wanted to challenge ourselves through new side-projects that we are curious about and document the process.

The idea is to routinely launch these challenges and document the journey until completion — or failure. Each challenge will represent a season, and each season will last for three months. Consequently, three-month time-capped projects, four of them per year.

The key here is to properly scope and design each project to be:

Feasible — it has to be achievable in 90 days
Measurable — it has to be clear what the listener can expect (“learning a new language” wouldn’t be a valid project, but ”running a marathon in less than 3 hours” would)
Valuable — a meaningful outcome and a positive societal impact (“eating 500 hotdogs in 5 minutes” however measurable, wouldn’t be valuable)
Reproducible — any listener has to, empirically, get the same result following the proposed steps
Comprehensible — the “final cut” has to easily guide you through the process without any pre-requisite or previous knowledge (if that’s the case we will make it clear at the beginning)

At a personal level, it’d be like having a long-life commitment with Jimmy (and, of course, the audience). An excuse to start checking off grizzled items that have remained in the backlog and, for one reason or another, were never revisited.

On the other hand, I hope we can share valuable content with our audience. A pool of resources for helping curious minds learn new skills, achieve their goals, and ultimately, create better versions of themselves.

Finally, keep in mind that Radio Lanza is a side-project in itself. Let’s pray for the best and meta-wish a long life and a healthy fate to the side-project of Radio Lanza v2.

20.32: notes on Fight Club

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This is not a newsletter, nor is it a weekly update one can expect to be delivered every Sunday. These are just random thoughts or ideas I come across and pin down during the week.

This week I re-watched Fight Club and wanted to write down some of its quotes and takeaways. For some reason, only this time around I saw the clear connection between the movie’s themes and Nietzsche’s thoughts and ideas.

Anti-consumerism

What if our existence is pointless?

From a consumerism point of view, I found a lot of similarities between the movie theme and Diogenes’ way of life.

The things you own end up owning you.
We buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war… Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.
We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

Non-conformity

What if God doesn’t like us?

It generates an implicit awareness to the fact that social constructs are nothing more than a superficial layer of culture that suppresses our true nature.

The movie encourages us to discard social expectations and live according to our own values.

You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.
I’m free in all the ways you are not.

Self-destruction

How to find meaning in a meaningless existence?

This theme reminded me about Nietzsche’s idea that “God is dead”. It builds on top of the idea of self-destruction as the destruction of a false self. Stop being perfect, stop creating an identity through material wealth and societal status.

This self construct is a pre-requisite and must be destroyed before embracing our true nature and live according to our own values.

The narrative centers around avoiding the pursue of endless self-improvement (better house, better job, better car, better body, more money…) and just be happy with how things are and take life as it comes. Which in turn, has two actionable outputs:

Let go of fears and distractions — focus on our purpose.
- You lost everything, you have nothing to live for, you have nothing to lose, you hit rock bottom, would you still try to make your life perfect in any way possible? Would you still care about what people think of you? What do you have to live for?
Embrace pain, take the hard path.
- It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
- This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.

The User Generated Nature of Gaming

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT

After almost a year working on a video platform for gamers, today, Gamestry is undergoing its most daring change so far. We’re moving away from producing and curating our content, and opening the gates to become a fully user-generated platform. One where all gaming creators can upload their content, create a community, and make a living out of their passion for games.

Before UGC

Gamestry set out to become a clear-cut video platform to discover, watch, learn, and talk about video games. One where we chased the best e-sports professionals and signed them up to produce delightful series of educational content. This content was then available behind a monthly subscription — think of a MasterClass, but specifically for gamers that wanted to level up their game.

The problem

Having the best educational experience for gamers, behind a paywall, turned out to be, at the same time, a beautiful idea, a daring product challenge, but also a terrible business model.

On one hand, our audience was mostly comprised of Gen Zs, who were struggling to justify the 9.99€ monthly price tag. And while this might sound like an excuse — since there’s no such thing as an expensive product, but one that’s not adding enough value nor delivering on the user’s expectations — it resonated more true than ever since most of our audience were kids on their teens from low-income countries.

This turned out to be a huge deal-breaker from a business perspective since it resulted in low LTVs, which combined with rising acquisition costs, didn’t justify the marketing efforts. In other words, we struggled with both retention, because our current users churned too early; and acquisition, because finding users was getting harder and harder. It felt like pushing a rock uphill all the time.

On the other, we had this huge realization — one that we had known all along but somehow neglected — that a gaming platform does not create a back catalog. Unlike Netflix or Spotify, in which each new piece of content adds more value to the subscription and gives additional reasons to the (ever more expensive to acquire) new customers to subscribe; when it comes to gaming, you’re just as good as your last piece.

The industry evolves so fast, that your content expires and can be considered “out of date” the very moment is published. On top of that, it turns out that the production quality bar is not as high as we thought it would. We’d spent hours editing and perfecting each piece. Yet users didn’t value the refinement level of our content.

We were optimizing for something our users didn’t care about. And when it comes to gaming, a recently published raw shooting that gets to the point is far more valuable than a fine studio-quality production from five months ago.

Why UGC

Amid the pandemic, our metrics didn’t look pretty and we were running out of money. A couple of months ago, if you’ve asked me, my most pessimistic version would have said that we’d be pretty much done in a matter of weeks. However, in an unexpected turn of events, almost out of despair, we’ve decided to open the doors and let all creators publish their content.

We did it for many reasons. But mainly to tackle the problems mentioned above. Becoming a user-generated platform means all the published content is (for now) free to watch. The subscription paywall stops being a stopper for our users. Letting everyone become a creator means that (hopefully) plenty of updated content will flood the website, and the scarcity and outdated pieces won’t be a problem anymore.

The move, somehow, manages to address all the challenges we faced. But it has its downside as well. To begin with, our revenue just went to zero overnight, that’s a pretty ugly one. We’re also facing a new business model and accommodating a different set of user needs with a platform that was not optimized for that.

However, there is one more thing, something that lets me sleep tight at night. This is the fact that after speaking with tons of users, all of them shared a root desire: the dream of becoming a creator. At the end of the day, this is what we originally set out to do with Gamestry. The difference? We’re now tackling the very same problem in a less structured fashion. We’re taking the more straight, yet unpaved and bumpy road to becoming a creator. Wish us luck 🤞.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Book tease

Goals are for losers.
Your mind isn’t magic, it’s a computer you can program.
The most important metric to track is personal energy.
Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.
Happiness = Health + Freedom
Luck can be managed, sort of.
Fitness is the lever that moves the world.
Simplicity turns ordinary into amazing.

Passion is bullshit. We are told to “follow our passion” just because the ones that win are more notorious and attach a simple rationale to their success. However, we don’t hear about those that failed “following their passion”.

🖇️ There is some survivorship bias attached here — The Black Swan goes deeper into this phenomena.

In other words, passioned people starting projects lead to more extreme outcomes. Success causes passion more than passion causes success.

Look for people with energy — this idea of “following energetic patterns” is a recurrent topic across the book, from career success, grit, or food intake.

Think of systems, not goals — be system-driven:

System: something you do in a regular basis that increases your happiness in the long run.
Goal: specific objective you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A goal-driven person is a loser by definition because she always lives in a state of pre success. The moment the goal is achieved, it fades away.

🖇️ Same idea found in Atomic Habits — actually both books are closely related in many topics.

A system’s approach to improve in your career would look like this 👇

Your job is not your job, but to find a better job.

Appearances, matter.

🔖 Difference between wishing something vs. paying the price to pursue it.

Energy is key (again). Follow, seek energy, and adapt your routine to maximize it. For example, if you know going to a shopping mall drains your energy, simply don’t go.

🔖 Difference between a simplifier vs an optimizer.

Simplicity always trumps accuracy.

Attitude — first master the basics i.e. food, exercise, sleep. Then make sure you keep playing or stay “out of jail”.

Affirmations work. Yes, they do. Yet another energy booster can be as easy as daydreaming, or visualizing yourself in a desired position.

Success can be habit forming — pick the delusion that works, become good at something, anything, and let the feeling of “winning” propel you to other fields.

In the quest for talent, seek for things you were doing when you were ten years old.

When building media products, averages don’t matter. Look instead for an outlier reaction from a small group of people, but most important, rely on what they “do”, not what they “say”.

“Wow, that was brave” — positivity is the closest we have to magic.

Timing is everything. Life is a slot machine that doesn’t require money. A regular slot machine will surely bankrupt any player in the long run. But life’s machine is different: it returns rare, but wild payoffs and does not ask for money upfront. It is a guaranteed winner if you just keep playing until you get lucky. You will fail 99% of the time, but success is guaranteed. All you need to do is to stay in the game long enough.

Don’t trust experts.

If you seek a certain change in life, make sure you recreate a conducive environment that promotes such change. The people you surround, relate, and hang out with will ultimately determine your odds of success. This is a good rephrasing of the “you become the average of your five best friends”.

Skills

📍 The skills formula:

Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.

You don’t need to be extraordinary, not even great, just good enough in one or more complementary skills.

When it comes to skills: good + good > excellent — quantity always beats quality in the skill realm.

If you think something could be useful, try to learn the basics. The moment you get into the habit of picking up skills, the more concepts you understand, the easier is to pick the next one.

📍 The knowledge formula:

The more you know, the more you can know.

🔖 Important skills to acquire in life — business writing, public speaking, accounting, design, psychology, conversation and storytelling, overcoming shyness, proper grammar, golf, persuasion, technology, voice technique, and pattern recognition.

Basic tips on conversation

🖇️ Some ideas are borrowed from How to Win Friends and Influence People

With strangers, set the stage by always asking their name, where do you live, family, what do you do for a living, hobbies, travel plans.
Let them talk about themselves and look for something in common — the least you say, the better.
Tell funny stories — make it a habit ask yourself how to turn your interesting life experiences into short, but interesting stories. Keep a backlog of stories.
Never open with “you” and less about food or medical issues.

Wording and behavior to reinforce persuasion

Because, would you mind, I’m not interested, I don’t do that, I just wanted to clarify, is there anything you can do for me, thank you for fill in the gap, this is just between you and me.
Be decisiveness — it speaks for leadership as well.
Show energy and enthusiasm.
A little bit of “healthy” insanity.

Happiness

The only reasonable goal in life is to maximize your total lifetime experience of something call happiness.

Happiness is not a state of mind influenced by whatever is happening in our lives. It is far less dependent on external circumstances than one might think.

You can control happiness through your lifestyle by doing what you want, when you feel like to.

Happiness has a directional nature: where you are heading is far more important than where you are. Hence when it comes to picking a career one should consider one that allows for continuous improvement.

🖇️ Same idea found in Stumbling On Happiness — which is mostly the ultimate reference of the subject.

An excessive amount of choices produces anxiety. To maximize happiness, reduce choices when possible. Automate small or irrelevant decisions. They drain will power that you might need for more important stuff.

The happiness recipe is as easy as: daydreaming (imagining a better future), controlling the schedule, eating right, exercising, and sleeping well.

Most people won’t accept the idea (or are just surprised by the idea) that happiness is “as simple as that’, or just a state of mind.

🏃‍♂️ You should aim to exercise everyday, but never exercise so much in one day that you won’t feel like being active the next day. In other words, the right amount of exercise today is whatever amount makes me look forward to workout tomorrow again.

🍔 Eating strategy: eat what you want, when you want. Just make sure you want the right things by changing your preferences on what you actually want. In other words, reprogram your food preferences.

Again, remove choices. Make it simpler. Save willpower for more important decisions.

Do not follow diet advice. Just seek the foods that make you feel good. Follow energy instead, find patterns in foods.

Food intake has a huge impact on your mood, problem solving ability, or energy. We think it is related to other factors because we do not tend to isolate causes, and do not treat food intake as an experimental science would.

Test, experiment. Track what you eat and log your mood or energy afterward. Link foods to energy levels. You would be surprised that quantity doesn’t matter as much as you thought.

Hooked

Sat, 09 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Products’ economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create. Companies that form strong user habits attach their product to internal triggers. As a result, users show up without any external prompting.

📍 Habits: the brain’s ability to quickly retrieve the appropriate behavioral response to a routine or process we have already learned.

📍 Trigger: the actuator of behavior — the spark plug in the engine. Triggers come in two types: external and internal.

Habit-forming products start by alerting users with external triggers. Then by cycling through successive hooks, users begin to form associations with internal triggers, which attach to existing behaviors and emotions — i.e. over time, Barbra associates Facebook with her need for social connection.

📍 Action: following the trigger comes the action: the behavior done in anticipation of a reward.

What distinguishes the Hook from a plain vanilla feedback loop is its ability to create a craving through variable rewards (dopamine surge). Feedback loops are all around us, but predictable ones don’t create desire.

📍 Investment: the mechanism that increases the odds the user will make another pass through the Hook cycle. She puts something into the product of service such as time, data, effort, or social capital. It is not a one-off isolated payment, but an action that improves the service for the next go-around.

Habits

Unprompted user engagement: I’m waiting in line, then, I open this app. Many of our daily decisions are made simply because that was the way we have found resolution in the past. The brain automatically deduces that if the decision was a good one yesterday, then it is a safe bet again today and the action becomes a routine.

As consequence of customers forming routines around a product, they come to depend upon it and become less sensitive to price.

In free-to-play games, delaying asking users to pay money until they have played consistently and habitually. Then converting users into paying customers is much easier.

📍 Viral Cycle Time: the amount of time it takes a user to invite another user. User habits are a competitive advantage and hooked users become brand evangelists. Megaphones for your company, bringing in new users at little or no cost.

Products that require a high degree of behavior change are doomed to fail even if the benefits of using the new product are clear and substantial.

A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of discomfort.

Habits as moats: the nontransferable value created and stored inside services discourages users from leaving.

Companies that succeed in building a habit-forming business are often associated with game-changing, wildly successful innovation.

Behaviors are LIFO: the habits you’ve most recently acquired are also the ones most likely to go soonest. This helps explain that people rarely change their habits for long. Hence the enemy of forming new habits is past behaviors, old habits die hard.

For an infrequent action to become a habit, the user must perceive a high degree of utility, either from gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.

Habit-forming technologies seem at first to be offering nice-to-have vitamins, but once the habit is established, they provide an ongoing pain remedy.

Trigger

Following the path of least resistance: reducing the thinking required to take the next action increases the likelihood of the desired behavior occurring with little thought.

Relationship triggers drive growth because people love to tell one another about a wonderful offer.

While paid, earned, and relationship triggers drive new user acquisition, owned triggers prompt repeat engagement until a habit is formed.

Internal triggers manifest automatically in your mind. Connecting internal triggers with a product is the brass ring of habit-forming technology.

Emotions, particularly negative ones, are powerful internal triggers and greatly influence our daily routines. Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation.

Users who find a product that alleviates their pain — validating our importance (or even our existence), checking to see if someone needs us, or providing an escape from life’s more mundane moments — will form strong, positive associations with the product over time.

New habits are sparked by external triggers, but associations with internal triggers are what keeps users hooked.

Product people must know their user’s internal triggers — that is, the pain they seek to solve. Hence, the ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the user’s pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the product as the source of relief.

Action

An action is the simplest behavior in anticipation of a reward.

Common needs are timeless and universal. Even on the Internet, people just want to do the same things they’ve always done.

Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time. Then, identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.

People do not know what they want. Hence, talking to users to reveal these wants will likely prove ineffective. What they say they want — is far different from their revealed preferences — what they actually do.

What would your users want to achieve by using your solution?
Where and when will they use it?
What emotions influence their use and will trigger them to action?

To initiate action, doing must be easier than thinking. The more effort required to perform the desired action, the less likely it is to occur.

📍 B = MAT => Behavior = Motivation x Ability x Trigger

For any behavior to occur, a trigger must be present at the same time as the user has sufficient ability and motivation to take action.

(M) The core human motivators:

Seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Seek hope and avoid fear.
Seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.

(A) The “steps” to create a product:

Understand the reason people use a product.
Lay out the steps the customer must take to get the job done.
Remove steps until you reach the simplest possible process.

Critics first discounted Twitter’s 140-character message limitation as gimmicky and restrictive; little did they realize the constraint actually increased users’ ability to create.

Focus on simplicity as a function of the user’s scarcest resource at that moment.

Ability is influenced by six factors:

Time — Is the user short on time?
Money — Is the behavior too expensive?
Physical effort — Is the user exhausted after a long day of work?
Mental effort — Is the product too difficult to understand?
Social deviance — Is the user in a social context where the behavior could be perceived as inappropriate?
Non-routine — Is the behavior simply so far removed from the user’s normal routine?

Identify what the user is missing; what is making it difficult for the user to accomplish the desired action?

Motivation or ability, which should go first? The greatest return on investment comes from increasing a product’s ease of use.

📍 The scarcity effect: in 1975 researchers Stephen Worchel, Jerry Lee, and Akanbi Adewole wanted to know how people would value cookies in two identical glass jars. One jar held ten cookies while the other contained just two. Although the cookies and jars were identical, participants valued the ones in the near-empty jar more highly.

A product can decrease in perceived value if it starts off as scarce and becomes abundant.

The group left with only two cookies rated them to be more valuable, while those experiencing sudden abundance — by going from two to ten — actually valued the cookies less. In fact, they valued the cookies even lower than people who had started with ten cookies to begin with.

📍 The framing effect: The mind takes shortcuts informed by our surroundings to make quick and sometimes erroneous judgments.

Remove an well-known artist from the concert hall, put him on a metro station, and few pay attention.
Increase the price of a given wine in a blind test and so will the participants’ enjoyment of the wine.

📍 The anchoring effect: People often anchor to one piece of information when making a decision.

📍 The endowed progress effect: if you provide some type of artificial advancement toward a goal, a person will be more motivated to complete the goal. In other words, having a status bar pre-filled at 25%, will make you more likely to reach 100%.

Variable Rewards

The nucleus accumbens — which has a significant role in the cognitive processing of motivation, aversion, reward — does not actually activate when the reward is received, but rather in anticipation of it.

What draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.

Variability increases activity in the nucleus accumbens and spikes levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, driving our hungry search for rewards.

Without — or finite — variability, in that we figure out what will happen next, we become less excited about the experience. To hold our attention, products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.

However, for companies like Google and Uber, adding more variability to an inherently variable user experience makes no sense. Variability is only engaging when the user maintains a sense of autonomy.

To change behavior, products must ensure the users feel in control. The most successful consumer technologies are the ones that nobody makes us use. Researchers believe the phrase “but you are free” disarms our instinctive rejection of being told what to do.

🔖 Researchers believe laughter may in fact be a release valve when we experience the discomfort and excitement of uncertainty, but without fear of harm.

Variable rewards come in three types:

The tribe: our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and included — i.e. getting upvotes or likes from recently published content, accumulating points representing how much someone has contributed to his or her tribe.
The hunt: the same mental hardwiring that drives San hunters chasing kudu (the pursuit itself) is the same mechanism that keeps us wanting and buying. The need to acquire physical objects, such as food and other supplies that aid our survival, is part of our brain’s operating system.
The self: we are driven to conquer obstacles, even if just for the satisfaction of doing so. Pursuing a task to completion can influence people to continue all sorts of behaviors — i.e. checking email: we want to gain a sense of competency, plus, adding an element of mystery to this goal makes the pursuit all the more enticing.

When dealing with difficult tasks — such as learning — gamification, points, badges, and leaderboards can prove effective. But only if they scratch the user’s itch. When there is a mismatch between the customer’s problem and the assumed solution, no amount of gamification will help spur engagement.

Rewards must fit into the narrative of why the product is used and align with the user’s internal triggers and motivations.

Good storytelling is variable in its nature: the cycle of conflict, mystery, and resolution is as old as storytelling itself, and at the heart of every good tale is variability.

Investments

The last step of the Hooked Model is the investment phase, the point at which users are asked to do a bit of work.

The IKEA effect: the more effort we put into something, the more likely we are to value it. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that our labor leads to love.
Little investments, can lead to big changes in future behaviors. Instead of demanding “the big thing” up front, ask first for smaller commitments.
Cognitive dissonance: we tend to irrationally manipulate how we see the world when we can’t deal with a reality that is too uncomfortable or doesn’t fit our wants. We can even change our preferences to avoid cognitive dissonance.

These three tendencies ☝️ lead to a mental process known as rationalization: in which we change our attitudes and beliefs, giving ourselves reasons to justify our behaviors.

The timing of asking for the investment is important. We humans evolved the tendency to reciprocate kindness because it improved our species’ ability to survive. Asking after the reward there is an opportunity to leverage a central trait of human behavior.

Investments increase the likelihood of users returning by improving the service the more it is used. They enable the accrual of stored value in the form of content, data, followers, reputation, or skill.

YouTube Won't Work

Sun, 03 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The day we switched from producing our content — kind of what Masterclass does — to become a completely user-generated play we realized that our success was fully dependent on creators, not end-users.

Creators move audiences, drive growth, and can make or break a platform. It follows, that to retain creators your product must treat them well, as a first-class citizen.

Internet 2.0

It hasn’t always been like this, though. In the early days, the Internet was an atomized place when it came to publishing content. There were tools like Blogger or WordPress that let you set up your thing, but capturing the audience remained up to you. The Internet looked like a continental landscape with series of villages, loosely connected through links pointing to each other.

However, this changed during the early 2000s with the rise of aggregators such as Facebook, YouTube, or Tumblr. These networks democratized the publishing side and turned the Internet into a user-generated place — remember the idea of Internet 2.0?

Not only everybody was able to contribute with their content, but most importantly, these gated networks provided connection within and brought audiences together. Your content was not living in the dark anymore, it was discoverable by your network of friends and family.

Therefore aggregators became both publishing tools and network generators. You didn’t need to care about getting users or building an audience anymore. For that purpose, they had something called “an algorithm” — which would automagically mediate and optimize the process. Your content would be distributed among the platform users, according to their interests.

In theory, it looked like a desirable outcome for society. However, it brought along a perverse twist of fate, with a plethora of unintended side effects, that reshaped the underlying fabric of the Internet.

Unintended consequences

Letting those platforms in charge of the networking side inevitably diluted the value of individual contributors. We became just “another node” in the network. We didn’t matter anymore, but the network did. As long as the platform had enough critical mass, it didn’t care if you left. We became faceless and irrelevant. Those were the times — and to some extent still are — when people went to YouTube to entertain themselves, not to follow somebody in particular.

On top of that, platforms not only dictated how your content was distributed but the terms in which it would monetize. They aligned incentives: their growth was measured with “clicks and views” therefore your content would be rewarded on that perilous basis.

This simple decision brought along several unintended consequences:

Free became the new normal: networks created a gated Internet, one where advertisers paid the party for the products we engaged with. Without even noticing, we traded comfort at the expense of privacy — but that’s definitely for another post.
Commoditized the value of a click: the Internet was not paid with money anymore, but with our attention. Its wide horizontal reaches standardized and diluted the value of the click. My engagement is worth the same as yours, no matter how much more I’d willing to pay. In other words, random visitors matter as much as die-hard fans.
No connection between creator and user: because the very definition of success for algorithms is based on engagement, their proxy to performance are clicks or views. They are blinded to emotion, or how much we care, hence networks and aggregators are not incentivized to promote direct connections.

Creators 2.0

Yet The Times They Are A-Changin’ and the power is, slowly but surely, moving away from platforms and towards creators. The idea of 1.000 true fans is now almost fifteen years old, but it has recently grown more relevant than ever. For the first time, technology allows us to directly engage with the creators we care about the most. Think of Patreon, Substack, or Gamestry; they have built the tools that will enable us to put a fair price on human irrationality.

Within these tools, not all the clicks are created equal. Audiences are walking away from aggregators to directly connect with their favorite creators. The result of this is worth it on both ends of the spectrum: creators can build audiences and profit from small niches that care about what they have to say; audiences can show appreciation, feel connected to their idols as a proxy for status.

It is also a big win for creativity. The possibility to leverage human emotion and irrationality will allow for new niches to flourish. Content that didn’t make sense on transversal platforms that rewarded the least common denominator, can now find its audience as well.

This is ultimately why I think YouTube (or your aggregator of choice) is poorly positioned to win the creator economy wars. The moment creators start accruing value on their own, they’ll fly away from large aggregators to directly connect with their supporters; and audiences will have fewer reasons to go there. Since the faceless nodes of the network will start devaluing themselves, lowering the network overall value in the process.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

—— Aristotle

The way we see the world is based on our perceptions. To change a given situation, we must change ourselves, and to change ourselves, we must be able to change our perceptions.

Perceptions matter: the lens itself also affects how we see the world. Or, in other words, we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

📍 Character ethic vs. personality ethic: as a society we have shifted our definition of success as a function of personality — public image, attitudes, and behaviors. Forgetting the classics, foundational values, such as integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, simplicity, or modesty.

Inside-out change: we are constantly seeking out shortcuts, techniques, quick fixes… short-term solutions. But in order to achieve true change, we must first change ourselves. Take a deeper look in our own motivations, and not just alter attitudes and behaviors on the surface level.

Happiness is the sacrifice between what we want now vs. what we want eventually.

📍 Golden goose: P (production, the golden eggs or desired results) vs. PC (production capabilities, the goose) ratio. The moral of the tale is that we often emphasize short-term results (golden eggs) at the expense of long-term prosperity (the goose). We are often more concerned with doing things right (efficiency) than with doing the right things (effectiveness).

How habits work

Habits are interdependent and sequential.
The first three habits (be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first) are habits of character and self-mastery; they will lead to the Private Victory and independence.
The next three habits (think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize) are the outward expressions of character; they will lead to mutual benefit, the Public Victory and interdependence.
Habit seven (sharpen the saw) “renews the Goose” and sustains the growth process.

Habit #1: Be proactive

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

—— Henry David Thoreau

We must take responsibility for our attitudes and actions, being part of the solution and improve the situation.

Proactive people have the ability to choose their responses. A proactive response is driven by values. Instead of just reacting to the world, we have the ability to proactively influence it.

On the other hand, reactive language becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; reactive people get entrenched in a deterministic paradigm and produce the evidence to support the believe.

Between stimulus and response there is a space: our freedom to choose.

📍 “Response-ability”: the ability to choose how we respond to a given stimulus or situation. Responsable people base their behavior in their own conscious choices (values), rather than their conditions (feelings).

Circle of influence: things we can actually do something about.
Circle of concern: do not focus on the things out of our control

Knowledge, desire, and skill are things that are in our control. The more we focus on the things we can control, the more our abilities and skills will improve. Working on those will enlarge our circle of influence. Don’t sit and wait in a reactive mode, waiting for problems to happen before taking action.

Love is a verb, not a feeling.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind

All things are performed twice: first in our mind, when we imagine it; then physically, when we do it.

This is the habit of personal leadership: you must begin each day or task with clear understanding of the your desired direction and destination.

Most of us find it rather easy to busy ourselves. But we don’t often stop to evaluate the meaning behind this busyness.

That’s why we want to start with the desired end in mind — the more exact and realistic the mental picture, the better the execution.

It is the same idea behind prototyping before coding: spend more time mulling over the destination before “wasting” resources in an outcome that it turned out to be wrong, or worse, something nobody wanted in the first place.

If we don’t begin with and end in mind we’re leaving the door open to let circumstances and other people determine our own path.

We should spot ineffective narratives that have been written for us. Then change those by new ones that are built from the inside-out, from our own values. Timeless, unchanging principles by which we must live our lives.

Habit 3: Put first things first

Habit 2 was all about the importance of determining our values and understanding what it is we are setting out to achieve. Habit 3 is about actually going after these goals, and executing on our priorities on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis.

📍 Efficient vs. effective. Think of “where are we going”: nowadays, it is so easy to busy ourselves. We work hard to achieve empty victories, however, we don’t often stop to evaluate the meaning behind this busyness of life. We might end up working towards unimportant things.

The key is not prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Organize and manage our time according to our personal priorities. We should spend the most time in:

QI — urgent and important: crisis, deadline-driven projects…
QII — not urgent and important: preparation, planning, values…

In order to focus our time in QII, we have to learn how to say ‘no’ to other activities, sometimes ones that seem urgent. We also need to be able to delegate effectively.

Habit 4: Think win-win

The next three habits (4, 5, 6) talk about Interdependence — i.e. working with others.

The win-win is the habit of interpersonal leadership. Effectiveness is largely achieved through the cooperative efforts of two or more people.

In order to establish effective interdependent relationships, we must commit to creating win-win situations that are mutually beneficial and satisfying to each party.

🖇️ Reminded of a Daniel Kahneman quote about “applying pressure vs. removing obstacles” when it comes to change other people’s behavior.

See problems, not as obstacles or struggles, but as an opportunity to build and invest in a relationship.

📍 Emotional bank account: by putting time, effort, and good will, into it, the balance of the account grows — manifesting in higher levels of trust between the two parties.

Think of this emotional bank account from the lens of the Golden Goose.

Deposits can be made through win-win solutions, by sticking to promises, or listening empathically. Seek to understand other people, because this will allow you to discover what’s important to them. Thus better understanding what they consider deposits.

Private victory precedes private victory.

Also maintaining personal integrity is one of the major contributions we can make to the emotional bank account. One can achieve this by being loyal to those who are not present. Bad-mouthing people who are not present might provide a momentary glimpse of pleasure (strangling the Goose) vs. being loyal (caring for the Goose) and investing in the long-term.

Conflict, both within family, or work, always arise from unclear roles, goals, or expectations.

Most people’s views are still anchored in a “win-lose” paradigm — they see each interaction with others as a competition, a zero-sum game.

Since people base their self-worth on comparisons with others, we think about succeeding in terms of somebody else failing.

📍 Scarcity vs. abundance mentality: there is plenty out there for everybody. My own success is not achieved at the expense of other’s success. Fight to enlarge the pie, rather than keeping a bigger slice of a small one.

It is impossible for a long-term relationship to form between two parties who are constantly in a competition with each other.

Lastly, to achieve win-win, keep the focus on results, not methods; on problems, not people. When it comes to interpersonal leadership, the more genuine our character is, the higher our level of proactivity.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood

The habit of communication.

We’ve had very poor training about “how to listen” to understand another human being from their own frame of reference. In other words, in order to seek to understand, we must learn to listen first.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, but with the intent to reply. They are either speaking or preparing to speak.

Usually, we tend to prescribe a solution before we diagnose the problem. We don’t seek to deeply understand the problem first.

Before we can offer advice, suggest solutions, or effectively interact with another person in any way, we must seek to deeply understand them and their perspective through empathic listening.

Habit 5 is greatly embraced in the Greek philosophy and represented by 3 words:

Ethos: personal credibility. The trust that you inspire, your Emotional Bank Account.
Pathos: empathetic side. The alignment with the emotional trust of another person’s communication.
Logos: the logic. The reasoning part of the presentation.

The order is important: Ethos, Pathos, Logos — your character, and your relationships, and then the logic of your presentation.

Keys to empathic listening:

Removing our own frame of reference as much as possible
Look at people’s body language, the tone of voice, and non-verbal gestures.
Putting yourself in their shoes, trying to feel what they’re feeling.

Habit 6: Synergize

The combination of all the other habits prepares for Habit 6; the habit of creative cooperation or teamwork. Two people cooperating will create far better results than either one could alone.

One plus one equals three or more, and the whole is great than the sum of its parts.

By understanding and valuing the differences in another person’s perspective, we have the opportunity to create synergy, which allows us to uncover new possibilities through openness and creativity.

The most important thing to realize is that people do not see the world as it is, but as they are. Hence is when we embrace and value those differences that people feel free to seek the best possible alternative.

It allows us as a group to collectively agree to ditch the old scripts and write new ones.

If two people share the same vision one is no longer needed.

The real essence of synergy is valuing the differences — the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.

🖇️ A similar idea can be found at Can’t Hurt Me — where David Goggins argues that we must embrace, respect, and value every human being, because we are all here to achieve something.

To achieve synergy, we start with habits 4 and 5 (thinking win-win and seeking first to understand). Only then we can pool our desires with those of the other person or group.

What we end up with is not a transaction, but a transformation. Both sides get what they want, and they build their relationship in the process.

Habit 7: Sharpen the saw

The habit of self-renewal and growth. It surrounds all previous habits and creates a positive feedback loop that empowers us to move along an upward spiral of growth and change, of Kaizen or continuous improvement.

Continuous renewal allows us to synergistically increase our ability to practice each habit by preserving and enhancing our greatest asset: ourselves.

To be effective, we must devote the time to renewing ourselves in four dimensions which show be exercised regularly:

Physically: eating well, exercising…
Spiritually: meditating, reading good literature…
Mentally: journaling, expanding our mind, acquiring new knowledge…
Socially: by developing meaningful relationships and making positive contributions to our community and society.

Some people find it hard to take time and sharpen the saw, since its maintenance seldom leads to dramatic, immediate results.

In essence, only by balancing and renewing our own resources (energy and health), we will create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle — the “Upward Spiral”, which will ultimately result in growth, change, and constant improvement.

Attracting and Retaining Creators

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

TikTok is a fascinating product, as well as a source of inspiration of mine, that has mastered the relation between creation and distribution of content. On the creator side, it is making pro workflows accessible and easy to use. On the distribution, it is enabling its algorithm through both human-assisted tagging and direct user feedback to create one of the stickiest products that we’ve ever seen.

In this post, I want to focus on the former.

The fact that TikTok has attracted many creators to its platform is not fortuitous. The trend is partly driven by its ability to democratize pro niches and making them approachable to the rest of us. Features reserved to the most sophisticated power users, such as intricate video effects or audio editing, are now effortlessly available to the average Joe.

This twist to the editing toolkit makes all the difference. It fosters content creation and unlocks network effects on creativity. In other words, the addition of an additional creator spurs inspiration across the board, by making others even more innovative and resourceful.

Since creators are struggling to find a place on the Internet that connects them to their audience, a lot of people have asked why YouTube hasn’t tackled this opportunity. However, YouTube has become so vast that its priorities aren’t set by niches anymore. Its product is embracing an unimaginably broad array of realities, which prevents them from optimizing vertical experiences that fit each use case on the platform.

The cause of this ossification turns them into the default choice for most creators — since most eyeballs end up there. On the bright side, though, it presents an opportunity for emerging platforms to exploit nascent, small niches with a massive upside that are still irrelevant for them to tackle.

At the end of the day, the cornerstone of any platform success revolves around the creators. It remains a two-sided marketplace, however, bring the top-notch abroad and eyeballs will inevitably follow.

It is reasonable to assume that the platform with the most attractive proposal for creators will reap massive rewards in terms of both acquisition and retention of their audiences.

Hence the question: how do you attract, but most important, retain creators?

I don’t have the secret sauce to solve this quandary. However, over time I have learned a few lessons here and there that might serve as a starting point. The nut we are trying to crack here is the clichéd question that has been endlessly asked in the business world. It acquires an especial dimension amongst creators: how do you differentiate, protect, and make your venture unique — or what’s the feature of yours that nobody can replicate.

There are four buckets any platform interested in retaining creators should have an eye on. It is rare for any product to tackle all at once, however, a combination of two or three can make a difference.

Sucking the oxygen out of the room — i.e. Uber entering a new city. It has been popularized by many startups trying to capture a new market armed with VC money ready to be burned. Resources that are used to monopolize the market by absorbing the cost of running operations at a loss to spur acquisition. This would be similar to attracting new creators by the virtue of (artificially) paying them more than other platforms would, a risky move that can’t be sustained over time. But if done right, it can potentially clean the room and do away with incumbents.
Producing your own content — i.e. Netflix. This strategy has proven very successful to dominate the streaming wars. And while it works for mediums such as TV shows or podcasts, it hasn’t worked for gaming. Gamers value abundance over quality and they are quite sensitive to the timing of the content. GoT is as relevant today as it was five years ago. A stream about FIFA 2016 is not as useful for somebody seeking to improve at the game. Under these conditions, it is safe to assume that user-generated content will reign over gaming.
Specific features where a piece of content only makes sense on your platform — i.e. TikTok remixes, or Spotify song embeds within a podcast. Such features are hard but can boost retention with less capital required. Since the content can only be created and consumed inside the platform, it builds a product moat that retains creators within your walls. The feature becomes necessary to produce the content in the first place.
Create a culture — i.e. Twitch emotes. If done right, this will protect and set your platform much further apart than any of the aforementioned tactics would. It is also the hardest one to master because unlike product features, culture works from the outside-in: the product team must “harvest” the necessary conditions — that by no means guarantee success — and the community is the one in charge to make it grow. Think of Kappa: it is not a product nor a feature, it is someone. But its meaning transcends the person. It is something the community understands and only makes sense given that context. It can’t be replicated, for the most, because nobody built it in the first place — it just happened.

I’m sure there are many more levers one could pull to acquire and retain creators. These, though, are the ones we’ve been playing with at Gamestry and the ones I feel more comfortable sharing because I have experienced them directly.

Finally, there is another bucket I haven’t explicitly discussed: monetization. In a creator-led platform, innovating around monetization is probably the single most important knob one can turn. It is also the largest opportunity YouTube is presenting. This time around, though, not because of its sheer volume, but because of its horizontal nature. The limitation is rooted deep down in the business model and how it operates. Its incentives to grow force YouTube to reward creators in terms of views, not content quality.

Due to its relevance, this idea is treated in its own post — the next in the series.

Empowering Creators

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This is the third part of a series about Gamestry. The first one, focused on Gamestry core idea and values; and the second, around the struggles creators face when it comes to monetization and turning their passion into a sustainable lifestyle.

In short, at Gamestry, we’re creating a unique marketplace where creators and viewers thrive and grow together.

Peeling a vertical from YouTube is always hard. You never know if it’d be large enough to drive monetization; if your platform would generate enough attention to bring new users abroad; and most importantly, if the product will be sticky enough to not just capture, but retain the users.

To begin with, by bringing a niche market together — that includes billions of users who place an emphasis on quality — Gamestry is able to unify the interests of both creators and viewers alike. We’ve created a sustainable way for creators to earn money, by bringing quality products directly to the perfect community.

But how do we actually go around this issue is a more interesting idea.

Our underlying assumption is that having intel into the gamer activity provides us with crucial data that will ultimately enhance their experience. For example, imagine that after watching a given piece of content, a player’s performance has been positively affected.

We can assume that, for example, if a large enough percentage of the players have seen that specific video prior to winning the corresponding game, the content is of high quality. We will then endorse those videos and recommend them to users.

Content always shines for its ability to resonate with the users’ interests. However, if your audience is rather a generalist, the stickiness plummets to the lowest common denominator. There is little space for exploring deep, focused, sophisticated ideas in front of a broad audience.

Recommendation engines don’t work that way. They are usually powered by exploit algorithms — which will give you more of what you like. A piece of content that has not resonated across a wider audience will have a hard time being shared, hence recommended to more users.

This is the key difference between horizontal platforms, such as YouTube; and vertically focused ones, such as Gamestry.

By lifting the content that ends up being the most helpful to users, we’re aligning the creator’ and the viewer’ interests. When creators get a sense of what videos have been successful in fulfilling their intent — i.e. to help gamers reach their potential in a particular game — they will then be motivated to continue creating the best content possible.

This will create more views of the content and overall, earn more money for the creator. Through this system, we are aligning the creators’ interests with those of the viewer. It is a matter of incentives.

But we haven’t stopped there, this is just the beginning. By being connected to the game APIs, we not only can evaluate the performance of each video, but also make sure the content you get is attuned to your level; pair and challenge you with other gamers with the same interests; evaluate and refine each step of your learning path… the list of possibilities are endless.

With billions out there wanting to learn how to improve as a video game player, there hasn’t been a reliable and trusted platform to go to.

Gamestry is a platform that’s ultimately run by gamers for gamers. We understand the needs of our users and our passion for the industry is the foundation for everything we do. This persistence and curious mindset, I found, is one of the most powerful drivers for any idea to move upmarket from its earliest stage.

I truly believe we are into something. The team we’ve assembled has both insights and shared global knowledge, so we are able to offer gaming and learning-oriented features that are not available on any other platform.

These put us ahead of the game and has been a springboard for our rapid growth to date — as an essential tool for gamer interaction, learning, sharing, and player-improvement.

The Black Swan

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

🦢 Black Swan characteristics — and some necessary definitions:

Outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, nothing in the past can point to its possibility.
Extreme impact: we tend to see the pennies instead of the dollars and keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events.
After the fact: we’ll seek explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable. We are just a great machine for looking backward, and great at self-delusion.

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history. There is a fundamental incompleteness in your grasp of such events, since you do not see what’s inside the box, how the mechanisms work.

The normal is often irrelevant: can you assess the danger of a criminal by examining what he does on an ordinary day?

We glorify “treatment”, but few reward acts of prevention. Imagine a politician that enforced severe airport controls the 10th of September — despite having “saved the world from a terrorist attack” it’d have been vilified.

It is easier and faster to destroy than to build. 9/11 lasted hours, but technological implementations can take decades. Positive Black Swans take time to show their effect while negative ones happen very quickly.

Events that are non-repeatable are ignored before their occurrence, and overestimated after (for a while). After a Black Swan, such as September 11, 2001, people expect it to recur when in fact the odds of that happening have arguably been lowered.

Mediocristan vs. Extremistan

We’ve been tricked into thinking that most of the inner works of our society follow a Gaussian distribution. When in fact, the opposite is true: they are decidedly sensitive to the extremes.

The main idea is that Gaussian-bell curve variations face a headwind that makes probabilities drop at a faster rate as you move away from the mean. While “scalables” do not impose such a restriction.

This idea is illustrated throughout the book with the juxtaposition of Mediocristan (where no single instance can affect the aggregate, featuring the physical, non-scalable, and subject to gravity) vs. Extremistan (where a single unit can affect the total in a disproportionate way; usually related with scalable matter, such as social issues or 1s and 0s).

In Mediocristan, as the sample size increases, the observed average will present itself with less and less dispersion — the distribution (or bell shape) will be narrower. In a nutshell, this the “law of large numbers”: uncertainty in Mediocristan vanishes under averaging.

The consequence of this is that variations around the average of the Gaussian, also called “errors,” are not truly worrisome. They are small and they wash out. They are domesticated fluctuations around the mean.

An extreme example of how the randomness of the Gaussian is tamable by averaging is “the stability” of a coffee cup. If the cup were one large particle, or acted as one, then its jumping off the table would be a problem. But the cup being the sum of trillions of very small particles, make it extremely stable.

However, the same does not hold in a winner-take-all environment such as Extremistan. Intellectual, scientific, and artistic activities belong to the province of Extremistan, where there is a severe concentration of success, with a very small number of winners claiming a large share of the pot.

There are two varieties of randomness, qualitatively different. One does not care about extremes; the other is severely impacted by them. One does not generate Black Swans; the other does.

Labor vs. idea person

The “labor” person sells his work. Some professions, such as dentists, restaurants, consultants, or massage professionals, cannot be scaled — no matter how highly paid, your income is subject to gravity.

There is a (physical) cap on the number of patients or clients you can see in a given period of time.
Your presence is necessary for the service you provide. If you open a fancy restaurant, you will at best steadily fill up the room (unless you franchise it).

Your revenue depends on your continuous efforts more than on the quality of your decisions.

The “idea” person sells an intellectual product in the form of a transaction or a piece of work. As “idea” person you do not have to work hard, only think intensely. You do the same work whether you produce a hundred units or a thousand.

🖇️ It is the idea of zero marginal cost and removing local barriers and friction:

The effect of the first music recording, an invention that introduced a great deal of injustice. Our ability to reproduce music on-demand allows us to listen to hours of “the very best” (some even dead), instead of to the local musician (still living). Who is now reduced to giving piano lessons to untalented children for minimum wage.
In the days of troubadours, everyone had an audience. A storyteller, a baker, or a coppersmith, had a market, and the assurance that none from far away could dislodge him from his territory. Today, a few take almost everything; the rest, next to nothing.

🔖 The inventor of the chessboard requested the following compensation: one grain of rice for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, eight, then sixteen, and so on, doubling every time, sixty-four times.

There is more money in designing than in actually making: organizations can get paid for just thinking, organizing, and leveraging their know-how and ideas while subcontracted factories in developing countries do the grunt work. Which explains why losing manufacturing jobs can be coupled with a rising standard of living.

Free markets

Capitalism is, among other things, the revitalization of the world thanks to the opportunity to be lucky. Luck is the grand equalizer, because almost everyone can benefit from it.

📍 Stochastic tinkering: free markets work because they allow aggressive trial-and-error, not by rewarding skills. We are all benefiting from overconfident entrepreneurs who fall for the narrative fallacy.

By the same token, organizations can go bust as often as they like, thus subsidizing us consumers by transferring their wealth into our pockets.

Out of the 500 largest U.S. companies in 50s, only 74 were still part of SP500, in the 90s. A few had disappeared in mergers; the rest either shrank or went bust.

The more bankruptcies, the better for us — unless they are “too big to fail” and require subsidies, which is an argument in favor of letting companies go bust early.

✏️ The strategy is to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can.

There is no way to derive profits from traded securities since these instruments have automatically incorporated all the available information. Therefore, public information can be useless, since prices can already “include” all such information, and news shared with millions gives you no real advantage.

Networks and globalization

It is easier for the rich to get richer, for the famous to become more famous.

—— (adapted from) Matthew 25:29

Ideas are not like genes: what people call “memes,” that compete with one another using people as carriers, are not truly like genes. Ideas spread because they have for carriers self-serving agents who are interested in them, and interested in distorting them in the replication process.

To be contagious, a mental category must agree with our nature.

📍 The long tail implies that the small guys, collectively, should control a large segment of culture and commerce, thanks to the niches and subspecialties that can now survive thanks to the Internet.

Despite the idea of networks being widely balanced and distributed, networks have a natural tendency to organize themselves around an extremely concentrated architecture: a few nodes are extremely connected (that serve as central connections); others barely so.

This has implications in Extremistan: we’ll see more periods of calm and stability, with most problems concentrated into a small number of Black Swans.

We will have fewer, but more severe crises. Conflicts with extremelly low-probability, yet degenerating into total decimation of the human race, a conflict from which nobody is safe anywhere.

The same applies to globalization: it creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse.

Confirmation bias

We can find confirmation for just about anything.

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. Black Swan logic makes what you don’t know (antiknowledge), far more relevant than what you do know.

📍 The problem of induction: how can we know the future, given knowledge of the past? How can we figure out properties of the (infinite) unknown based on the (finite) known?

We get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification. It is misleading to build a general rule from observed facts. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our body of knowledge does not increase from a series of confirmatory observations.

See the turkey example: what can a turkey learn about what is in store for it tomorrow from the events of yesterday? A lot, perhaps, but certainly a little less than it thinks, and it is just that “little less” that may make all the difference.

Karl Popper: you formulate a (bold) conjecture and you start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong.

Something has worked in the past, until it unexpectedly no longer does, and what we have learned from the past turns out to be at best irrelevant or false, at worst viciously misleading.

On top of that, Black Swans can’t be used to predict the future. One can’t derive future explanations and formulate patterns ex post.

NED vs. END

✅ NED: No Evidence of Disease — aka. No evidence of the possibility of Black Swans
⛔ END: Evidence of No Disease — aka. Evidence of no possible Black Swans

Our inferential machinery, that which we use in daily life, is not made for a complicated environment in which a statement changes markedly when its wording is slightly modified.

📍 Domain-specific: our reactions, mode of thinking, intuitions, depend on the context in which the matter is presented. We react to information not on its logical merit, but on the basis of which framework surrounds it, and how it registers with our social-emotional system.

We tend to use different mental modules for different events: our brain lacks a central all-purpose computer that starts with logical rules and applies them equally to all possible situations.

🖇 An idea from Thinking Fast And Slow: large samples are more precise than small samples, which is the same to say that extreme outcomes are more likely to be found in small samples. Or, large samples are more stable and should fluctuate less from the long-term average.

Narrative fallacy

We tend to learn the precise, just facts; not the general, the rules.

📍 The narrative fallacy: the lack of ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them; forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them.

We like stories, we like to summarize, and simplify — to reduce the dimension of matters.

The more random information is, the greater the dimensionality, thus the more difficult to summarize. Explanations bind facts together. They make them more easily remembered and make more sense.

Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding. It pushes us to think that the world is less random than it actually is.

There is a biological foundation on why we tend towards simplification; it has to do with the chemical dopamine. Information is costly to store. The more orderly, patterned, and narrated, the easier it is to store in one’s mind.

Our brains suffer from indexing limitations, rather than consciousness storage capacity. We hold life-long memories, but struggle remembering a phone number.

Memories

Narrativity and causality makes time flow in a single direction. Messing up with remembrance of past events: we will tend to remember facts from our past that fit a narrative.

We recall events while knowing the answer of what happened subsequently. It is impossible to ignore posterior information. This simple inability to remember not the true sequence of events, but a reconstructed one will make history appear in hindsight to be far more explainable than it actually was, or is.

Memory is dynamic, not set in stone the moment is recorded. We continuously revise and re-narrate past events in the light of what appears to make logical sense after these events occur.

News and causality

Opinions converge. If you selected 100 journalists in isolation, you would get 100 opinions. But the process of having people report in lockstep caused the dimensionality of the opinion set to shrink — they converged on opinions and used the same items as causes.

Each story will immediately seek and draw a cause to make matters more concrete, and fit into a narrative you can “buy”. It is as if they wanted to be wrong with infinite precision.

Narrative make us also fail to react on things we relate rather than statistics:

People are more likely to pay for terrorism insurance than for plain insurance (which covers, among other things, terrorism).
Empirically, sex, social class, and profession seem to be better predictors of someone’s behavior than nationality.

✏️ Signal self-confidence: humans will believe anything you say provided you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence.

Gratification

A bottle or a cistern? Our enjoyment declines with additional quantities. These nonlinear relationships are ubiquitous in life. Linear relationships are truly the exception.

Mother Nature destined us to derive enjoyment from a steady flow of pleasant small, but frequent, rewards. How good matters rather little. To have a pleasant life you should spread these small “affects” across time as evenly as possible.

The same property in reverse applies to our unhappiness. It is better to lump all your pain into a brief period rather than have it spread out over a longer one.

It follows that the right strategy for our current environment may not offer internal rewards and positive feedback. The world has changed too fast for our genetic makeup.

People devoted to “their own Black Swan” spend most of their time waiting for the big day that (usually) never comes. This takes your mind away from the pettiness of life — the cappuccino that is too warm or too cold, the waiter too slow or too intrusive, the food too spicy or not enough — all these considerations disappear because you have your mind on much bigger and better things.

However, there is a price you might end up paying seeking a Black Swan: hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from chronic stress. These small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self.

✏️ Takeaway: look at your portfolio once a month, instead of updates every minute.

📍 Anticipated utility by Danny Kahneman or affective forecasting by Dan Gilbert: you are about to buy a new car. It is going to change your life. You do not anticipate that the effect of the new car will eventually wane and that you will revert to the initial condition, as you did last time. If you had expected this, you probably would not have bought it.

We fail to learn from our past errors in projecting the future of our affective states. We grossly overestimate the length of the effect of misfortune on our lives. You will adapt to anything, as you probably did after past misfortunes.

Silent evidence

A life saved is a statistic; a person hurt is an anecdote.

The losers (or the dead) are not the ones writing the history books: drowned worshippers, being dead, would have a lot of trouble advertising their experiences from the bottom of the sea. This can fool the casual observer into believing in miracles. We call this the problem of silent evidence.

The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism… Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

If we have a large enough sample pool and an extreme asymmetry of outcomes it is easy (yet wrong) to assume the winners, the lucky ones, shared innate talent or unique skill.

📍 The beginners luck: those who start gambling will be either lucky or unlucky (given that the casino has the advantage, a greater number will be unlucky). The lucky ones, with the feeling of having been selected by destiny, will continue gambling; the others, discouraged, will stop and will not show up in the sample.

You either have to believe some transcendental intervention is in play or accept his skills and insight in picking the winning numbers. But if you take into account the quantity of gamblers out there, and the number of gambling sessions (several million episodes in total), then it becomes obvious that such strokes of luck are bound to happen.

Be suspicious of the “because” and handle it with care. Particularly in situations where you suspect silent evidence.

Anthropic principle

The fact that you survived is a condition that may weaken your interpretation of the properties of the survival.

Despite our life came under a serious threat but, having survived it, we retrospectively underestimate how risky the situation actually was.

Same applies to evolution: it is a series of flukes, some good, many bad. You only see the good. But, in the short term, it is not obvious which traits are really good for you, particularly if you are in the Black Swan-generating environment of Extremistan.

Think of the odds of the parameters being exactly where they need to be to induce our existence (any deviation from the optimal calibration would have made our world explode, collapse, or simply not come into existence).

For someone who observes all adventurers, the odds of finding a Casanova are not low at all: there are so many adventurers, and someone is bound to win the lottery ticket.

The problem here with the universe and the human race is that we are the surviving Casanovas, or the lucky gambler. When you start with many adventurous Casanovas, there is bound to be a survivor, and guess what: if you are here talking about it, you are likely to be that particular one.

So we can no longer naïvely compute odds without considering that the condition that we are in existence imposes restrictions on the process that led us here.

Even at a more personal level: if I am now writing these lines, it is certainly because history delivered a “rosy” scenario, one that allowed me to be here, a historical route in which I avoided massacres, wars, and many others “dead-ends”.

Our bing here is a consequential low-probability occurrence, and we tend to forget it.

Do not compute odds from the vantage point of the winning gambler (or the lucky Casanova), but from all those who started in the cohort. If you look at the entire starting population taken as a whole, you can be close to certain that one of them (but you do not know in advance which one) will show stellar results just by luck.

This is why we do not see Black Swans: we worry about what has happened, not what may happen but did not. We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened.

✏️ Wrapping up Part I: shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. This insulation from the toxicity of the world will have an additional benefit: it will improve your well-being.

Predictions

We tend to “tunnel” while looking into the future, making it business as usual, Black Swan-free, when in fact there is nothing usual about the future.

The future ain’t what it used to be.

—— Yogi Berra

📍 Epistemic arrogance: our hubris concerning the limits of our knowledge. We overestimate what we know, and underestimate uncertainty, by compressing the range of possible uncertain states. We are demonstrably arrogant about what we think we know.

When you are employed, hence dependent on other people’s judgment, looking busy can help you claim responsibility for the results in a random environment. The appearance of busyness reinforces the perception of causality, of the link between results and one’s role in them.

📍 Belief perseverance: the tendency not to reverse opinions you already have. Once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds — so those who delay developing their theories are better off. Additional knowledge of the minutiae of daily business can be useless, even actually toxic.

📍 Past and future asymmetry: in people’s minds, the relationship between the past and the future does not learn from the relationship between the past and the past previous to it. Because of this introspective defect we fail to learn about the difference between our past predictions and the subsequent outcomes. When we think of tomorrow, we just project it as another yesterday.

This makes us believe in definitive solutions — yet not consider that those who preceded us thought that they too had definitive solutions. We laugh at others and we don’t realize that someone will be just as justified in laughing at us on some not too remote day.

🔖 Imagine being a member of a higher-level species, far more sophisticated than humans. You would certainly laugh at the people laughing at the non-human primates. Now think of those people amused by the apes, the idea of a being who would look down on them the way they look down on the apes cannot immediately come to their minds. If it did, they would stop laughing.

Experts

Do not trust experts: note the difference between “know-how” and “know-what.” The Greeks made a distinction between technē and epistēmē. The empirical school wanted its practitioners to stay closest to technē (craft), and away from epistēmē (knowledge).

Professions that deal with the socioeconomic future and base their studies on the non-repeatable past have an expert problem. They do not know what they do not know.

We humans are the victims of an asymmetry in the perception of random events. We attribute our successes to our skills, and our failures to external events outside our control, namely to randomness.

🔖 Interesting view around executive vs. craftsman: needless to say they were usually sleep-deprived. Being an executive does not require very developed frontal lobes, but rather a combination of charisma, a capacity to sustain boredom, and the ability to shallowly perform on harrying schedules. […] and that strange activity called the business meeting, in which well-fed, but sedentary, men voluntarily restrict their blood circulation with an expensive device called a necktie.

Montaigne, fully accepted human weaknesses and understood that no philosophy could be effective unless it took into account our deeply ingrained imperfections, the limitations of our rationality, the flaws that make us human.

To me utopia is an epistemocracy, a society in which anyone of rank is an epistemocrat, and where epistemocrats manage to be elected. It would be a society governed from the basis of the awareness of ignorance, not knowledge.

📍 Modern politics: we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because the advantages of being in groups trump the disadvantages of being alone. It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes.

Evolution

📍 The riddle of induction: we project a straight line only because we have a linear model in our head. The fact that a number has risen for 1.000 days straight should make you more confident that it will rise in the future. But if you have a nonlinear model in your head, it might confirm that the number should decline on day 1.001.

The same past data can confirm a theory and also its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either:

a) you are more likely to be immortal
b) that you are closer to death

Used correctly and in place of more visceral reactions, the ability to project effectively frees us from immediate, first-order natural selection — as opposed to more primitive organisms that were vulnerable to death and only grew by the improvement in the gene pool through the selection of the best. In a way, projecting allows us to cheat evolution: it now takes place in our head, as a series of projections and counterfactual scenarios.

It is as if evolution has put us on a long leash whereas other animals live on the very short leash of immediate dependence on their environment.

Randomness

Randomness, in the end, is just unknowledge.

📍 Butterfly Effect: Lorenz subsequently realized that the consequential divergence in his results arose not from error, but from a small rounding in the input parameters.

📍 Forward-backward problem — assuming nonlinearity: a single butterfly flapping its wings in New Delhi may be the certain cause of a hurricane in North Carolina, though the hurricane may take place a couple of years later.

However, given the observation of a hurricane in North Carolina, it is dubious that you could figure out the causes with any precision: there are billions of billions of such small things as “wing-flapping butterflies” that could have caused it. The process from the butterfly to the hurricane is greatly simpler than the reverse process from the hurricane to the potential butterfly. Confusion between the two is disastrously widespread in common culture.

Pascal’s advocated for eliminating the need to understand the probabilities of a rare event, since there are fundamental limits to our knowledge of these; rather, we can focus on the payoff and benefits of an event if it takes place.

This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can’t know) is the central idea of uncertainty. Much of my life is based on it. You can build an overall theory of decision making on this idea.

Investment

Be the only one looking for the unread books.

📍 Seek for asymmetry: put yourself in situations where favorable consequences are not capped and much larger than the unfavorable ones. Indeed, the notion of asymmetric outcomes is the central idea of this book.

People are ashamed of losses, thus engage in strategies that produce very little volatility, however exposed to blowups. This trade-off between volatility and risk can show up in careers that give the appearance of being stable, like jobs at IBM until the 1990s. When laid off, the employee faces a total void: he is no longer fit for anything else.

The strategy is to be as hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive as you can be, instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative:

~ 90% in extremely safe instruments.
~ 10% in extremely speculative bets, with no upper bound on potential gains, as venture capital-style portfolios.

📍 Convex combination: the average will still be medium risk, but constitutes a positive exposure to the Black Swan. When you have a very limited loss you need to get as aggressive, as speculative, and sometimes as “unreasonable” as you can.

Nero engaged in a strategy that he called “bleed.” You lose steadily, daily, except when some event takes place for which you get paid disproportionately well. No single event can make you blow up, on the other hand — some changes in the world can produce extraordinarily large profits that pay back such bleed for years.

✏️ Go to parties: maximize the serendipity around you. Do not look for the precise and the local. Work hard, but not in grunt work, but chasing chasing Black-Swan-like opportunities and maximizing exposure to them.

Able To Pause

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

As most of my country fellows, I’ve also spent the last week shut down at home, under the strict quarantine enforced by the government. However, this post has ~~nothing~~ little to do with the news itself, but a random thought I just got out of this state of affairs.

To set the stage, I summon Jeremy Irons at Margin Call, on the verge of a financial crisis:

I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. I’m here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That’s it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I’m afraid that I don’t hear — a — thing. Just… silence.

Despite differences in their nature, both the 2008 crisis and today’s COVID-19 unveiled themselves to be what Nassim Taleb would certainly depict as Black Swans.

It has caught us all off guard. Flipping an over-confident, unprepared society on its head. It is precisely this over-confidence, this “societal arrogance”, that I want to revisit under the lens of Jeremy Irons’ music.

The inner mechanics of our entire socio-economic apparatus is built upon a simple assumption: the music won’t stop. It all depends on it.

We like it or not, the “impossible” has happened. At the very beginning of 2020, the music has stopped.

The silence emerging from this new situation has surfaced a purposely ignored truth: while it lasted, the music generated such a momentum that allowed us to carry on. Now that the music has stopped, we have found ourselves standing still. Holding on more weight than we could actually lift.

The weight of the largest uber-connected network ever built, the result of an incessant process of globalization, has fallen upon ourselves.

So now, what? Truth is that nobody knows. We are still figuring out what it all means. Most things will certainly default to “normal”. However, we are starting to become acquainted with the idea that the world will never be the same again.

And here it comes, what I presume to be, the good news.

Note the subtlety in the previous paragraph — pointing out to a retreat to the “normal”. I deliberately alluded to the “things” that have changed. Nonetheless, the aftermath of this crisis will bring along a more profound, yet less apparent, change.

Our values will change.

This whole music schema was reliant on a society running on top of an hedonic treadmill. Leveraging what Danny Kahneman would later refer to as Anticipated Utility: we fail to learn from our past errors in projecting the future of our affective states.

To some extent, this phenomenon has been modeling our definition of success all along. It shaped our aspirations, even society’s role models. We used to ~~compare ourselves with~~ look upon the ones who relied upon and had mastered the tune. Those were the ones who made it.

However, we are growing comfortable with the idea that true luxury might have nothing to do with “more”. Under such stress, true luxury has instead become the ability to pause. Stand still with no ~~debt~~ weight.

We might realize that the true bliss is not about a bigger house, a fancier car, or the shiniest diamond.

It is rather the ability to take our headphones off, and let the music stop without breaking apart. Being able to live by our own rules, without relying upon disposable externalities. Achieving true independence from the system.

I hope that if when we come out of this, we write down the lesson. We look inside, learn to live with fewer dependencies on the outside; we re-calibrate our values, embrace what is truly important.

So, the next time you feel the “urge” to acquire the latest gadget, take a deep breath, and think of Derek Sivers’ parrot yelling at you:

It won’t make you happy, it won’t make you happy!

Here's to the generalists

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The combination of persistence and curiosity is a very good predictor of employee success in a knowledge economy.

—— Eric Schmidt

After more than four years at Ironhack, I have witnessed and assessed a fair amount of students seeking to upgrade their skills or transition their careers into tech.

Far from bootcamp-land, I still keep getting a few requests here and there from aspiring developers seeking career advice.

Along these lines, last week I was chatting with a friend that wanted to break into tech, performing a full 180 degree move at the age of 27. With a solid background in marketing and design, he wanted to become a full-time developer.

It is not an unreasonable decision. I have seen many students succeed in the exact situation.

On top of that, and more often than not, I get overly excited about the prospect’s decision — sometimes even more than the students themselves. Given the right conditions, I certainly encourage them to go for it.

However, for some reason, this time around, I did not. This one turned out to be special. It evoked a profound feeling of empathy and deeply resonated with me.

This guy happens to be a generalist struggling to find a label for himself. In his mind, he is no designer, no marketer, no developer… he is just a little bit of each. He can’t fit himself in a box and unambiguously answer the question of “what do you do for a living” without the hesitant opening of “well, it is complicated…“.

I tried to debug the situation by dropping at him the “theory” of what I believe to be true: that you want to perform at the top quartile in three disciplines, rather than becoming the best in a single one; that you want to “be a fox”, keep an open mind, and cross-pollinate knowledge from seemingly disconnected areas; the list went on and on.

While hearing these words come out of my mouth, I was also realizing this was the story of my life. For many years, I had been struggling with the exact same issue. And however aware, the conversation helped me better frame the situation under a more appropriate lens.

I would define myself as a frustrated generalist by design. One that constantly wants to break out of his own nature and focus, specialize — just to suddenly realize that what he truly wanted was to explore new things.

For some reason, my rationality is not comfortable being a jack of ~~all~~ some trades, but master of none. It craves labels: either a one or a zero, either an engineer or a product manager… We, people, like to fit stuff into pre-defined categories — and this feeling of not fitting in anyone’s box has been chasing me my entire life.

Whether I like it or not, I have inherited — and actively nurtured — two qualities: curiosity and perseverance. Both exceptionally valuable traits by themselves, however, their inner relationships at some point become incompatible.

Roughly, this is how its narrative usually plays out:

First, a divergence phase. Curiosity prevails. It keeps me learning from new sources, exposed to a wide range of unrelated fields.
Next, the panic phase. Extreme rationality steps in and permeates the scene with the aforementioned feeling of not fitting any box. Ghosts of insecurity, failure, and becoming forever unemployable creep in. Rationality demands labels to support and validate my endeavors.
Third, a convergence phase. Perseverance takes the stage to overcome and take me out of panic mode. It creates a narrative to convince myself that the solution is to narrow down. Pick one discipline from the divergence pool phase and focus obsessively. Go to “a box”.
Finally, the release mode. Paradox crystalizes. I realize that I am not comfortable with this self-inflicted single-purpose lifestyle.

As you might have guessed, the list is not a one-off straight arrow, but a never-ending loop. The release mode triggers an emotional reaction that sets me back again at the divergence phase.

The phenomenon also comes in different frequencies — which is interesting. It has developed during longer cycles that manifest themselves, for example, as career changes. But also with shorter wave-lengths that might have led, for instance, into educational programs or new side-projects.

In short, this has been the story of my life — and I knew it beforehand. In just ten years after being “released” from college, I have seen this endless loop play out many times. However, writing these thoughts down, or engaging in lengthy, deep conversations around certain topics, sometimes help “debug” your inner mechanics.

I keep complaining that life is always detouring me from becoming the developer I wanted to be when I was in my early twenties. That for some reason life wants me also involved in the product, business, marketing, design, or sales side of things.

However, I have come to terms that it is not “an invisible hand” pulling the strings and getting me off-track. It is just me, and this curious nature, actively seeking it out.

I used to grumble about this made-up curse. I felt like I needed an external agent to justify my actions. Only over time, I have learned to be comfortable with my generalist signature.

Because despite this never-ending discomfort caused by this disdain, looking back, best things have always occurred at the intersection of this multidisciplinary learning.

Here’s to all the generalists out there. For those who believe that would never meet any LinkedIn job offer criteria. Keep exposing yourselves to many things. As diverse as possible. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t belong inside any particular box. These are just social constructs brought to you by the ones that will also tell you to think outside of it. Embrace your generalist nature.

Stillness Is The Key

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

—— Blaise Pascal

Our minds are over-stimulated and our bodies over-fed, under-exercised. Meditation, exercise, and fasting could restore an ancient balance.

Mind

🧘 Be present: this moment is a gift, that’s why we call it present.

This very moment is all there is. Our minds are constantly expecting something, worrying about the future, or regretting the past. We pay money and buy things just to escape the present, to “take us out”.

Yet to be happy is no more than accepting our reality. Being aware of our thoughts. Embracing the now. It doesn’t matter how “good or bad”. We are in control and we’ll make it the best of what we have.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

—— Leo Tolstoy

Aim to see the world as an artist would. Ask questions. Be curious. Be fascinated and let the smallest things surprise you.

📥 Limit inputs: the quality of your output is a direct function of the sources you allow in.

We are bombarded with information, most of it, unimportant, irrelevant. Society is constantly pushing new information at us, creating a sense of urgency along the way. We fool ourselves with the importance of the urgent. We lose the sense of the truth. We call it “analysis by paralysis”. Something we’ve known for a long time to be used in wars, conflicts, and whenever we seek to instill caos and confusion.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

—— Herbert A. Simon

The only outcome of this behavior is lack of focus on what truly matters. If we instead seek to limit our inputs to be, not just fewer, but of the highest quality, we’d become a mile deep in what really matter.

Go back to the classics: by limiting input and making sure it is of the highest quality, we’d be only consuming information that has already endured the test of time. We’d be automatically filtering the signal from the noise.

There are countless of events happening right now, at this very moment, around the world. 99.9% of them do not matter and won’t certainly matter in the future. However, our technology makes possible to surface and let each of them be potentially forwarded to us. This is a problem because we have come to convince ourselves that we need to be ever present in order to filter out this 0.1%.

In other (simpler) words: shut down social media, batch texting and email, get rid of unnecessary screens. Don’t be afraid of missing out, whatever is important today, we’ll remain important tomorrow.

🤫 Afraid of silence: we live endlessly connected to irrelevant chatter and noises because we prefer to keep our minds distracted rather than sitting quietly with our thoughts.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

—— Epictetus

🏛️ Seek wisdom: put yourself in an endless path of open minded search for the truth.

All intellectual movements, religions, or philosophies, have just one thing in common: they seek wisdom. Confucius suggested “a craftsman approach to wisdom”. The greeks referred to it as Sophia. The Buddhists coined the term Prajñā. Even the Bible has a citation around it.

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

—— Proverbs 4:7

So, no matter what your religious flavor is, if you aim to seek wisdom you’d most certainly “get it right”. As a gateway to wisdom, the book also recommends to cultivate the habit of journaling.

Spirit

🌟 Virtue: to experience inner peace, and ultimately attain virtue, stick and hold ourselves to noble standards. Guide and conduct life through them. Choose love, courage, strength, patience, kindness, goodness, honesty.

Virtue is moral excellence. It has no dependencies. It does not rely on other people to be attained. It depends solely on us. We must develop a strong, righteous moral code and often ask ourselves important questions such as: what is important? Which are my principles? How am I going to live?

😠 Envy: the most common form of lust is envy.

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

—— Joseph Epstein

It leads to an endless loop of misery since we end up wanting what we don’t have — even if it is at odds and mutually exclusive with what we already have. Worse, we also might want others not to have it. Yet when it comes the time, we are not willing to pay the price they have paid to have it.

🎁 Wanting enough: ask, as Epicurus did, what will happen to me if I get what I want? Run this simple test against any desire — how would I feel after having it? Consider the hangover before taking the drink.

There is always a moment of disappointment at the time of acquiring something. Instead of focusing on material things, we should seek for the beauty around us.

🔋 We struggle with the acknowledgment of the existence of a higher power. Because that would mean admitting we are not ultimately in control.

Our current technological developments are preventing us from the capacity of awe. We live in the wealthiest society humanity has ever seen, yet one which is utterly depressed and unhappy.

We need to believe in something bigger than ourselves in order to endure pain on Earth.

👫Relationships: everybody can be rich, famous… only you can be father, friend…

We need to surround ourselves with somebody who understands us better than we do. Somebody that keeps us grounded and prevents us from getting off track.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

The book explores in depth what might seem at first this contradiction of striking a balance between professional achievement and caring about our family and friends.

It resolves that finding a partner that complements us, spending time nurturing relationships with people that want the best for us, is actually the best recipe for the long game.

A life dedicated solely to work requires an endless, self-inflicted drive that and can become miserable.

🌎 We are all one: each of us have a role to fulfill in this world and were put on Earth for a reason. We must be respected for that.

Love all. Be at peace. Embrace Mitfreude — which is the opposite of Schadenfreude.

Great leaders know how to make and convey the connection between the collective with the personal.

Body

Mens sana in corpore sano.

🔁 Build and honor a routine: make it your sacred ritual. Respect it. Turn it into a profound experience at which you devote yourself.

Routine frees you from countless irrelevant choices that will inevitably arise during the day. Those add no value and might end up wasting your limited cognitive capacity. Automate useless actions by building up good habits you don’t have to think of.

Take indecision away, limit choices, and free up resources for the deep work.

💍 Get rid of the unnecessary: reduce your needs and get rid of your possessions. Examine what you own and ask if you could go without it.

For a man can only lose what he has.

Nobody can deprive you of what you don’t have. If you reduce your needs to zero, there is nothing they can be taken from you.

Don’t use your money to purchase loneliness or anxiety.

The catastrophe of success: the more we cannot be without a thing or certain level of service, the more dependent we become. Now we can’t go back and live without it. On top of that comfort impairs our ability to do things by ourselves.

What you own will end up owning you. Each possession come with strings attached: insurances, monthly statements, obligations, bills, responsibilities… worries, problems, and as a result, less freedom.

On top of that, the book emphasizes other themes from the Stoic movement. What we have to come to accept as necessary conditions for leading a ”good life” such as: saying no, maintaining a routine, taking walks, sleeping enough, seeking solitude for deep work and having a hobby.

Creators Are Struggling

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

You start feeling old the moment you realize that our kids’ idols are not soccer players or F1 drivers anymore. The Times They Are A-Changin’ — ask American kids about what they would like to be when they grow up. An astounding 29%, you’ll find, would say they want to become a YouTube star, a creator. More than those who would like to become Astronauts (11%).

But how does this young generation even get there?

The creator economy — i.e. businesses centered around independent content curators, influencers, and online community builders, has grown exponentially in the last 10 years. YouTube still serves as the only viable platform available to content creators ‘wannabes’. Specifically those with a focus on knowledge exchange for video games. However, it falls short of fulfilling their needs.

What’s missing?

Creators don’t make money

Understanding the underlying YouTube mechanics and its link to clickbait content is key. If a YouTube video gets enough hits, the advertisers come running, and the creator makes a profit. But, as of today, this is the only profit-making channel available to them. One that is not only misaligned with the creator incentives but also extremely competed.

Creators crave the chance to turn their passion for gaming into a sustainable income. They have long demanded more monetization channels in addition to advertising. An assumption that has already been validated by the growth of external monetization platforms such as Patreon.

Patreon is a precious business that should have never had to exist. How come we need an external party to enable creators to monetize? Shouldn’t these tools become a key component of the distribution platform itself — where the content is actually consumed?

Creators can’t stand out from the crowd

YouTube is a video-sharing platform that’s already saturated with content ranging from unboxings, funny kittens or amateur song covers… you name it. Content made by game enthusiasts will almost certainly get lost in the mix competing with an endless offer of clickbait content. The chances of standing out and becoming recognized and recommended by other gamers are non-existent.

At Gamestry we envision creators rising to the top by their own merits. Not only will they be competing exclusively with other gaming-oriented content, but also benefit from a wide array of specialized features that will make the best out of their content. This realigns incentives and ensures that good content ultimately gets the audiences and attention it deserves.

Creators are forced towards click-bait

Even though some creators are able to develop fan-bases and reach a wide audience through YouTube, the “click-driven”, monetization method of the platform doesn’t drive creators towards quality. As YouTube is unable to differentiate between curated, quality content, and casual, generic content, the result is a platform that favors quantity over quality.

Though creators might start out inspired to produce quality content, if they want to reach their largest possible audience through YouTube, they end up aiming towards “clickability”.

The outcome is that they produce generic, less creative content while viewers are still left desperately seeking quality content. But what if the needs of creators and viewers were matched and met?

At Gamestry we believe that profiting from the creation of high-quality content must become a cornerstone of the creator experience. That’s the reason why, from the very beginning, creators not only earned money through views but also from subscriptions to their channels, one-to-one coaching, direct tips… and more to come.

On top of that, we are enabling a unique experience for the viewer as well. The content is properly labeled, categorized, and organized with a gaming-first mentality. At Gamestry, both viewers and creators will feel at home, with a platform that was designed by, and for gamers only.

Next in the series, we’ll dive deeper into the specific features that will enable creators to monetize and, ultimately, turn their passion into a sustainable lifestyle.

What Gamestry Is About

Sat, 15 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Last month I wrote about the reasons behind my move from Ironhack to Gamestry. As some readers and listeners from Radio Lanza have pointed out, it was framed from a personal angle, rather than covering the basics.

At first, I thought of writing about the actual “job to be done” straight away. However, the initial idea was getting too long and required context to be fully understood. That’s the reason why I have decided to turn it into a series of short writings about Gamestry.

This is the first one of the series, aimed to cover the elemental: what Gamestry is about.

Reason d’être

Or, why the world needs Gamestry to exist? In short, our conviction is twofold:

On one hand, gamers need a unique, clear-cut video platform to discover, watch, learn, and talk about video games.
On the other, content creators are eager to share their knowledge and skills with gamers around the world. They additionally deserve the best toolkit to create educative, high quality, effective content while being able to profit from doing so.

An online space that caters to both audiences and where the chance of turning a passion for gaming into a way of making a living is paramount. That is what we are setting out to achieve.

Gaming has matured

Gaming used to be a fringe activity, part of an underground scene. But there’s been a paradigm shift in gaming. The nerdy guy has become the cool guy. The marginalized are now the mainstream.

We all know someone who spends a portion of the day playing video games. However, when they want to develop their passion further, where do they go? Sports enthusiasts learn from watching their favorite athletes, and musicians learn from performers. But what outlet do gamers have to learn from?

Well, some of them watch YouTube:

74% of gamers say they watch YouTube videos to learn how to get better at a game.

—— Google report 2019.

YouTube was not designed for gamers

Despite being the de-facto place for uploading content, YouTube is a generic platform that is not optimized for gaming. It doesn’t cater to the learning needs of gamers or creators. It lacks specific learning features that give gamers the chance to hone in on what they need. And for creators who make an effort to create high-quality content, the chance to profit from their efforts is almost non-existing.

Then why gamers continue to use it? YouTube may well be the best choice among all substandard options out there. But still, with billions of players and hundreds of millions of creators worldwide, the growing need for purpose-built gaming and skill-sharing platform is long overdue. The market has reached a point of maturity that deserves its own vertical solution. At Gamestry we are up to seize this opportunity.

There’s a huge market up for grabs

It happens all the time: specialized platforms emerge whenever markets become large enough and current platforms can’t serve their users’ needs. Take, for example, StubHub the concert-ticket retail specialist. The site managed to clutch substantial amounts of revenue away from what was at one time eBay’s domain, by bringing trust and reliability to the market. Or just think of what AirBnB did to Craigslist. It is the same playbook all over again.

After successful stories like this, it’s no surprise that specialized platforms continue to emerge. Gamestry has huge potential for similar success. We offer a specialized platform for a market of gamers with a drive to learn and improve their performance, as well as those who create great content on how to best play those games.

The success of passionate gamers

Video games are a mainstream phenomenon, promoted fundamentally by younger generations, among whom gaming has become a proxy for pride and social status.

Content creators of the gaming community need a trusted platform to flaunt their own, high-quality content, and profit from it through multiple channels.
Gamers need an innovative digital video platform which provides high quality, up to date content that’s tailored to their needs.

Both need a place that’s solely dedicated to video games and meet these specific criteria. That’s what Gamestry is, and that’s what we do.

I hope these words have shed some light on the very basics of “what Gamestry is about”. The next post on the series will focus on the problem — mostly from the creator side — and later cover our proposed solution to tackle their struggles.

Can't Hurt Me

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Life is a mind game

The mind is the most powerful tool we have. Nonetheless we are barely using a fraction of its potential. The mind is way more powerful than we think it is — and we can train it.

The same can be said about the capabilities and limits of the human body. We can endure further, become stronger, but we prefer to seek comfort and avoid pain.

Along these lines, if we push ourselves, both physically and mentally, we’d find a self we didn’t know it even existed.

📍 Calisthenic mind: train the mind, endure pain.

Buddha said that “life is suffering” — pain and suffering are inevitable. Yet in order to avoid it, we seek comfort, endless entertainment and distractions to recreate this illusion of busyness.

Motivation is bullshit — be in a mission

Motivation won’t get us far. We might be motivated the first week, but what happens when we have to go for a run this windy night of February? We’ll jump back to the sofa and think that “never mind, I’ll do it tomorrow”.

The ones who start tomorrow, never start. It is so easy to plan from the comfort of our sofa… everybody climbs mount Everest from their comfy apartment, yet few are the ones who endure the pain to go through the mission. Instead of being motivated, make your life commitment to pursue greatness.

Here are some tips to persist and face difficult times:

Cookie jar: celebrate small goals and remember past victories
Compound: make small commits that increase over time
Engage and activate the sympathetic system
Ask yourself why are we here for

In short, you’re either getting better or worse — start from zero, learn something new, don’t get comfortable, and you’ll certainly end up in a better place.

Prove everybody wrong

Be in a mission — outperform, impress, and overachieve. Make everybody notice, your friends, your boss, your colleagues, and see how far you can go.

Your family and closest friends will discourage your from pursuing your goals or fulfilling your “mission”. Because they want you to be “safe”, they want you to stay “on track”, they want “the best” for you.

But who are they to decide what’s “the best” for you?

Fear of failure and our own success terrifies them because, if we succeed, our light reveal the imaginary boundaries and limits they’ve set for themselves.

What if — you can’t find peace without going to war with yourself

Why are we here for? Shoot for more than you even thought was possible — imagine that when you die, you are confronted with God. God has two books: one with they story of what we’ve been, a recap of the live we’ve lived; and another that tells the story of what we could have achieved if we had lived up to our full potential.

Make your resolution to exceed God’s expectations. Make God to “write more lines” on the book about what we could have been. Surprise God to the point where s/he says “I didn’t see that coming, I didn’t even think he was capable of that”.

Just JavaScript

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

For the last month or so I’ve been following along with the Just JavaScript course — Dan Abramov’s email series about JavaScript.

Dan’s involvement and relevance within the community grant him plenty of trust and credibility. Besides, I ultimately decided to enroll because I expected a unique take on JavaScript. Something I wouldn’t get from fundamental books — a “meta” view of the language.

Just JavaScript is my distilled mental model of how JavaScript works

After having devoured three emails, I must say, the course has exceeded my, already high, expectations and surprised me in ways I didn’t anticipate.

I’m not a JavaScript expert. On the contrary, I’m fairly new to the language. I recently transitioned to a web developer role coming from product management, and always since felt I missed the foundation — which has awarded me with a large dose of impostor syndrome. I have a little bit of experience working with frameworks, such as React, true that, but never faced the plain, vanilla side of JavaScript. In short, I lack the basics.

Coming back to Dan’s email series, I’d not dare to comment nor criticize the content from a technical standpoint. I haven’t earned, not even close, the experience or knowledge to formulate such claims. Even less to Dan’s work, which I deeply appreciate and respect.

However, from an educational outlook, the content is extremely rich and instructive in a very novel way. It offers a unique viewpoint that I had never encountered in other educational programs or books.

It challenges the mind and bestows a singular insight, a meta-view, of the language. It reveals JavaScript from a perspective I had never thought about, but most importantly, it helps understand how the language “works” from the inside-out. It is like ~~arguing~~ programming from first principles.

Yet it goes further than that. Its most surprising “feature” is the direct applicability to one’s daily work. I didn’t see that coming.

More often than not, I catch myself stringing lines of code without thinking, or “truly” acknowledging, what they mean, or do. But when it comes to coding, I’ve come to realize is that “each line counts” more than we think. With each line comes a lot of responsibility, because it will end up determining how something works.

I wasn’t paying attention. In general, not just with coding, we navigate the world riding on top of a huge abstraction we’ve made for ourselves. An abstraction we’ve built from experience during our entire lifetime. Relentlessly crafted by each interaction with our biased view of the world.

That’s how we assume the world behaves, but that’s not how the world truly works. In the same way, Newton’s laws give us a simple framework to think of mechanics and understand the world. One that works most of the time, but fails miserably when we push it against the edge cases of reality.

I never thought about coding like this before. I had assumed so much about how some piece of code behaved but failed to understand how it ultimately worked. As much as I like to reason by first principles in other areas of life, this one felt through the cracks.

This is what Just JavaScript, I found, is all about — unveiling the true nature of the language. In Anaïs Nin’s parlance, teaching us to see.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

This is the ultimate value and what education should be about. Generating new ideas, challenging the mind, and helping acquire novel points of view. Not just absorbing knowledge for the sake of learning.

And finally, this is what Just JavaScript brilliantly achieves with its unadorned approach to the language’s first principles — a simple reason that, in itself, makes the course worth each minute you spend with it.

Hi From Gamestry

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The past December 31 was my last day at Ironhack. A meditated decision that marked the end of an unforgettable journey. It meant leaving behind the best job in the world.

As I partially disclosed in the Now — 2020 post, on January 1, I officially joined an incipient Gamestry team. A new personal and professional époque. The challenge? No other than to build a product that would help gamers around the globe become better players.

At this point, Gamestry is no more than a “crazy idea” that holds up because of its founders’ faith and a shaky WordPress template. Coming from a well-established Ironhack, the maneuver depicts a retreat (again) to the earliest of the stages. One that would contradict conventional wisdom around properly climbing the professional ladder. A risky move no caring mother would approve.

The background story

By the end of wintertime of 2019, I met Gamestry’s founders through a friend that was formally advising them. He encouraged me to go meet them. Share product guidance at their new idea. He knew I’d enjoy it; he knows me well.

What started as an informal chat, over time, the relationship kept evolving — as well as my involvement and enthusiasm. We immediately clicked, and I found myself spending more and more time with them. I was having the time of my life helping with their nascent product.

The project was at a sparkling stage every pioneer has experienced starting a new venture, or launching a new feature. Truth be told: the stage I love the most. Ideas splash from all directions and everything connects chaotically. It is the PM job then to bring the room’s entropy down and start shaping this stream of creativity.

Amid the summer, I took a few (deserved) days off from Ironhack to spend more time with Gamestry. A bittersweet situation that presumably (not that I know first hand) felt like cheating to your loved one. It started to feel inevitable. The desire to build bug me again, I couldn’t help it.

The reasons why

The freshness of creating something from scratch. The freedom that comes with dealing with a blank canvas. The creativity of upbringing an idea from 0 to 1. The personal growth that one experiences getting out of the comfort zone. Even going back to the code editor — something I missed, and boy, I enjoyed it.

It got me thinking of the early days at iomando and Ironhack. They used to be like this. Companies evolve, though. Sometimes you don’t even notice. Change happens slowly, then all at once. As Hemingway said, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

This is how I found myself after a deep Ironhack immersion. Which led me to a profound musing around what makes me happy in life.

Good question, huh. Glad you asked.

I won’t presume to hold a conclusive answer. Not even close. However, I tried to evaluate what I valued or enjoyed in life; which activities or patterns brought me joy, which did not; and how to align it all with my systems, routines, and daily affairs.

Seeking happiness

I’m certain of very few things in life. I consider all my strong beliefs as ”loosely held”. They are permanently and forever up to review. Most of them have evolved since they were first formulated.

Yet there is one thing I’ve learned over time that has endured the test of daily life’s experiences: the directional nature of happiness. It doesn’t matter “where you’re now standing”, but “where you’re headed towards”. It holds true for health, wealth, learning… anything.

Following this rationale, I applied a simple formula: evaluate what makes me happy, and what does not. From there, try to do more of what makes me happy, and less of what does not.

Below there is an (oversimplified) list of the activities or patterns that bring me joy — in no particular order:

(Personal) growth: learning new things and skills, building stuff, and starting new ventures or projects.
Health: being active and in touch with nature — running, cycling, hiking… just taking good care of my physical self.
Family and friends: spending more quality time with them.

I realized that my current life’s anatomy was not actively nurturing those endeavors. Ironhack has given me one of the best rides of my life. I feel grateful for the opportunity Gonzalo and Ariel gave me almost five years ago. I will keep it dear and close to my heart, and always bring it with me wherever I go.

However, something was telling me to get out of the comfort zone; broaden my horizons; discover unexplored territories; learn new things. I wanted to realign life and work again, and I had been presented with the opportunity to do precisely that.

Gamestry had it all. A project where, product-wise, everything was to be done. An industry I knew nothing about. Starting from scratch. The challenge to assemble a brand new team. Exciting, uncertain, and frightening at the same time.

I gave it a lot of thought before making the jump. This is just the second career decision of my entire professional life. However, when incentives are aligned, decisions become rather easy.

Hence, officially starting on January 1, 2020, I’ll be joining Gamestry to make it happen, to build the product that would help gamers around the globe become better players.

Update from 2020-02-15: some readers and listeners from Radio Lanza have pointed out that I haven’t actually mentioned the specifics and key responsibilities of the role itself — and they are right. In this post, I focused mostly on the emotional, passionate side, rather than the actual “job to be done”. To read more about the quirks of the role itself, I wrote a followup post that specifically deals with that.

Thank You and Goodbye, Ironhack

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, on a Friday evening, I was working late at Ironhack. The campus was crowded. Full house. Three cohorts just graduated and they were enjoying their Hackshow. Although I didn’t join the party, I could still see and hear all the action taking place.

Right after the winners were announced, one of them came right to me. She just won the UX contest with a magnificent project.

However, to me, she was not just the ”UX winner”. It signified something bigger. The ultimate reason I joined Ironhack. But more on that later.

She came to say “thank you”. She did it because she joined the UX bootcamp with a full scholarship granted through the wallapop program. She thanked me because I was the one (randomly) assigned for her interview during the application process. As if I had the last say on the matter…

I didn’t deserve the credit. Nonetheless, it made my day.

Probably, what I just told you makes no sense. By the end of these lines, I hope it does.

Hey team,

I’m reaching out because I wanted to personally announce to all of you that, after more than four years, I’ll be leaving Ironhack by the end of the year.

As much as I enjoy writing, I can’t remember the time when ”the process” became so painfully confusing. For this post, I have faced the blank ~~paper~~ screen countless times with meager to no success.

Eventually, besides endless frustration, two things came out of it:

A handful of drafts that will endure as frozen bits in the hard disk of my computer.
The seed of the email I have sent to the company announcing that I’m leaving Ironhack by the end of the year.

This is why, if you have read some posts around here, you might find this one a bit confusing — at least unfamiliar. Since I have borrowed the only finished thing I had, the email, as a template to guide my narrative throughout the post. At least this route got me til the end. Better done than perfect, they say.

Yet it doesn’t come easy. Only the second time in my entire professional life that I’m undergoing a career change. However, this time around, it tastes completely different. If there’s such a thing as bittersweet, it must bear a striking resemblance to this.

This has been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve made in my lifetime. I’m leaving behind an amazing company, with an inspiring mission, but most importantly, an extraordinary group of people that I’ll always be proud of having been part of.

It feels like I’m leaving behind the best job in the world.

The kind of job and workplace any mother would like you to have — granted you were first able to explain what you actually do. One that I carefully molded over time, but unfortunately, outgrew me in ways I probably expected.

It didn’t use to be always like this, though.

Back in 2015, I joined Ironhack as Barcelona Campus Manager — a puzzling title since by that time there was still no campus nor people to be managed :) Everything was yet to be made and the company looked like nothing it does nowadays. Those were by far the hardest times at Ironhack, but also, at a personal level, the most fulfilling ones.

The challenge back then, easier said than done: kickstart the Barcelona campus. From scratch. Ground zero. On my own. Go figure. It was a job for the crazy ones. Tailor-made.

[…] during the firsts six months, I was literally alone, handling operations, marketing, sales, customer support, even teaching, and assessing coding exercises!

I didn’t even know where I was getting into, but ended up loving every bite. Building the Barcelona campus from scratch has been one of the most rewarding deeds I’ve undertaken so far. Something I’ll remember fondly and look upon with nothing but pride.

Notwithstanding, after two intense years, both the role and the organization had evolved. I found myself in a position where there was no time for the building anymore. My schedule turned into an endless array of meetings, presentations, and PR events. Being the campus manager was no longer about creating, but growing.

It now required a completely different skill set than the one required when I got started. Back then Barcelona needed to go from 0 to 1; we achieved that. Now it needed to go from 1 to 100.

Which brings us to part two of my Ironhack journey.

After two years, late 2017, when we consolidated the Barcelona Campus, I got a second chance to start from scratch within Ironhack helping assemble a non-existing product team. A department that has grown to become a major cornerstone for the company.

By the end of 2017, I was presented with the opportunity to kickstart Ironhack’s product team. The proposal came bundled with the keywords “product”, “from scratch”, “impact”, and every single requirement I could be possibly looking for.

Yet the biggest challenge at the time could be reduced to a simple and daunting statement: what even “product” meant at Ironhack. Not even myself had the answer. That’s what excited me the most about such a quest.

Fortunately today we do have the answer. A really good one. Looking back at this second epoch at Ironhack, I’d argue the thing I’m the proudest of is having incontestably answered this question.

Our team has managed to create unique, unforgettable learning experiences through software. Nonetheless, the beauty of this product resides in the fact that its reach transcends the digital realm.

The tools we’ve built have empowered our team of rockstars in an offline world to make a leap. We have bridged the gap between the digital and the physical — creating a seamless experience that blends the best of both worlds.

Yet again, it is easier said than done.

And despite I’ve enjoyed every single moment of this journey, I miss the times when everything was yet to be made. I thrive in the chaos and Ironhack has now reached a place where there’s no chaos anymore. Ironhack has become a “big boy” now, and lately, I’ve struggled to find my place within the organization.

That’s the ultimate reason why I’m leaving.

Next up, I’ll be pursuing the chaos again, seeking out new opportunities where, still, everything is yet to be made.

There’s not much I would add here. The quote speaks for itself. I like starting things up, getting them off the ground — from 0 to 1. It is my thing, and can’t help it.

At the same time, both a gift and a curse from curiosity. On the one hand, it grants an opportunity of being involved within the most creative, and thriving stages of a nascent project.

Unfortunately, on the other, it presets the boundaries of your contribution, and stamps on it an expiration date in advance. Programmed obsolescence of sorts.

Lastly, I just wanted to say that it has been a privilege to be part of this team. I also wanted to thank Gonzalo and Ariel for their blind trust, for giving me (twice) “the keys of the castle” and making all of this possible.

I know that I have mentioned it several times during this post already, yet I can’t help it but do it again.

The unique set of individuals that Ironhack has managed to put together is astonishing and has been since the very beginning. Do you still wonder how such a conventional, simple business model has managed to transcend beyond its wildest expectations? Look no further.

I still vividly remember the day I was formally introduced to the team. I strolled to my apartment later that night, with the lingering thought that each of them could have perfectly been my friend all along. It felt like family, still does.

Even today, every single employee — and we are about to reach the 200 mark — lives and breathes Ironhack. They joined because they care about changing people’s lives. They truly believe we can do it by empowering them to become digital creators.

Which brings me to the last, and most significant, point.

But most importantly, I wanted to remember all of you the significance of what we are doing here every day: empowering and changing our students’ lives through education. After more than four years I’ve seen it happen, again and again, something we should all reflect and be proud of.

It might sound cliche, but Ironhack has made me realize the importance of contributing to a project that has a positive impact on the world. A noble cause, bigger than yourself. Everybody brags about this; just a handful know what they are talking about; even fewer have experienced it first-hand.

If you do happen to have experienced it, you will know that once you’ve been ~~“cursed”~~ “touched”, there’s no turning back. You will certainly have a hard time in a future job that lacks this heartfelt component.

Ironhack has given me one of the best rides of my life. I feel grateful for the opportunity Gonzalo and Ariel gave me almost five years ago. I will keep it dear and close to my heart, and always bring it with me wherever I go.

Bittersweet. Yet it is time for me to leave.

Best.

Marc — I never add a signature to my emails, so I’ll do it here :)

🙋‍♂️ Curious about where I’m headed next? Read here the answer.

Books v2

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Early last year, I set out to build a new framework for how book summaries were delivered within collado.io.

Since the very beginning, book summaries were all about distilling and collecting the takeaways I would get from books. A tool to cement and remember what I have learned from them, but also the place I would come back whenever I felt like reviewing any given title. What started out as a reactive feature to prevent my own “data loss”, ended up being a well of knowledge for future reference.

(a place to) summarize and publish the books I’ve read (and also re-reading and migrating the notes from old ones) in order to create a knowledge base of sorts — independent from pansa, of course.

However, they turned out to be not as useful as I expected. Excessive copying and pasting from the source material and the lack of original content (i.e. my own thoughts or words about it) made them too long and difficult to digest. An approach that defeated the very purpose of the summaries. Their main goal was to retrieve, on-demand, in a glimpse, the books’ golden nuggets. Yet they failed at its most fundamental value prop.

That blog post was just me acknowledging book summaries were not working as intended and a (public) assertion that signaled my resolution to fix it. Shorter reads. Less copy and paste. More original content. Enhanced connection with other ideas.

The outcome was clear. The output not so much.

Almost a year has passed. More books have been published under the old framework. I didn’t have a convincing solution to deliver such a feature. Yet. It was not until a few weeks ago, after reading Awareness and Essentialism (which curiously was never summarized) that I came up with an answer.

Rather a simple one: do less, but better.

God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction.

Last year, when I started to mull over this new approach, I had something “grandiose” in mind. A big feature. Discoverability. Interactive content. Recommendations. Filters here and there. You name it, the list was endless.

However, it all felt like too much. When in fact, the answer was to be found on the other side.

My initial aim was to create a repository of summaries with a lot of features on top to discover and connect the content. In other words, I wanted to (re)create Blinkist all along.

But then I started to look at the problem from a pure product perspective and asked myself: “why people visit and read collado.io in the first place”?

It is not because the site is full of features. Rather the opposite — it is minimal and simple on purpose. It is not because the content is particularly good. I’d never claim such a thing. They visit because its content is unique in its own peculiar way. It is my distinct view of the world. Not the best one, maybe not even a good one, but one that can’t be found somewhere else.

Hence, following the same logic, book summaries might need not be distinct from other posts. Readers come here expecting to hear a genuine voice. If somebody wanted to read a summary of the book, they could easily grab a better one someplace else.

Does this approach run against visits and attracting new readers? Sure it does. But this blog has never been about counting page views. It has always been more of a public journal of sorts, the place where I’d collect my thoughts and cement new ideas.

I’ve always thought that we all have a limited amount of “love” to share with the world. It is up to us how we split it. Some opt for giving little love to a lot of people, others prefer to give larger chunks to a handful. I’ve always erred on side of the later.

Book summaries must be no different. Indistinguishable from other blog posts in their spirit — yet they are keeping the 📖. An opportunity to pin down my train of thought through the lens of the book. Just a short narrative that would blend the book’s takeaways with my beliefs and current state of mind.

This is how book summaries will look like from now on, and (update from the future) you can read the very firsts ones here and here.

Now — 2020

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ If you are more into podcasts, check out the audio (and extended) version of this post in our first episode of 2020. On top of that, keep in mind this post is also the natural extension of the 2019 retrospective. Which, in itself, was the audio, TL;DR version of the last episode of 2019, where Jimmy and I put together our reviews of the closing year. And yes, that was quite a lot of resolution follow up!

This post also changes the 4-month Now schedule pattern (early, mid, late) seen in past editions, in favor of a one-off Now, published at the beginning of each year. As progress is being made, the items across resolutions will be properly updated. By the end of the year, I also plan in releasing a retrospective, similar to this one I wrote for 2019.

TL;DR: this year’s theme will be all about consolidating the “retreat” back to the very definition of early stage. All the efforts will be focused on mastering a healthy, stable, and solid routine; also sharpening my coding skills through computer science fundamentals, embracing best practices, and getting a deeper understanding of the tools and techniques that (nowadays) comprise the full stack.

Career — 💶 MYM

Read these coding-related books:
- Eloquent JavaScript
- Clean Code
- Clean Architecture
- Structure and interpretation of computer programs
- The pragmatic programmer
Enroll and complete the CS50 — Computer Science for Web Programming — starts on the 1st of April.
Invest more time to side-projects:
- collado.io: finish the migration and write 25 articles.
- Radio Lanza: find a “niche” and record 25 episodes.

Body — 🏋️‍♂️ MYF

Keep a more consistent training log by exercising every single day:
- 🏃‍♂️ Run 1.500 km
- 🚴 Bike 6.000 km — from the 1st of April until the 31st of October

Mind — 🐮 MYW

Double down: read 25 (non coding-related) books.

The not to-do list

Things that I’d also like to do in 2020, but won’t. They still remain potential candidates for 2021.

Add meditation to the daily routine.
Keep a more diverse training log by adding swimming to the mix.

New Year's Eve In Moscow

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Almost a year ago, the evening of the last day of 2018 — upon finishing the last race of the year — I was having a remarkably quiet dinner at home.

My own particular way of celebrating the end of the year. Moscow’s New Year’s Eve, as I like to call it.

Let me explain. Since I usually have dinner at 9PM, go to sleep around 11PM, and actively avoid crowded environments, I realized that New Year’s Eve was messing up with my routine. Instead of letting it go, I looked for a solution that would let me celebrate the end of the year, and still at the same time, be a good fit for my agenda.

Hence a few years ago I worked the situation around and started celebrating New Year’s Eve from another time zone. One that better suited my schedule. Having considered different time zones, I resolved that rolling the “party” a couple of hours forward would result in the optimal tradeoff. That would fall under the UTC+3 bucket. Being Moscow the most representative city of this time zone, I started referring to this practice as celebrating “Moscow’s New Year’s Eve”. And it works like a charm.

But I digressed — we were on December 31st, 2018, around 9PM UTC+1 — and I was about to celebrate New Year’s Eve while jotting down some retrospective thoughts from the year ending and pondering over next year’s intents.

Truth is that I’m not a yearly-resolution setter. I believe those who claim they will start on Monday, actually never start. One shouldn’t wait until the rolling year to start something. It is a self-imposed time frame that doesn’t make any sense. Just an illusion we create for ourselves to feel like we’ve accomplished something. From a goal-setting point of view, it is a day like any other.

Jocko Willink has something to say about it.

I think resolutions are, for the most part, little feel-good statements that people use to justify a delay in execution.

—— Jocko Willink

However, I usually use this symbolic date to make a retrospective of sorts and recalibrate the themes for the upcoming year. These themes are not goals or resolutions in themselves. They are more like buckets I use to wrap and frame my intents. The same themes I revise and update each quarter through the Now page.

On top of that, this very week, Jimmy and I sat down and recorded the last episode of 2019, and also put together our personal review of the year. Go check the full episode if you’re interested in the long version, but I also wanted to pin the nuggets conversation down here. The TL;DR if you want.

As always, I first break the goals down into three main themes:

Body: fitness, performance, and sports.
Mind: happiness, and personal development.
Career: work, and professional development.

As a side note, this year I’ve discovered that Naval Ravikant shares a similar framework when it comes to productize yourself — which I believe can be traced back (and should be credited) to this tweet.

Find three hobbies 👇

• One that makes you money. 💰

• One that keeps you in shape physically & mentally. 💪

• One that keeps you creative & always one step ahead of the rest. 🧠
— Nik Sharma (@mrsharma) November 13, 2017

Long story short, I liked better his naming convention and repurposed my life’s themes to align them with Nik’s parlance. It ended up being something like this.

Body maps to “Makes You Fit” — 🏋️‍♂️ MYF
Mind maps to “Makes You Wise” — 🐮 MYW
Career maps to “Makes You Money” — 💶 MYM

The “emoji + acronym” notation is just the way I tag the projects and tasks related to the theme in Notion. No big deal — just put it here for reference.

So, after a year, here’s the review of the 2019’ goals I set up a year ago during the singular celebration of Moscow’s New Year’s Eve.

Body — 🏋️‍♂️ MYF

❎ Run a marathon under three hours. Fail. Short of 15 minutes and 41 seconds. This one was particularly frustrating. I wrote a post mortem about it that dwells on the reasons behind the failure.
✅ Add new disciplines to my sports practice. Success. Went beyond running, added CrossFit and road bike to the mix. For further reference, here’s my Strava #YEARINSPORT 👇

Mind — 🐮 MYW

❎ Incorporate meditation into my daily routine. Fail. Big one. Tried several times during the year but was unable to stick to the practice. Still feeling unproductive while meditating, like “I’m losing time”.
✅ Read one book per month. Success. Over 100% completion rate. Actually read 15 books this year.

Career — 💶 MYM

✅ Become a full-stack web developer. The biggest success, by far the pinnacle of the year. Backtracked a ten-year detour to become (again) a software developer. As happy as I am, I wrote some thoughts about it.
❎ Finish transition of collado.io. Fail, let’s say 30% done. Despite the migration from Squarespace has settled, there is a lot of missing content that still needs to be migrated.

Unexpected

Unsolicited opportunities that were presented during 2019.

✅ Radio Lanza. Success, period.
❎ #TIL project. Fail. A beautiful, short-lived project guilty of not eating my own dog food. Despite I know how important it is to start small, I went all-in with #TIL. Aimed to tweet every single day from the get-go, instead of say, once a week. It ended up taking way more time than I could allocate to it and wouldn’t scale it down.

And that’s it for 2019.

If you want to know more, go listen the Radio Lanza episode for the extended version of this post.

If you want to know further, go read 2020’ resolutions developed under the same framework.

Awareness

Sat, 14 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT

God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction.

We’re guilty, no time to enjoy life. We’re overworked, go, go, go. If you really enjoy life and the simple pleasures of the senses, you’d be amazed. You’d develop that extraordinary discipline of the animal. An animal will never overeat. Left in its natural habitat, it will never be overweight. It will never drink or eat anything that is not good for its health. You never find an animal smoking. It always exercises as much as it needs. Watch your cat, see how it springs into action, look at the suppleness of its limbs and the aliveness of its body. We’ve lost that. We’re lost in our minds, in our ideas and ideals and so on, and its always go, go, go. And we’ve got an inner self-conflict which animals don’t have. And we’re always condemning ourselves and making ourselves feel guilty.

Nourish yourself on wholesome food, good wholesome food. I’m not talking about actual food, I’m talking about sunsets, about nature, about a good movie, about a good book, about enjoyable work, about good company, and hopefully you will break your addictions to those other feelings.

Lots of people gain the world and lose their soul. Lots of people live empty, soulless lives because they’re feeding themselves on popularity, appreciation, and praise, on “I’m OK, you’re OK” on “look at me, attend to me, support me, value me, on being the boss, on having power, on winning the race”. Do you feed yourself on that? If you do, you’re dead. You’ve lost your soul. Feed yourself on other, more nourishing material. Then you’ll see the transformation.

Waking up

Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox.

Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. They are having a nightmare.

People don’t really want to grow up, to change, to be happy, or to be cured. What they want is relief — a cure is painful.

We are afraid of losing control of the life that we are so precariously holding together. To wake up, the thing you need most is the readiness to learn something new.

It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. What you really fear is the loss of the known.

An awakened person is somebody who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within.

Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.

Every new idea, every great idea, when it first began was in a minority of one. That Jesus Christ—minority of one. The Buddha—minority of one. Everybody was saying something different from what he was saying.

Jesus proclaimed the good news yet he was rejected. Not because it was good, but because it was new. We hate the new. We don’t want new things, particularly when they’re disturbing, particularly when they involve change.

God

The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable.

It’s not a question of imitating Christ, it’s a question of becoming what Jesus was. It’s a question of becoming Christ, becoming aware, understanding what’s going on within you.

We need to be redeemed again. We need to put off the old man, the old nature, the conditioned self, and return to the state of the child but without being a child.

This is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of God, to know that we do not know. Our great tragedy is that we know too much. We think we know, that is our tragedy; so we never discover.

Beliefs and filters

All I can do for you is challenge your beliefs and the belief system that makes you unhappy. All I can do for you is help you to unlearn.

Most of what we feel and think we conjure up for ourselves in our heads.

Life has no meaning. Meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.

We are constantly getting feedback from reality. But we are filtering things out through our conditioning, culture, and programming. The way we were taught to see things and to experience them.

Even our language can be a filter. There is so much filtering going on that sometimes you won’t see things that are there.

Agreement and disagreement have to do with words and concepts and theories. They don’t have anything to do with truth. Truth is never expressed in words. Truth is sighted suddenly, as a result of a certain attitude.

Are you listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what you already think? That’s faith. Not belief, but faith. Your beliefs give you a lot of security, but faith is insecurity.

Understand, observe

No judgment, no commentary, no attitude: one simply observes, one studies, one watches, without the desire to change what is.

We’re always busy fixing things we don’t even understand. It never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed. They need to be understood. If you understood them, they’d change.

Do you want to change the world? How about beginning with yourself? Through observation, understanding. With no interference or judgment on your part. Because what you judge you cannot understand.

We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. That is why when two people look at something or someone, you get two different reactions.

If you let yourself feel good when people tell you that you’re OK, you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you’re not. As long as you live to fulfill other people’s expectations, you better watch what you wear, how you comb your hair, whether your shoes are polished — in short, whether you live up to every damned expectation of theirs. Do you call that human?

Part of waking up is saying “no” to people, to live your life as you see fit. That is not selfish. The selfish thing is to demand that someone else live their life as you see fit.

Cut out all the OK stuff and the not-OK stuff; cut out all the judgments and simply observe, watch, see through it.

When you renounce something, you’re tied to it.
When you fight something, you’re empowering it.

Understand its true value and you won’t need to renounce it; it will just drop from your hands.

Awareness

It’s like when you throw black paint in the air; the air remains uncontaminated. You never color the air black.

Most people don’t live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts — generally somebody else’s — mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions.

In the life of a priest, fifty years’ experience is one year’ experience repeated fifty times.

If the eye is unobstructed, it results in sight; if the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing; if the nose is unobstructed, the result is a sense of smell; if the mouth is unobstructed, the result is a sense of taste; if the mind is unobstructed, the result is wisdom.

Wisdom occurs when you drop barriers you have erected through your concepts and conditioning. Wisdom is not something acquired; wisdom is not experience; wisdom is not applying yesterday’s illusions to today’s problems.

Our conditioning, our concepts, our categories, our prejudices, our projections, the labels that we have drawn from our cultures and our past experiences, it all prevents us from seeing.

Be aware of what you’re saying, be aware of what you’re doing, be aware of what you’re thinking, be aware of how you’re acting. Be aware of where you’re coming from, what your motives are. The unaware life is not worth living.

It was so cold that if the thermometer had been an inch longer, we would have frozen to death.

—— Marc Twain

We do freeze to death on words. It’s not the cold outside that matters, but the thermometer. It’s not reality that matters, but what you’re saying to yourself about it.

Information is not insight, analysis is not awareness, knowledge is not awareness.

“It’s the ‘Aha’ experience that counts.” Merely analyzing gives no help; it just gives information. But if you could produce the “Aha” experience, that’s insight. That is change.

The root of evil is within you. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you understand.

Making sense of the “I”

“I” is neither great nor small. “I” is neither successful nor a failure. These things come and go. These things depend on your conditioning, the criteria society establishes, even the mood of the person who happens to be talking to you. It has nothing to do with “I.”

Practice self-observation: watch everything in you and around you as far as possible and watch it as if it were happening to someone else.

You feel pretty strongly about certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about them, but are you really? It’s going to take a lot of awareness for you to understand that perhaps this thing you call “I” is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of your conditioning and programming.

Am I my thoughts, the thoughts that I am thinking? No. Thoughts come and go; I am not my thoughts.

Am I my body? They tell us that millions of cells in our body are changed or are renewed every minute, so that by the end of seven years we don’t have a single living cell in our body that was there seven years before. Cells come and go. Cells arise and die. But “I” seems to persist. So am I my body? Evidently not.

The body is part of “I,” but a changing part. It keeps moving, it keeps changing. We have the same name for it but it constantly changes. Just as we have the same name for Niagara Falls, but Niagara Falls is constituted by water that is constantly changing. We use the same name for an ever-changing reality.

You’ve got “I” observing “me.” This is an interesting phenomenon that has never ceased to cause wonder to philosophers, mystics, scientists, and psychologists.

Self-worth

When we look at a person, we really don’t see that person. What we’re seeing is something that we fixed in our mind. We get an impression, hold on to that impression, and we keep looking at a person through that impression. If you understand that, you will understand the loveliness and beauty of being aware of everything around you.

When we talk about self-worth, we are really talking about how we are reflected in the mirrors of other people’s minds. One understands one’s personal worth when he no longer identifies or defines one’s self in terms of these transient things.

There is yet another illusion, that is it important to be respectable, to be important. Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved.

We spend so much of our lives reacting to labels. We identify the labels with the “I.” When you’re caught up in labels, what value do these labels have, as far as the “I” is concerned? Could we say that “I” is none of the labels we attach to it? Labels belong to “me.” What constantly changes is “me.”

Relating happiness to excitement or thrills is what causes the depression. You’re just preparing the way for your next depression. That’s not happiness, that’s addiction.

Depression

Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind, the stupid, sleeping human mind.

Lots of people have negative feelings they’re not aware of. Lots of people are depressed and they’re not aware they are depressed.

We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances. But we don’t have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you.

It’s like imagining that you change your handwriting by changing your pen. Or that you change your capacity to think by changing your hat. That doesn’t change you really, but most people spend all their energies trying to rearrange their exterior world to suit their tastes.

(a) identify the negative feelings in you
(b) understand that they are in you, not in the world, not in external reality;
(c) do not see them as an essential part of “I”; these things come and go;
(d) understand that when you change, everything changes.

You don’t change yourself; it’s not me changing me. Change takes place through you, in you.

The reason you suffer from your depression and your anxieties is that you identify with them. You say, “I’m depressed.” But that is false. You are just experiencing a depression right now.

You are not your depression. That is but a strange kind of trick of the mind, a strange kind of illusion. You have deluded yourself into thinking — though you are not aware of it — that you are your depression, that you are your anxiety, that you are your joy or the thrills that you have.

So when you step out of yourself and observe “me,” you no longer identify with “me.” Suffering exists in “me,” so when you identify “I” with “me,” suffering begins.

When you’re living for nothing, you’ve got all your skills, you’ve got all your energy, you’re relaxed, you don’t care, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose.

You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re depressed. Suffering, pain, misery and depression tie you to the self. On the other hand, you’re never so ready to forget yourself as when you are happy. Happiness releases you from self.

Step outside of yourself and look at that depression, don’t identify with it. You don’t do a thing to make it go away; you are perfectly willing to go on with your life while it passes through you and disappears.

You can be happy in your anxiety. You can be happy in your depression. But you can’t have the wrong notion of happiness.

Happiness

It will pass. Everything passes, everything.

Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are the swings of the pendulum. If you seek kicks or thrills, get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover. One end of the pendulum swings to the other.

If you want anything too badly, you’re in big trouble. You can be happy right now. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re focusing on what you don’t have.

We are ready to be happy provided we have this, that, and the other thing. This is really to say to our friend, to our God or to anyone, “You are my happiness. If I don’t get you, I refuse to be happy.”

You don’t need to belong to anybody or anything or any group. You don’t need to be in love. What you need is to be free. What you need is to love. That’s your nature. But you want to be desired. You want to be applauded, to be attractive. You don’t need this. You can be blissfully happy without it.

Your Society is not going to be happy to hear this, because you become terrifying when you open your eyes and understand this. How do you control a person like this? He doesn’t need you; he’s not threatened by your criticism; he doesn’t care what you think of him or what you say about him. He’s cut all those strings; he’s not a puppet any longer.

True, uninterrupted happiness is uncaused. You cannot make me happy. You are not my happiness. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Because we have it already.

Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.

Society

What are we saluting? I salute humanity, not a flag with an army around it.

We are crazy. The only reason we’re not locked up in an institution is that there are so many of us. We’re living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything. We’re crazy to the point, I’ve come to believe, that if everybody agrees on something, you can be sure it’s wrong.

American says he or she is making a living, it isn’t a living they’re making. They have much more than they need to live. Come to my country and you’ll see that. But try to convince the average American of this. They’ve been brainwashed; they’ve been programmed. So they work and strive to get the desired object that will make them happy.

In India, many poor people are starting to get transistor radios, which are quite a luxury. Until everyone started getting transistors, they were perfectly happy without one. That’s the way it is with you. Until somebody told you you wouldn’t be happy unless you were loved, you were perfectly happy. You can become happy not being loved, not being desired by or attractive to someone. You become happy by contact with reality. That’s what brings happiness, a moment-by-moment contact with reality. That’s where you’ll find God; that’s where you’ll find happiness.

You and I were trained to be dissatisfied with ourselves. We’re always dissatisfied, we’re always discontented, we’re always pushing. Go on, put out more effort, more and more effort. But there’s always that conflict inside; there’s very little understanding.

We were given a taste of various drug addictions: approval, attention, success, making it to the top, prestige, getting your name in the paper, power, being the boss. We were given a taste of things like being the captain of the team, leading the band… Having a taste for these drugs, we became addicted and began to dread losing them.

So you became cravenly dependent on others and you lost your freedom. Others now have the power to make you happy or miserable. You crave your drugs, but as much as you hate the suffering that this involves, you find yourself completely helpless.

Most people in affluent countries have lost their capacity for enjoyment. They’ve got to have more and more expensive gadgets; they can’t enjoy the simple things of life.

Who determines what it means to be a success? This stupid society. The main preoccupation of society is to keep society sick! They are loony, they’re crazy. You became president of the lunatic asylum and you’re proud of it even though it means nothing. Having a lot of money or being president of a corporation has nothing to do with being a success in life.

Success in a political circle might be considered failure in some other circles. These are conventions. But we treat them like realities. When we were young, we were programmed to unhappiness. They taught us that in order to be happy you need money, success, a beautiful or handsome partner in life, a good job, friendship, spirituality, God—you name it. Unless you get these things, you’re not going to be happy, we were told. Now, that is what I call an attachment.

Attachment

An attachment is a belief that without something you are not going to be happy.

Until I get this object (money, friendship, anything) I’m not going to be happy; I’ve got to strive to get it and then when I’ve got it, I’ve got to strive to keep it. I get a temporary thrill. Oh, I’m so thrilled, I’ve got it!.

But how long does that last? A few minutes, a few days at the most. When you get your new car, how long does the thrill last? Until your next attachment is threatened!

We’re too distracted with this attachment. Temporarily, the world rearranges itself to suit our attachment, so we say, “Yeah, great! My team won!” But hang on; it’ll change; you’ll be depressed tomorrow.

You didn’t really need it to be happy, did you? That should have taught you, but we never learn. We’re programmed; we’re conditioned. How liberating it is not to depend emotionally on anything. If you could get one second’s experience of that, you’d be breaking through your prison and getting a glimpse of the sky.

Don’t look down your nose at the alcoholics and the drug addicts: maybe you’re just as addicted as they are. Learn to be alone, with nowhere to rest your head, to leave everyone free and be free yourself, to be special to no one and love everyone — because love does that. It shines on good and bad alike.

You need to break out of this prison, this programming, this conditioning, these false beliefs, these fantasies; you need to break out into reality.

Reality is lovely; it is an absolute delight. Eternal life is now. We’re surrounded by it, like the fish in the ocean, but we have no notion about it at all.

Desire

The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.

Pleasant experiences make life delightful, but they don’t lead to growth. What leads to growth is painful experiences. Suffering points up an area in you where you have not yet grown, where you need to grow and be transformed and change.

Do not suppress desire, because then you would become lifeless. Desire in the healthy sense of the word is energy, and the more energy we have, the better. Understand desire instead. Don’t seek to fulfill desire so much as to understand desire.

The beauty of an action comes not from its having become a habit but from its sensitivity, consciousness, clarity of perception, and accuracy of response.

Wakefulness, happiness — call it what you wish — is the state of non-delusion, where you see things not as you are but as they are, insofar as this is possible for a human being. To drop illusions, to see things, to see reality.

Desire breeds anxiety and sooner or later it brings its hangover. You have somehow said to yourself that the existence and well-being of ‘I’ is tied up with this desire.

Love

There’s nothing that can be said, really, about love. We can only speak of non-love. We can only speak of addictions. But of love itself nothing may be said explicitly.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. He is not to blame. The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.

We always want someone else to change so that we will feel good. But even if your wife changes or your husband changes, you’re just as vulnerable as before; you’re just as idiotic as before; you’re just as asleep as before.

When true love enters, you no longer like or even dislike people in the ordinary sense of the word. You see them clearly and you respond accurately. So you have to be aware of your prejudices, your likes, your dislikes, your attractions. They’re all there, they come from your conditioning.

You are never in love with anyone, you’re in love with your prejudiced idea of that person.

“Falling in love” has nothing to do with love at all. It isn’t love, it’s desire, burning desire. You want, with all your heart, to be told that you’re attractive to her. That gives you a tremendous sensation. Meanwhile, everybody else is saying, “What the hell does he see in her?” But it’s his conditioning — he’s not seeing. They say that love is blind. Believe me, there’s nothing so clear-sighted as true love, nothing.

It’s been there all along, staring us in the face in the scriptures, though we never cared to see it because we were so drowned in what our culture calls love with its love songs and poems — that isn’t love at all, that’s the opposite of love.

Addiction, attachments, clinging, craving, and desire are blind. But not true love. Don’t call them love.

If you wish to love, you must learn to see again. And if you wish to see, you must learn to give up your drug. It’s as simple as that. Give up your dependency. Tear away the tentacles of society that have enveloped and suffocated your being.

Think of a life in which you depend on no one emotionally, so that no one has the power to make you happy or miserable anymore. You refuse to need any particular person or to be special to anyone or to call anyone your own.

Loneliness

We seek to cure our loneliness through emotional dependence on people, through gregariousness and noise. That is no cure. Get back to things, get back to nature, go up in the mountains. Then you will know that your heart has brought you to the vast desert of solitude, there is no one there at your side, absolutely no one.

You must drop it all. When your illusions drop, you’re in touch with reality at last, and believe me, you will never again be lonely, never again. Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.

Think of the loneliness that is yours. Human company will only serve as a distraction. There’s an emptiness inside, and when the emptiness surfaces, you run away: turn on the television, turn on the radio, read a book, search for human company, seek entertainment, seek distraction. Everybody does that. It’s big business nowadays, an organized industry to distract us and entertain us.

Unless you hate your father and mother, brothers and sisters, unless you renounce and give up everything you possess, you cannot be my disciple.

How can you love people when you need people? You can only use them. If I need you to make me happy, I’ve got to use you, I’ve got to manipulate you, I’ve got to find ways and means of winning you. I cannot let you be free. I can only love people when I have emptied my life of people.

Grief is a sign that I made my happiness depend on this thing or person. We’re so accustomed to hear the opposite of this that what I say sounds inhuman. To depend on another psychologically — to depend on another emotionally, means to depend on another human being for my happiness.

Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.

Selfishness

The lovely thing about Jesus was that he was so at home with sinners, because he understood that he wasn’t one bit better than they were.

We differ from others — from criminals, for example — only in what we do or don’t do, not in what we are.

There are three types of selfishness.

First, when I do something, or rather, when I give myself the pleasure of pleasing myself.
Second, when I give myself the pleasure of pleasing others. Don’t take pride in that. Don’t think you’re a great person. You’re a very ordinary person, but you’ve got refined tastes.
Third, which is the worst: when you do something good so that you won’t get a bad feeling. It doesn’t give you a good feeling to do it; it gives you a bad feeling to do it. You hate it.

Expect the worst, you’re dealing with selfish people. They’re not nice. They’re as bad as you are. They’re asleep like you. And what do you think they are going to seek? Their own self-interest, exactly like you.

We love to hurt people, especially some people. We love it. And when someone else is doing the hurting we rejoice in it. But we don’t want to do the hurting ourselves because we’ll get hurt, others will have a bad opinion of us. They won’t like us, they’ll talk against us and we don’t like that.

Ignorance and fear, ignorance caused by fear, that’s where all the evil comes from, that’s where your violence comes from.

Alive

We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever.

It’s only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with our anxiety, our worries, our concerns, our burdens.

The way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave.

Imagine you’re lying flat and you’re dead. Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn’t it?

You’re not living until it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to you whether you live or die. At that point you live. When you’re ready to lose your life, you live it. But if you’re protecting your life, you’re dead.

People mistakenly think that living is keeping the body alive. So love the thought of death, love it. Go back to it again and again.

It’s precisely the ones who don’t know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life. The awakened is not bothered about it; you don’t care. You are not interested, period.

Eternal means timeless — no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension.

Road To Dystopia

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT

William Gibson is credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenera, known as cyberpunk. He is also who coined one of the most descriptive quotes about our modern social dynamics.

The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.

—— William Gibson

It only takes a curious mind and paying enough attention to the right spots to see where the arrow of time is pointing at.

Last week, I am convinced, I got a first-row seat to experience where our society is heading to.

As Jimmy and I discussed in both the fourteenth, but especially, fifteenth episodes of Radio Lanza — I got the chance to try, for a few days, a Tacx trainer hooked up with Zwift, the online riding community platform.

I won’t go into much detail here about the trainer experience — check out the episodes for a “fully-featured” review. This post focuses on the steady deployment of VR environments across society. Yet I would say that if you haven’t seen Zwift’s user interface, and you care about digital products, you won’t remain indifferent. Download the app and check it out for yourself. It is worth it. The “cartoonish” approach to its components makes it feel strangely unique. Out of touch (in a good way) from the rather stark, humorless design patterns that nowadays prevail in the software industry.

A few minutes in riding the bike, I had this insight into how VR would be rolled out across society. When I ask colleagues about how they believe VR will come along, we often depict this scenario where, out of the blue, we are suddenly hooked in a virtual world ala Ready Player One. I don’t think that would be the case. Once more, our impulse to respond with a simplistic cause and effect answer to a complex, multivariate problem.

If you still want simple, though, let me rephrase it for you: it would look more like, as Hemingway would put it…

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

—— Ernest Hemingway

In other words, our way into VR would make one think of how Craigslist went “out of ~~business~~ relevance”. Smaller ventures took on it by peeling off single verticals out of its core. One by one: finding an apartment, renting a car, second-hand marketplaces. Delivering a way better experience in each of them.

VR might evolve in a similar fashion. How far are we from replicating an entire society inside a VR world? I’d say far enough. But how far are we from creating a riding experience for cycling nerds that could be even feature-richer (more comfortable, and safer) than reality itself? I’d say it is pretty much here.

I’m not suggesting that riding with Zwift is a better approach than hitting the road — this is up to personal taste. This topic transcends “the good or the bad”. What I’m saying is that we are becoming remarkable at creating superb software environments.

As of today, we are already erecting entire software worlds with its limits bound on human imagination. This is a powerful idea. We are not only able to mimic, but to “enhance” reality through this amazing sauce we call software.

Technologically, we are not yet at the point where we can take on the entire reality at once. However, we are certainly capable of trimming parts of this reality and deliver our interpretation of it. The same pattern we’ve already seen with AI. We all believed that AI would come to take all jobs, destroy humanity. Maybe it does in the long run. But as of today, it is being deployed industry by industry. One single task at a time.

Along these lines, this is not a dystopian AI, VR, future I’m making up. This reality is already here and people are going there. Entire events that used to take place in our reality are happening in collateral worlds because our attention and time are moving there.

Going back to Zwift, we’ve created a fully-featured virtual world for cyclists to join and ride along with their friends. An immersive experience that looks nothing like a road. Other verticals will inevitably start to follow.

We are on the verge of turning this worrisome point where setting up entire new realities is becoming cheaper than “fixing” the one we already have.

This is not a judgment call. It is just a plain, objective view of our current technological landscape. What it is indeed suggesting is that as technology allows for it, more and better experiences will be delivered. It is sure to happen. Not just for cycling, but for any singular activity where we can summon a community around it.

Gradually, but next thing we’ll know, suddenly.

Heuristics For A Business Idea

Fri, 08 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The Black Swan made me think about the framework under which our industry scrutinizes ideas as a foundation for a new venture. Questions come to mind. What is it considered to be good or bad? Are those industry-generated values pointing at the same “true north” for everybody? What resonates as a good idea for me is also good for you?

On top of that, there is — and has always been, this tension between idea and execution. Is it better to come up with a poor idea executed by a remarkable team? Or working on a breakthrough with an unmotivated group?

Of course, I don’t have an answer. What I do know is which pattern I’d be looking after if, for some reason, I find myself chasing the next business idea. My “true north”, my framework of sorts.

But because there is a huge deviation in what each of us considers to be a good idea, beware what follows is what works for me. It might not lead to the idea you’re looking for.

For example, ambitious people in the quest to build the “next unicorn” might find attractive an idea with endless upside, yet terribly difficult to execute — that’s why it leads to its unicorn status in the first place…

Well, to me this is an awful idea.

First, because its “black swan” nature diminishes its odds of success. Second, because if you happen to pull it off, it will lead you to ~~slavery~~, ~~misery~~, a 24/7 always-on-call CEO role that I wouldn’t wish for my worst enemy.

But again, that’s just me. It happens to work for Marc. No judgment.

Finally, before we jump into the framework itself, take into account some considerations. My definition of good for evaluating whether an idea leads to what I consider a “healthy” business outcome.

It results in a business that can leverage software, but it doesn’t reap the benefits of a massive scale. Or, in plain English that would be a ~~family~~ lifestyle business — where its income is subject to gravity.
Avoids winner-take-all environments. These are usually a race for capital.
Derives benefits from keeping a low profile. Or, a configuration where the quote “a penny saved is at least equal to a penny spent” would be especially relevant.
It can achieve profitability on its own terms and can grow organically. It doesn’t require tons of capital to move forward.
It can operate solo or with a handful of employees. Without stating an upper bound, as a rule of thumb: the least people to manage, the better.

As you can see, this is not advisable for the next billion-dollar company. It is rather the opposite: a framework to maximize your odds of success.

Now, to the heuristics.

Market

Look for a market where end users are, at least, familiar with the idea of exchanging real money for your product or service. Here are some examples:

Health: we don’t even ask “how much it will cost” when our lives are at risk. 🍪 Bonus: this is a business model that is literally powered by nature.
Self-improvement: this is a broader category, but I’d summarize it as climbing the social ladder. There are many paths to fulfill this idea: fitness, education, beauty… anything that makes us look better in front of society.
Addictions: sad, but true. Think of gambling, sex… I would rather stay away from it. Unfortunately, it is the most profitable of the triplet¹.

Direct providers to these markets will also do the trick. However, it is usually riskier, since your eggs would then be in one basket.

Finally, having an edge on a market niche will usually pay off as well, because it’d exploit insights that are not available to average Joes — keeping competitors away. To spot these cracks, you better be an insider, which takes time, or partner with somebody who already is.

Behavior

Make sure you build something your audience understands and relates to. If you have to “educate” the market and explain what your product does, you’ll find yourself moving the stone uphill.

Especially if you’re building a B2C product (which you should avoid, see next point), do not reinvent the wheel. Educating the market you will burn tons of marketing money explaining the product before you even sell the first copy. Nonetheless, if your product does something or mimics an action your users are already familiar with, it will immediately click.

🍪 Bonus: if it was something they were already accustomed to paying for (see the previous point), even better.

End-user

Prefer B2B over B2C.

The B2C wars have already settled. For a B2C product, you’d want scale. Hence the product wants to be free. It follows that it will require a lot of capital upfront. I’m not suggesting it is impossible, it is just the odds are not there (see my considerations for what a good idea is).

Especially dealing with subscription-based models, unless you know what you are doing, or unless your product has a B2B edge that you can later pull off, avoid the B2C way. The CACs and LTVs for such a granular customer base rarely add up.

But if, if, if…

(If) you have no choice but B2C, again, avoid subscription-based models. The churn will eventually kill you.

(If) there is no alternative (which I doubt) go mobile, go indie. Monetize in-app, and keep your cost structure lean. Otherwise, the revenue share with the app stores will eat your margins for lunch.

(If) no choice but B2C, and (if) going indie is not an option… we’re moving out of my framework for what a good idea is. But, (if) you find yourself struggling with customer acquisition, look for the aggregators in the space. These are established actors that can act as the proxy for sales.

Don’t go around thinking about how to make the customer pay attention. Instead, go convince the ones your customer is already listening to and split the cake.

I was recently prompted to come up with examples of (1) B2C businesses, that (2) were subscription-based, that (3) were tackling a market niche (so no Netflix, nor Spotify). Further than in-app products or services that have a B2B edge to exploit (see Blinkist, Grammarly…), I struggled to come up with ideas. Until I stumbled upon this, and I was discouraged 😓.↩

Man's Search for Meaning

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, or a quest for power, but a quest for meaning. The great task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be.

In work — doing something significant.
In love — caring for another person.
In courage — the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

Don’t aim at success: the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the:

Unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
By-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.

The more one forgets himself — by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

✏️ If you are straightforward with what you want in life, in the long run, you will actually get it: I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that, in the long run, success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

There was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends.

While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was brought home to us: we really had nothing now except our bare bodies; all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence. What else remained for us as a material link with our former lives?

Apart from that strange kind of humor, another sensation seized us: curiosity. I have experienced this kind of curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain strange circumstances.

Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how.

Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man is through love and in love.

In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in an honorable way, in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

In my mind I took bus rides, unlocked the front door of my apartment, answered my telephone, switched on the electric lights. Our thoughts often centered on such details, and these memories could move one to tears.

It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. The men were herded, sometimes driven together, then apart, like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own.

In Auschwitz I had laid down a rule for myself which proved to be a good one and which most of my comrades later followed. I generally answered all kinds of questions truthfully. But I was silent about anything that was not expressly asked for.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.

I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, “homeostasis.”. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

(some of my patients) lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the “existential vacuum.”

No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom.

Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?”

The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day.

The person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest.

What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

“No, thank you” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

Now — Late 2019

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

What stays the same

After four months, Radio Lanza is already on its 14th episode, keeping up with a precise weekly schedule. The show has increased its audience far beyond what I expected, covering a wide range of topics. Besides the regular programming it has also featured interviews with experts, especial episodes, and even questions from our listeners.
Learning about physics through the Feynman Lectures turned out to be a terrific idea, but also harder than expected. My physics memories from college were in worse shape than I predicted and advances have been sluggish. However, the materials are engaging and, slowly but surely, I will eventually finish them.

What’s new

A good friend of mine happens to be a distinguished foodie in town. Despite her humbleness — she would never consider herself as such — products sometimes speak louder than words, and here’s the app she built to back my statement up. A self-curated guide that will recommend the perfect spot based on your preferences.

It turns out, the app has reached its technical boundaries, and it is currently ill-equipped to support its upcoming product roadmap. Well, as a side-project, I’m helping her re-build Ask Irene from scratch to fulfill, from the software perspective, her vision of the project.

By the end of August, I also started the #TIL micro-project — a healthy practice of publishing a daily Tweet about something I’ve learned. If you want to learn more of it, I wrote about the project’s rationale in this post, and also commented on a few unexpected side effects during a recent episode of Radio Lanza.

Finally, I thought it might make sense to bundle here all the changes I’ve made during these months at collado.io — a meta update of sorts. Hence, right below, the very first edition of the changelog.

Changelog

✨ New Features

Changelog: these very lines are the new feature by itself. Rendered at the bottom of each Now post, it aims to summarize “what’s new” at collado.io.
Radio Lanza episode feed: the entire show notes collection of Radio Lanza is now available in its own work page.
Embedded web player at the top of each Radio Lanza episode: share or listen to an episode right from the show notes page — without being redirected to Apple Podcasts or Simplecast.

🔧 Enhancements

Old nows are rendered as a feed of cards at the end of the page instead of being presented as inline content. That layout created an undesirable amount of scroll as “new nows” were being added, now looks cleaner.
Add offline support through gatsby-plugin-offline: drop-in support for making a Gatsby site work offline and more resistant to bad network connections. It creates a service worker for the site and loads the service worker into the client.
Strava is back in the footer: as an intermittent runner, sometimes I run a lot, sometimes I don’t run at all. Now it seems I’m on my way to run a lot again. Strava deserves to be back.
Refactor a ton of code: improved image rendering, also made a few functions and GraphQL queries reusable across many components, and a (longer than expected) approach on how react-helmet was handling all the meta tags and SEO-related elements.
Deprecate Netlify CMS: the idea of having a CMS to publish content sounds like a no-brainer. Yet if you get along with the text editor, for a personal blog, I realized, it does not make much sense.
Deprecate Google Analytics: having it there in the first place was was a mistake in itself. This website exists as a way to share my thoughts and ideas, not because it wants to amass more users. Now collado.io is eating its own dog food. Now is tracking-free.

#TIL side effects

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It has been almost a month since I started the #TIL micro-project — a healthy practice of publishing a daily Tweet about something I’ve learned. If you want to learn more of it, I wrote about the project’s rationale in this post, and also commented on a few side effects during a recent episode of Radio Lanza.

Surprisingly, #TIL has already evolved since its inception and started maturing in its own way. In just five bullets, this post lays out the most surprising and unexpected insights after a month of sharing a daily nugget about something I’ve learned.

It is hard to put something in 280 characters. Despite I don’t consider myself to be a prominent writer, I’ve long maintained the practice since 2012. However, the synthesis of ideas into such a small canvas turned out to be surprisingly challenging. It forces you to distill what you genuinely want to say. While I don’t discard using Tweestorms when discussing more complex topics, for the moment and to keep it simple, I’m sticking to the 280 ceiling.
Setting a baseline of knowledge. This one I found endlessly fascinating. The problem with the aforementioned constraint is not about the ability to convey an idea into such a tiny format. 280 characters are more than enough to share any idea. The problem is the baseline of knowledge, the starting point. What it is safe to assume the reader will know about the topic. But most importantly, how much context needs to be deployed to set up the stage for the idea to be understood. It inevitably reminded me of this magnificent footage when Feynman is asked for how magnets work. To some extent, it feels reassuring to know that even the finest lecturers of all times also struggled with this very problem.
The mental model I initially developed around how it’d work turned out to be flawed. In my mind, I’d find myself walking down the street or cooking dinner while listening to a podcast. All of a sudden, an idea would pop up. Up to this point, so far so good, as it happens quite often. The problem is what would occur next: the plan was to grab the idea, jot the thing down, and tweet it out to the world. Twenty seconds, at most. Well, it doesn’t work like this. Because of one and two, if you want to make this a pleasant and valuable experience for the reader, every single Tweet needs to be properly curated and edited before it is sent. This is not to say I’m spending an hour on each Tweet. Regardless, I rarely do it from my phone, but usually sit down and take some time to think of what I want to say.
Async Sunday. The combination of one, two and three, motivates a product iteration of sorts. Sending succinct, curated content that also meets a certain baseline for shared understanding runs against instant, thoughtless publishing. Ideas strike whenever they want, not when sitting in front of a computer while holding a nice cup of coffee. On top of that, and contrary to the project’s own narrative, they don’t steadily strike every day, sharp, at 6pm. This silly insight (something I should have foreseen in the first place) posed the biggest threat to #TIL’s long term viability. This dependency turned it into an unsustainable practice. The dependency needed to be removed. To put it in operational terms, the now synchronous publishing process, had to become an asynchronous one. Say hi to Buffer: a simple, but quite useful product that queues and schedules posts for future publishing. Exactly what I needed. Now, with Buffer, I just log raw ideas during the week. Then every Sunday I schedule some time to sit down and plan all Tweets for the upcoming week. With Buffer, #TIL just became async, thoughtful and predictable. And if it were not enough, it even has a free plan for social media impaired weirdos like me that covers all my needs.
Trending topic 😂. And to be honest, I didn’t see that one coming.

Adopting the great @MarcCollado 's #TIL practice on Twitter and LinkedIn as an incentive to synthesize and share every day learnings 🙏
— Alvaro Rojas (@ajoered) August 14, 2019

Besides a handful of kind words of encouragement and a positive reception around the project, some friends (well, just one for now, but let me savor the moment) seemed to like thing and kick-started their own versions of the #TIL.

Today I Learned

Sun, 11 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It won’t come across as a surprise to long-time readers that organizing information and mapping out knowledge is something I’ve been dwelling on for a while. It has bothered me to such extent that we even attempted to create our own product to fix the thing for once and for all. Sadly, our vision turned out to be a massive endeavor, way bigger than we originally expected. One that even two product minds combined couldn’t come to grips with. Silently, the project ended up fading away into the background.

Meanwhile, on a not that unrelated note, it turns out, I discovered Reddit. 14 years after its foundation, I fell in love with the community.

Suddenly, inspired by r/todayilearned subreddit, a dopey idea came up: steadily sharing the bits and pieces I kept on ~~forgetting~~ learning.

I mulled over it: since I’m already collecting ~~and quickly forgetting~~ scattered nuggets of information coming from podcasts, books, or articles, why not make them available to the rest of us in a digestible way?

Immediately, I understood both the potential and benefits of such an idea.

On one hand, it could become an engaging scheme to surface compelling thoughts that would otherwise end up unnoticed, forgotten.
On the other, it would also help me pin quick learnings down, and keep a life-long, open log of interesting content.

It started growing on me, and the “what” looked good enough: sharing a daily drop about something insightful I’ve learned that day.

Nonetheless, the “how” remained undefined. There were still plenty of unanswered questions wandering around: Where would this content be shared? Shall I host by myself at collado.io? Should I honor Reddit’s community and post it in there?

In an attempt to preserve and enhance the reader’s interest, I’m not going to dissect the internal debate I underwent to reach a conclusion. Long story short, let’s just say that Twitter came to mind.

A social network I’ve been passively using for more than ten years. Twitter has been consistently nurturing me with thoughtful content, but it has also been a place where I’ve never taken an active role in. The communities that interested me the most were filled with people that felt too far away. But my close network was not engaging with the topics I found most interesting. A curious paradox by itself, now that I think about it.

On top of that, Twitter has always been a platform I found difficult to navigate. Beyond the aforementioned disconnect, the network’s massive noise makes it really hard to find the hidden gems. I also never came to a definite conclusion on whether a third party client makes things better or worse. A love-hate relationship of sorts.

Regardless, Twitter seemed like a good fit to host the #TIL project: open, engaging, with large communities already built-in. Yet most important, the product itself was the perfect match for small-sized bites of sharp content. Plus a unique opportunity to fall in love with Twitter again.

Checked, checked, checked. Everything eventually seemed to fall into place: the “what”, the “how”, and the “where”. It sounded like this…

Share a daily Tweet with the hashtag #TIL about something insightful I’ve learned that day.

Last, but not least, the remaining question was the “when”. I already figured that one out though: as soon as possible.

#TIL to maintain DAI stable value, its fees are used to buy up and destroy MKR. However, if MKR holders were to accept collateral — for DAI to be issued against — that would lose its value overnight, MKR would be automatically minted and sold in the market to cover for that debt.
— Marc Collado (@MarcCollado) August 4, 2019

On August 5th, 2019, the very first #TIL was released ☝️. Can’t wait to “learn” what comes out of this 😬.

Leapfrogging The Phone

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The Screen Time feature on my three-year-old iPhone 7 reveals that I’m staring at it less than an hour a day, and the most used apps are Audible and Overcast, because of its “background activity”. Which should tell you that I’m not using it that much.

Despite September is coming and an iPhone 7 could be cataloged as collector’s piece by some Apple aficionados, I have no plans to upgrade my phone¹. What’s more, I’ve been recently even questioning the need for it in a world where it has become the epicenter of the tech Universe. The conclusions have been startling².

To begin this exploration I started by listing the jobs my iPhone currently does for me. From an impartial point of view, which problems or needs it is solving for. The checklist tops at seven:

Communications: sporadic email and texting, and calls.
Productivity: reminders, calendar events, and capturing quick notes.
Notifications³: despite having strong opinions around notifications and getting most of them delivered quietly in the background, both communications and productivity are somehow dependent.
Audio: streaming audio (music, podcasts, and audiobooks) to pair of Bluetooth headsets.
Health: tracking workouts and keeping up with my health metrics — i.e. HR, or VO2Max (usually through a heart-rate monitor).
Authentication and payments: 2FA for some applications and paying for stuff in the real world.
Navigation: moving around without getting lost is still a thing.

These are the seven things⁴ my phone currently does that a PC⁵ can’t, and will certainly never do. Most of them require a combination of mobility and proximity to the physical environment that spans beyond PCs’ nature.

You don’t need a phone for that.

The minimalist in me was yearning for a checklist that revealed a set of inconsequential features that I could easily live without. Ditch the phone for once and for all and subtract yet another device from the list of things I own. Unfortunately, that was far from the truth. The checklist contained certain features that are still “imperative” to function in our modern society without undergoing massive trade-offs.

However, it revealed a far more interesting insight. None of the listed items are enabled by virtue of the phone’s nature or form factor. They have been either inherited from other computing platforms or built around its convenience and omnipresence. In other words, one can’t help but conclude that I don’t need a phone for that. These jobs are nowadays dispatched on a phone because, again, it is convenient and omnipresent. But I’d argue that most of them could be better addressed by a smaller, closer, and more personal device.

Just for the sake of the argument let’s presume that such a device, the one that is better suited to deliver the functionality presented on the checklist, is a wearable, a smartwatch of sorts.

What you can do in a phone, you can do in a smartwatch.

I’m sure that the very moment I instilled this smartwatch idea, inevitably, large doses of skepticism started piling up in your mind. Skepticism in the sense that what you can do in a phone you can’t do in a smartwatch.

While true, to some extent, when faced with this argument I’m immediately reminded of a brilliant Benedict Evans article from 2015. Where he eloquently discussed this precise idea, but between PCs and phones.

Instead of thinking about the constraints of mobile — of the things you can’t do because the screen is smaller and there’s no keyboard — we should rather think of the PC as having the basic, cut-down, limited version of the internet, because it only has the web. It’s the mobile that has the whole internet.

His point was, and remains, spot on. Not only he made the case against the phone “not being capable enough”, but went even further by flipping the argument and suggesting that the “lesser” device was instead the PC.

He realized that the Internet as a whole, not a browser in a window as we knew it, was evolving around a new breadth of experiences enabled by cameras, GPS, or accelerometers. Necessary components the PC completely lacked. Hence to get the full Internet experience (again, not the full browser experience) you must now do it through a mobile device, not the other way around.

Walking down this path, we’ll encounter a world immersed in a revolution that is transforming the way we fundamentally think of the Internet. On one hand, IoT has swamped the market with an endless assortment of connected devices, constantly generating tons of data from its environment. On the other, technology has become more personal with wearable devices, also generating massive amounts of data coming from our bodies.

The IoT is all about bridging the gap between the digital and the physical, offline world we all live in. A daring quest our phones are ill-equipped to deal with.

Rather sooner than later, the phone will be bypassed.

All of this was probably a hyperbolized dissertation to make a rather simple point: sooner than later, for some outliers that already spend more time than they should in front of their PCs, no phone will be needed. They’d go straight to a smartwatch as their default mobile choice. A trend I can see nothing but grow. Not because more people will use PCs, but because smartwatches will become more capable. A story we’ve already seen unfolding between phones and PCs.

Coming back full circle to the aforementioned checklist, nearly all items could be already dispatched with a wearable device. Yet there are still a few pitfalls here and there. However, to be totally fair, each of them has seen massive improvements in recent years. Here’s the list of blockers preventing a human from becoming smartwatch-only.

Speech recognition has to improve if it wants to fully replace the keyboard as an input mechanism. The society also has to get comfortable with us “dictating emails” on the subway.
The tradeoff between cellular connection and battery life still remains suboptimal for a full phone handover.
Most smartwatches are not available as standalone products but exist as dependent satellites orbiting around a phone⁶.
On a related note, most carriers still don’t treat smartwatches as first-class citizens in the network. Its contract is usually bound to a primary device, again, a phone.

Just a few years ago, this shortlist would have had a dozen more items. Things like onboard cellular connectivity, dedicated app stores, audio streaming, or dictation and speech recognition where nowhere to be seen among its capabilities. The amount of progress has been astonishing. Which makes me think that crossing the remaining items is just a matter of months, not years.

We are getting closer than ever to a place where our primary (and probably only) mobile device could become a wearable — aka smartwatch. Which was a long way to say that I won’t be upgrading my iPhone this year. Neither the next one. I’d rather get a hold on it and wait until we get to the place where it can be totally leapfrogged. Go straight to a smartwatch.

All references to a “phone” allude to “smartphones” or any variation of a mobile, Internet-enabled computing device that is not a wearable. More than ten years after the iPhone was introduced, one can assume most phones are already quite “smart”.↩
This is a thought experiment grounded on my particular use cases and workflows. First of all, I could spend +12 hours a day in front of my laptop, a pattern I do not consider the average by current societal standards. On top of that, tasks that have become a mobile-preferred experience for most, such as email, texting, or browsing the Internet, I still prefer doing in a computer.↩
Both communication and productivity (and their corresponding notifications) a PC can also do. As pointed out in (2) I actually prefer to do it there. Yet these use cases refer mostly to on the go situations, where a PC is not available.↩
The absent category that would probably surprise the most is photography. While it is true that occasionally I take a picture here and there, it is definitely a feature I can live without.↩
For all intents and purposes, references to a “PC” allude to desktop and laptop computers. One might still argue that a smartphone is, in fact, a PC of sorts, and it’d be totally correct. Yet to make a clearer cut, I’m sticking to the legacy meaning the label “PC” still entitles.↩
The early years of the iPhone featured the exact same dependency and it wasn’t until iOS5 that it received the ability to start fresh with no need to tether the device to iTunes. One can imagine the same trend unfolding again, this time between the iPhone and Apple Watch.↩

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Sat, 13 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

In a nutshell

Part I — Fundamental Techniques In Handling People.

Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation.
Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Part II — Six Ways To Make People Like You.

Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people.
Principle 2: Smile.
Principle 3: Remember other people name.
Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Principle 6: Make the other person feel important — and do it sincerely.

Part III - How To Win People To Your Way Of Thinking.

Principle 1 - The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Principle 2 - Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say “You’re wrong.
Principle 3 - If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Principle 4 - Begin in a friendly way.
Principle 5 - Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
Principle 6 - Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
Principle 7 - Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
Principle 8 - Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
Principle 9 - Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
Principle 10 - Appeal to the nobler motives.
Principle 11 - Dramatize your ideas
Principle 12 - Throw down a challenge.

Part IV — Be A Leader: changing your people’s attitudes and behavior.

Principle 1 - Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Principle 2 - Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Principle 3 - Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
Principle 4 - Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Principle 5 - Let the other person save face.
Principle 6 - Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.
Principle 7 - Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
Principle 8 - Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Principle 9 - Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.

—— Herbert Spencer

Say to yourself over and over: “My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.”

Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain

People don’t criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be. Hence criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself and arouse hard feelings.

Criticism wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. It can demoralize and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.

So, if criticism won’t change the outcome nor the other person’s perspective, why criticize? Just to feel better?

I will speak ill of no man.

—— Benjamin Franklin

Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. It’ll breed sympathy, tolerance and kindness.

Dr. Johnson said: “God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days” Why should you and I?

Never tell people they are wrong

This will be interpreted as a direct attack at their intelligence, judgment, pride and self-respect. That will make them want to strike back. But it will never make them want to change their minds.

You may then throw at them all the logic of Plato and Kant, but you will not alter their opinions.

Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions, jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy, and pride. We don’t want to change our minds about religion, haircut, or favorite movie star.

Remember that they may be totally wrong. But they don’t think so. Don’t condemn them. Any fool can do that. Try to understand them. There is a reason why the other man thinks and acts as he does.

On the other hand, we sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance, but if we are told we are wrong, we resent the imputation and harden our hearts.

Avoid arguments

You can’t win an argument. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Keep calm, watch out for your first reaction, and control your temper.

Our first reaction to statements we hear from other people is an evaluation or judgment, rather than an understanding of it. Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers. Try to build bridges of understanding.

When we are right, let’s try to win people gently and tactfully to our way of thinking, and when we are wrong — and that will be surprisingly often, if we are honest with ourselves — let’s admit our mistakes quickly and with enthusiasm.

Look for areas of agreement. When you have heard your opponents out, begin by emphasizing the things on which you agree. Keep emphasizing, if possible, that you are both striving for the same end and that your only difference is one of method and not of purpose.

Give honest and sincere appreciation

There is only one way to get anybody to do anything: by making the other person want to do it.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated, “the desire to be important”. If somebody did something right, make them feel important.

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people” said Charles M. Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement”.

Remind and praise them about their early success, the “rough beginnings”. Almost every successful person likes to reminisce about his early struggles.

On top of that, even if we need to deliver unpleasant news, it is better to do it after we have heard some praise of our good points.

Let’s cease thinking of our accomplishments, our wants. Let’s try to figure out the other person’s good points.

Arouse in the other person an eager want it

Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something. So, first, think about what they want, not what you want.

So the only way on Earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

It then follows that if you are able to talk in terms of what the other person wants, and arouse in the other person an eager to want it, you’ll be set for life.

Before you speak, pause and ask yourself: “How can I make this person want to do it?” That question will stop us from rushing into a situation heedlessly, with futile chatter about our desires.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

—— Henry Ford

No one likes to feel that she is being sold or told to do “a thing”. If salespeople can show us how their product will help us solve our problems, they won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And customers like to feel that they are buying - not being sold.

Become genuinely interested in other people

People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves - morning, noon and after dinner.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

One can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.

If we want to make friends, let’s put ourselves out to do things for other people.

Remember other people’s names

The average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together. It is the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

The executive who tells me he can’t remember names is at the same time telling me he can’t remember a significant part of his business and is operating on quicksand.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

—— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems. Think of that the next time you start a conversation.

Be a good listener

Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves and their accomplishments; and always talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.

—— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be an attentive listener to become a great conversationalist. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering.

Most people are trying to win others to their way of thinking by talking too much about themselves. It doesn’t work. Let the other people talk themselves out. They know more about their business and problems than you do. So ask them questions. If you disagree with them you may be tempted to interrupt. But don’t. They won’t pay attention to you while they still have a lot of ideas of their own crying for expression. So listen patiently and with an open mind. Be sincere about it. Encourage them to express their ideas fully.

More principles

Smile. Show people you’re happy to see them by smiling. When they see how happy you are to meet them, they can’t help but be happy to see you too. Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says: “I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you”.

Admit it when you are wrong. There’s positive magic, in phrases such as: “I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.” There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one’s errors. It not only clears the air of guilt and defensiveness, but often helps solve the problem created by the error.

Yes, yes. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” at the outset. Keep your opponent, if possible, from saying “no.” Think of the Socratic Method, which, in its core, seeks this very idea.

Don’t chase credit. Credit others, even if it was “your” idea.

Dramatize. Tell great stories. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention.

Stimulate competition. Instill in other people the desire to excel, the challenge. That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression, to prove her worth, to excel, to win. The desire for a feeling of importance.

Prepare your meetings in advance. Put yourself in their shoes and have a clear idea of what to say and what that person — from your knowledge of his or her interests and motives - is likely to answer.

Give suggestions, not orders. Never say: “do this” or “don’t do that.” Instead go with: “you might consider this”, or “do you think that would work?”

Transform people. If you and I will inspire the people with whom we come in contact to a realization of the hidden treasures they possess, we can do far more than change people. We can literally transform them. We all have the magic ability to praise people and inspire them with a realization of their latent possibilities.

Encourage people. Be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it — and he will practice in order to excel.

The effective leader should keep the following guidelines in mind when it is necessary to change attitudes or behavior:

Be sincere: do not promise anything that you cannot deliver.
Forget about the benefits to yourself and concentrate on the benefits to the other person.
Know exactly what it is you want the other person to do.
Be empathetic: ask yourself what is it the other person really wants.
Consider the benefits that person will receive from doing what you suggest.
Match those benefits to the other person’s wants.
When you make your request, put it in a form that will convey to the other person the idea that he personally will benefit.

Radio Lanza

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

🎙 Radio Lanza is a podcast co-hosted by Jimmy Flores and Marc Collado.

We want to encourage entrepreneurs to launch their projects. In each episode, we share personal experiences on how to turn ideas into products, creating a structured educational toolkit along the way.

The show seeks to inspire future entrepreneurs in their next venture while sparing them some of the mistakes we’ve personally made. We do it through interviews with insightful guests, dissecting nerdy topics, but above all, sharing our controversial opinions around the products we love.

To know more, you can visit our official website and subscribe to the show to get our latest episode right away.

The backstory

When you meet Jimmy Flores for the first time, you remember. He is definitely not somebody who goes unnoticed. I met Jimmy Flores in the fall of 2016. And truth be told, I met him with a mixture of astonishment and skepticism.

Back then I was the Campus Manager at Ironhack and he joined our global team as Content Marketing Manager. The distinction is subtle but important. Despite he would be working from the Barcelona Campus, I didn’t hire him. He was part of the remote workforce that constitutes Ironhack’s global team. Curiously enough, the one I’m currently working with.

At a glance, he is this big, tall, Mexican-looking guy, featuring flashy tattoos spreading all across his arms and hands. On top of that, add a strong, confident voice seamlessly switching between English and Spanish. Undoubtedly, an impressive picture.

And no joke, you don’t mess around when you meet Jimmy Flores for the first time.

From that first impression I would have never foreseen that, in a not so distant future, he would become one of my best friends — and my co-host, but more on that later.

Fast forward two years, Ironhack and Barcelona strengthened our relationship and kept us close. Unfortunately, by the end of 2018, I got the news. Jimmy was moving to Mexico with his wife (and dog) to pursue a professional opportunity.

It was not an unexpected announcement. For a long time, I knew he wanted to cross the Atlantic. But I must confess, now that he is gone, for the first time in my life I have experienced how it feels like to miss a friend.

That being said, this is not a dismal story. Not at all. We have stayed in touch, more than ever. What is more, we have fully embraced the Chinese proverb that goes along these lines…

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

In other words, we went the Jimmy Flores way — all-in.

After two years living in the same city, we had to wait for more than nine thousand kilometers and seven hours between us to launch a podcast together.

Radio Lanza

Say “hi” to Radio Lanza 👋

Radio Lanza was born out of natural selection. A survival of the fittest of sorts in a world full of random ideas Jimmy and I had been bouncing around. From marcrumors.com, a weekly satire around Product Hunt picks; to a master plan to make me run for mayor in Barcelona. Yes, these are the ideas Jimmy constantly comes up with.

We ended up settling for something ~~more realistic~~ in the intersection of our personal interests and the potential to make a meaningful contribution to our audience.

In our (still) short-lived careers, we both have amassed a lot of professional experience. Launching our own projects and working on early stage, high-growth startups. Yet approaching them from radically opposed ends of the spectrum.

He is the creative, I’m the analytical.
He is the visionary risk-taker, I’m the rational optimist.
He will launch before it is ready, I won’t launch until it is perfect.

The yin and yang.

At the same time, we both have a deep passion (and strong opinions) around products, technology, design, and all the geeky stuff in between.

Long story short, we realized that we were already having these amazing conversations over the phone. Discussing new business ideas, entrepreneurship, and products we love. What is more important, we were (well, he was more) willing to share them with the world.

So we thought…

Why don’t we start a podcast where we can share our personal experiences on “how to launch your business idea step-by-step”, so we can help our audience avoid the mistakes we’ve made?

This is how Radio Lanza came to be.

A show that wants to inspire and encourage you to launch your new project. Also, an excuse for us to geek out on a weekly basis, and share our strong, controversial opinions around the products we love.

Welcome to Radio Lanza.

Now — Mid 2019

Wed, 01 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Making

Jimmy Flores and I just launched a new podcast: Radio Lanza. You can read the story of how it came to be in the this post and links to each episode can be found in its dedicated page.

Despite the mic will get a lot of love during this period, I will also be revamping the way book summaries are presented at collado.io. Writing summaries out of my notes after reading a book is a good habit. I want to make the most out of this content, so readers can benefit from a better experience.

Learning

Every year I usually enroll in a course around a topic I’d like to explore. Here are examples from 2016 (WebDev — Rails), 2017 (Data analytics) and 2018 (again, WebDev — React).

This year, though, “I don’t feel like course”. Yet there is a topic I want to explore further: physics.

Back in college, I hated physics. Nowadays I find myself devouring books, papers, or anything I can put my hands on that speaks physics. Several friends have recommended the Feynman Lectures — I will (re)start my structured physics journey with them.

Reading

If you’ve read a book in a week, you haven’t “read it”, at all.

This was a friend’s reaction when I mentioned I was aiming to read a couple of books per month during Early 2019. Then he went on…

You don’t go cover to cover and call it a day. A book is not a closed entity living in isolation. It contains a mesh of references you ought to explore, endless opportunities to learn beyond the book itself. It should persuade you to discover new ideas, otherwise, you are not truly “reading it”.

…and he has a point.

For this reason, during mid 2019, I will slow down my reading efforts and focus more on “reading” the ones I couldn’t handle from Early 2019. Plus I will revisit my all-time favorite Sapiens, but embracing this mindful approach, savoring each page 😋

Attention Deprived

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Randy Gardner holds the record for the longest a human has gone without sleep. In 1964, Gardner, then a high school student in San Diego, California, stayed awake for 11 days and 25 minutes.

Sleeping is such an important (and at the same time misunderstood) phenom, that humans can go way longer without food than without sleep. What’s more, Matthew Walker in his masterpiece Why We Sleep dares to flip the entire conversation in its head by suggesting that our “default state” used to be being asleep, not awake — in his own words:

Sleep is the price that we pay for wakefulness.

Despite I’m convinced that in a few years we will look back at our current sleep practices the same way we today look back at smoking or sugar consumption, sleep science is still in its infancy.

Up to date, most findings have been discovered through rats. Surprisingly they can go way longer than us without sleep. Being the 1989 Everson’s experiment one of the best-known pieces of research around the subject — which concluded that depriving rats of sleep resulted in their death within up to 30 days, yet the mileage may vary.

While the experiment’s documentation is fascinating by itself, what “amused”¹ me the most were the techniques scientists used to keep the rats awake. It is pure human creativity at its best. Turns out they have become “popular” enough they even have its own dedicated section on Wikipedia’s Sleep Deprivation page.

We are now able to look back at those experiments and “appreciate” the creativity involved in the methods researchers employed because at the end of the day, the subjects were… well, rats. No humans were harmed as a result.

Unfortunately, if you read on immediately after the aforementioned section, you’ll be shocked by the fact that the same methods were also used in humans, in order to set its victims up for abusive control.

Bear with me here, because this is a long stretch.

I’d argue that, collectively, without even noticing, we have given away and granted the permissions for anybody to exercise such techniques on ourselves.

I’m talking about notifications on mobile devices.

By mindlessly accepting the default, apparently harmless, notification settings that come along with both Android and iOS, we are allowing any person (or worse, any service) to light up our screen and/or buzz our mobile device at their discretion.

As much as I’m deeply concerned about this default pattern, it is also true that, in isolation, solely by itself, this is not generally perceived as an unmitigated disaster.

The problem, though, is how much we do care about what our mobile devices “have to say”.

We are attached to their screen to an extent that even the “ten-years-ago” versions of ourselves would ~~consider it insane~~ have a hard time believing it.

I won’t point out nor link to any study around ~~addiction~~ attachment to mobile devices because their worst predictions are persistently exceeded the very moment they are published.

Yet it is a fact that some people spend more time staring at their mobile devices than with their (real) beloved ones. Here things start to get creepy. Although what worries me the most, is the easiness by which we drop the current task at hand to attend our device’s requests.

We have agreed upon the fact that it is OK to stop doing whatever it is we are currently doing just to check out our phones.

So, on one hand, we have the lack of friction to get a notification across, and on the other, an unbelievable level of devotion and societal worship to the devices themselves.

Now put the two together. It follows that we have just capitulated and plainly opened the gates for everybody to crave for our attention, on demand.

In other words, everybody has now the ~~power~~ permission to light up our screen and plug into something we are constantly checking out. Even most concerning, pulling our attention away from what we are doing to attend (probably) what will become another inconsequential request.

By doing this we are losing our ability to focus, concentrate on what is important, and carry on deep, meaningful work. Keep walking down this path, and our lives will become an unintelligent, never-ending craving for the next shot of social dopamine in the form of trivial notification.

I worry we might be giving away our attention, in exchange for nothing, one notification at a time.

Please note the quotes. I’m aware there is nothing funny or entertaining about mistreating and depriving animals of sleep. The topic was brought up just in order to point out to the creativity involved in the experiments themselves, not their ultimate purpose.↩

Atomic Habits

Sun, 14 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Changes that seem small and unimportant at first, will compound into remarkable results if you stick with them for years. We all deal with setbacks, but in the long run, the quality of our lives will depend on the quality of our habits. With the same habits you will end up with the same results, but with better habits, everything is possible.

Habits Compound

Get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better.

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. You can’t see any difference in a single change, but the impact in the long run can be enormous.

📍 Aggregation of marginal gains: searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.

It cuts both ways though, we often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter very much in the moment, and we find it easier to fall back to the bad habit because of its immediate reward. This idea can be also found in Better Than Before.

Same applies to negative habits. If you eat an unhealthy meal today, the scale doesn’t move much. But it is the accumulation of many missteps and small choices compound into toxic results.

Choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.

It is not where are we standing right now (current results), it is the path we are on (current trajectory) that matters.

Under this framework, it is time that magnifies the margin between success and failure. It multiplies whatever you feed it, either good or bad.

One Defining Moment — The Illusion Of Success

Because the outside world just sees a dramatic event, not all the work that preceded it, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. It’s easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.

You get what you repeat.

Breakthrough moments are usually the result of several previous actions, which build up the requirements to unleash a major change.

📍 Plateau of latent potential: despite you expect to make progress in a linear fashion, habits appear to make no difference until they cross a certain threshold. It is a hallmark of any compounding process, the most powerful outcomes are delayed.

Like ice melting when crossing a certain temperature, the work was not wasted, it is just being stored.

Regardless, once the plateau of latent potential is crossed, people will call it “overnight success”, reinforcing the idea of survivorship bias.

This struggle we face to understand non-linearity and compounding effects is also explored in Fooled By Randomness alongside the idea that “most people give up before the rewards”.

Goals & Systems

Goals are about the results you want to achieve, they are good for setting direction.
Systems are about the process that lead to those results, they are best for making progress.

A systems-first mentality beats a goal-oriented mind-set.

There are several problems associated with goal-setting:

Winners and losers share the same goals, thus the goals are not what differentiate them. It is the systems in place what leads to a desired outcome.
A goal is a momentary change — achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. Focus on fixing the inputs instead and the outputs will take care of themselves.
Goals restrict happiness: first, they foster the idea of Hedonic treadmill, because you’re continuously deferring happiness until the next milestone (when I have X I’ll be happy). Second, it allocates success to the binary resolution of achieving it or not instead of focusing on the process.
Goals are at odds with long term progress: runners work hard for months, but as soon as they cross the finish line, they stop training. In other words, people revert their habits once the goal has been accomplished.

When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

Fall in love with the process rather than the product.

The purpose of setting goals is to win the game.
The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Changing The Wrong Thing — Identity

Change can happen at three layers:

Outcomes: goals, what you get.
Process: systems, what you do.
Identity: what you believe.

As seen in the previous point, we shouldn’t focus on what we want to achieve (outcomes-based), rather on who we wish to become (identity-based).

The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes your identity.

Behind every system of action, there is a system of beliefs. Consequently, behavior that is not aligned with the self, won’t last. If you want to create new habits, you need to change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior.

If you want habits to stick in the long term, they have to become part of who you are. You are not the person who “WANTS” or “DOES”, you are the person who “IS”.

The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity behind that behavior.

“Identity” derives from the Latin “essentitas” which means being, and “identidem”, which means repeatedly.

Define what you want to be, who you wish to become, then be the type of person that could get the outcome you want.

1st Law — Make It Obvious

A habit is just a memory of the steps you previously followed to solve a problem in the past.

Some people associate habits with lack of freedom, yet the opposite is true, when you have your habits dialed in and the basics of life are handled, your mind is free to focus on new challenges.

There are four stages when it comes to creating a habit — of any kind:

Cue: the trigger that sparks a craving. Same cues might have different effects on different people, depending on their backgrounds or motivations — i.e. the sound of a slot machine to a gambler.
Craving: the feeling that motivates you to act and generate a response.
Response: which provides a reward.
Reward: it satisfies the craving, closing the loop, and ultimately, becomes associated with the cue.

If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. That being said, there are ways to reinforce or avoid this loop from happening, depending on the nature of the habit.

Create or reinforce a good habit:

Cue: make it obvious.
Craving: make it attractive.
Response: make it easy.
Reward: make it satisfying.

Break or avoid a bad habit:

Cue: make it invisible, and your habit will never start.
Craving: make it unattractive, and you won’t experience enough motivation to act.
Response: make it difficult, and you won’t be able to do it.
Reward: make it unsatisfying, and it won’t satisfy your desires, then you’ll have no reason to do it again.

The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. To put in Thinking Fast And Slow terms, they have the ability to move behavior from System 2 to System 1.

Some habits are so deeply ingrained in our nature that the cues that spark them become essentially invisible to us. If an habit becomes mindless, you can’t expect to improve it. Because of this, the process of behavior change must begin with awareness.

Before we can effectively build new habits, we need to get a handle on our current ones.

There are no good habits or bad habits. There are only effective habits. That is, effective at solving problems.

All habits serve you in some way, even the bad ones, which is why you repeat them. In order to asses and distill good habits from bad ones, we should ask ourselves: does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be?

(Positive) Feedback loops

Despite PFL are not mentioned in this chapter, the idea of “Habit Stacking” reminded me of a similar concept also found in Better Than Before — which Gretchen Rubin refers to as “IF — THEN planning”.

📍 When and where: the first important takeaway is that people who make a specific plan for “when” and “where” will perform a new habit are more likely to succeed.

Some think they lack motivation when they really lack clarity.

Scheduling is important not only because it allocates the time to perform the habit (the when), but also because it provides focus, since it prevents other (less important) activities to get in the way.

📍 Habit stacking: create an implementation intention, it goes like “when situation X arises, I will perform response Y” or “after X happens, I will do Y”. Then when the moment of action occurs, there is no need to make a decision, simply follow the plan.

The best way to start this pattern is to map the trigger to a current habit or something you need to do, and link it to something you want to do.

After [CURRENT HABIT] that I need to do, I will [NEW HABIT] that I want to do.

In a nutshell… timing and location have a huge impact on habit formation. That’s because you often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing and also choose products not because of what they are, but because of where you are — environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.

Design the environment

Every habit is context-dependent: if you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.

Be the designer of your world, not a mere consumer of it.

Deliberately designing the environment is one of the most effective ways to control our behavior. At the end of the day we think we are in control of our decisions, but we’d be surprised of how many of our actions are simply determined by the most available option, rather than explicit choice.

Visual cues are the main catalyst of behavior, thus a change in what we see can lead in a change in what you do — make the cues obvious.

If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.

Habits can be easier to change in a new environment because it is easier to associate a new habit with a new context than to build a new habit in the face of competing cues.

Self-control

Disciplined people seem not to have more self-control, they just have structured their lives in a way that they don’t require heroic will-power or self-control. They simply spend less time in tempting situations.

The people with the best self-control are usually the ones who need to use it the least.

Practice self-control not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.

Behavior change techniques (such shaming obese people or showing picture of sick lungs to smokers) can back-fire, because they foster the feelings they are trying to numb. If you’re not careful about cues, you can provoke the behavior you intend to stop in the first place: you feel bad, then you eat more food, then because you ate junk food you feel worse… it is a downwards spiral.

You can break a bad habit, but you are unlikely to forget it.

Just the fact of being reminded of the cue, for good or for bad (as seen in the previous example), can lead to fall back into the habit again. This is what Gretchen Rubin described as “Poetic justice”:

Poetic justice of bad habits, the punishment bewailers to fit the crime. The punishment for a bad habit, is the bad habit.

Resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy, because it is difficult to maintain good habits in a negative environment. Self-control is just a short-term strategy, not a long-term one. It is better to reduce the exposure to the cue that triggers it in the first place.

📍 The inversion of the First Law Of Behavior Change (for avoiding bad habits): instead of making it obvious, make it invisible.

Recap

Awareness
Behavior intention: when X happens, I will do Y
Habit stacking: after X, I will do Y
Design the environment

2nd Law — Make It Attractive

The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely is to become habit-forming.

Habits are dopamine-driven feedback loops, when dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. Yet dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. It is the anticipation of a reward, not the fulfillment of it, that gets us to take action.

Whenever you predict that an opportunity will be rewarding, your levels of dopamine spike in anticipation.

After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.

—— Spock

The anticipation of an experience can even feel better than attaining it, since the parts of the brain that respond to anticipation are way bigger.

Desire is the engine that drives behavior. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response.

Temptation bundling

Linking a thing you need to do with a thing you want to do — i.e. static bike that connected to Netflix that would stop the TV show under a certain cadence: you need to exercise, you want to see Netflix.

Another example: #ThanksGodIsThursday — linking the activities NBC needed their users to do (watch the TV show) with the thing their users wanted to do (sit down, relax, have some drinks, eat popcorn…). Over time, people connected the reward of relaxing over friends with the cue of watching the TV show on Thursday night. Brilliant.

Human nature & culture

The Polgar sisters grew up in a culture that prioritized chess above all else — praised them for it, rewarded them for it. In their world, an obsession with chess was normal.

One of the deepest human desires is to belong.

We don’t choose our earliest habits, we imitate them, each with with its own expectations, invisible rules that guide your behavior each day.

Behaviors are attractive when they help us fit in and belong to the tribe, we are actually wired to behave like this and imitate the habits of three social groups in particular:

The close: we tend to pick the behavior of the people who surround us. We can use this in our advantage by joining a culture where our desired behavior is the normal behavior, and surround with people who have the habits you want for ourselves.
The many: similar idea as the one found in The Wisdom Of Crowds, where the larger the group, the bigger the influence over the individual and the tendency to align our single behavior to the group’s, even if the result is a suboptimal outcome. We would rather be wrong with the tribe, rather than right by ourselves.
The powerful: once we fit in, we want to stand out. We are drawn to behaviors that earn us approval, admiration and respect. We imitate the people we envy or have been more successful.

Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want, and stay with the group once you have achieved them.

💡 Nerdfitness: we feel strange when joining a gym because we are out of shape, if the people in there already shares something with us (video-game lovers, computer enthusiasts) changes becomes more appealing because it feels like something people like you already do.

Rituals

Great habit-forming products do not try create new motivations, but tap onto the underlying motives of human nature.

Habits are modern day solutions to ancient desires.

Your current habits might not the best way to solve the problems you face, rather the methods you’ve learned to use.

Every action is preceded by a prediction. Life feels reactive, but it is actually predictive. All day long, you are making your best guess of how to act given what you’ve just seen and what has worked for you in the past.

Craving is the sense that something is missing. It is the desire to change your internal state.
Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be.

Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings. Reframe your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks.

Change the wording “you have to…” by “you get to…”
Make it aspirational, instead of “I need to go run in the morning” say “It’s time to build endurance and get faster.”

Recap

Temptation bundling: pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
Join a culture when your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
Create a motivation ritual by making something you enjoy before the difficult habit.

3rd Law — Make It Easy

Don’t confuse motion with action. Motion is an illusion that allows us to feel like we’re making progress without running the risk of failure.

Focus on taking action, not motion. Less planning, more doing.

To master a habit and make it automatic, start with repetition, not perfection — it is the frequency that makes the difference.

Friction & environment

How to design a world where it is easy to do what is right?

Design the environment so it makes good behaviors easy and bad ones harder. Maybe a small environment change does not have an impact on its own, but the cumulative result of small tweaks might.

Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are the easiest to do.

We would naturally gravitate towards the option that requires the least amount of work.

📍 Friction: increase friction related to the environment of a bad habit, yet reduce it and organize the space in order to create and maintain healthy ones — i.e. leave the pen on the table if you want to draw.

Decisive moments

Decisive moments set the options available to your future self. Habits can be decided in a few seconds, but its impact might last for hours.

Create an environment of inevitability.

A decisive moment might be walking out of the door in the morning and head to the gym — without having breakfast. One might think the habit we are seeking is exercising, but it is also fasting, since the moment we walk out of the door we are enabling a series of future habits.

Habits are the entry point, not the destination.

The difference between a good day and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moments.

📍 Two-minute rule: when you start a new habit, it (the start) should take less than two minutes to do.

The goal might be to run a marathon, but the “gateway habit” is just lacing your shoes.

Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less.

Master the habit of showing up and become the type of person who does X (ties back to identity).

One minute of reading is better than not picking the book at all — you are casting votes for your new identity.

Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.

When you automate your life as possible, you spend your time doing tasks machines can’t do yet. Each habit we hand over to technology frees up time to pour into the next stage of growth.

Recap

Reduce friction: decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits.
Prime the environment: prepare your environment to make future actions easier.
Master the decisive moment: optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact.
Use the Two-Minute Rule: downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less.
Automate your habits: invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior.

4th Law — Make It Satisfying

Make it satisfying closes the last stage of the loop and increases the odds of repeating it next time.

Animals are constantly focused on the present or near future — they live in an immediate-return environment, with actions that deliver clear and immediate outcomes.

In modern society, most decisions we make don’t have an impact now, but in the future — we live in a delayed-return environment. We can work for years until our actions deliver the desired pay-off.

Our society is “brand-new”, we haven’t evolved to truly understand a delayed-return environment.

The consequences of bad habits are delayed, while the rewards are immediate.

What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.

The last mile is always the least crowded.

The ending of any experience is vital because we tend to remember it more than other phases. You want the ending of your habit to be satisfying in order to increase the rate of a repeated behavior.

Incentives can start a habit, identity sustains a habit.

If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It

Habit tracking is a great reinforcer because it…

Generates a list of cues that remind you to act again.
Provides visual proof and clear evidence of your progress. It feels good see your result — visual proof of the person you’re becoming.
Keeps you honest by surfacing real data about your habit. Most of us have a distorted view of our own behavior. We think we act better than we do.
Reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.

Record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs. The completion of the behavior is the cue to write it down.

Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

Show up, never miss twice, and rebound quickly. Loss days hurt you more than successful days help you — a 33% loss is equivalent to a 50% gain.

It’s easy to train when feeling good, but it’s crucial to show up when we don’t feel like it — even if we do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity.

Make sure you pick the right metric to measure. Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you.

Recap

Use reinforcement: give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit.
Make “doing nothing” enjoyable.
Use a habit tracker: don’t break the chain.
Never miss twice: get back on track immediately.

Advanced Topics

Pick your battles wisely, in order to maximize success, choose the right field of competition.

Align your habits with your personal inclinations and abilities.

Genetics

The first step is to accept the simple truth that people are born with different abilities — understand your nature to better your strategy.

Competence is highly dependent on context.

Genes tell you where the odds are in your favor. If you want to be truly great, selecting the right place to focus is crucial.

Genes do not predispose, but predetermine.

In other words, genes do not determine your destiny, but your areas of opportunity.

Ask yourself: “what feels natural to me?” and work hard on the things that come easy.

Create your own game: when you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different. Assemble a rare combination of skills (you don’t necessarily need to be the best at it), that combined, allow you to stand out and make of yourself a truly unique proposition.

Flow & Boredom

Work on tasks of just manageable difficulty. Humans experience peak motivation when working right on the edge of our current abilities.

Mastery requires practice, but inevitably, habits will get boring over time, and by nature, we crave for novelty.

Successful athletes are the ones who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.

Really successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The difference is that they still find a way to show up despite the feelings of boredom. Not a unique passion or endless motivation, it is just the fact of showing up despite the feelings of boredom.

You have to fall in love with boredom.

That’s the reason why keep jumping on a new diet or exercise routine, despite the fact “the old one” was working. The most habit-sticking products provide novelty all the time (games, junk food…) — this known as variable reward, like a slot machine.

Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.
Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.

Mastery

The upside of habits is that we can perform without thinking, the downside is that we can stop paying attention to little errors.

MASTERY = HABITS + DELIBERATE PRACTICE

Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.

In order to achieve peak performance, make sure you are getting slightly better each day.

Reflect, review, take plenty of notes, and search for areas of improvement. Ensure your performance is maintained over time.

📍 Decision journal: record the major decisions you make each week, why you made them, and what you expect the outcome to be. Review the choices at the end of each month or year to see where you were correct and where you went wrong.

Annual Review to reflect on the previous year.
- What went well this year?
- What didn’t go so well this year?
- What did I learn?
Core Values Review to consider whether you have been living in accordance with them.
- What are the core values that drive my life and work?
- How am I living and working with integrity right now?
- How can I set a higher standard in the future?

Keep your identity small.

Your identity creates a kind of “pride” that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing.

The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

Conclusion

Can one coin can make a person rich?

At some point you have to admit that your life was transformed by one small change.

Strive for thousands of 1% improvements.

Success is a not a goal, there is no finish line, it is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.

Sunsetting sub3

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Fall in love with the process rather than the product.

This quote comes straight from Atomic Habits. Although I knew of the book existence in advance, it was later (repeatedly) recommended by a reliable friend.

And I must admit, I was dismissive of it at first. In my mind, I had already labeled it as ”yet another book” about good habits. So far, I had enough about happiness and self-help this year, and it is just April — I thought to myself.

I just felt that I was already doing a decent job around habits. But above all, I believe we all reach a certain threshold where we should ask ourselves if more information is the answer, or it is just a matter of sitting down and doing work.

If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

—— Derek Sivers

Long story short, I convinced myself that, at least, it would potentially become an entertaining companion for my commute. Reluctantly, I bought the audiobook.

Oh, boy, I was wrong. Two chapters in, I secured the Kindle version. Next thing you know, I was hooked and taking notes like crazy.

These lines are not meant to be a comment around the book. The last thing I’ll say about the book itself is that if you have to read a single thing about habits, please, make yourself a favor and get a copy of Atomic Habits.

By now, you might be wondering what habit-forming books have to do with running a marathon under three hours.

Well, turns out, it does. It made me realize that I had set an empty goal for myself, and I was actually not “in love” with the process itself.

In particular, there were four key ideas around a goal-oriented mindset that made me realize that I was walking the wrong path.

Winners and losers share the same goals, thus themselves goals must not be what differentiate them.
A goal is a momentary change, then achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. It does not have a long-lasting effect.
By nature, goals restrict happiness: first, because they foster the idea of continuously deferring happiness until the next milestone. Second, it allocates success to the binary resolution of achieving it or not instead of “enjoying the ride”.
Finally, goals are at odds with long term progress. In other words, people revert their habits once the goal has been accomplished.

Along these lines, the book presented an example that really resonated with me.

Runners work hard for months, but as soon as they cross the finish line, they stop training.

In short, this is the story of my (running) life. Train hard, cross the line, stop running for six months. Then, suddenly, get excited about another race and start training like crazy again.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/332140652

Check out the video above ☝️ and see for yourself what happens around the second 10. There is this neat yearly bar chart, featuring the monthly millage. Before August… nothing. Emptiness. Not a single mile logged. I just crossed Barcelona’s marathon finish line the previous year and suddenly stopped training.

A systems-first mentality beats a goal-oriented mindset.

On top of that, I was also seeing diminishing returns from my training. After a good race in Valencia, I couldn’t beat my mark in Sevilla. The combination of a huge drop in training volume after Valencia, a lack of motivation, and seeing my results flatten out, just gave me more ~~excuses~~ reasons to make a decision around the whole sub3 edifice that, truth be told, I had already made.

Last week I wrote a healthy exercise around prioritization and regaining focus of my side-projects. I really can’t tell if it is worth reading. At least, it helped me realize that I had reached a point where I had to start saying no to some things in order to keep moving forward.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to picking up the battles you know you can win — or at least the ones you will enjoy fighting for.

I’m not sure if I would have eventually crossed the sub3 mark, but I do know for sure that I wasn’t having fun along the way. The entire venture was founded around an empty goal, to win a self-constructed game.

What I wanted though, was to just keep playing the game. Hence after a second failed attempt, I think I just had enough. And for the time being, I’ll shift my training-related efforts towards mobility, flexibility, and strength, and most importantly, enjoy the run 🏃‍♂️.

Strong Opinions, Loosely Held

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Monsieur de Norpois was not lying. He had just forgotten. One forgets rather quickly what one has not thought about with depth, what has been dictated to you by imitation, by the passions surrounding you.

In this line from Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time (later referenced in Fooled By Randomness), Monsieur de Norpois is made to be ashamed of the fact that he expressed a different opinion.

Opinion change can be sometimes daring, even considered a weakness or liability across certain environments. Something I found surprising since it is precisely this change the basis of inductive reasoning, thus the foundation for the formulation of our modern science.

I must admit, I change of opinion rather often. Although sometimes, I still nowadays feel insecure when it comes to step back, course correct or hesitate about my previously held beliefs.

In particular, there is a certain type of opinion change that worries me the most — if we were to frame the issue from as a cost-benefit analysis. I’m referring to what is popularly known as escalation of commitment. Which, in short, means keeping on investing in past decisions based on cumulative prior investment, despite the fact that new evidence already suggests your resources would be more wisely allocated in another place.

True for products, finance, personal relationships, you name it. You’ve invested so much in something that the cost of “killing it” is preventing you from turning around and making the right decision.

Now put escalation of commitment and societal rejection, coming from opinion change, together. Add a little bit of insecurity to the mix. You’ve got yourself the perfect combination to lose focus of what’s important.

The major on the major, the minor on the minor.

—— Heard somewhere

I don’t know where or when I’ve heard this quote, but it truly captures (in a subtle software development fashion) this idea. Making sure we are allocating the time in the relevant, high-impact endeavors, rather than pouring endless resources, because we said so in the past, to stuff that is barely moving the needle.

During the lasts two or three months this sentiment has been, more than ever, unpleasantly acute. As a byproduct of feeling particularly sharp and energetic, I committed to way too many things. Running a marathon in less than 3 hours, reading one book per week, building cloud computing for the mind, further developing Udacity projects… and on top of that, of course, working as a Product Manager at Ironhack and sleeping (at least) seven hours — because this is what humans also do, sleep.

It sounds like I was doing a lot, but know what? I will recall these firsts months of 2019 as one of the most unproductive times of my life. Spread so thin across too many projects, sometimes I found myself blocked, distracted, without focus, not knowing where to go next. An especially frustrating concern coming from somebody whom “prioritization” constitutes a great chunk of his daily job, with an ~~unhealthy~~ uncanny obsession around efficiency and productivity.

Ask yourself how much of it is motivated by not wanting to disappoint people and what my future 80-year-old would think about it.

I wonder how many decisions would be reconsidered after being analyzed through this lens. At least, it made me think of several things I had committed to that were not adding a significant amount of value and I was only doing because I didn’t want to (or thought it would) let somebody down.

Overcommitted, I reached a point where I had to start saying no to some things in order to keep moving forward.

Along these lines, this post, besides serving me as a healthy exercise around prioritization and regaining focus, will also serve as the official deprecation announcement¹ for both the Magis and sub3 projects.

Both for completely different reasons — the one for sub3 is separately discussed here, I must confess, looking back, putting an end to them felt as a pure relieve — which also reassured me that I was making the right decision.

This was especially true in the case of Magis, which was a “spin-off” for one of the Udacity’s React Developer Nanodegree.

As much as I love coding and the joy I derive creating stuff, Magis was a self-imposed project, misaligned with all my other priorities. It was being maintained just for the sake and joy of “making”. Because once I told myself I would keep on working on it, and I wanted to honor my own commitment. But sadly, unlike pansa or collado.io, it had no purpose or vision for the future.

I have opinions about learning, education and, side-projects. They are somehow my own bread and butter. Nevertheless, I still have mixed feelings around when to embark on a completely unrelated learning path or side-project. Something at the antipode of your current area of expertise or current endeavors. I can come up with arguments in favor and against both.

In this particular case though, I’ve come to realize that Magis, at some level, should have kept a certain degree of alignment or end goal by itself in order to thrive. For coding related projects, I would not recommend to start investing time without a clear goal in mind — something you truly “want” to build. Controversial opinion, true, but I just found that learning for the sake of learning is cool, but it is also a recipe to forget.

To wrap this topic up, it is worthy to note that James Clear makes a smart distinction between goals and systems in his book Atomic Habits that I think clearly translates to our discussion:

Goals are about the results you want to achieve, they are good for setting direction. Systems are about the process that lead to those results, they are best for making progress.

Magis has served me well as a playground for trying new technologies and features before rolling them out to other projects of mine, but it ultimately lacked a goal for itself. Plus, there are more efficient ways to achieve the same outcome anyway. There was no point for keeping it “alive”. And that’s it.

This has been a strange article, I know.

But long story short, it has served me as a sanity check to reset my priorities and get out of an unproductive situation; (I hope) it serves you to learn something about prioritization and changing an opinion; and ultimately, it serves as the official announcement to sunset both Magis and sub3 projects. Which truth be told, after writing these words I just realized that… nobody might care in the first place.

Probably the most relevant take away of this piece.

I know I could just drop them and go on with my life, probably nobody would have noticed anyway. Yes, true, but I couldn’t help it. I needed the sanity check that I had both “put an end to it” and the “reasons why” had been properly communicated.↩

Fooled By Randomness

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Remember that nobody accepts randomness in his own success, only his failure.

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.

It is a mistake to use, as journalists and some economists do, statistics without logic, but the reverse does not hold: it is not a mistake to use logic without statistics.

Our brain sometimes gets the arrow of causality backward. Assume that good qualities cause success; the fact that every intelligent, hardworking, persevering person becomes successful does not imply that every successful person is necessarily an intelligent, hardworking, persevering person.

Causality can be very complex. It is very difficult to isolate a single cause when there are plenty around. This is called multivariate analysis.

This problem has a more worrying extension; we are not made to view things as independent from each other. When viewing two events A and B, it is hard not to assume that A causes B, B causes A, or both cause each other.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (it is the consequence because it came after). Say hospital A delivered 52% boys and hospital B delivered the same year only 48%; would you try to give the explanation that you had a boy because it was delivered in hospital A?

Which came with the help of luck could be taken away by luck. The flip-side, is that things that come with little help from luck are more resistant to randomness.

Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.

Risk-conscious hard work and discipline can lead someone to achieve a comfortable life with a very high probability. Beyond that, it is all randomness: either by taking enormous (and unconscious) risks, or by being extraordinarily lucky.

Nero dixit:

The only dark side of being a trader is the sight of money being showered on unprepared people who are suddenly taught that Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is “refined” music.
Intellectual contempt does not control personal envy. That house across the street kept getting bigger.
He tried to soothe his discomfort by recalling the behavior of Swann, the character in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, a refined art dealer and man of leisure who was at ease with such men as his personal friend the then Prince of Wales, but acted like he had to prove something in the presence of the middle class.

Alternative histories

The possible worlds, or how we dismiss the events that don’t end up happening.

For Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, God’s mind included an infinity of possible worlds, of which he selected just one. These non-selected worlds are worlds of possibilities, and the one in which I am breathing and writing these lines is just one of them that happened to have been executed.

📍 The dentist and the entrepreneur.

If you were to relive a set of events 1000 times, what would the range of outcomes be? If there is very little variance in your alternative histories (i.e. you chose to become a dentist), then you are in a relatively non-random situation. Meanwhile, if there is a very wide range of normal results when considering 1000 variations (entrepreneurs, traders, etc.), then it is a very random situation.

Certainty is something that is likely to take place across the highest number of different alternative histories.
Uncertainty concerns events that should take place in the lowest number of them.

🎲 $10 million earned through Russian roulette does not have the same value as $10 million earned through the diligent and artful practice of dentistry. They are the same, can buy the same goods, except that one’s dependence on randomness is greater than the other.

In other words, it all is more random than we think, but not all is random. Chance favors preparedness, but it is not caused by preparedness — and the same goes for hard work.

📍 Process vs. result (or CEO’s empty suits).

Consider the difference between judging on process and judging on results. Lower-ranking persons in the enterprise are judged on both process and results. But top management is only paid on result — no matter the process. There seems to be no such thing as a foolish decision if it results in profits.

CEOs take a small number of large decisions, more like the person walking into the casino with a single million-dollar bet. External factors, such as the environment, play a considerably larger role than with the dentist. The link between the skill of the CEO and the results of the company are tenuous. By some argument, the boss of the company may be unskilled labor, but one who presents the necessary attributes of charisma and the package that makes for good MBA talk.

📍 The monkey-on-the-typewriter problem.

If a 25 year-old played Russian roulette, say, once a year, there would be a very slim possibility of his surviving until his fiftieth birthday — but, if there are enough players, say thousands of 25 year-old players, we can expect to see a handful of (extremely rich) survivors (and a very large cemetery).

CEOs are not entrepreneurs. They have a skill in getting promoted within a company rather than pure skills in making optimal decisions — we call that “corporate political skill.” These are people mostly trained at using PowerPoint presentations.

We continue to worship those who won battles and despise those who lost, no matter the reason. I wonder how many historians use luck in their interpretation of success — or how many are conscious of the difference between process and result.

One cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e. if history played out in a different way). Clearly, the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome, but such a point seems to be voiced only by people who fail.

But reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette:

It delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds of chambers instead of six.
Denigration of history, we feel that the sorts of things that happen to others would not necessarily happen to us.
Unlike a well-defined, precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality.

Complex ideas and the news

Arguments should be simplified to their maximum potential; but people often confuse complex ideas that cannot be simplified into a media-friendly statement as symptomatic of a confused mind.

It is a fact that our brain tends to go for superficial clues when it comes to risk and probability, these clues being largely determined by:

We overvalue the things that trigger an emotional response.
The ease with which they come to mind — related to the availability heuristic from Thinking Fast And Slow.
Risk is not mediated in the “thinking” part of the brain but largely in the emotional one.

This means that rational thinking has little to do with risk avoidance. Much of what rational thinking seems to do is rationalize one’s actions by fitting some logic to them.

Ask a profitable investor to explain the reasons for his success; he will offer some deep and convincing interpretation of the results.

📍 Don’t read the news.

Journalism is just about entertainment, particularly when it comes to radio and television.

Conventional wisdom favors things that can be explained instantly and in a nutshell. Most poetic sounding adages are plain wrong.

For an idea, age is beauty.

It’s better to value old, distilled thoughts than “new thinking” because for an idea to last so long it must be good. That is, old ideas have had to stand the test of time. New ideas have not. Some new ideas will end up lasting, but most will not.

Common sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age eighteen.

— Albert Einstein

In that sense the mental probabilistic map in one’s mind is so geared toward the sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news… This is one of the many reasons that journalism may be the greatest plague we face today — as the world becomes more and more complicated and our minds are trained for more and more simplification.

🖇 Related to Thinking Fast And Slow and the idea that sometimes “an algorithm that is constructed in the back of an envelope is often good enough to compete with an optimally weighted formula, and certainly good enough to outdo expert judgement”.

People fail to learn that their emotional reactions to past experiences (positive or negative) were short-lived:

We retain the bias of thinking that the purchase of an object will bring long-lasting happiness (it won’t).
That a setback will cause severe and prolonged distress (it won’t, either).

🖇 Related to Stumbling On Happiness and the idea that “we compare with the past instead of with the available”.

The opportunity cost of missing a “truly new thing” like the airplane and the automobile is minuscule compared to the toxicity of all the garbage one has to go through to get to these jewels (assuming these have brought some improvement to our lives, which I frequently doubt).

It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spent “studying” the news last month neither had any predictive ability during your activities of that month nor did it impact your current knowledge of the world.

Mathematics and Monte Carlo

Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute.

It is a fact that “true” mathematicians do not like Monte Carlo methods. They call it “brute force.”

I am not a “native” mathematician, that is, I am someone who does not speak mathematics as a native language, but someone who speaks it with a trace of a foreign accent.

Mathematically, progress means that some new information is better than past information, not that the average of new information will supplant past information, which means that it is optimal for someone, when in doubt, to systematically reject the new idea, information, or method. Clearly and shockingly, always.

Minor stalemates in life can often be solved by choosing randomly. In many cases it doesn’t really matter so long as you choose something and move forward.

📍 Hindsight Bias: when you look at the past, the past will always be deterministic, since only one single observation took place. Yet a mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.

Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny.

A more vicious effect of such hindsight bias is that those who are very good at predicting the past will think of themselves as good at predicting the future, and feel confident about their ability to do so.

🎲 Do not look at your portfolio: consider someone checking his portfolio every month. As 67% of his months will be positive, he incurs only four pangs of pain per annum and eight uplifting experiences. Now consider looking at his performance only every year. Over the next 20 years that he is expected to live, he will experience 19 pleasant surprises for every unpleasant one!

📍 Survivorship bias.

We tend to think that traders were successful because they are good. Perhaps we have turned the causality on its head; we consider them good just because they make money. One can make money in the financial markets totally out of randomness.

At a given time in the market, the most successful traders are likely to be those that are best fit to the latest cycle. This does not happen too often with dentists or pianists because these professions are more immune to randomness.

📍 Evolution and reproductive fitness.

We will ignore the basic misuse of Darwinian ideas in the fact that organizations do not reproduce like living members of nature — Darwinian ideas are about reproductive fitness, not about survival.

Darwinian fitness applies to species developing over a very long time, not observed over a short term — time aggregation eliminates much of the effects of randomness; things (I read noise) balance out over the long run.

Evolution does not mean that an animal is at the maximum fitness for the conditions of its time. On average, animals will be fit, but not every single one of them, and not at all times. Just as an animal could have survived because its sample path was lucky, the “best” operators in a given business can come from a subset of operators who survived because of over-fitness to a sample path that was — at the time — free of the evolutionary rare event.

There are some strategies that work well for any given cycle (an extreme fad diet). Yet strategies that work for a given cycle in the short term may not be the best for long run. They are sub optimal strategies winning over a randomly beneficial short term cycle.

📍 Median != Mean

Median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample.
Mean (or average) is the sum of a sample of numbers divided by the count of numbers in the sample.

Whenever there is asymmetry in outcomes (a skewed distribution), the average survival has nothing to do with the median survival.

📍 Odds and outcomes.

Things in life don’t move continuously at all.

Asymmetric odds means that probabilities are not 50% for each event, but that the probability on one side is higher than the probability on the other. A coin toss, for example, has symmetric odds.
Asymmetric outcomes mean that the payoffs are not equal. This is that each “odd” has different value.

The frequency or probability of the loss (the odds), in and by itself, is totally irrelevant; it needs to be judged in connection with the magnitude of the outcome.

Probability != Expectation (probability x payoff (or odds x outcomes))

It is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. How frequent the profit is irrelevant; it is the magnitude of the outcome that counts.

People usually miss this point because their schooling comes from examples in symmetric environments, like a coin toss, where such a difference does not matter. In fact, the so-called bell curve that seems to have found universal use in society is entirely symmetric.

📍 Skewed bets.

Rare events present a large payoff when they occur. I try to make money infrequently, as infrequently as possible, simply because I believe that rare events are not fairly valued. The rarer the event, the more undervalued it will be in price.

I aim at profiting from the rare event, with my asymmetric bets.

When making a bet we have to look at 1/ the odds of happening, 2/ the payoff you receive if it works, and 3/ the cost of it failing. A bet on something very unlikely can be smart if the payoff is large and you have rules to limit the many small losses that are likely.

Yet people tend to be sensitive to the presence or absence of a given stimulus, rather than its magnitude. The agent would prefer the number of losses to be low and the number of gains to be high (even if they are irrelevant in size), rather than optimizing the total performance.

Stay away from people of a competitive nature, as they have a tendency to commoditize and reduce the world to categories, like how many papers they publish in a given year, or how they rank in the league tables.

The problem is that we read too much into shallow recent history. A deeper look at history teaches us that things that never happened before do happen. It can teach us a lot outside of the narrowly defined time series; the broader the look, the better the lesson.

Induction

There are only two types of theories:

Theories that are known to be wrong, as they were tested and adequately rejected (he calls them falsified).
Theories that have not yet been known to be wrong, not falsified yet, but are exposed to be proved wrong.

A theory that falls outside of these two categories is not a theory. A theory that does not present a set of conditions under which it would be considered wrong would be termed charlatanism, it would be impossible to reject otherwise.

Indeed the difference between Newtonian physics, which was falsified by Einstein’s relativity, and astrology lies in the following irony. Newtonian physics is scientific because it allowed us to falsify it, as we know that it is wrong, while astrology is not because it does not offer conditions under which we could reject it.

No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

I can use data to disprove a proposition, never to prove one. I can use history to refute a conjecture, never to affirm it. In other words: there is a big difference between “this has never happened” and “this will ever happen.” You can say the first, but never truly confirm the second. It just takes one counter example to prove all previous observations wrong. We never know things for sure, only with varying degrees of certainty.

Karl Popper refused to blindly accept the notion that knowledge can always increase with incremental information — which is the foundation of statistical inference. It may in some instances, but we do not know which ones. Many insightful people, such as John Maynard Keynes, independently reached the same conclusions.

If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past’s past), then why should our future resemble our current past?

Popper’s falsificationism is intimately connected to the notion of an open society. An open society is one in which no permanent truth is held to exist; this would allow counter-ideas to emerge.

The simple notion of a good model for society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian.

📍 Causality, induction, and the best of both worlds

Unlike induction (which is going from plenty of particulars to the general), causality is easier to commit to memory. Our brain would have less work to do in order to retain the information. The size is smaller. It is very handy, as the general takes much less room in one’s memory than a collection of particulars. The effect of such compression is the reduction in the degree of detected randomness.

Recreate a low-information, more deterministic ancient time, say in the nineteenth century, all the while benefiting from some of the technical gains, all of the medical breakthroughs, and all the gains of social justice of our age. I would then have the best of everything. This is called evolution.

Monkeys and typewriters

If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them would come out with an exact version of the Iliad.

How much can past performance (here the typing of the Iliad) be relevant in forecasting future performance?

The randomness of the content (dentist vs. entrepreneur)
The number of “monkeys” in the operation

📍 (again) Survivorship bias.

The same applies to the business world: the greater the number of businessmen, the greater the likelihood of one of them performing in a stellar manner just by luck. I have rarely seen anyone count “the monkeys” in the business world.

In real life one sees only the survivors, the winners. the other monkeys are not countable, let alone visible. Losers do not show up. They are hidden away as it is natural for those who failed to vanish completely.

The number of managers with great track records in a given market depends far more on the number of people who started in the investment business (initial sample), rather than the individual odds to produce profits.

📍 Hedonic adaptation and comparing with others.

Most people prefer to make $70.000 when others around them are making $60.000, than to make $80.000 when others around them are making $90.000.

If we choose to live among the people who have been successful, we are implicitly excluding failure from the sample. Those who have failed do not show up in the sample, thus making us feel as if we were not doing well at all. By living on Park Avenue, one does not have exposure to the losers, one only sees the winners.

As we are cut to live in very small communities, it is difficult to assess our situation outside of the narrowly defined geographic confines of our habitat.

This might also lead to a never-ending loop: you get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again. And to that, add the psychological treadmill effect: you get used to wealth and revert to a set point of satisfaction.

📍 The world is not that small at all.

If you meet someone randomly, there is 1 in 365.25 chance of your sharing their birthday. In a room with 23 people, the chance of there being 2 people with the same birthday is about 50%. For we are not specifying which people need to share a birthday; any pair works.

The world is much larger than we think. It is just that we are not truly testing for the odds of having an encounter with one specific person, in a specific location at a specific time. Rather, we are simply testing for any encounter, with any person we have ever met in the past, and in any place we will visit during the period concerned.

📍 Deviation from the mean.

The larger the deviation from the norm, the larger the probability of it coming from luck rather than skills.

Real randomness does not look random.

📍 Linearity and the compounding effects of consistency.

People think that if, say, two variables are causally linked, then a steady input in one variable should always yield a result in the other one. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized.

Reality does not give us the privilege of a satisfying linear positive progression: you may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash.

Most people give up before the rewards.

People cannot comprehend the nonlinear nature of the rare event. There are routes to success that are nonrandom, but very few people have the mental stamina to follow them. Those who go the extra mile are rewarded.

🖇 Related to 1000 True Fans — it is better to have a handful of enthusiastic advocates than hordes of people who appreciate your work — better to be loved by a dozen than liked by the hundreds. This applies to the sales of books, the spread of ideas, and success in general and runs counter to conventional logic. The information age is worsening this effect.

Emotions and decisions

📍 The hesitant donkey

Imagine a donkey equally hungry and thirsty, standing exactly between sources of food and water. He would die of both thirst and hunger, unable to decide which to get first.

Now inject some randomness by randomly nudging the donkey closer to one source, no matter which. The impasse is broken, and our happy donkey will be both fed and hydrated.

In other words — “flipping a coin” breaks some of the minor stalemates in life where one lets randomness help with the decision process.

Randomness is not always unwelcome. To some extent, unpredictability (or lack of knowledge) can be beneficial to our defective species. Randomness (correctly applied) prevents us from optimizing and being exceedingly efficient in the wrong things.

Herbert A. Simon had this idea that if we were to optimize at every step in life, then it would cost us an infinite amount of time and energy. Accordingly, there has to be in us an approximation process that stops somewhere. Clearly he got his intuitions from computer science. “Satisficing” was his idea (the melding together of satisfy and suffice): you stop when you get a near-satisfactory solution. Otherwise it may take you an eternity to reach the smallest conclusion or perform the smallest act.

Applied to a “real-life” scenario, a slightly random schedule and a little bit of uncertainty prevents us from optimizing and being exceedingly efficient in the wrong things. Those who live under a self-imposed pressure to be optimal in their enjoyment of things suffer a measure of distress. It helps you be a satisfacer instead of maximizer.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky went in a completely different direction than Simon and started figuring out rules in humans that did not make them rational — but things went beyond the shortcut. For them, these rules, which are called heuristics, were not merely a simplification of rational models, but were different in methodology and category. They called them “quick and dirty” heuristics.

📍 Emotions and decisions

Normative science (i.e. Economics): offers prescriptive teachings; it studies how things should be. Based on the hypothesis that humans are rational and act rationally because it is the best thing for them to do (it is mathematically “optimal”).
Positive science (i.e. Physics): based on how people actually are observed to behave.

Normative economics is like religion without the aesthetics.

The absence of a central processing system makes us engage in decisions that can be in conflict with each other. But back to Herbert A. Simon’s idea around the “optimization sweet spot” — an experiment reported that the purely unemotional man was incapable of making the simplest decision. He could not get out of bed in the morning, and frittered away his days fruitlessly weighing decisions.

One cannot make a decision without emotion.

Now, mathematics gives the same answer: if one were to perform an optimizing operation across a large collection of variables, even with a brain as large as ours, it would take a very long time to decide on the simplest of tasks.

It seems that the emotions are the ones doing the job. Psychologists call them “lubricants of reason.” We actually need to feel things to make decisions.

Biases

“I’m as good as my last trade” or Prospect Theory: looking at differences, not absolutes, and resetting to a specific reference point.
“Sound-bite effect” or Affect Heuristic: people react to concrete and visible risks, not abstract ones.
“It was so obvious” or Hindsight Bias: things appear to be more predictable after the fact.
“You were wrong” or Inductive fallacies: jumping to general conclusions too quickly.

Your brain reacts differently to the same situation depending on which chapter you open to.

The fact that your mind cannot retain and use everything you know at once is the cause of such biases. One central aspect of a heuristic is that it is blind to reasoning.

We seem to focus too much on “local” changes, not global ones. That is, we care too much about the latest change rather than the overall trend 👇

You do not have everything you know in your mind at all times, so you retrieve the knowledge in a piecemeal fashion, which puts these retrieved knowledge chunks in their local context. You have an arbitrary reference point and react to differences from that point, forgetting that you are only looking at the differences from that particular perspective of the local context, not the absolutes.

🖇 An idea also seen at Stumbling On Happiness — it is easier for your brain to detect differences rather than absolutes, hence rich or poor will be (above the minimum level) in relation to something else.

Yet there is a difference between a wealth level reached from above and a wealth reached from below. The road from 16 million to 1 million is not as pleasant as the one from 0 to 1 million.

Wealth does not make people happy, but positive increases in wealth may, especially if they come as “steady” increases.

🖇 And also seen in Thinking Fast And Slow — when something is in relation to something else, that something else can be manipulated. Psychologists call this effect of comparing to a given reference anchoring.

📍 (again) on journalists, causality and experts.

Journalists most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of absence.

When news says “Dow up 1.3 on lower interest rates”, it’s less than a 0.01% move, which requires no explanation, nothing to explain, no reasons to adduce. But journalists being paid to provide explanations will gladly provide them.

Unless something moves by more than its usual daily percentage, it’s noise. A 2% move is 4-10 times more significant than a 1% move. A 7% move can be several billion times more relevant than a 1% move.

Unless the source of a statement has extremely high qualifications, the statement will be more revealing of the author than the information judged.

This mechanism I also call Wittgenstein’s ruler: unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.

Stoics, skepticism, and changing your mind

Monsieur de Norpois was not lying. He had just forgotten. One forgets rather quickly what one has not thought about with depth, what has been dictated to you by imitation, by the passions surrounding you.

Don’t go around spending energy defending your (failed) past ideas, instead make a buck with what you have learned from it.

What characterizes real speculators like Soros from the rest is that their activities are devoid of path dependence. They are totally free from their past actions. Every day is a clean slate. He knew how to handle randomness by keeping a critical open mind and changing his opinions with minimal shame.

There is nothing wrong and undignified with emotions — we are cut to have them. What is wrong is not following the heroic or, at least, the dignified path. That is what stoicism truly means.

📍 Escalation of commitment — do not hold stubbornly to an opinion for the mere fact that he had voiced it in the past.

🎲 Say you own a painting you bought for $20k, and is now worth $40k. If you owned no painting, would you buy it at the current price? If not, then you are said to be married to your position. There is no rational reason to keep a painting you would not buy at its current market rate - only emotional investment.

📍 Personal elegance

Start stressing personal elegance at your next misfortune. Exhibit sapere vivere (“know how to live”) in all circumstances. Dress at your best on your execution day (shave carefully); try to leave a good impression on the death squad by standing erect and proud. Try not to play victim when diagnosed with cancer. Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity. Do not complain. The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior. Good luck.

Randomness and happiness

We know that people of a happy disposition tend to be of the satisficing kind, with a set idea of what they want in life and an ability to stop upon gaining satisfaction. On top of that, “what they want” is usually of intrinsic value by itself, rather than material pleasure.

Yet causality is not clear:

Are optimizers are unhappy because they are constantly seeking a better deal?
Or is just unhappy people tend to optimize out of their misery?

Getting rich results in his seeing flaws in the goods and services he buys.

People who get promoted to important positions usually suffer from tightness of schedules: everything has an allotted time. At the limit, you can decide whether to be (relatively) poor, but free of your time, or rich but as dependent as a slave.

Hidden gems

I respect people with scientific minds who feel compelled to spend their nights reading wholesale on a subject matter, trying to figure out what was done on the subject by others before emitting an opinion.

We are designed by mother nature to have an extremely skewed physical workout: hunter-gatherers had idle moments followed by bursts of intense energy expenditure.

Too much success is the enemy (think of the punishment meted out on the rich and famous); too much failure is demoralizing. I would like the option of having neither.

Cool experiment about how we make serious probabilistic mistakes in today’s world 👇

A test of a disease presents a rate of 5% false positives.
The disease strikes 1/1000 of the population.
People are tested at random, regardless of whether they are suspected of having the disease.
A patient's test is positive.
What is the probability of the patient having the disease?
---
Most doctors say 95%! True answer is 1/50. (2%).

Most of us know pretty much how we should behave. It is the execution that is the problem, not the absence of knowledge. I am tired of the moralizing slow-thinkers who pound me with platitudes like I should floss daily, eat my regular apple, and visit the gym outside of the New Year’s resolution.

In a few decades will we look upon the Nobel economics committee with the same smirk as when we look at the respected “scientific” establishments of the Middle Ages. We have been getting things wrong in the past and we laugh at our past institutions; it is time to figure out that we should avoid enshrining the present ones.

Say you always have the same threshold of reactions. Such predictability will allow people to take advantage of you up to that well-known trigger point and stop there. But if you randomize your trigger point, sometimes overreacting at the slightest joke, people will not know in advance how far they can push you.

Upgrading Books

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

—— Derek Sivers

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I love reading books. Alongside with podcasts, they are my go-to media type for continuous education — since they are not only a great source to learn new ideas but to revisit and connect old ones.

One of my lifelong frustrations, though, has always been my inability to ~~remember~~ retrieve, just-in-time, the right piece of information. For a long time, I thought of “more reading” as the solution to this problem. Yet feeding the brain with more raw data ultimately failed to turn this data into an actionable outcome. “More information”, as Derek Sivers would say, “is not the answer”.

That’s ultimately the reason why this year I started to work on pansa — a memory-taking app that, hopefully, will help me (and its users) to create, organize, find and connect memories, so we don’t have to worry about forgetting anymore

Prior to pansa, I stumbled upon the Books project from Derek Sivers. The idea behind it is both dead-simple, yet at the same time, extremely powerful — in his own words:

At sivers.org/book I have a collection of my notes from the 250+ books I’ve read since 2007.

His reading process was not limited to rushing through the book, cover to cover, put it back to the shelf and call it a day. Instead, he took some time right after finishing it to write down the notes and highlights he took during the reading, and finally, publish them online.

The idea resonated with me the very moment I heard of it. I immediately felt the need to do the same with “my collection”.

Since then, I’ve started to summarize and publish the books I’ve read (and also re-reading and migrating the notes from old ones) in order to create a knowledge base of sorts — independent from pansa, of course.

The way to keep track of this library so far has been to follow the tag ‘books’. And despite it kind of works, I ultimately see it as a suboptimal solution for a problem that has huge potential.

This update aims to address this problem through a couple of things I’ll be focusing in the upcoming months.

Improve Summaries

Until now, when it came to creating each book summary, I was mostly copying and pasting the Kindle highlights plus adding additional some notes of my own. Furthermore, I also created a custom mapping to enable some features on top of markdown.

Yet the outcome of this process was missing the point, resulting in summaries that were not only too long but also difficult to distill the most important takeaways from each book.

In my mind the final output of these summaries can be considered successful if it accomplishes two premises:

Its reading is able to retrieve the main book ideas, through a cohesive narrative, in less than ten minutes.
Throughout the summary, there is an easy way to connect its ideas to other books or content I had written.

In order to deliver on these two requisites, I’ll completely change the way book summaries get delivered.

First, book summaries will be limited to 1.000 words and will feature only original content (i.e. my own words). Copy and paste won’t be allowed anymore with the exception of quotes — that will be appropriately marked as such.

Second, before book summaries are published, I’ll make sure to link to all relevant content using the aforementioned “mapping system”.

The idea behind the process is simple: force myself to think and formulate the author’s thoughts in my own terms. This will surface the most relevant ideas, connect them with other sources while keeping the summary short enough that it will be digestible in ten minutes, or less.

Despite the output of this one is way less defined than the previous action, its outcome is clear enough: present and surface the book summaries’ content in a way that it promotes discoverability and connection across books.

Think of a pansa within collado.io.

As a matter of fact, when I decided to move collado.io I already mentioned as one of the reasons the ability to build new features and capabilities that could go beyond blog post publishing.

Right now collado.io is just a personal blog that could be hosted elsewhere without the hassle of taking care of the entire site. It is reasonable to argue that, for the sole purpose of writing, Squarespace is a better bang for the bank. True, but collado.io has big plans for the future and wants to move beyond “basic blogging” and Squarespace was not the right tool for the job anymore.

This is the perfect opportunity to leverage the fact that collado.io is built on Gatsby (React in its core) to create a dedicated feature to make a feature out of great content — that is already available and it will do nothing but grow.

I’m still not sure how this new feature will look like at the end, but I aim to make it one of my side-project priorities during mid-2019 — it will actually make its way into the Now section.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Conventional self-help advice — which tells you to visualize success and think about the type of person you want to be only reinforces the idea that you are not that thing — it only focuses in what you lack and then it emphasizes for you.

The fixation on the positive is a continuous reminder of what we haven’t achieved or what we are not.

Everyone wants you to believe that the secret to a good life is to have a nicer job or a better car or a prettier girlfriend [more, more, more] — giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health.

The key to a good life is giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.

📍 Filter bubble (aka. feedback loop from hell): social media recreates a fake illusion — where we get a filtered and distorted picture of everybody’s lives — that constantly makes us unhappy and we feel that something’s wrong with us.

🔖 We are no longer facing a material crisis — we have plenty of resources: TVs, smartphones, and clothes and goods that we don’t need. We are arguably living in the best time in history. The problem we face is existential and spiritual. We have so much stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t know what to give a fuck about anymore.

Because there’s an infinite amount of things we can now see or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up, that we’re not good enough, that things aren’t as great as they could be.

Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. Pursuing something only reinforces that you lack it in the first place.

🖇 Related to Alan Watts’ Backwards Law: if one is to apply more conscious effort in hopes of increased results, he will run into diminishing returns for his effort. More effort does not equate to better results.

Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape it only backfires. Accepting your experience of life as being great and wonderful is the single greatest thing you can do for your happiness.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

—— Albert Camus

If you are able to not give a fuck about the pain your goals require, then you become unstoppable.

🔖 This is how it works: you are going to die one day. Everyone you know is going to die soon. In this period of time, you only have a certain amount of fucks to give.

Learning how to focus and prioritize your thoughts effectively, pick and choose what matters, based on finely honed personal values. It is extremely difficult to achieve, but it is perhaps the greatest and most important struggle one can undertake in life.

Because when you give too many fucks — everyone and everything — you’ll feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times. That all is supposed to be exactly the way you wanted it to be. It’ll eat you alive.

Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about. The key is to gradually prune the things you care about, so that you only give a fuck on the most important of occasions.

🔖 When a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some. I think what most people consider “life problems” are really just side effects of not having anything more important to worry about.

👇 Coming up, a masterclass on happiness, pain, the meaning of emotions, why we fall in love with the result (not the process), exceptionalism, and how Internet and the media have created a polarized society that only cares about extremes.

Happiness is not a solvable equation.

Happiness is a work in progress. It comes from solving problems, not avoiding them. To be happy we need something to solve. Yet solving problems is hard and often feels bad.

Finding something important and meaningful in your life is perhaps the most productive use of your time and energy. Find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Suffering is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change. But there is no value in suffering when it is done without purpose.

📍 Pain spurs action, it is not a bug, but a feature of evolution. Problems never stop. They merely get exchanged or upgraded. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of the next.

The emotional pain of rejection or failure teaches us how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

Don’t hope for a life without problems. Hope for a life with good problems.

True happiness occurs only when you find the right problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. Happiness is wanting the problems you have and wanting to solve them. Happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems.

📍 Negative emotions as a CTA: emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.

Negative emotions are a sign that something is going unaddressed.
Positive emotions are rewards for taking the proper action.

If you feel crappy it’s because your brain is telling you that there’s a problem that’s unaddressed or unresolved.

Make a habit of questioning emotions because they are not always right. Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it is good. Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad. Emotions are merely signposts or suggestions.

📍 Being in love with the result — not wanting it, enough. You can’t merely be in love with the result. Everybody loves the result. You have to love the process.

I didn’t actually want it. I was in love with the result, but I wasn’t in love with the process. Because of that, I failed. The common cultural narratives would tell me that I gave up on my dream. The truth is, I thought I wanted something, but it turns out I didn’t.

Don’t ask yourself what you want out of life. It’s easy to want success and fame and happiness and great sex. Everybody wants those things. A much more interesting question to ask yourself is, “What kind of pain do I want?” What you are willing to struggle for is a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

The climb to the top is a never-ending upward spiral with new problems always surfacing and new processes that you must fall in love with. You are never allowed to stop climbing because the entire point is to love the climb. If you ever stop loving the climb, the results will never come.

Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems.

There’s no such thing as a personal problem. If you’ve got a problem, chances are millions of other people have had it in the past. You are not unique in your suffering.

The easier and more problem-free our lives become, the more we seem to feel entitled for them to get even better. Entitlement is linked to mass-media-driven exceptionalism.

Most of us are pretty average at most things we do. Even if you’re exceptional at one thing, chances are you’re average or below average at most other things. But the media only cares about the extremes — the exceptional — these are the only ones that get all the attention, reinforcing the false perception that exceptional is the new normal.

Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience. The best of the best, worst of the worst, and most upsetting of the upsetting. We only see the most exceptional news stories because that’s what drives revenue. This is a real problem when it comes to comparison because you can only be exceptional in one thing thing and you’re going to be below average in nearly everything else. That makes comparison a very dangerous game to play.

Exceptional information drives us to feel insecure, so we feel the need to compensate through entitlement and addiction, feel the need to be more extreme, more radical, and more self-assured to get noticed or even matter.

If the worst thing you can be is in the middle of the bell curve, it then becomes better to be at the extreme low end, because at least there you’re still special and deserve attention: the most miserable, or the most oppressed, or the most victimized.

The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so because they’re obsessed with improvement, which stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. You don’t become exceptional by believing you are exceptional. It’s anti-entitlement.

The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.

Acceptance of your own mundane existence will free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations.

Self-awareness is like an onion. There are three layers:

Understanding of one’s emotions.
Asking why we feel certain emotions and understanding the root cause of the emotions that overwhelm you.
Our personal values: How am I choosing to measure myself?

📍 Values and metrics

If what we value is poorly chosen, then everything will be out of whack. At the end of the day we should ask ourselves “why am I suffering? — for what purpose?“.

🔖 What is objectively true about a situation is not how you come to see the situation — i.e. how you come to measure it. Problems might be inevitable, but the way we choose to measure them it is not, it is flexible. We get to control what our problems mean by how we choose to measure them.

The way we measure success influences how we view the problems we face.

Everything we think and feel about a situation ultimately comes back to how valuable we perceive it to be.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

—— Sigmund Freud

The difference between a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that we chose it. If you’re miserable in your current situation, it’s because you feel like some part of it is outside your control — that there’s a problem you have no ability to solve, a problem that was somehow thrust upon you without your choosing.

📍 Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable, and more depressed. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest to obtain and the easiest to lose.

🖇 Related to the three types of happiness described in Delivering Happiness.

Pleasure […] is about always chasing the next high. I like to refer to it as the “Rock Star” type of happiness because it’s great if you can have a constant inflow of stimuli, but it’s very hard to maintain unless you’re living the lifestyle of a rock star.

📍 Responsibility — it looked to me like a handy summary of Jordan Peterson’ Rule #2: Treat yourself as if you were someone that you are responsible for helping.

William James decided to conduct a little experiment. Spend one year believing that he was 100 percent responsible for everything that occurred in his life, no matter what. During this period, he would do everything in his power to change his circumstances, no matter the likelihood of failure. James would later refer to his little experiment as his “rebirth” and would credit it with everything that he later accomplished in his life.

We are responsible for everything in our lives. We always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.

Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense. Fault results from choices that have already been made. Responsibility results from the choices you’re currently making.

People will often fight over who gets to be responsible for successful and happiness. But taking responsibility for our problems is far more important because that’s where real learning comes from.

📍 Change and growth — yet again related to Jordan Peterson’ Rule #4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

Change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else. It really is that simple. It’s just not easy.

Throughout my life, I’ve been flat-out wrong about myself, others, society, culture, the world, the universe — everything. And I hope that will continue to be the case for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes.

Learning is not a binary process. When we learn we move from wrong to slightly less wrong, without actually ever reaching truth or perfection.

🔖 Personal growth can actually be quite scientific.

Our values are our hypotheses.
Our actions are the experiments.
The resulting emotions and thought patterns are our data.

We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we’re wrong today so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow.

📍 Certainty

There are particular certainties that we don’t want to let go of, values that have given ourselves meaning during the years.

Certainty is the enemy of growth. Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth.

Instead of striving for certainty, be in constant search of doubt: about beliefs, feelings, or the future.

Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change.

There is no correct ideology. There is only what your experience has shown you to be right for you. All beliefs are wrong — some are just less wrong than others.

The only thing we “know” is what hurts in the moment — but we don’t know if that will eventually turn out to be a positive experience.

People five hundred years from now will laugh at us and our certainties today. They, too, will be wrong. Just less wrong than we were.

📍 Meaning

We are associative machines, our minds keep on generating associations so we get the feeling that we are in control of our environment.

But our brains, while magnificent, they are imperfect, we make mistakes, misinterpret events, forget things, to know that this is ultimately deceptive.

Once we create meaning for ourselves it is really difficult to let go. We are biased towards the meaning that our mind has made and don’t want to let go of it.

Most of our believes are wrong.

The man who believes he knows everything learns nothing.

Despite dreaming of being X, the real potential of being an X nobody likes is far scarier than remaining an X nobody has heard of. At least, we are used to the latter.

Don’t find yourself. Never know who you are.

“Finding yourself” can cement you into a strict role with unnecessary expectations, and close you off to potential and opportunities.

📍 Manson’s Law of Avoidance: the more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it. The more something threatens how you view yourself, the more you will avoid getting around to doing it.

If I believe I’m a nice guy, I’ll avoid situations that could potentially contradict that belief. If I believe I’m an awesome cook, I’ll seek out opportunities to prove that to myself over and over again. The belief always takes precedence.

Let go of the idea that “you” exist at all — if you don’t have an identity to protect, then change becomes much easier.

Don’t be special. Don’t be unique. The moment you start worrying about what other would think you’re being narcissistic, assuming that your problems are somewhat special. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

—— Aristotle

If it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.

If it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.

The magnitude of your success is tied to how many times you’ve failed at that thing.

📍 Goals, metrics and processes

Goals are limited in the amount of happiness they can provide in our lives because they are finite. Once you achieve the goal, it can no longer provide happiness because the finish line has been crossed.

“Buy a house and a nice car” once achieved, has nothing left to give you.

Goals like buy a lake house, lose fifteen pounds — are limited in the amount of happiness they can produce in our lives. They may be helpful when pursuing quick, short-term benefits, but as guides for the overall trajectory of our life, they suck.

Paradoxically, then, by choosing processes as your focus, you can increase your overall, lifelong happiness by focusing on the process and not the goal. Processes never end, which means happiness can continue indefinitely.

A metric for the value “honesty” is never completely finished; it’s a problem that must continuously be reengaged.

Action isn’t just the consequence of motivation; it’s also the cause of it. Do something and inspiration will follow.

🖋 Sometimes problems are left aside, unattended for months, just because the idea of starting feels unbearable. Yet just the fact of putting on feet in front of the other and working on it again, inevitably generates the motion to keep at it.

If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.

📍 Manson’s “do something” principle: do something now, even if it’s really small, and let good actions cascade as a result.

📍 Less is more — or why more is not always better

The only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, or one person.

Pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to enjoy the rewards of depth of experience.

There’s a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you’ve spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career. And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting the alternatives.

We are defined by what we choose to reject.

🔖 Travel shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function.

Russian frankness is unadulterated expression. Honesty in the truest sense of the word. Communication with no conditions, no strings attached, no ulterior motive, no sales job, no desperate attempt to be liked.

To build trust you have to be honest. That means when things suck, you say so openly.

On the other hand, western culture is rooted in the desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation and conflict, is a deep valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. We are even motivated to change opinions depending on who’s listening, just for the sake of being liked.

📍 Commitment

When pursuing a wide range of experiences, there are diminishing returns to each additional adventure — it is a logarithmic trend, as you keep adding experiences, excitement flattens out.

On the other hand, commitment…

Gives you freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the unimportant.
Hones your attention and focus, directing them toward what is most efficient at making you healthy and happy.
Makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again?
Allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would.

Commitment, in its own way, offers a wealth of opportunity and experiences that would never otherwise be available to you, no matter how many surface level experiences you pursued.

Breadth of experience is necessary and desirable to go out there and discover what seems worth investing yourself in. But depth is where the gold is buried.

📍 Death

The human being is the only animal that is able to think about alternate realities.

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death makes a distinction between two types of selves:

Physical self
Conceptual self: the one the endures even after we “physically” die

All of human civilization, he says, is basically a result of immortality projects that allow our conceptual self to live on way past the point of our physical death. This is ultimately why we aim to put our names in buildings or go to Mars.

Our physical bodies will die, but we cling to the idea that we can live on through religion, politics, sports, art, and technological innovation.

All of the meaning in our life is shaped by our innate desire to “never truly die”.

Death is the only thing we know for certain, thus it shall be the compass that orients our values and decisions.

If there is no reason to do anything, if life is pointless, then there is also no reason to not do anything. What do you have to lose? You’re going to die anyway, so your fears and embarrassments and failures don’t mean anything. You might as well try.

📍 Something bigger than yourself

True happiness comes from contributing to something bigger than yourself.

On the other hand, entitlement isolates us because it runs counter the idea of a contribution to a larger, greater project.

Great attention !== Great success

People declare themselves experts, entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, mavericks, and coaches without any real-life experience, because they feel that they need to be great to be accepted in a world that broadcasts only the extraordinary.

It is the act of choosing your values and living by them that makes you great, not any outcome or accomplishment.

We’re all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t.

—— Charles Bukowski

Predictably Irrational

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly.

Everything is relative, and that’s the point.

Most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context.

We don’t know what kind of racing bike we want until we see it in the Tour De France.
We don’t know what kind of speaker system we like until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one.
We don’t know what we want to do with our lives - until we find a relative or friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing.

We not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable — and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily.

📍 The decoy effect is the secret agent in more decisions than we could imagine.

For vacation, choosing between Rome and Paris. Tough choice! Don’t know. Offer a 3rd option: Rome without the free breakfast. Call it “-Rome”, or the decoy.

Now considering 3 options: Rome, -Rome, Paris.

The comparison with the clearly inferior option makes Rome with the free breakfast seem even better. -Rome makes Rome look so good that you judge it to be even better than the difficult-to-judge Paris.

In essence, introducing (−A), the decoy, creates a simple relative comparison with (A), and hence makes (A) look better, not just relative to (−A), but overall as well. As a consequence, the inclusion of (−A) in the set, even if no one ever selects it, makes people more likely to make (A) their final choice.

Studies even find that countries with the “happiest” people are not among those with the highest personal income. Yet we keep pushing toward a higher salary.

This is the problem of relativity — we look at our decisions in a relative way and compare them locally to the available alternative.

🖇 Related to Stumbling On Happiness and the idea of driving across town to save a few bucks for a low-priced item, but not to get “the same amount” on a car, for example. Relativism at its best.

That’s a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of relativity.

📍 Arbitrary coherence. (“baby duckling”). Anchoring. Imprinting.

Once prices are established in our mind, they shape not only what we are willing to pay for an item, but also how much we are willing to pay for related products. (This makes them coherent.)

Price tags themselves are not anchors. They become anchors when we contemplate buying a product or service at that particular price. That’s when the imprint is set. From then on, we are willing to accept a range of prices, but we will always refer back to the original anchor.

📍 The fallacy of supply and demand

…or as Mark Twain once noted about Tom Sawyer, “Tom had discovered a great law of human action, namely, that in order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”

How did Starbucks charge more for coffee, then? If we were previously anchored to the prices at Dunkin’ Donuts, how did we move our anchor to Starbucks?

You go in the for the first time, then the second time you wonder, should you go in? The ideal decision-making process should take into account the quality of the coffee (Starbucks versus Dunkin’ Donuts); the prices at the two places; and, of course, the cost (or value) of walking a few more blocks to get to Dunkin’ Donuts. This is a complex computation — so instead, you resort to the simple approach: “I went to Starbucks before, and I enjoyed myself and the coffee, so this must be a good decision for me.” So you walk in and get another small cup of coffee.

🔖 We start to line up behind ourself: one that we call self-herding. This happens when we believe something is good (or bad) on the basis of our own previous behavior. Essentially, once we become the first person in line at the restaurant, we begin to line up behind ourself in subsequent experiences.

If anchoring is based on our initial decisions, how did Starbucks manage to become an initial decision in the first place? In other words, if we were previously anchored to the prices at Dunkin’ Donuts, how did we move our anchor to Starbucks? This is where it gets really interesting. When Howard Shultz created Starbucks, he was as intuitive a businessman as Salvador Assael. He worked diligently to separate Starbucks from other coffee shops, not through price but through ambience. Accordingly, he designed Starbucks from the very beginning to feel like a continental coffeehouse.

Starbucks did everything in its power to make the experience feel different. So different that we would not use the prices at Dunkin’ Donuts as an anchor, but instead would be open to the new anchor that Starbucks was preparing for us.

…more about supply and demand

Traditional economics assumes that prices of products in the market are determined by a balance between two forces: production at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). The price at which these two forces meet determines the prices in the marketplace.

This is an elegant idea, but it depends centrally on the assumption that the two forces are independent and that together they produce the market price, but:

What consumers are willing to pay can easily be manipulated, and this means that consumers don’t in fact have a good handle on their own preferences and the prices they are willing to pay for different goods and experiences.
Anchoring comes from manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (MSRPs), advertised prices, promotions, product introductions… all of which are supply-side variables. It seems then that instead of consumers’ willingness to pay influencing market prices, the causality is somewhat reversed and it is market prices themselves that influence consumers’ willingness to pay.

What this means is that demand is not, in fact, a completely separate force from supply.

In other words, the sensitivity we show to price changes might in fact be largely a result of our memory for the prices we have paid in the past and our desire for coherence with our past decisions — not at all a reflection of our true preferences or our level of demand.

Mark Twain’ quote:

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

There are wealthy men who drive 4-horse passenger coaches 20-30 miles on a daily line in the summer because the privilege costs them considerable money, but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work, and they would resign.

📍 Decisions are not isolated choices

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Perhaps it’s time to inventory the imprints and anchors in our own life. Even if they once were completely reasonable, are they still reasonable? Once the old choices are reconsidered, we can open ourselves to new decisions — and the new opportunities of a new day. That seems to make sense.

With everything you do, in fact, you should train yourself to question your repeated behaviors.

Theory says we base these decisions on our fundamental values - our likes and dislikes. But could it be that we made arbitrary decisions at some point in the past and have built our lives on them ever since, assuming the original decisions were wise?

We can actively improve on our irrational behaviors. Start by becoming aware of our vulnerabilities and train yourself to question your repeated behaviors.

If you’re planning on a purchase, ask yourself:

How did that habit begin?
What amount of pleasure will you be getting out of it?
Is the pleasure as much as you thought you would get?
Could you cut back a little and better spend the remaining money on something else?

In particular, pay attention to the first decision you make in what is going to be a long stream of decisions. When we face such a decision, it may seem this is just one decision without large consequences, but in fact the power of the first decision has a long-lasting effect that will percolate for years to come.

📍 The cost of zero

If you find a bin of free athletic socks at a department store, for instance, there’s no downside to grabbing all the socks you can. The critical issue arises when FREE! becomes a struggle between a free item and another item — a struggle in which the presence of FREE! leads us to make a bad decision.

“FREE!” makes us do irrational things.

Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside, FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is.

🧪 Experiment: a table set up in a busy area, offering chocolate:

Lindt truffle = 27 cents. Hershey’s Kiss = 2 cent. Result? 75% chose truffle, 25% chose kiss.
Lindt truffle = 15 cents. Hershey’s Kiss = 1 cent. Result? 73% chose truffle, 27% chose kiss.
Lindt truffle = 14 cents. Hershey’s Kiss = free. Result? 31% chose truffle, 69% chose kiss.

I think it’s because humans are intrinsically afraid of loss. The real allure of FREE! is tied to this fear. There’s no visible possibility of loss when we choose a FREE! item (it’s free). But suppose we choose the item that’s not free. Now there’s a risk of having made a poor decision—the possibility of a loss. And so, given the choice, we go for what is free.

📍 The cost of social norms

We live in two worlds: one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships.

Social norms: friendly requests that people make of one another. “Could you help me move this couch?” Social norms are wrapped up in our social nature and our need for community. They are usually warm and fuzzy. Instant paybacks are not required.
Market norms: the exchanges are sharp-edged: wages, prices, rents, interest, costs-and-benefits. Market relationships are not necessarily mean or evil - they also include self-reliance, inventiveness, and individualism - but they do imply comparable benefits and prompt payments.

When you are in the domain of market norms, you get what you pay for - that’s just the way it is.

Once market norms enter our considerations (aka. there is a monetary transaction involved), the social norms depart.

Using gifts is not seen as market norms. No one is offended by a small gift, because even small gifts keep us in the social exchange world and away from market norms.

🔖 Takeaway: when you’re in a restaurant with a date, for heaven’s sake don’t mention the price of the selections. Yes, they’re printed clearly on the menu. Yes, this might be an opportunity to impress your date with the caliber of the restaurant. But if you rub it in, you’ll be likely to shift your relationship from the social to the market norm.

Brilliant example to illustrate how social norms work 👇

A fine was imposed to parents that picked up their kids late. Once the fine was imposed, the day care center had inadvertently replaced the social norms with market norms. Now that the parents were paying for their tardiness, they interpreted the situation in terms of market norms. In other words, since they were being fined, they could decide for themselves whether to be late or not, and they frequently chose to be late. Needless to say, this was not what the day care center intended.

Once the fine was removed, the behavior of the parents didn’t change. They continued to pick up their kids late. In fact, when the fine was removed, there was a slight increase in the number of tardy pickups (after all, both the social norms and the fine had been removed).

🔖 Takeaway: when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time. In other words, social relationships are not easy to reestablish. Once the bloom is off the rose — once a social norm is trumped by a market norm — it will rarely return.

📍 Social norms applied to education

Cash will take you only so far — social norms are the forces that can make a difference in the long run. Instead of focusing the attention of the teachers, parents, and kids on test scores, salaries, and competition, it might be better to instill in all of us a sense of purpose, mission, and pride in education. To do this we certainly can’t take the path of market norms. The Beatles proclaimed some time ago that you “Can’t Buy Me Love” and this also applies to the love of learning — you can’t buy it; and if you try, you might chase it away.

We should probably first rethink school curricula, and link them in more obvious ways to social goals (elimination of poverty and crime, elevation of human rights…), technological goals (boosting energy conservation, space exploration, nanotechnology…), and medical goals (cures for cancer, diabetes, obesity…) that we care about as a society. This way the students, teachers, and parents might see the larger point in education and become more enthusiastic and motivated about it.

Money is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.

So what good is money? In ancient times, money made trading easier: you didn’t have to sling a goose over your back when you went to market, or decide what section of the goose was equivalent to a head of lettuce. In modern times money has even more benefits, as it allows us to specialize, borrow, and save. But money has also taken on a life of its own. As we have seen, it can remove the best in human interactions.

📍 The influence of arousal

Our experiment at Berkeley revealed not just the old story that we are all like Jekyll and Hyde, but also something new — that every one of us, regardless of how “good” we are, underpredicts the effect of passion on our behavior. In every case, the participants in our experiment got it wrong. Even the most brilliant and rational person, in the heat of passion, seems to be absolutely and completely divorced from the person he thought he was.

When you are in one state, and try to predict your behavior in another state, you’ll get it wrong.

We all systematically underpredict the degree to which arousal completely negates our superego, and the way emotions can take control of our behavior.

📍 Procrastination and self-control

Procrastination (from the Latin pro, meaning for; and eras, meaning tomorrow) is rooted in the same kind of problem as arousal: when we promise to save our money, we are in a cool state. When we promise to exercise and watch our diet, again we’re cool.

But then the lava flow of hot emotion comes rushing in:

Just when we promise to save, we see a new car, a mountain bike, or a pair of shoes that we must have.
Just when we plan to exercise regularly, we find a reason to sit all day in front of the television.
And as for the diet? I’ll take that slice of chocolate cake and begin the diet in earnest tomorrow.

🖋 This idea is related to the asynchrony found in positive feedback loops during the habit-forming process. If you commit to exercise more, the benefits of exercising won’t show up in the short-term, but instead, eating that cookie has an instant gratification (and seemingly no penalty) that we end up giving in.

Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.

Students did their assignments best when forced to obey a schedule, instead of letting them choose for themselves (since procrastination takes over). If this lesson is applied to society, government could force required health exams the way we get tickets for jaywalking or having seat belts unsecured.

What if the doctor asked you if you would like to pay this $100 deposit for the test? Would you accept this self-imposed challenge? And if you did, would it make you more likely to show up for the procedure?

📍 Bundling activities: the lesson to learn from Ford’s experience is that bundling our medical tests (and procedures) so that people remember to do them is far smarter than adhering to an erratic series of health commands that people are unwilling to follow.

Thoreau wrote, “Simplify! Simplify!” And, indeed, simplification is one mark of real genius.

🔖 The self-control credit card: customers decide in advance how much money they wanted to spend in each category, per store, per time-frame. For example: $20 on coffee per week, or $600 on clothes every 6 months, or no candy between 2pm and 6pm. If they surpass their limit, cardholders select their penalties. The card could be rejected, or they could tax themselves and send the tax to Habitat for Humanity, a friend, or long-term savings. Or it could email your spouse.

📍 The price of ownership

On the basis of Jack Knetsch, Dick Thaler, and Daniel Kahneman’s research on the “endowment effect,” we predicted that when we own something we begin to value it more than other people do.

🎲 Bunch of people wait in line for football tickets. They’re handed out on a lottery system. Some get them, others don’t, but they all waited the same time. […] It was an emotional chasm that was formed, between those who now imagined the glory of the game, and those who imagined what else they could buy with the price of the ticket. And it was an empirical chasm as well—the average selling price (about $2,400) was separated by a factor of about 14 from the average buyer’s offer (about $175).

🔖 Adam Smith wrote, “Every man [and woman] … lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.”

We focus on what we may lose, rather than what we may gain. When we price our beloved VW, therefore, we think more about what we will lose (the use of the bus) than what we will gain (money to buy something else).
We assume other people will see the transaction from the same perspective as we do. We somehow expect the buyer of our VW to share our feelings, emotions, and memories. Or we expect the buyer of our house to appreciate how the sunlight filters through the kitchen windows.

It’s as hard for the buyer to imagine the seller’s point of view as it is for the seller to imagine the buyer’s.

📍 The Ikea effect (aka. escalation of commitment): the more work you put into something, the more ownership you begin to feel for it. Think about the last time you assembled some furniture. Figuring out which piece goes where and which screw fits into which hole boosts the feeling of ownership.

“Virtual ownership,” of course, is one mainspring of the advertising industry. We see a happy couple driving down the California coastline in a BMW convertible, and we imagine ourselves there. We get a catalog of hiking clothing from Patagonia, see a polyester fleece pullover, and—poof—we start thinking of it as ours. The trap is set, and we willingly walk in. We become partial owners even before we own anything.

Similarly, we can start to feel ownership during a bidding on eBay.

Ownership changes perspective. Moving backwards to our pre-ownership state is a loss we cannot abide. While moving up in life, we indulge ourselves with the fantasy that we can always ratchet ourselves back if need be, but in reality, we can’t.

🖇 Related to Mark Manson’s brilliant post on minimalism where he points out that “there are two psychological factors at play in owning a bunch of stuff and both lower the overall quality of life: identity investment and loss aversion”.

📍 Keeping doors open

We might not always be aware of it, but in every case we give something up for those options. We end up with a computer that has more functions than we need, or a stereo with an unnecessarily expensive warranty.

Once they saw their options shrinking, our MIT students could not stay focused. Pecking like barnyard hens at every door, they sought to make more money, and ended up making far less.

What my friend (and also the donkey and Congress) failed to do when focusing on the similarities and minor differences between two things was to take into account the consequences of not deciding. The donkey failed to consider starving, Congress failed to consider the lives lost while it debated highway legislation, and my friend failed to consider all the great pictures he was missing, not to mention the time he was spending at Best Buy.

More important, they all failed to take into consideration the relatively minor differences that would have come with either one of the decisions.

📍 The effect of expectations

Students who got beer with drops of vinegar liked it. But if they were told in advance it had vinegar, they didn’t. Students who were told about the vinegar after tasting the beer liked it much better — as much as the ones who didn’t know it had vinegar at all.

If you tell people up front that something might be distasteful, the odds are good that they will end up agreeing with you — not because their experience tells them so but because of their expectations.

Same with coffee: when presented with test-taste coffee in styrofoam cups, people said it tasted cheap. When the same coffee was presented in nice cups, saucers and spoons, they said it tasted expensive. And they’d be willing to pay more for it.

🔖 Stereotypes: asians good at math, women worse at math. This means that Asian-American women could be influenced by both notions. In fact, they are. Asian women were asked to take a math exam.

Half were asked questions about being Asian first (priming their thoughts for race-related issues), and they did better on the test.
Half were asked questions about being a woman first (priming their thoughts for gender-related issues), and they did worse on the test.

🖇 Related to Priming - Wikipedia effect, not just states of mind prime behavior or decisions, but also actions and emotions can be primed by events of which we are not even aware.

🎲 John Bargh and the “Florida effect” involves two stages of priming. First, the set of words primes thoughts of old age, though the word “old” is never mentioned; second, these thoughts prime behavior, walking slowly, which is associative with old age.

Tasting beer without knowing about the vinegar, or learning about the vinegar after the beer was tasted, allowed the true flavor to come out. The same approach should be used to settle arguments — this type of “blind” condition might help us better recognize the truth.

When stripping away our preconceptions and our previous knowledge is not possible, perhaps we can at least acknowledge that we are all biased. If we acknowledge that we are trapped within our perspective, which partially blinds us to the truth, we may be able to accept the idea that conflicts generally require a neutral third party — who has not been tainted with our expectations — to set down the rules and regulations.

📍 The power of price

The more we understand the connection between brain and body, the more things that once seemed clear-cut become ambiguous. Nowhere is this as apparent as with the placebo.

When given a placebo pill, told it was a pain pill, almost all people felt the pain-relieving effects when told it was very expensive. But when told it was only 10 cents, only half felt the effects.

For people with recent pain-medicine experience, it was even more extreme. They had recently learned first-hand that you get what you pay for.

📍 Cost-benefit calculation framework for “classic” type of dishonesty:

How much money is in the till (the reward)
Who might be around to stop them (chances of getting caught or how difficult it’ll be to get it done)
What punishment they may face if caught

📍 Second type of dishonesty: the kind committed by people who generally consider themselves honest — the men and women who have “borrowed” a pen from a conference site, taken an extra splash of soda from the soft drink dispenser, exaggerated the cost of their television on their property loss report…

Cheating is often one step removed from cash. Taking a red pencil from work is easy. Taking 10 cents from the petty cash drawer in order to buy a pencil is not so easy.

Smith’s theory had a darker corollary: since people engage in a cost-benefit analysis with regard to honesty, they can also engage in a cost-benefit analysis to be dishonest. According to this perspective, individuals are honest only to the extent that suits them (including their desire to please others).

This means that even when we have no chance of getting caught, we still don’t become wildly dishonest.

Sigmund Freud explained it this way. He said that as we grow up in society, we internalize the social virtues. This internalization leads to the development of the superego. In general, the superego is pleased when we comply with society’s ethics, and unhappy when we don’t. This is why we stop our car at four AM when we see a red light, even if we know that no one is around.

We care about honesty and we want to be honest. The problem is that our internal honesty monitor is active only when we contemplate big transgressions, like grabbing an entire box of pens from the conference hall. For the little transgressions, like taking a single pen or two pens, we don’t even consider how these actions would reflect on our honesty and so our superego stays asleep.

Cheating is a lot easier when it’s a step removed from money.

Do you think that the architects of Enron’s collapse would have stolen money from the purses of old women? Certainly, they took millions of dollars in pension monies from a lot of old women. But do you think they would have hit a woman with a blackjack and pulled the cash from her fingers? You may disagree, but my inclination is to say no.

At a college dorm, we put 10 cans of coke in shared fridges, and they all disappeared. We put 10 $1-bills on a plate and they all stayed.

Students given a chance to cheat under ordinary circumstances cheated, on average, by 2.7 questions. But when they were given the same chance to cheat with non-monetary currency, their cheating increased to 5.9. What a difference there is in cheating for money versus cheating for something that is a step away from cash!

🔖 Students primed with the Ten Commandments were primed to cheat less: people cheat when they have a chance to do so, but they don’t cheat as much as they could. Moreover, once they begin thinking about honesty — recalling the Ten Commandments — they stop cheating completely. In other words, when we are removed from any benchmarks of ethical thought, we tend to stray into dishonesty. But if we are reminded of morality at the moment we are tempted, then we are much more likely to be honest.

None of this makes logical sense, but when the medium of exchange is non-monetary, our ability to rationalize increases by leaps and bounds.

How we can control our tendency to cheat when we are brought to our senses only by the sight of cash — and what we can do now that cash is going away.

📍 Free lunches

When people order out loud in a restaurant, they choose differently than when they order privately. It varies from culture to culture, though — in Hong Kong, people felt they had to order the same thing as their companions.

People who ordered out loud were also not has happy with their selections afterwards.

🔖 What we found was a correlation between the tendency to order alcoholic beverages that were different from what other people at the table had chosen and a personality trait called “need for uniqueness”: sometimes we are willing to sacrifice the pleasure from a particular consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others.

We are all far less rational in our decision making than standard economic theory assumes. Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless—they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains.

Standard economics: all human decisions are rational and informed, motivated by an accurate concept of the worth of all goods and services and the amount of happiness (utility) all decisions are likely to produce. Under this set of assumptions, everyone in the marketplace is trying to maximize profit and striving to optimize his experiences. As a consequence, economic theory asserts that there are no free lunches — if there were any, someone would have already found them and extracted all their value.
Behavioral economics: people are susceptible to irrelevant influences from their immediate environment (context effects), irrelevant emotions, shortsightedness, and other forms of irrationality.

The good news is that these mistakes also provide opportunities for improvement. If we all make systematic mistakes in our decisions, then why not develop new strategies, tools, and methods to help us make better decisions and improve our overall well-being? That’s exactly the meaning of free lunches from the perspective of behavioral economics.

We usually think of ourselves as sitting in the driver’s seat, with ultimate control over the decisions we make and the direction our life takes; but, alas, this perception has more to do with our desires — with how we want to view ourselves — than with reality.

Our visual and decision environments are filtered to us courtesy of our eyes, our ears, our senses of smell and touch, and the master of it all, our brain. By the time we comprehend and digest information, it is not necessarily a true reflection of reality. Instead, it is our representation of reality, and this is the input we base our decisions on. In essence we are limited to the tools nature has given us, and the natural way in which we make decisions is limited by the quality and accuracy of these tools.

Productizing Hacks

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Despite I have already written (twice) about the rationale behind pansa and why such a product ought to exist, I still had second thoughts about embarking on such a large project without a clear direction or at least some certainty that it’d lead somewhere productive or valuable.

At the end of the day, why the world needs yet another note-taking app remains a legitimate question to ask. Quoting from Broken Notes:

On top of being an over-served market, note-taking apps — alongside productivity apps, such as habit-forming routines or to-do lists — have become one of the favorite playgrounds for talented indie developers.

Aside from the market saturation, I even started to wonder why is it that my brain doesn’t map to any existing product — or if am I really the one to blame because of that.

This made me think deeply about what pansa is ultimately about. But first, let me show you how I currently use notes to capture my thoughts, clip information and connect ideas — through markdown.

> Quote — isolated author highlight
📍 Concept — definition
🔖 Bookmark — folding the corner of a page
✏️ Annotation — something I'd write in the margins of a page
🖇 Related to [link](#)

…what was that? ☝️

If you were to read through any raw note of mine — and the most public expression of these are my book notes — you’d inevitably bump into these Emoji-based remarks.

Each of them represents the digital version of a common action I’d perform in the real world if I wanted to capture the same item through an analog device, such as a notebook.

This way I can bring familiar actions to the digital realm and create a simple map that helps me translate the way I think into 0s and 1s.

For example, if you’d start reading a note and see a > mark you can expect something bold, an idea deeply connected to the author that I want to keep and remember. Along these lines, a 📍 would signal an interesting concept, a definition — you’d usually find it paired with a link to its Wikipedia entry. If you’re curious and want to see it in action for yourself, just skim through this summary of Thinking Fast And Slow.

Prior to this article, I’d never written down this legend. Annotating my memos in this fashion was something I did for myself, but never shared nor thought about it at this meta-level. These mappings — despite barely scalable — just came naturally to me. In other words, I never sat down to explicitly design them. They lived in my mind and were not part of a documented process.

But then I got it. This is exactly what pansa is ultimately about: designing an explicit feature out of these hacks.

At the end of the day, each Emoji signals a user story of sorts, an intent. Yet this is something I “organically” constructed on top of a medium that was not designed to hold that feature in the first place.

And it works? Well, yes it does, kind of. A bicycle can also get you from Berlin to Rome, but I’d argue that it is not the best way to go, I’d rather take a plane.

Mounting Emoji-based hacks on top of markdown is fine, and it has served me well for years, but it is not optimal. Yet they served, though, another — way more valuable — purpose: they paved the road for a new product to existing.

It inevitably reminded me of the design trend for turning user hacks into product insights, a widely shared pattern across the design community that advocates for stop thinking of the design process in terms of either “users don’t know what they don’t know” or “users know what we don’t yet know”, but instead treat it as a reinforcing cycle.

Our approach is to look for “the hacks” — the things users are already doing in an attempt to solve a particular need or problem — and turn those hacks into insights.

In a nutshell, that if you want to discover “true” user problems, you should look for hacks, workarounds users already make (and come up with by themselves) to get the job done. These are usually unpolished, yet highly creative solutions to real needs that provide extremely valuable insights, and ultimately, act as a proxy for building great features.

I see these Emojis as my own “hacks”, and I’d love for pansa to be able to productize and make an explicit feature out of them, one that sits at the product’s core, a first class citizen, not just an Emoji-based hack on top of markdown.

Stumbling On Happiness

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How much of what you do is for now, and how much is to please the future you?

We do “good” things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become. We treat our future selves as though they were our children, constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy.

🖊 Mind the syntactic distinction between “me” and “they” as if they were different people.

The human being is the only animal that experiences and thinks about the future, and is able to see the world as it has never seen before — imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real.

The human brain is an “anticipation machine” and “making future” is the most important thing it does.

The frontal lobe is responsible for planning and anxiety — two key future-oriented functions.

When people find it easy to imagine an event, they overestimate the likelihood that it will occur. Because we get more practice imagining good events than bad events, we overestimate the likelihood that good events will actually happen to us, which leads us to be unrealistically optimistic about our futures.

On the other hand, fear, worry, and anxiety have useful roles to play in our lives. We motivate by dramatizing the unpleasant consequences of misbehaviors by imagining the unpleasant tomorrows.

One of the central needs of humans is to control things. Enacting control over your own life is a source of pleasure.

The most important reason why our brains insist on simulating the future is that our brains want to control the experiences we are about to have.

🖊 Whenever you are leading a team, make sure they feel in control, that they are making decisions themselves.

If we lose our ability to control things, we become unhappy, helpless, hopeless, and depressed. Despite we exert no control over an uncontrollable event, people often act as though they can control the uncontrollable.

Subjectivity

The fact that experience is unobservable to everyone but the person having it.

We don’t notice changes if we are not focused on an experience as it changes. In this case, we rely on our memories to remember and recognize a change, but our memories are quite faulty — thus it is difficult to assess happiness on a shaky memory.

No one knows what happiness really is. That means we can’t say definitely whether someone in a situation that might seem bad to us, is actually less happy than we are.

We can be wrong about our own emotional experience.

📍 Language squishing hypothesis: our current view and understanding of the world completely shapes our own perception and emotional experience.

🖇 Learning to See — iA

Once we have an experience, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened.

📍 Experience-stretching hypothesis: you might have heard “They only think they’re happy because they don’t know what they are missing.” That’s actually the point. Not knowing what we are missing is the very thing that allows us to be happy despite not having some other opportunity.

🖇 Hedonic treadmill — Wikipedia

In other words, your experiential background can dramatically change your happiness levels. Once you know something exists and have experienced pleasure from it, then your definition of happiness changes compared to what it was in the past.

What’s more, an experience that once brought you pleasure could no longer do. A man given a drink of water in the desert may rate his happiness as an 8/8. A year later, that same drink might make him feel no better than a 2/8.

Experience and awareness are closely related but not the same. Experience refers to partaking in an event. Awareness refers to being cognizant that the event is happening.

Experience comes from the Latin “experientia”, which means “to try”
Awareness comes from the Greek “horáō”, which means “to see”

How to evaluate subjective experiences?

Psychological sciences will always be imperfect because we are trying to observe someone else’s subjective experience, but it’s the best we’ve got and the closest an outside observer can get to understanding the inside of someone else’s mind.

📍 In this scenario we have to trust on the Law of Large Numbers. Which is to say that phenomena arises from very large numbers of something, is not the same as that phenomena derived from a smaller sample “but bigger”.

Large numbers make the experiment behave in a totally different way. For example, billions of neurons lead to a conscious human brain, but two neurons are not a small version of consciousness.

Similarly, one person’s subjective experience of happiness (and life) might be imperfect and subjective, but when we look at hundreds or thousands of people truths and patterns start to emerge. The individual imperfections cancel each other out.

🖇 An idea closely related to Thinking Fast And Slow and the idea that:

Large samples are more precise than small samples, which is the same to say that extreme outcomes are more likely to be found in small samples.

Realism

The way our brain store and retrieve memories of past experience deceives us and provides a faulty interpretation of the way things truly are.

📍 Manufactured belief: because those interpretations are usually so good, we do not realize that we are seeing an interpretation. Instead, we feel as though we are sitting comfortably inside our heads, looking out though the clear glass windshield of our eyes, watching the world as it really is.

🔖 It has been demonstrated by several experiments that information gathered after an event can actually change our memories of such event.

We forget that our brains are talented forgers, delivering a mixture of memory and perception whose detail is so compelling that its inauthenticity is rarely detected.

How our brains accomplish such faithful reflection? Immanuel Kant — Wikipedia claimed that our perceptions are the result of a psychological process that combines:

What our eyes see
What we already think, feel, know, want and believe

Then uses this combination of sensory information and preexisting knowledge to construct our perceptions of reality.

As Will Durant — Wikipedia put it, a manufactured reality.

Our brains “fill in” all sorts of information each day. Our predictions are influenced by our experiences. We make assumptions about things that we predict based on the previous experiences we have had or heard about before.

Therefore, the mistake we make when we unthinkingly accept the validity of our memories and perceptions is the same mistake we make when we imagine our futures.

📍 The power of absence: we tend to underestimate the events that don’t happen. To infer causal relationships between two events, you have to compute:

Co ocurrences
Non co ocurrences
Co-absences

Yet people tend to focus on or remember “what happened”, but not “what didn’t happen”. Again, in the same way, we tend to omit the details when we think of the future and focus only in the information at hand.

For example, a life with blindness is about a lot more than being blind, but when we imagine life as a blind person we tend to only think about seeing and forget all the other parts of life.

🔖 Seeing in time is like seeing in space:

When we imagine the distant future, we tend to imagine things in generalities and gloss over the details and focus more on the “why”.
When we imagine things in the near future (like tomorrow), we tend to think in concrete details and focus more on the “how”.

When things are far away (in space) they are vague and lacking in detail. We do not mistakenly conclude that the far-away thing is vague and lacking in detail. But when we remember or imagine a distant (in time) event, our brains seem to overlook the fact that details vanish, and we conclude that the distant events are as vague as we are imagining and remembering them.

For example, have you ever wondered why you often make commitments that you deeply regret when the moment to fulfill them arrives? When we said yes, we were thinking in terms of why instead of how, in terms of causes of consequences instead of execution, and we failed to consider the fact that the detail-free event we were imagining would not be the detail-laden event we would actually experience. Doing something next month is “an act of love”, whereas doing it right now is “an act of lunch”.

20 dollars in a year vs 19 dollars in 364 days
20 dollars today vs 19 dollars tomorrow

Presentism

Our today’s experience inevitably shapes our views of the future. Everyone tends to use the present as a way to imagine the future and influence memories of the past. Thus, our memories and imaginations are often closer to our current reality than actual reality.

That’s the reason why when scientists make erroneous predictions, they almost always err by predicting that the future will be too much like the present.

📍 Preefeling: just as imagination previews objects, so does it prefeel events.

When we ask our brains to look at a real object and an imaginary object at the same time, our brains choose the real object. Eyes open and looking at something overrides imagining something.

When we try to ignore our current gloomy state and make a forecast about how we will feel tomorrow, we find it’s a lot like trying to imagine the taste of marshmallow while chewing liver. It’s only natural that we should imagine the future and then consider how doing so makes us feel, but because our brains are hell-bent on responding to current events, we mistakenly conclude that we will feel tomorrow as we feel today.

📍 Starting points have a profound impact on ending points. Your starting point matters because we often end up close to where we started. (This could be applied to many areas of life: memories, socioeconomic status, education, etc.)

🖇 An idea closely related to the Anchoring Effect from Thinking Fast And Slow.

🔖 Variety and repetition: the idea of anchoring perfectly translates to variety — variety made people less happy, not more. Volunteers in a no-variety group were more satisfied than volunteers in the variety group.

Variety made people less happy, not more.

Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. Jhink about the first time your love said “I love you”, versus the 100th time.

📍 Habituation effect: decreases pleasure with repeated cycles, but it can fade over time. “Variety is the spice of life” can be false depending on timing.

Time and variety are two ways to avoid habituation, and if you have one, then you don’t need the other.

When episodes are sufficiently separated in time, variety is not only unnecessary, it can actually be costly.

When considering options available to you during a single session (like many appetizers at one meal) variety is good. When considering options spaced out over time (like what to order at your favorite restaurant each month) go with your top pick every time because the habituation effect will decrease between each session and you’ll get full enjoyment each time.

🖊 We tend to think of time as we think of space — past is behind, present is here, future is beyond. If we draw a timeline we do it as we write, left to right. Yet this is not a shared pattern across cultures, other cultures that don’t share this values do it their own way.

We compare with the past instead of with the available.

It is much easier to remember the past rather than generate new possibilities — thus I’ll tend to compare the present with the past when I should be comparing the present with the possible instead.

People are more likely to purchase a vacation package that has been marked down from $600 to $500 than an identical package that costs $400 that was on sale the previous day for $300. We end up preferring bad deals that have become decent deals to great deals that were once amazing deals.

🔖 The human brain is not sensitive to the absolute magnitude of stimulation, but it is extraordinary sensitive to differences in changes — to the relative difference of stimulation.

There is no answer to the question “is people able to detect 5 ounces?” Because brains do not detect “ounces”, they detect “differences in ounces”.

The same is true for other physical magnitudes, but it also extends to non-physical objects, like money. We don’t think in absolute dollars. We think of relative dollars. We would drive across town to save $50 on a $100 radio, but not to save $50 on a $100,000 car. Yet our bank account doesn’t “work” in terms of relative dollars, but in absolute ones. Those $50 will be the same ones we purchase a pencil or a house.

📍 Side-by-side comparisons: having objects side-by-side make us consider features we weren’t even thinking of when we thought of buying the item in the first place.

For example, people were given the opportunity to bid on a dictionary that was in perfect condition and had 10,000 words. They bid $24. Others given the opportunity to bid on a dictionary with a torn cover but 20,000 words. They bid $20. When a different group was able to compare them side-by-side, they bid $19 for the small intact dictionary and $27 for the large torn dictionary. People care about an attribute (# of words) only when it is brought to their attention by side-by-side comparison.

🔖 What do all these facts about comparison mean for our ability to imagine future feelings?

Value is determined by the comparison of one thing to another.
There is more than one kind of comparison we can make in any given instance.
We may value something more highly when we make one kind of comparison than when we make a different kind of comparison.

If we want to predict how something will make us feel in the future, we must consider the kind of comparison we will be making in the future, and not the kind of comparison we happen to be making in the present.

Just because the comparison has been brought to our attention, we can’t imagine our futures without it. And we don’t ask ourselves if the comparisons we are making now, are the ones we will be making later.

🔖 Great example of this: sit people in a table and ask them how they’d feel eating a bag of potato chips. In one group place a chocolate bar next to the chips, on the other, a plate with sardines. Then people compare how would they enjoy eating the potatoes compared with the “other” food. But they were wrong, because the moment they’d eat the potato chips, neither the chocolate nor the sardines would have any influence whatsoever in their enjoyment of the chips.

Again, side-by-side comparisons, when evaluating their experience eating the chips, they were doing so “compared to the other food” instead of evaluating the actual experience. Same thing when buying a pair of speakers side-by-side.

We think losses are more powerful than equal sized gains.

📍 Presentism: refers to judging historical events or people by modern day standards. It is largely useless and unfair because you can’t expect historical figures to make the same decisions as we do now because they lived in a very different context. Condemning Thomas Jefferson for keeping slaves or Sigmund Freud for patronizing women is like arresting someone today for having driven without a seat belt in 1923.

While pigeons and rats respond to stimuli as they are presented in the world, people respond to stimuli as they are represented in the mind.

Rationalization

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

🔖 The brain and the eye have developed a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees and not what the eye denies. But in return the eye has agreed to look where the brain wants. When the facts don’t match our expectations, we just cook the facts.

We tend to overestimate how terrible traumatic events will actually be: when people are asked to predict how they’ll feel if a bad event occurs, they consistently overestimate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.

🔖 We’re more likely to look for and find a positive view of things we’re stuck with than of things we’re not. Because it is only when we can’t change our experience that we look for ways to change our view of the experience.

We find silver linings only when we must.

🔖 We tend to overvalue freedom. We can easily imagine all of the benefits freedom will provide to us, but we tend to underestimate the fact that freedom hinders us from moving forward because we are constantly debating if their are better options out there. Only when we have fully committed and gone “all in” do we reach an inescapable situation where our brain can easily justify our behavior and circumstances.

Because experiences are inherently ambiguous, finding a positive view of an experience is done well and often. Racetrack gamblers evaluate their horses more positively when they are leaving the betting window than when they are approaching it. Same with voters. Objects are fine on their own, but when they become our objects, they are instantly finer. People are adept at finding a positive way to view things once those things become their own.

Nobody wants to be stood up at the altar, but those who have had it happen say it was the best thing that happened to them. Like so many things, getting jilted is more painful in prospect and more rosy in retrospect.

📍 We have psychological immune systems which often get triggered when we experience particularly traumatic events. These systems protect us from events that we would assume would be intensely painful and thus we are able to recover from them better than we often assume we would.

Inescapable situations will trigger our psychological immune systems, which then promote our brain’s ability to deliver a positive outlook and happiness from an inescapable situation.

If we can’t find people who are doing more poorly than we are, we create them.
When we want to believe that someone is smart, a single letter of recommendation may suffice. When we don’t want to believe that person is smart, we may demand a thick envelope full of transcripts, tests, and testimony.

🔖 It doesn’t take much to convince us that we are smart and healthy, but it takes a lot of facts to convince us of the opposite.

🖇 Related to the Confirmation Bias also seen in Thinking Fast And Slow. We don’t just select facts that support our own views from magazines, but also from memory.

We spent countless hours and dollars arranging our lives to ensure that we are surrounded by people who like us, and people who are like us, information that supports our own beliefs and realities.

🔖 People in all walks of life seem to regret NOT having done things much more than they regret things they did. The most popular regrets are not going to college, not grasping profitable business opportunities, and not spending enough time with family and friends.

Maybe because… It’s harder to manufacture positive and credible views of inactions than actions.

Three interesting related-concepts seen throughout the book:

Insight ~ remedied by glasses
Hindsight ~ remedied by written notes of the past
Foresight is as fallible as insight or hindsight, how to remedy foresight? 👇

Corrigibility

People choose certainty over uncertainty and clarity over mystery, despite the fact that in both cases clarity and certainty had been shown to diminish happiness.

We naturally (but incorrectly) assume that things that come easily to mind are things we have frequently encountered.

Infrequent or unusual experiences are the most memorable. We tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times not the most likely of times.

It is usually the way an experience ends that shapes the how we remember it. Memory’s fetish for endings explains why women often remember childbirth as less painful than it really was, and why couples whose relationships have gone sour remember that they were never really happy in the first place.

Wealth increases happiness when it lifts people out of poverty into middle class, but it does little to increase happiness thereafter.

🔖 Economies grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy — which we know it definitely won’t.

The belief that children are a source of happiness becomes a part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it.

One way to make predictions about our own emotional futures is to find someone who is having the experience we are contemplating and ask them how they feel.

The best way to predict our feelings tomorrow is to see how others are feeling today.

The average person doesn’t see themselves as average. Most people see themselves as more [fill in the blank] than the average Joe. Ironically, our bias towards seeing ourselves as better than average causes us to see ourselves as less biased than average, too.

We don’t always see ourselves as superior, but we almost always see ourselves as unique.

Surrogation is a cheap and effective way to predict one’s future emotions, but because we don’t realize just how similar we all are, we reject this reliable method and rely instead on our imaginations, as flawed and fallible as they may be.

📍 Bernoulli’s calculation for happiness

Multiply the odds of getting what you want by the utility of getting what you want: happiness = probability * pleasure.
Each successive dollar provides a little less pleasure than the one before it. The determination of the value of an item must not be based on its price, but on the utility it yields.
The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to predict the utility we will get from our choices because of the many biases we have.

The Right Time

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

For those who know me well it shouldn’t come as a surprise that — at several stages of my career, and for many years now — I’ve been pondering with the idea of becoming a full-time developer.

In 2011, right out of college, and after building the first iteration of iomando by myself, I fell in love with the craft and wondered if, ultimately, that was my calling. Long story short, a combination of a premature seed round at iomando, pushy investors, and my inability to say “no”, inadvertently put me on the “manager’s track”.

In 2015, right after stepping down from iomando, I had committed to a sabbatical that, hopefully, would route me back to the “developer’s track”. Long story short, my sabbatical barely lasted twelve days, and again, I was back on the “manager’s track”.

This time around though, not without a cynical touch of humor.

What are the odds, that not only destiny has always pushed me towards managerial roles, and away from technical ones, but in an unexpected turn of events, it put me in charge of the school that helps its students become software developers themselves?

As campus manager, I’ve literally helped and advised hundreds of students getting a job, from [fill in the blank] to software developer. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m extremely proud of the career that I’ve cast for myself. But sometimes one has to admit that destiny’s irony goes a long way.

That being said, and setting aside my own frustrations and this never-ending indecision that runs deep inside my head, I’ve never stopped learning and coding as a hobbyist.

From the good old college days tinkering with C and Visual Basic, I’ve always been on the lookout for new learning opportunities and keeping up to date with the latest technologies.

In 2016, as a campus manager, I enrolled Ironhack’s Part-time Web Development Bootcamp — not just to experience our own product first hand, but out of a genuine curiosity to learn web development.

In 2017, right after my transition back again to product management, I enrolled the Udacity Data Analyst Nanodegree — not to become a data analyst myself, but to bring a little bit of sanity into an overly opinionated environment.

And again, 2018 has been all about React, and one step along the way has been graduating from the Udacity React Developer Nanodegree — not to become a developer myself, but to deeply understand the stack our engineering team deals with every day.

That was quite a long prologue.

My point is that during these years at Ironhack, I’ve encouraged a lot of people to make the change, switch careers and join the tech industry as software developers — how effortless is to deliver advice, when your own interests are not at stake!

At the end of the day, it is a matter of empathy — and I get them because I’ve been in the exact same situation as they are. Maybe that’s why most of them end up immensely happy with their career choices and come back later to thank me — for which I’m extremely humbled and grateful, definitely one of the reasons I take pleasure in what I do.

On the other hand, I’ve also been on the other side of the conversation. I’ve consulted many friends and mentors if I should make the move, and become a software developer myself.

Again, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody — the first part of this very post might lead you to think that I’m already halfway there. And of course, their recommendations, look a lot like the ones I give to other people: “just do it”.

Yet a quick look into my Twitter profile might tell you that, so far, I haven’t made the change.

Am I not eating my own dog food? Is it cowardliness? Lack of confidence? The reason why is beside the point, the thing is that it made me think, way beyond this particular situation.

It made me think how many times we deliver unsolicited advice to people we care about, and while most of the time they listen, they don’t act.

And we get judgmental, because for us it is so damn obvious, that we can’t understand their indecision. Why? We are convinced we have far more domain knowledge. Yet they don’t listen. We get frustrated, even angry.

Well, for them — for me, too — it’s just not the right time.

Giving advice and receiving advice are completely different things. You have to be qualified to give advice, but you have to be prepared to receive it, which is a far more complicated endeavor.

Because it is impossible for a third party observer to fully appreciate the dimension of another’s mind. What’s going on in there? Which are their struggles right now? If we can’t even understand ourselves, how come we can pretend to even grasp the surface of somebody else?

You know, I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions, but I’ll make an exception for this one.

For 2019, I resolve to embrace empathy, to acknowledge and respect the battle each of us is secretly fighting — even without knowing which one this is. Be patient and accept that right now is not the right time. Yet persist, and wait until the time comes. Then, just then, become their best support.

Now — Early 2019

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Training

Keeping up with the ~~obsession~~ goal of running a marathon under three hours. The next stop, after missing the 3h15min mark — just by 39 seconds — in Valencia, will be the Sevilla Marathon on the 17th of February and my hometown’ Barcelona Marathon on the 10th of March.

Both Sevilla and Barcelona should be clocking somewhere between 3h10min and 3h15min, the closer to the former, the better.

Making

A growing discontent with note-taking apps has recently gotten all my attention, to the extent that I’ve decided to create my own thing.

I’m still not sure where this is going. It could end up nowhere with “yet another” note-taking app, finding out it simply can’t be done. Or maybe, just maybe, creating an amazing product that solves all my note-related pains.

What I do know is that it might become one of the most delightful side-projects I have ever worked on and that I’ll be having the time of my life building it.

Reading

I want to keep on reading a couple of books per month, but also reinstate the practice of publishing my book notes — even if they aren’t extremely polished.

Early 2019, these will be my eight (+1) book pickings:

Thinking Fast And Slow

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction

🖇 Related to Free Will most impressions and thoughts arise in your conscious experience without your knowing how they got there.

🖇 Related to Moneyball we are far too willing to believe research findings based on inadequate evidence and prone to collect too few observations in our own research.

We use resemblance as a simplifying heuristic — a rule of thumb — to make a difficult judgement. When the question is difficult and a skilled solution is not available, intuition still has a shot, but we often answer an easier question instead, without noticing the substitution.

🎲 Good examples from the book are: Steve the librarian, the number of times K being more likely to appear in the first letter of a word or why to pick Ford stocks.

People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory — which is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media.

Part 1 — Two Systems

System 1: the instant, no effort, unconscious, no sense of voluntary control, automatic, emotional, intuitive thinking. It has biases and has little understanding of logic and statistics.
System 2: the slower, conscious, rational, reasoning, deliberate thinking.

System 2 is normally comfortable in “low-effort” mode, System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2. If endorsed by System 2, intuitions, intentions, and feelings, turn into beliefs. When everything goes smoothly, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1.

System 2 has the capability to adopt a set of “task sets”, it can program memory to obey an instruction and override habitual responses.

🎲 The Invisible Gorilla - Wikipedia by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to blindness.

🖇 Related to Rumsfel’s There are known knowns - Wikipedia

📍 Ego depletion

We dispose a limited budget of attention to allocate to activities — we can’t go beyond this budget. Imagine System 2 as the electrical circuit on your home, but they respond different to overload. Whilst a breaker trips on the electrical circuit, shutting all devices down, System 2 is selective and protects the “most important” activity — hence the Gorilla experiment.

🎲 Müller-Lyer illusion - Wikipedia

As we become skilled in a task, its demand for “energy” diminishes. The acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs: laziness is built deep into our nature.

Even self-control requires discipline in contrast of flow — a state of effortless concentration so deep that we lose sense of ourselves. States of flow “shut down” the self-control, freeing up resources to be directed to the task at hand.

Self-control and cognitive effort are forms of mental work.

🎲 Roy Baumeister - Wikipedia has demonstrated that all the variants of voluntary effort — cognitive, emotional, physical or activities that impose high demands on System 2 — draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental effort — aka. ego depletion.

The nervous system is the primer consumer of glucose hence effortful mental activities are expensive in the currency of glucose. The implication of this idea is that the effects of ego depletion can be undone by consuming glucose.

🖇 Related to [Keith Stanovich — Rationality and the Reflective Mind]( Keith Stanovich ) argues that rationality should be distinguished from intelligence. The later he calls it algorithmic, and deals with slow thinking, but higher scores of intelligence do not come free of biases. Superficial or “lazy thinking” is a flaw in the reflective mind, a failure of rationality.

We are associative machines. An idea that has been activated evokes many other ideas, not in a series, but simultaneously, which in turn activate many others. Again related to Free Will, only a few will register in consciousness, most of the work of associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious self.

We know far less about ourselves than we feel we do.

📍 Priming - Wikipedia effect, not just states of mind prime behavior or decisions, but also actions and emotions can be primed by events of which we are not even aware.

🎲 John Bargh and the “Florida effect” involves two stages of priming. First, the set of words primes thoughts of old age, though the word old is never mentioned; second, these thoughts prime behavior, walking slowly, which is associative with old age.

📍 Cognitive ease: ranges between “Easy” i.e. the situation is comfortably familiar, mostly directed by System 1; to “Strained” in which a problem exists and the mobilization of System 2 is required. When strained, you’re likely to be more vigilant and suspicious, but also less creative.

Cognitive ease can be triggered by a repeated experience — familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth, a clearer font, a primed idea or good mood. In addition to make simpler messages or make them memorable i.e. verses are more likely to be taken as true. Hence cognitive ease has multiple causes, but it is really difficult to tease them apart.

🎲 Robert Zajonc’s mere exposure effect - Wikipedia does not depend on the conscious experience or familiarity. It also appears when words are shown so quickly that the observers never became aware of having seen them. System 1 can respond to impressions of events that System 2 is unaware.

The mere exposure effect is linked to safety and survival, it occurs because the repeated exposure of a stimulus is followed by nothing bad.

🎲 Sarnoff Mednick’s Remote Associates Test - Wikipedia

People’s guesses are much accurate than they would be by chance. A sense of cognitive ease is apparently generated by a very faint signal from the associative machine.
Unhappy subjects were unable to perform the intuitive task accurately. When we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with intuition. * Good mood, intuition, creativity and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster.
Most important, the impression of cognitive ease, that comes with the presentation of a coherent triad appears to be pleasurable in itself.

📍Causation

Finding causal connections is part of understanding a story and is an automatic operation of System 1. It is also “motivated” to jump into conclusions, it makes choices even without us noticing, which involves the construction of the best possible interpretation of a given situation.

When the question is difficult and a skilled solution is not available, intuition still has a shot: an answer may come to mind quickly — but it is not an answer to the original question. When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

System 1 by default will first try to “make sense” or find a causal explanation to any event. Only System 2 is able to “unbelieve”, thus subjects engaged with cognitive demanding tasks, tired or depleted will be more easily influenced.

If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it.

📍 Confirmation Bias

The operations of associative memory contribute to a general confirmation bias. A deliberate search for confirming evidence, is how System 2 tests hypothesis. Contrary to the rules of philosophers in science, who test hypothesis by trying to refute them, people seek data that are likely to be compatible with the beliefs they currently hold.

The tendency to like or dislike everything about a person — including things you have not observed — is known as the halo effect. It also manifests when a handsome and confident speaker bounds onto the stage, you can expect the audience will judge his comments more favorably than he deserves.

📍WYSIATI

What you see is all there is — jumping into conclusions on the basis of limited evidence. The combination of a coherence-seeking System 1 (even when there’s not enough information to make a decision) with a lazy System 2, implies that System 2 will endorse many intuitive beliefs, which closely reflect the impressions generated by System 1.

When information is scarce, which is a common occurrence, System 1 operates as a machine for jumping to conclusions. You did not start by asking, “What would I need to know before I formed an opinion about the quality of someone’s leadership?” System 1 got to work on its own from the first adjective.

Poor evidence can make a very good story.

You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it. Paradoxically, it is easier to construct a coherent story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit into the puzzle. Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

📍 Intensity matching & substitution

Other features of System 1 are basic assessments — for example, our ability to judge people’s competence by combining the two — unrelated — dimensions of strength and trustworthiness. System 1 deals readily answers questions that refer to an underlying dimension of intensity or amount — which permits the use of the word more. This is known as intensity matching. The most surprising thing is that it is also able to translate matching values across dimensions.

It all comes down to its ability to generate intuitive opinions on complex matters. If a satisfactory answer to a hard question — target question — is not quickly found, System 1 will find a related question that is easier — heuristic question — and it will answer it. We call this phenomena substitution.

The present state of mind looms very large when people evaluate their happiness.

The automatic processes fo the mental shotgun and intensity matching often make available one or more answers to easier questions that could be mapped out onto the target question.

Part 2 — Heuristics And Biases

System 1 is always looking to identify causal connections between events, even when there is no such connection — it is looking for a “reason” to explain things.

🔖 The associative machinery seeks causes. The difficulty we have with statistical regularities is that they call for a different approach. Instead of focusing on how the event at hand came to be, the statistical view relates it to what could have happened instead. Nothing in particular caused it to be what it is — chance selected it from among its alternatives. Our predilection for causal thinking exposes us to serious mistakes in evaluating the randomness of truly random events.

People are prone to apply causal thinking inappropriately, to situations that require statistical reasoning.

A random event does not lend itself to explanation, but collections of random events do behave in a regular fashion.

🖋 You can predict the outcome of a repeated sampling from an urn just as confidently as you can predict what will happen if you hit an egg with a hammer. You cannot predict the every detail of how it’ll shatter, but you can be sure of the general idea. Statistically speaking, there is no difference between smashing an egg and the drawing of marbles — the only difference is the satisfying sense of causation that we experience when thinking of a hammer hitting an egg is altogether absent when thinking about sampling.

📍 Artifacts are observations that are produced by some aspect of the research. Large samples are more precise than small samples, which is the same to say that extreme outcomes are more likely to be found in small samples. This explanation is not causal.

Part 3 — Overconfidence

📍 Narrative fallacy

Introduced by Nassim Taleb — describe how flawed stories of the past can shape our views of the world and expectations for the future. They arise inevitably from our continuous attempt to make sense of the world.

We look for stories that are simple, concrete, assign a larger role to talent stupidity and intentions, rather than luck.

A compelling narrative fosters an illusion of inevitability.

There are many phenomenas here working at the same time. First, WYSIATI — you can’t help but dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know.

It is easier to construct a compelling story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit the puzzle. Yet if an unpredicted event occurs, we immediately adjust our view of the world to accommodate the surprise.

In everyday language, we use the word know only when what was known turned out to be true and can be shown to be true.

We believe we understand the past, which implies that the future should also be knowable, but in fact we understand the past less than we believe we do.

The mind that makes up narratives of the past is a sense-making organ. When an unpredicted event occurs, we immediately adjust our view of the world to accommodate the surprise. We have an imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge. Once you adopt a new view of the world (or any part of it), you immediately lose much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed.

Consumers have a hunger for a clear message about the determinants of success and failure in business, and they need stories that offer a sense of understanding, however illusory.

📍 Hindsight bias

Also known as the knew-it-all-along effect, is the inclination, after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, despite there having been little or no objective basis for predicting it.

It leads observers to assess the quality of a decision not by whether the process was sound, but by whether the outcome was good or bad.

Yet the basic message of business books is that good managerial practices can be identified and that good practices will be rewarded by good results. Both messages are overstated.

🖇 Related idea — The Halo Effect. Because of it, we get causal relationships backwards: we are prone to believe that firms fails because the CEO is too rigid, when the truth is that the CEO is too rigid because the firm fails.

Inevitably, we are always looking for causal explanations in events where luck plays a major role.

The comparison of firms that have been more or less successful is to a significant extent a comparison between firms that have been more or less lucky. Knowing the importance of luck, you should be particularly suspicious when highly consistent patterns emerge from the comparison of successful and less successful firms. In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.

The average gap must shrink, because the original gap was due in good part to luck, which contributed both to the success of the top firms and to the lagging performance of the rest. We have already encountered this statistical fact of life: regression to the mean.

📍 The illusion of validity

The amount of evidence and its quality do not count for much, because poor evidence can make a very good story.

The illusion that one has understood the past feeds the further illusion that one can predict and control the future. These illusions are comforting. They reduce the anxiety that we would experience if we allowed ourselves to fully acknowledge the uncertainties of existence. We all have a need for the reassuring message that actions have appropriate consequences, and that success will reward wisdom and courage. Many business books are tailor-made to satisfy this need.

“When you sell a stock,” I asked, “who buys it?” He answered with a wave in the vague direction of the window, indicating that he expected the buyer to be someone else very much like him. That was odd: What made one person buy and the other sell? What did the sellers think they knew that the buyers did not?

A major industry appears to be built largely on an illusion of skill.

The buyers and sellers know that they have the same information; they exchange the stocks primarily because they have different opinions.

If all assets in a market are correctly priced, no one can expect either to gain or to lose by trading. Perfect prices leave no scope for cleverness, but they also protect fools from their own folly.

For the large majority of individual investors, taking a shower and doing nothing would have been a better policy than implementing the ideas that came to their minds.

Individual investors predictably flock to companies that draw their attention because they are in the news. Professional investors are more selective in responding to news. These findings provide some justification for the label of “smart money” that finance professionals apply to themselves.

A basic test of skill: persistent achievement. The diagnostic for the existence of any skill is the consistency of individual differences in achievement.

The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the industry. Facts that challenge such basic assumptions - and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem - are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them.

Skill in evaluating the business prospects of a firm is not sufficient for successful stock trading, where the key question is whether the information about the firm is already incorporated in the price of its stock. Traders apparently lack the skill to answer this crucial question, but they appear to be ignorant of their ignorance.

🔖 Our tendency to construct and believe coherent narratives of the past makes it difficult for us to accept the limits of our forecasting abilities. Everything makes sense in hindsight, and we can’t suppress the powerful intuition that what makes sense in hindsight today, was predictable yesterday.

The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future. Yet the idea that historical events are determined by luck is profoundly shocking, although it is demonstrably true.

📍 Intuitions vs. formulas

Unreliable judgements can’t be valid predictors of anything.

Because you have little direct knowledge of what goes into the mind, you’ll never know that you might have made a different judgement or reached a different under very slightly different circumstances. Formulas do not suffer from such problems.

The surprising success of equal-weighting schemes has an important practical implication: it is possible to develop useful algorithms without any prior statistical research.

An algorithm that is constructed in the back of an envelope is often good enough to compete with an optimally weighted formula, and certainly good enough to outdo expert judgement. This logic can be applied to many domains, from stock picking to medical treatments.

The story of a child dying because an algorithm made a mistake is more poignant than the same story occurring because of a human error. The difference in emotional intensity is readily translated to a moral preference.

📍 Acquiring skill

When do judgements reflect true expertise? When do they display an illusion of validity? There are two conditions for acquiring a skill:

An environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable: intuition can’t be trusted in the absence of regularities in the environment. * Only extremely regular environments might justify an intuition that goes against the base rates.
An opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practice: we are looking here for quick feedback loops, if there is a huge delay between actions and their noticeable outcomes, its learning becomes harder. * As an example, among medical specialties, anesthesiologists benefit from good feedback, because the effects of their actions are likely to be quickly evident. In contrast, radiologists, obtain little immediate information about the accuracy of their diagnoses.

Despite all of them might have acquired intuitive skills, the latter have failed to identify the situations and the tasks in which intuition will betray them.

Expertise is not a single skill, it is a collection of skills.

📍 Planning fallacy consists in making decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities.

Plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios.
Could be improved just by consulting statistics (outside view) of similar cases.

Statistical information — the outside view — is routinely discarded when it is incompatible with one’s personal impressions of a case. In the competition with the inside view, the outside view doesn’t stand a chance.

Yet incorporating all distributional information available about the class reference — from other ventures similar to that being forecasted (taking the outside view) is the cure to the planning fallacy.

Yet sometimes, when the outside view is presented in the midst of the project it is discarded because of the sunk-cost fallacy. It is easier to change directions on a crisis, but because this is not a crisis — just new facts have been presented.

If you were allowed one wish for your child, consider wishing her optimism.

Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; […] their chances of depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health […] and in fact, they are likely to live longer.

🖇 Related to Twelve Rules For Life and its first rule: stand up straight with your shoulders back.

The people who have the greatest influence in the life of others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident.

🔖 Usually optimists show a higher tendency to:

Focus on their goal, anchor on their plan and neglect relevant base rates — planning fallacy.
Focus on they want or can do, neglecting skills of others — competition neglect and above-average effect, with the immediate consequence of excess entry to the market.
Both explaining the past and trying to predict the future, focusing on the casual role of skill and neglect the role of luck aka. illusion of control.
Focus in what they know, and neglect what they don’t know, which makes them overly confident.

Optimism is highly valued, socially and in the market; people and firms reward the providers of dangerously misleading information more than they reward truth-tellers.

Magis 1.0

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Early November I shared the story behind a handful of tweaks I made to the Would You Rather app, Udacity’s React Nanodegree second project based on React & Redux.

That was quite a refactor, auditing each component of the code base (while reducing its “waist” by more than 30%) and making sure I was applying the best practices and new cool things I kept on learning after the Nanodegree.

By the end of the post, I also mentioned that from now on I’d try to be more consistent and incremental with its development, documenting the roadmap, properly adding issues to the project and working on it on a more regular basis, rather than doing massive, one-off pushes.

Well, here’s take two, brought to you by a couple of vacation days I got for myself right after the Valencia Marathon. And while not sure “incremental” is the best word to describe it, working on it felt so good that I’ve decided to change its name (for a cooler one, more on that in a moment) and start versioning the thing to put a little bit of sanity to its future development.

That being said, let’s once and for all stop the drumroll and jump straight into what’s new.

First of all, a new name 🎉

I know this has nothing to do with a novel feature or an improvement to the app’s performance, but what’s the deal with an exceptional product if you don’t have a ~~proper~~ fancy way to name it, huh? So I got my act together and started with the fundamentals.

And because you don’t want your, or any product for that matter, to be named Would You Rather… I set aside ten minutes of my life in the search of a new name. And oh, boy, we have “the” name. The Would You Rather project is now called Magis, and I’m sure you’re gonna love it 😂

Wait, what? Magis? Yes, Magis, which is the Latin word for “rather” — how cool is that?

Truth be told though, originally, I went for Prius, which is also a synonym for “rather”, but it quickly won my heart because of the car-related notation. Nonetheless, after consulting with a friend that knows a great deal of Latin, she pointed out that Prius, despite being also used to manifest preference, had a more restricted applicability for time-bound transformations.

Long story short, Magis it is.

And, now that we’ve got the fundamentals right, we can move to more interesting stuff, which brings us to the fact that Magis is also live.

Despite my devops skills do not stretch beyond GitHub continuous deployment through Netlify, I’d say I’ve learned a thing or two about that while publishing this very site. In other words, I’ve reused all the acquired knowledge to get this project its place on the Internets.

Netlify supports plenty of functionality, but the continuous deployment means that it has a direct connection to its GitHub repository and all the commits to master are immediately deployed. For the rest of us, this simply means the project is now live in its latest version and accessible for anybody to check out and play with it — which inevitably leads us to the next update.

Magis is now able to handle user authentication, creating and managing users through Twitter & GitHub OAuth, which in combination with its continuous deployment means that you can create users and interact with the product yourself, in real-time.

This new feature is supported by Google Firebase, a comprehensive mobile development platform I discovered thanks to Wes Bos’ React For Beginners course — which I couldn’t recommend enough to React newcomers.

Finally, and also enabled through the Firebase stack, Magis now sports a real-time, WebSocket-powered database — which feels like black magic if you’re used to working with Node.js & MongoDB for the backend.

Buff… that was quite an update: new name, continuous deployment, user authentication, and a real-time database… but, before we wrap this up, there’s one more thing.

Actually, the trickiest thing of the entire update. Which is, in turn, frustrating, because this is something the average user won’t ever see or notice.

As you might recall, the app state was maintained through Redux, because the feature was a required specification of the project’s rubric.

Therefore, a desirable feature would be to maintain the Redux store and the real-time database in-sync — so the app’s UI gets instantaneously updated, but also keeps a copy of the user data in the cloud, away from the client.

In an “ideal world” this wouldn’t pose any problem since the only thing one ought to do is to just update the reducers to include a final callback to sync the store with the remote database upon change on the data layer.

Yet I’ve learned this world was far from ideal, the hard way. It looks like Firebase doesn’t play nice with arrays, and this becomes a problem if your entire Redux store data model is overrun with arrays…

Thus, one last honorable mention, the last feature of this update: cover to cover refactor of the entire Redux store. And pardon me if that seemed irrelevant, but I needed to get it out to the world, so at least, it won’t go unnoticed hereafter.

collado.io Is Live

Sat, 08 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

If you are reading these lines, rest assured, because you are certainly reading them in the new collado.io 👏

Well, long story short, after more than 300 commits, six months in the making, and five years of hosting at Squarespace, collado.io is finally going solo: moving to a new place accompanied by a new partner. Oh! And if you feel like the short story was not enough, you can, of course, read the whole thing and the reasons why I’m doing this in here.

But let’s get back to why this is great news. As you start to navigate around the place, I hope you’ll notice that the new collado.io features nicer fonts (thanks, IBM Plex), the color palette is more pleasant to the eye (thanks, Irene), and overall, the content structure makes more (and will undoubtedly make more, and more, in the future) sense.

Most important, it also means that everything is accurately developing according to the plan I outlined in the summer. Precisely, at this very moment, executing on the third step: sunsetting Squarespace.

Which brings us to the not that good news, and the reason why it is important that you keep reading if you want to safely navigate this website and ultimately avoid the path of the unhappy, randomly bounced visitor.

As a reminder, the third step of the plan consisted in releasing the Gatsby-based site (this one) live at collado.io domain by the end of Q4 2018 (checked), while still migrating the remaining content from Squarespace.

These dates are relevant because the entire move of all the archive (all the things I’ve written during the lasts five years) won’t be completed until Q2 2019 (currently at about ~30%), so you can expect a few broken links here and there. But wait, do not despair, all the content is still accessible at Squarespace, and because I’m trying to honor the URL mappings, if you simply change the root domain, it should all be fine 😅.

Another important remark is that I’m improving the way the /about section works, and it is not fully backed, yet. I’m aware that one of the most visited URLs at collado.io has always been /iomando. It was kind of a landing page within the site that explained the whole story behind the company, cover to cover, from foundation to acquisition, from three different perspectives: business, design, and technology.

The new /about page will feature more side-projects of mine while improving on the experience of the current ones, but again, I’m still working on it and I’m afraid it won’t be fully operational until early next year.

So, to wrap this up:

First of all, my sincere apologies for all these inconveniences while navigating the place. I feel a little bit like the impudent host that organizes a dinner party and still has the house under construction… and I’m aware, that the lack of completion is absolutely on me. But it is also true that I wanted to release the thing as soon as possible. Because on one hand I’m extremely excited about it, but on the other, because I wanted to gather as much feedback as I could early on.
Keep in mind that all the old content is still live at Squarespace. So, if you get a nice 404, most of the time, just changing the root domain and maintaining the URL should do the trick.
If you came here to know more about iomando, your best option right now is to visit Squarespace. I assume the /about section in the new collado.io will be live early next year.

Finally, and most important, thanks for visiting the place and if you have tips, suggestions, feedback… anything, do not hesitate and send those my way. You’d be surprised by how many things I’ve learned, fixed and improved just by random readers reaching out on the Internets 🙂

Broken Notes — Take Two

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Last week I shared some thoughts about my frustrations around note-taking apps. Particularly, how most of them failed at organizing content, unable to create meaningful structures of domain knowledge from all the input the user had supplied over time.

Inadvertently, the post took a slightly philosophical turn, discussing the fundamental structure of note-taking apps and how I thought those should change in order to solve for my needs.

Rereading the whole thing, I believe I should have thought it twice before hitting the “publish” button. Besides being a little bit self-centered, the post suffers from the classic rookie mistake of prematurely jumping into possible solutions, without even considering the most fundamental aspects of the problem.

Rather than detailing the distinct problems that would give grounds for the existence of the product I was proposing in the first place, I just went straight to what I thought I wanted.

Consequentially, most of the feedback I’ve got revolved around the idea that the problem was not sufficiently understood, that I didn’t get to the ultimate why. Because of this, in this “take two” I want to dive deeper, list my current struggles and distill the problem until it becomes crystal clear.

Idle Input

Let’s open with the basics. They say the best camera is not the one with more features nor the most expensive, rather the one that is always with you. The one that when the moment unexpectedly appears, it is ready to capture it. The smartphone is the best example of the thing that’s with you all the time, ready to take action.

Notes are no different. Ideas fly by. A smart line in a meeting, an inspiring insight from a podcast during a commute… you think you’ll remember, but you won’t.

My personal experience tells me that the friction of opening the preferred notes app, creating a new note, giving it a title, writing the content, tagging it… is enough to prevent me from capturing that thought. It is not that much work, but enough, at least for me, to not do it most of the time.

This is the main reason why dozens of ideas end up constantly falling through the cracks. I’m lazy enough not to save them. I’ve played around with voice notes, a dedicated #SaveForLater tag… yet nothing worked, the pain remained.

My assumption though points to another direction: I want to think this is not a problem of effort, rather a circumstantial one.

In other words, what bothers me is that I have to input a piece of content into a medium which it doesn’t belong to. Then I’m worried about stupid things like “am I formatting this the as I always do?” or “should I categorize this as a quote or an idea?” thus not focusing on the capturing itself, rather in the peripheral tasks that surround it.

A note is a blank canvas, it can be anything. The problem is that in my mind, I want it to work in a certain way, I want it to be the camera that’s always with me, but now, I feel stuck with a tool that simply put was not designed to get the job done.

If the input mechanism was optimized enough, with its fields already matching my mental data layer (author, source URL, media type) then adding content will turn into a delightful experience.

Storing Content

Moving on from the capturing, this second problem deals with the storing of the already captured content. Along those lines, an endless (still ongoing) personal fight of mine has always been mapping out the way my brain “thinks” to an existing software tool. Believe me, I have tried, many, many times, but never succeeded.

Not to go through the full list, but as an example here are a few things a note should be able to capture and later store in a comprehensible way.

Text input — this is the main idea
Context (optional) — any related issue or theme that helps contextualize the idea
Author/s
Related author/s
Source URL — which could autogenerate the media type
- Media type — book, movie, podcast, tweet, article, blog post
Tags — if it clearly belongs to a distinct descriptive topic

Tried to recreate something like this across categories, notes that grouped ideas, tags in multiple dimensions, such as topics, types of content, media sources… nothing worked. I even have mapped out the experience in diagrams, flows, and how it’d all fit with my inherited content.

Usually, after that, a part of me is convinced that this is the one, that it should work out this time around.

Truth be told, there is invariably a ~~sweet~~ delusional period of time while I’m convinced that I have nailed it for once and for all. Yet a few weeks later the whole thing starts cracking all over the place.

Then I’m left with dozens of notes captured in a new platform, the one I thought it’d be the one, but it wasn’t. Which leads to the next problem.

Silos Of Content

This one, in particular, is not a problem with note-taking apps themselves, rather a problem of mine. Having tried so many options, I ended up with my notes scattered around several apps and services — Evernote, Vesper, Ulysses, Bear, Apple Notes…

While this might not bother other people, it produces me a lot of mental anxiety. I have a list where I keep all the non-urgent things I’d like to do someday. These are essentially valueless but nice-to-have tasks such as digitize old pictures or clean up the attic storage.

Yet the first thing on that list is and has been for many years, to consolidate all my notes in a single platform. Up until this day I have never dared to start. Not only because it is a lot of work, but more important, because I’m afraid a new product will come up and all this effort would have been in vain.

Summing it up, the problem with these two last sections is that no app has been able to neatly map the idea of “external brain” into a software product.

Which on the other hand, I totally understand. A note-taking app is an extremely malleable product that can be turned into almost anything. Narrowing it down to such rare use case would only hurt its market potential — in a market that’s already pretty saturated.

JIT Information

All note-taking apps are also usually great content storing mechanisms. But because a note can be turned into anything, the “file system” is totally disconnected from the note format and limits itself to folders, categories or tags.

While this might work when the stored content has the exact same hierarchy and format, I think the models fall apart when we want to abstract away the content from the file structure.

In other words, this classic file-based approach makes content really easy to search — which is great for OS file management — but really hard to find when you need it.

Easy to search, hard to find.

Most of the time, all the content is not required. Instead what I envision are kind of sparks, cues, that lead me to the idea. The way my mind (and hopefully others, too) works is that the ideas are already passively stored, but the ability to search for it is not.

Say I want to pull out ideas about strength training. I don’t want to be handed a book. I just want to recall all the instances or bites I have been absorbing over time: a quote, the main idea on a book, the takeaway from a podcast or even a highlight from a movie.

From those bites, my brain can take it from there and quickly start constructing the speech.

Well, that was a lot… at least I hope it has shed some more light to the idea and my struggles with the note-taking experience and the creation of an external brain for the curious minds.

It seems that lately I can’t take this thought off my head, and really, every day that goes by I’m truly thinking of creating this thing, seriously.

Broken Notes

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Something’s broken with note-taking apps.

It is not because of the lack of software available. On the contrary, this is precisely an over-served market that has already approached the writing experience from all possible directions. No matter the what, where or how chances are there is a writing app for that.

It is not because of the lack of good software, either. On top of being an over-served market, note-taking apps — alongside productivity apps, such as habit-forming routines or to-do lists — have become one of the favorite playgrounds for talented indie developers.

Yet at a foundational level, something’s broken.

Let’s start from the beginning.

My ~~obsession~~ relationship with note-taking apps started back in 2011 with Ommwriter — formerly OmmWriter Dana, a project with roots in Barcelona, whose creator I would randomly meet years later without even knowing who he was.

Then my notes embarked on an eternal journey with Evernote, Simplenote, iA Writer, Apple Notes, Vesper, Notability, Bear, among many more. Each one coupled with its own painful migration and set up process, in order to make the app behave the way my mind wanted to.

Maybe I was using them wrong, but seven years later, I still haven’t found a piece of software that fully satisfy my note-taking desires.

Maybe my needs sit many standard deviations away from what any sane product manager would consider reasonable or would be willing to design for, thus they haven’t even considered building such a thing.

After all, there’s nothing wrong with note-taking apps themselves. They are functional pieces of software that deliver on its promise of elegantly turning your thoughts into ones and zeros.

Then what is it, exactly, that I’m looking for?

Inevitably, we learn new things every day. The curious mind acts as a magnet that incessantly keeps on attracting small pieces of information. They might come up during a conversation, reading a book, watching a movie, listening to a podcast, or simply walking down the street.

These pieces of information might not be something we use right away, but we want to capture them, store them, and map them out alongside other related pieces we already have. Then we want them to generate new connections, while building an ever-growing knowledge base that, hopefully, will turn ourselves into better human beings.

Unfortunately, we are wonderful, fallible machines. If our brain did that out of the box, Moleskine would probably be out of business.

We miss, forget or don’t remember most of the things we learn, hence making it harder to relate and connect ideas down the road. The ever-growing knowledge fortress we dream of ends up looking more like a shattered hut.

It is precisely at this point where my knowledge forming requirements and the nature of the note-taking app start to collide.

The problem, as I see it, is that at its most fundamental level, these apps are structured around the core idea of a note — its atomic component. But a note can be anything: a quote from Hemingway, a physics assignment for college or an article pulled from the Internet.

Each of them tells its own story. Most of them have nothing to do with one another. Many of them are tangentially related. A handful of them are closely connected. But there is no way to architecture knowledge out of atomic, independent notes.

To be fair, as far as I’m concerned, there are ways around this organizational problem. Most of them deliver on its promise, but still fail when it comes to generate knowledge from its atomic parts.

For instance, tags are great to group notes that share a high-level theme, but they are rigid and do not group or link ideas visually. They don’t spot patterns or show the connection strength, either. In other words, tags make content easy to search, but they also make it difficult to find or rediscover.

On the other hand, a plain, physical notebook is also a great tool that gets the capturing job done. But again, fails miserably at clustering ideas. It doesn’t pull the content apart nor provides an easy way to search for things you wrote a while ago.

Simply put, note-taking apps are designed around the note. What I think I want, is for them to be designed around knowledge.

Beyond a delightful writing and note-capturing experience, what I want is a knowledge clustering interface — an external brain of sorts. An application that receives a piece of information as an input and creates information-based connections with its other pieces. Something that groups related information and generates structures of domain knowledge that map to higher levels of abstraction — not a tag, but a concept.

On top of that, each piece of information links back to its original source. This one is very important since the mind (especially true for visual thinkers) sometimes uses the content source as a proxy for retrieving the information. Thus having a clear backlink to the movie or the book you pulled it from would be a fundamental feature.

If this sounds confusing, this is because it is, indeed, confusing. Besides the fact of being the only human being asking for such a product, this confusion might be the ultimate reason nobody has built this product, yet.

To me, this looks like a product where the most important thing is how ideas are sourced and connected to one another. It should be something that’s always with you, ready to capture, but it doesn’t limit itself to the note-taking aspect. It uses this content to create meaning, the knowledge fortress we were talking about, outside your brain.

But, why?

I’m writing these lines because I wanted to crystalize my frustration, my inability to map my needs to an existing product. However, rereading the whole thing, I feel like I’m still far from it. Deep down, I know what I want, but I struggle when it comes to structure the thing.

Currently stuck on available products, I find myself running in too many directions. Using separate tools for what I envision should be a single product, creating silos of information here and there, disconnected, unrelated, that is ultimately not serving in my goal to create an accessible, lifelong knowledge base.

I’m starting to think that if I truly want such a thing to exist, I should build it myself. But my lack of product definition and vague wording about what I ultimately want also has me worried that I’d be walking on a dead-end path. On the other hand, I’m starting to think that if I truly want such a thing to exist, at the very least, I should try.

The Would You Rather Refactor

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Last March I joined the Udacity’s React Developer Nanodegree (RDND). I did it mostly driven by curiosity, a passion for coding and crafting digital products. Most importantly, I did it as a way to relate and connect in a more profound way with our team of engineers.

Don’t get me wrong, though, I have never felt like an outsider, on the contrary. I am an engineer myself. I have been surrounded by talented engineers my entire career: at college, of course, at iomando, at Ironhack — first as a campus manager, and now as a product manager.

Coming from a technical background has given me an “unfair advantage” relating to other software engineers — despite dealing mostly with the management side of things — participating in technical discussions and comfortably sharing opinionated ideas about our approach to software development.

Yet at the same time, web development moves fast, and I started to sense that React — one of the most critical pieces of our stack — was outpacing me in many ways.

I had to learn React, I owed to my team.

Long story short — if you rather want the long version check out the RDND in-depth post — late July I delivered the last project of the RDND. Yet I finished the Nanodegree feeling that I rushed through the thing. Like I just put a ton of strings together that made some React-sense and wrap them up onto GitHub repos in order to graduate. But didn’t digest the best practices, didn’t master React’s foundation. Somehow, it missed the point.

Because of that, I promised myself that as soon as I could put some more “side-project time” together I would go back, review them one at a time, and implement all the cool things I kept on learning.

It took me almost three months to find the right time, but finally, the last couple of weeks have been all about updating the Would You Rather project — the second one of the RDND.

This project consists in a small quiz game, built with React & Redux, that quizzes the user with polls in a “Would You Rather…” format. It allows the user to log in, post polls and also vote on polls posted by other users.

I chose to start working again on this one because it was built on top of Redux — which I really liked, but also because it was the one that seemed to have the most room for improvement. During these past two weeks, I set aside almost every evening (and some nights, too) to work on a fully revamped product: from the UI design fundamentals, down to the component structure and the way the data is fetched and handled throughout the app.

In a nutshell, what impressed me the most after going deep again into the project was, first, how quickly you forget about the code you wrote just three or four months ago; and second, yet closely related, what an embarrassing experience is to go through your “old” code. Which I’ll take as a good thing since it means that you’re learning and skills have improved.

The app now retains less than 25% of the original code I delivered back in May, while reducing the total lines of code by more than 30% — achieving, of course, feature parity with the older version. I really didn’t know where those metric belonged in a performance scale for an amateur. After consulting with many fellow developers that know a thing or two about it, I have been told that it is pretty impressive 👍.

On top of that, the app loads faster — mostly because I got rid of the Material UI library (more on that later), but also improved the way asynchronous calls were managed since they were taxing the app performance.

The app comes packed with many new features under the hood, but I’ll try to cover the most important things spanning from the design of the UI down to the refactor of some critical components.

Designing with Figma

I don’t want to turn this into an unconditional love letter to Figma, but I totally could. Figma is probably one of the most incredible pieces of software I have discovered this year. There is plenty already written on the Internet about its magnificence, but as a side note, I’ll just go on about what it meant for our product team, in particular.

We basically narrowed down our design stack from four separate tools…

(1) Sketch — to design the thing
(2) Abstract — to keep every designer within the team in-sync
(3) InVision — to validate prototypes with stakeholders
(4) Zeplin — to share the final designs with developers

…down to a single product, Figma — without losing any features nor accepting any tradeoffs along the way. This is definitely not something that happens very often.

Because of that, I was already interacting with Figma but never had the opportunity to get my hands dirty. Moreover, one of the things that I regret the most (again, going back to the point of rushing through the Nanodegree) was that during the program I didn’t have the time to actually design the projects. But instead jumped straight to the code editor — not something that I’m proud of. In other words, I would have never encouraged my team to do such a thing, but I clearly didn’t eat my own dog food here.

So I started — as it should be — from the very beginning. Designing each component in advance, every state it went through the app lifecycle. The journey started with colors and typography. In this regard, I cheated a little bit and used Ironhack’s color palette. For the fonts, I used a combination of Fira Code and Fira Mono.

Now that my love for Figma is already confessed, let’s move on to the design of more interesting things like…

The Poll Card

Later on, I set out to reimagine the most critical UI component: the poll card. I aimed to keep the voting experience as simple as possible, yet it still took two taps to vote from the home page.

This was not a deliberated product decision, but the consequence of a technical constraint I couldn’t get my head around at the time. Fortunately, my coding skills seem to sharpen up and I could finally deliver a card that managed its own state across the lifespan of the poll.

On the interaction level, I also wanted to keep the card as minimal as possible, with a large, clear CTA. Since each poll card still needed two CTAs (one for each option) fitting independently both the copies and the two buttons in such a small piece of real estate made the UI really confusing. The solution to this problem turned out to be as easy as getting rid of the copy vs. button distinction, and merging them together, in a seamless experience.

The outcome is a poll card with larger tappable areas, since the poll container itself acts as the button, that creates a polarizing feeling through the color composition itself — which is the main idea behind the Would You Rather game. No additional buttons or text required, it is as simple as simple gets.

Before the refactor, code-wise, the poll card component was truly a mess. It consisted mainly of the poll text, then it had “attached” its correspondent CTA, which rendered dynamically depending on the poll state. What sounds like a plan on paper, caused a lot of problems since the CTAs had to manage its own state as well, turning the whole thing into a really confusing, inconsistent piece of code.

Following best practices, now the card has its own component during its lifecycle that properly manages the uniqueness of the poll throughout each step of the way. The components follow the SOLID principles and are isolated enough to do just one thing, but do it really well.

Material UI and styled-components

While from an engineering standpoint the most challenging tasks were by far the component refactors and the Redux integration, I also spent a fair amount of time moving away from the Material UI library in favor of custom-made components built with Styled Components.

The initial version of the project relied on the Material UI library for almost all UI facing components. Which on one hand was great because it provided well-established components straight out from Google’s Material UI toolkit, which inevitably led to faster development times. But on the other hand, it constrained the outcome to the Material UI look and feel, and worse, it handicapped the app’s performance since the library was huge.

I embarked on a laborious journey to refactor each component from scratch, removing its dependencies to the Material UI library, but most importantly, taking the time to ensure best practices were deployed across the app, making a clear distinction between presentational and container components.

Now presentational components are only concerned with how the app looks, are stateless, receive data and callbacks exclusively via props, and are written as functions.

Here’s where Styled Components really came in handy, allowing for the UI style to mutate depending on props and keeping the styles contained to each component. Really good stuff.

Final Thoughts

I could go on and on over many of the new features of the Would You Rather project. I really had a great time refactoring it from the ground up, but if you made it this far, I think it’d be a good idea for you to just go to the project repo and check it out for yourself.

From now on, I’ll try to be more incremental with its development, documenting the roadmap, properly adding issues to the project and working on it regularly, rather than doing massive, one-off pushes. The idea behind all this is no other than to keep practicing my coding skills, while building out things that could be of use to myself and (hopefully) others.

Next up, will be Flashcards, the third and final project of the Nanodegree: a mobile application built with React Native, that allows users to create decks, add cards with questions to the decks and, of course, quiz themselves and receive a score upon quiz completion.

12 Rules For Life

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Overture

📍 Order is where the people around you act according to well-understood social norms, and remain predictable and cooperative. It’s the world of social structure, explored territory, and familiarity. The state of Order is typically portrayed, symbolically as masculine. It’s the Wise King and the Tyrant, forever bound together, as society is simultaneously structure and oppression.

📍 Chaos, by contrast, is where—or when—something unexpected happens. Chaos emerges, in trivial form, when you tell a joke at a party with people you think you know and a silent and embarrassing chill falls over the gathering. Chaos is what emerges more catastrophically when you suddenly find yourself without employment, or are betrayed by a lover.

Order and chaos are the yang and yin of the famous Taoist symbol: two serpents, head to tail. Order is the white, masculine serpent; Chaos, its black, feminine counterpart.

The dividing line between order and chaos: that’s where we are simultaneously stable enough, exploring enough, transforming enough, repairing enough, and cooperating enough.

The black dot in the white — and the white in the black — indicate the possibility of transformation:

Just when things seem secure, the unknown can loom, unexpectedly and large.
Just when everything seems lost, new order can emerge from catastrophe and chaos.

To straddle that is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos, possibility, growth and adventure. Place one foot in what you have mastered and understood, and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering.

When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing you don’t notice - it is there and then that you are located precisely on the border between order and chaos.

Old stories contain nothing superfluous. Anything accidental - anything that does not serve the plot - has long been forgotten in the telling.

Heaven is something you must build. Immortality is something you must earn.

For the Taoists, meaning is to be found on the border between the ever-entwined pair. To walk that border is to stay on the path of life, the divine Way. And that’s much better than happiness.

🔖 I hope that these rules and their accompanying essays will help people understand what they already know: that the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, and that the willingness to take on that responsibility is identical to the decision to live a meaningful life.

Happiness is found on meaning — taking responsibility, is the only antidote for chaos. Adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world. This is how we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world.

Rule 1

Stand up straight with your shoulders back

🦞 Speaking of lobsters… conflict, in turn, produces another problem: how to win or lose without the disagreeing parties incurring too great a cost. If both get killed in the fight, they are at risk of a third one coming along and “taking the prize”.

High levels of serotonin and low levels of octopamine characterizes the victor. The opposite neurochemical configuration produces a defeated-looking, very likely to hang around street corners, and to vanish at the first hint of trouble.

If a dominant lobster is badly defeated, its brain basically dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinate’s brain — one more appropriate to its new, lowly position.

Males who stay on top longer are those who form reciprocal coalitions with their lower-status compatriots, and who pay careful attention to the troupe’s females and their infants. The political ploy of baby-kissing is literally millions of years old.

It is exponentially more worthwhile to be successful: the dominant male, with his upright and confident posture, not only gets the prime real estate and easiest access to the best hunting grounds. He also gets all the girls.

📍 80 / 20

“to those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.”

—— Matthew 25:29

Unequal wealth and social distribution: when the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia. It also applies to creative work, research and book publication, music composition…

The moment we bump into someone, we immediately, inevitably, assign a status or grade from 1 to 10 of how they rank in the societal scale. Dominance hierarchies are older than trees and have been around for some half a billion years.

If you present yourself as defeated, then people will react to you as if you are losing. If you start to straighten up, then people will look at and treat you differently.

Because “nature” is “what selects,” [the longer a feature has existed](Lindy effect), the more time it has had to be selected - and to shape life.

📍 Top and bottom

When operating at the bottom, the ancient brain counter assumes that even the smallest unexpected impediment might produce an uncontrollable chain of negative events. It will render you impulsive, so that, for example, you will jump at any short-term mating opportunities, or any possibilities of pleasure, no matter how sub-par.

On the other hand, if you have a high status, mechanics assume that your niche is secure, productive and safe, and that you are well buttressed with social support. This renders you confident and calm, standing tall and straight, and much less on constant alert.

You can delay gratification, without forgoing it forever. You can afford to be a reliable and thoughtful citizen.

📍 The importance of habits and routine

The body, with its various parts, needs to function like a well-rehearsed orchestra. Every system must play its role properly, and at exactly the right time, or noise and chaos ensue. It is for this reason that routine is so necessary. The acts of life we repeat every day need to be automatized. They must be turned into stable and reliable habits, so they lose their complexity and gain predictability and simplicity.

📍 Negative loops

There are many systems of interaction between brain, body and social world that can get caught in positive feedback loops. Depressed people, for example, can start feeling useless and burdensome, as well as grief-stricken and pained. This makes them withdraw from contact with friends and family. Then the withdrawal makes them more lonesome and isolated, and more likely to feel useless and burdensome. Then they withdraw more. In this manner, depression spirals and amplifies.

📍 Stand up straight with your shoulders back

To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality.

So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them — at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.

Rule 2

Treat yourself as if you were someone that you are responsible for helping

People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves.

People often don’t really believe that they deserve the best care. Instead of narcissistically inflating their own importance, they don’t value themselves.

It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.

Some people degenerate into the hell of resentment, but most refuse to do so.

You have to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you.

You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.

Define who you are. Refine your personality.

Rule 3

Make friends with people who want the best for you

The world is a different place when it is cold like that.

📍 Freud’s Repetition Compulsion.

People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produce the same faulty results.

Not everyone who is failing is a victim. Not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise.

Distinguish between someone truly wanting and needing help, and someone who is merely exploiting a willing helper.

The person who tries and fails, and is forgiven, and then tries again and fails, and is forgiven, is also too often the person who wants everyone to believe in the authenticity of all that trying.

A boss moves a problematic person into the midst of a stellar team, hoping to improve him by example. What happens? The entire team degenerates.
Place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability.

Down is a lot easier than up.

Are you enabling a delusion? Is it possible that your contempt would be more helpful than your pity?

Before you help someone, you should find out why this person is in trouble. You shouldn’t merely assume that she is a noble victim of circumstances and exploitation — this is the most unlikely explanation. It’s never been that simple.

If you buy the story that everything terrible just happened on its own, with no personal responsibility on the part of the victim, you deny that person all agency in the past (and, by implication, in the present and future, as well). In this manner, you strip him or her of all power.

It is far more likely that a given individual has just decided to reject the path upward, because of its difficulty.

Failure is easy to understand.

No explanation for its existence is required. In the same manner, fear, hatred, addiction, promiscuity, betrayal and deception. Failure is easy.

It’s easier not to shoulder a burden.
It’s easier not to think, and not to do, and not to care.
It’s easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today.

To fail, you merely have to cultivate a few bad habits. You just have to bide your time.

Here’s something to consider: If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself?

Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement: loyalty must be negotiated.

You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.

People who support your upward aim will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not.

When you dare to aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future.

🔖 Michelangelo’s marvel, David, cries out to its observer: you could be more than you are. When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future. Then you disturb others, in the depths of their souls, where they understand that their cynicism and immobility are unjustifiable.

Don’t think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It’s not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgment, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.

Rule 4

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today

It’s easier for people to be good at something in small, rural communities.

🖇 Related to Thinking Fast And Slow and the idea that small samples will always produce more extreme results.

Large samples are more precise than small samples, which is the same to say that extreme outcomes are more likely to be found in small samples. This explanation is not causal.

Local heroes have the opportunity to enjoy the serotonin-fueled confidence of the victor. People born in small towns are statistically overrepresented among the eminent.

We are not equal in ability or outcome, and never will be. A very small number of people produce very much of everything. The winners don’t take all, but take most. And the bottom is not a good place to be. Life is a zero sum game and worthlessness is the default condition.

If the cards are always stacked against you, perhaps the game you are playing is somehow rigged - perhaps by you.

A cliché of nihilism: “In a million years, who’s going to know the difference?” The proper response to that statement is not, “Well, then, everything is meaningless.” It’s, “Any idiot can choose a frame of time within which nothing matters.” Talking yourself into irrelevance is not a profound critique of being. It’s a cheap trick of the rational mind.

The black and white distinction between success and failure (with no middle ground) is a naive, unsophisticated analysis.

The world allows for many ways of being, if you don’t succeed at one, you can try another. Even if the changing games doesn’t work, you can invent a new one. On top of that, it’s unlikely that you’re playing only one game, and you should consider your performance across all of them.

Winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?

Perhaps you’re overvaluing what you don’t have, and undervaluing what you do.

Dare to be dangerous. Dare to be truthful. Dare to articulate yourself, and express what would really justify your life.

We are always and simultaneously at point “a” (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point “b” (which we deem better).

We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all.

We suffer chronic unease and discomfort because we are always comparing “what is” with “what can be”.

The future is like the past, with one difference: the future could be better. The present might be flawed, but the place you start is not as important as the direction you’re heading.

Happiness is always found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.

📍 You only see what you aim at

🖇 The idea that what you aim at determines what you see is the representation of Daniel Simons’ Gorilla experiment.

You’re a bad employee, but a worse boss. Ask yourself what you can do for you, no matter how small. Then reward yourself for that.

Five hundred little actions make your day. Are you willing to make two or three of those a little bit better today? Repeat this for three years and you’ll become an entire different, better person.

Aim small, but aim high. Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself a reward, in triumph. Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that’s magic. That’s compound interest.

📍Vision is expensive: to deal with the overwhelming complexity of the world, you ignore most of it, while you concentrate minutely on your private concerns. You just see the things that facilitate your moves towards your desired goals. You will detect obstacles along the way, but you are pretty much blind to everything else. And there’s a lot of everything else. And you’re very blind.

We are blinded by our desires, the rest of the world is hidden from us. If we start aiming at something different — something like “I want my life to be better” — our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit.

Aim and focus to what will make Life better: aim for a better Life, not for a better office. Aim for a better Life for everybody, not just you. Wish everybody well.

What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better, and what small thing would I like as a reward?

Aim lower, but aim high. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day.

What do you know about yourself? On one hand, you are the most complex thing in the universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on the microwave. Don’t overestimate yourself.

Rule 5

Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

People often get basic psychological questions backwards. Why do people take drugs? Not a mystery. It’s why they don’t take them all the time that’s the mystery. Why do people suffer from anxiety? That’s not a mystery. How is that people can ever be calm? There’s the mystery. We’re breakable and mortal. A million things can go wrong, in a million ways. We should be terrified out of our skulls at every second. But we’re not. The same can be said for depression, laziness and criminality.

Violence is the default. It’s easy. It’s peace that is difficult: learned, inculcated, earned.

Much more of our sanity than we commonly realize is a consequence of our fortunate immersion in a social community.

You can teach virtually anyone anything with such an approach. First, figure out what you want. Then, watch the people around you like a hawk. Finally, whenever you see anything a bit more like what you want, swoop in and deliver a reward.

the fundamental moral question is not how to shelter children completely from misadventure and failure, so they never experience any fear or pain, but how to maximize their learning so that useful knowledge may be gained with minimal cost.

Two general principles of discipline:

Limit the rules.
Use the least force necessary to enforce those rules.

Rule 6

Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world

It is possible to learn good by experiencing evil — the majority of people who were abused as children do not abuse their own children.

Success makes us complacent. We forget to pay attention. We take what we have for granted. We turn a blind eye. We fail to notice that things are changing, or that corruption is taking root. And everything falls apart. Is that the fault of reality — of God? Or do things fall apart because we have not paid sufficient attention?

If it’s her fault, she might be able to do something about it. If it’s God’s fault, however — if reality itself is flawed — then she is doomed.

A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known — that’s sin. That’s failure to hit the mark. And the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no, here’s something to try: start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know that what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is.

Have you taken full advantage of the opportunities offered to you?
Do you have habits that are destroying your health and well-being?
Are you truly shouldering your responsibilities?

Every person is too complex to understand themselves completely and contains wisdom that we can’t comprehend.

Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you can speak up with honor. You can use your own standards of judgement, you can rely on yourself for guidance.

Life is short and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own — the wisdom of the past was ancestors was hard earned, and your ancestors might have something useful to tell you.

Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?

Who knows what existence might be like if we all strived for the best.

Rule 7

Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient

There is little difference between sacrifice and work. They are also both uniquely human.

The discovery of the causal relationship between our efforts today and the quality of tomorrow motivated the social contract — the organization that enables today’s work to be stored, reliably, mostly in the form of promises from others.

The successful among us succeed because delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future. The successful sacrifice.

It takes a long time to learn to keep anything later for yourself. You are sharing with your future self.

To share does not mean to give away something you value, and get nothing back. To share means, properly, to initiate the process of trade.

Benjamin Franklin once suggested that a newcomer to a neighborhood ask a new neighbor to do him or her a favor. The latter could now ask the former for a favor, in return, because of the debt incurred, increasing their mutual familiarity and trust. In that manner both parties could overcome their natural hesitancy and mutual fear of the stranger.

If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values. It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It’s time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.

No tree can grow to Heaven, adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, unless its roots reach down to hell.

The fact that automobiles pollute only becomes a problem of sufficient magnitude to attract public attention when the far worse problems that the internal combustion engine solves has vanished from view. People stricken with poverty don’t care about carbon dioxide.

Aim up. Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. Don’t be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression, torture and death. Become aware of your own insufficiency — your cowardice, malevolence, resentment and hatred. Consider the murderousness of your own spirit before you dare accuse others, and before you attempt to repair the fabric of the world. Maybe it’s not the world that’s at fault. Maybe it’s you. You’ve failed to make the mark. You’ve missed the target. You’ve fallen short of the glory of God. You’ve sinned. And all of that is your contribution to the insufficiency and evil of the world. And, above all, don’t lie. Don’t lie about anything, ever.

To have meaning in your life is better than to have what you want, because you may neither know what you want, nor what you truly need. Meaning is something that comes upon you, of its own accord. You can set up the preconditions, you can follow meaning, when it manifests itself, but you cannot simply produce it, as an act of will.

What is expedient works only for the moment. It’s immediate, impulsive and limited. What is meaningful, by contrast, is the organization of what would otherwise merely be expedient into a symphony of Being.

Once you have placed “make the world better” at the top of your value hierarchy, you experience ever-deepening meaning. It’s how you make amends for the pathology of history.

There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient.

Rule 8

Tell the truth or at least don’t lie

I soon came to realize that almost everything I said was untrue. I had motives for saying these things: I wanted to win arguments and gain status and impress people and get what I wanted. I was using language to bend and twist the world into delivering what I thought was necessary. But I was a fake. Realizing this, I started to practice only saying things that the internal voice would not object to. I started to practice telling the truth — or, at least, not lying. I soon learned that such a skill came in very handy when I didn’t know what to do.

What should you do, when you don’t know what to do? Tell the truth.

📍 Acting politically: it is the speech people engage in to manipulate others, it is what university students do when they write an essay to please the professor instead of articulating and clarifying their own ideas, it is what everybody does when they want something and decide to falsify themselves to please and flatter […]. This is known as a “life lie” attempting to manipulate reality with perception, thought and action. People define their utopia and then bend their lives into knots trying to make it reality.

Defining reality with and only the current knowledge of the world: an eighteen-year-old decides, arbitrarily, that she wants to retire at fifty-two. She works for three decades to make that happen, failing to notice that she made that decision when she was little more than a child. What did she know about her fifty-two-year-old self, when still a teenager?

Oversimplification and falsification is particularly typical of ideologues. They adopt a single axiom: government is bad, immigration is bad, capitalism is bad, patriarchy is bad. Then they filter and screen their experiences and insist ever more narrowly that everything can be explained by that axiom.

Sin of commission: you do something you know to be wrong.
Sin of omission: you let something bad happen when you could do something to stop it.

Imagine being at work, and somebody imposes an unfair rule, one you don’t agree with — but you decide not to say anything, you accept it and think that “it doesn’t matter”. You don’t want to confront the situation and prefer to yield. By doing this, you’re making a statement, and perpetuating and allowing more events like this to come in the future. This has an impact on your being as well, if you will not reveal yourself to others, so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward.

If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears.

However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not… you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.

The mind is its own place place, and in itself can make the heaven of hell, and the hell of heaven.

We must make decisions, everyone needs a concrete, specific goal — an ambition, and a purpose. An aim provides a destination, the structure necessary for action, a point of contrast against the present, and a framework, within which all things can be evaluated. An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting. If you have no aim everything can mean anything or nothing.

You are by no means only what you already know. You are also all that which you could know, if you only would. Thus, you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are. You should never give up the better that resides within for the security you already have — and certainly not when you have already caught a glimpse, an undeniable glimpse, of something beyond.

Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain of what they should be. The best ambitions have to do with character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go. It allow you to prevail against adversity.

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.

Rule 9

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you need to know

Advice is what you get when the person you’re talking with about something horrible and complicated wishes you would just shut up and go away. Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence.

It is amazing what people will tell you if you listen.

Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it. Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better.

There is no such thing as knowing the objective truth, and there never would be. There is no such thing as an objective observer, and there never would be. There is no complete and accurate story.

Memory is not a description of the objective past. Memory is a tool. Memory is the past’s guide to the future. If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again.

“This is what happened. This is why. This is what I have to do to avoid such things from now on”: That’s a successful memory. That’s the purpose of memory. It’s not “to remember the past.” It’s to stop the same damn thing from happening over and over.

Carl Rogers wrote, “The great majority of us cannot listen; we find ourselves compelled to evaluate, because listening is too dangerous.”

If you listen, instead, without premature judgment, people will generally tell you everything they are thinking — and with very little deceit. People will tell you the most amazing, absurd, interesting things. Very few of your conversations will be boring. You can in fact tell whether or not you are actually listening in this manner. If the conversation is boring, you probably aren’t.

📍 Conversation of mutual exploration: it allows all participants to express and organize their thoughts, everybody participating is trying to solve a problem, instead of insisting of a priori validity of their own ideas. All are acting on the premise that they have something to learn.

It constitutes active philosophy, the higher form of thought and the best preparation for better living.

It makes a better friend of the unknown rather than the known. You already know what you know, and unless your life is perfect, what you know is not enough. You remain threaten by disease, self-deception, unhappiness, limitation…

If you knew more, if you just knew enough, you’d be happier, healthier, wiser, more honest, you would suffer less. However your current knowledge hasn’t neither made you perfect or kept you safe, so it is insufficient by definition.

Remember that what you do not yet know is more important than what you already know.

When somebody shares their conclusions with you, you can bypass some of the pain of personally learning those things.

Meditate as you converse instead of strategizing towards victory. Don’t be in the conversation just seeking validation, being right or get your point across — if you do that, you’re just repeating what you already believe.

Tell the speaker what are you learning from their conclusions, report what this information has done to you, how it has changed you. Rephrase their thoughts as you speak and build shared knowledge from there. Then you both move towards somewhere newer, broader, better. You both change as you let your presuppositions die.

Listen, your wisdom consists not only to knowledge you already have, but from the continual search for knowledge. Which is the highest form of wisdom.

Rule 10

Be precise in your speech

If you leave things vague, then this makes the world too complex to be managed.

Situations, most things in life, show their complexity when they fail or cease to work.

If you identify things, with careful attention and language, you bring them forward as viable, obedient objects, detaching them from their underlying near-universal interconnectedness. You simplify them. You make them specific and useful, and reduce their complexity.

When things break down, what has been ignored rushes in. When things are no longer specified, with precision, the walls crumble, and chaos makes its presence known. When we’ve been careless, and let things slide, what we have refused to attend to gathers itself up, adopts a serpentine form, and strikes — often at the worst possible moment. It is then that we see what focused intent, precision of aim and careful attention protects us from.

Chaos emerges in a household, bit by bit. Mutual unhappiness and resentment pile up. Everything untidy is swept under the rug, where the dragon feasts on the crumbs. But no one says anything.

Something is out there in the woods. You know that with certainty. But often it’s only a squirrel. If you refuse to look, however, then it’s a dragon, and you’re no knight: you’re a mouse confronting a lion; a rabbit, paralyzed by the gaze of a wolf. And I am not saying that it’s always a squirrel. Often it’s something truly terrible. But even what is terrible in actuality often pales in significance compared to what is terrible in imagination.

You must determine where you have been in your life, so that you can know where you are now. Otherwise you can’t get to where you’re going.

Say what you mean, so you can find out what you mean. Act out what you say, so you can find out what happens. Then pay attention. Note your errors. Articulate them. Strive to correct them.

Confront the chaos of Being. Take aim against a sea of troubles. Specify your destination, and chart your course. Admit to what you want. Tell those around you who you are. Narrow, and gaze attentively, and move forward, forthrightly. Be precise in your speech.

Rule 11

Do not bother children when they are skateboarding

Of course it was dangerous. Danger was the point. They wanted to triumph over danger. They would have been safer in protective equipment, but that would have ruined it. They weren’t trying to be safe. They were trying to become competent — and it’s competence that makes people as safe as they can truly be.

When untrammeled — and encouraged — we prefer to live on the edge. There, we can still be both confident in our experience and confronting the chaos that helps us develop. We’re hard-wired, for that reason, to enjoy risk. We feel invigorated and excited when we work to optimize our future performance, while playing in the present. Otherwise we lumber around, sloth-like, unconscious, unformed and careless. Overprotected, we will fail when something dangerous, unexpected and full of opportunity suddenly makes its appearance, as it inevitably will.

You must also know clearly what you want out of the situation, and be prepared to clearly articulate your desire.

Make your request as small and reasonable as possible - but ensure that its fulfillment would satisfy you. Come to the discussion with a solution, instead of just a problem.

It’s a good idea to tell the person you are confronting exactly what you would like them to do instead of what they have done or currently are doing. Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs — not even you.

If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences - and infer the motivation.

The planet is harder on us than we are on it. We could cut ourselves some slack.

📍 Women and mating

Girls can win by winning in their own hierarchy — by being good at what girls value, as girls. They can add to this victory by winning in the boys’ hierarchy. Boys, however, can only win by winning in the male hierarchy. They will lose status, among girls and boys, by being good at what girls value. It costs them in reputation among the boys, and in attractiveness among the girls.

The byproduct of this dynamic is that, in the long run and aside from STEM, universities will be populated mainly by women.

Women have a strong proclivity to marry across or up the economic hierarchy. They prefer a partner of equally or higher status. The same does not hold true for men, yet they show a preference for younger mates. Because of this, inevitably, marriage is something reserved for the rich.

The unemployable men is an undesirable species. A woman should not look after a man, because she must look after children, and a man should not be a child.

If they’re healthy, women don’t want boys. They want men. They want someone to contend with; someone to grapple with. If they’re tough, they want someone tougher. If they’re smart, they want someone smarter. They desire someone who brings to the table something they can’t already provide. This often makes it hard for tough, smart, attractive women to find mates: there just aren’t that many men around who can outclass them enough to be considered desirable.

In 1847, Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson was the first to demonstrate the anesthetic properties of chloroform on humans. The first baby delivered under the effects of chloroform was called Anesthesia.

📍 Culture, hierarchy and inequality of outcome

Culture takes with one hand, but in some fortunate places, it gives with the other.

Consider this, as well, in regard to oppression: any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are, of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and the losers to criticize it. But (1) the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy (as some will be better and some worse at that pursuit not matter what it is) and (2) it is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends life its sustaining meaning.

We experience success and meaning in life as a consequence of moving towards something deeply desired and valued. The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequence is the inequality of outcome. But that’s not a bad thing, since you can “play” and “win” in different games.

In societies that are well-functioning competence, not power, is a prime determiner of status. Competence. Ability. Skill. Not power. This is obvious both anecdotally and factually. The most valid personality trait predictors of long-term success in Western countries are intelligence (as measured with cognitive ability or IQ tests) and conscientiousness (a trait characterized by industriousness and orderliness).

Rule 12

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

Imagine a being who is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. What does such a being lack? Limitation. If you are already everything, everywhere, always, there is nowhere to go and nothing to be. Everything that could be, already is. And everything that could happen, already has. And it is for this reason that God created man.

A super hero who can do anything turns out to be no hero at all. He’s nothing specific, so he’s nothing. He has nothing to strive against, so he can’t be admirable. Being of any admirable sort seems to require limitation. Perhaps this is because being requires becoming, and to become is to become something more or at least something different.

When you love someone, it’s not despite their limitations. It’s because of their limitations.

Set aside some time to talk and to think about the illness or other crisis and how it should be managed every day. Do not talk or think about it otherwise. If you do not limit its effect, you will become exhausted, and everything will spiral into the ground. This is not helpful. Conserve your strength. You’re in a war, not a battle, and a war is composed of many battles. You must stay functional through all of them. When worries associated with the crisis arise at other times, remind yourself that you will think them through, during the scheduled period.

And maybe when you are going for a walk and your head is spinning a cat will show up and if you pay attention to it then you will get a reminder for just fifteen seconds that the wonder of Being might make up for the ineradicable suffering that accompanies it. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

Free Will

Sat, 06 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

Our sense of free will results from a failure to appreciate this: we do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.

Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower… are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will believe. But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being.

It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: on the one hand, we can’t make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.

🔖 The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions.

First, that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past.

Before you are aware of what you will do next — a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please — your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it.
Neuroscientists view the brain as a quantum computer. And even if it were, quantum indeterminacy does nothing to make the concept of free will scientifically intelligible.
What I will do next, and why, remains, at bottom, a mystery — one that is fully determined by the prior state of the universe and the laws of nature. To declare my “freedom” is tantamount to saying, “I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.”

Second, that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present.

The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness — rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.
You are not in control of your mind — because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts. You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
Choices, efforts, intentions, and reasoning influence our behavior — but they are themselves part of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and over which we exert no ultimate control. My choices matter — and there are paths toward making wiser ones — but I cannot choose what I choose. And if it ever appears that I do — for instance, after going back and forth between two options — I do not choose to choose what I choose. There is a regress here that always ends in darkness.

📍 Inheritance — a game of luck

You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn’t choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime — by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?

The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments, and bad ideas (and the innocent, of course, have supremely bad luck). Which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being is responsible for his genes or his upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character. Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself.

Even if you believe that every human being harbors an immortal soul, the problem of responsibility remains: I cannot take credit for the fact that I do not have the soul of a psychopath. If I had truly been in Komisarjevsky’s shoes on July 23, 2007 — that is, if I had his genes and life experience and an identical brain (or soul) in an identical state — I would have acted exactly as he did. There is simply no intellectually respectable position from which to deny this. The role of luck, therefore, appears decisive.

Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.

📍 Compatibilism

The problem for compatibilism runs deeper, however — for where is the freedom in wanting what one wants without any internal conflict whatsoever? Where is the freedom in being perfectly satisfied with your thoughts, intentions, and subsequent actions when they are the product of prior events that you had absolutely no hand in creating?

📍 Determinism

If determinism is true, the future is set — and this includes all our future states of mind and our subsequent behavior. And to the extent that the law of cause and effect is subject to indeterminism — quantum or otherwise — we can take no credit for what happens. There is no combination of these truths that seems compatible with the popular notion of free will.

📍 Some conditions seem to get a pass

Despite our attachment to the notion of free will, most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind. This shift in understanding represents progress toward a deeper, more consistent, and more compassionate view of our common humanity — and we should note that this is progress away from religious metaphysics.

📍 Religion

Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems.

Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin — which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us.

sub3 — Month #1

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been over a month since I started planning for the sub3 marathon project. In my mind, this first month was all about getting things up and running, building the habit, the momentum that will eventually become the foundation for the project. Yet sincerely, the results have blown my wildest expectations, I couldn’t have imagined a better, more steady start.

I feel the need to bring back Steve here, just to remind me what I got wrong the last time, but also what fueled me this last month — and hopefully what will keep me going in the future.

How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.

In a nutshell, this is what me overcoming Resistance looks like 👇

Still far from my PRs, though, the almost 250km I clocked this month have taken the “laziness cloud” out of the picture and put me in a position to start pushing these times down during October.

Retrospective

Note that almost half of the training volume was performed on trails — hence the unusually high positive altitude gained — because of two upcoming trail races during September I wanted to prepare for. Notwithstanding, I also had the chance to combine it with a handful of interval sessions in the track.

As I mentioned before, I’m not currently following any strict training plan. I just try to combine fast-paced intervals with slower, longer runs, and simply rest when I feel tired or overtrained. Kind of common sense, but nothing structured nor organized.

Later this month, though, I started to dig a little deeper into training plans in order to approach the sub3 hour marathon more scientifically, if such thing exists. I know I’ll be following a plan eventually, but first I wanted to focus on getting the “basics” right, and consolidate the habit of training four to five times per week. In other words, reliable proof that I could do it, by demonstrating to myself that I could commit to training.

That’s the main reason why I still don’t have any metrics to “obsess” with. I wanted to start with a softer approach and meanwhile, use this time to learn about the craft and set for the appropriate metrics when the time comes.

On the other hand, whilst not following a strict routine or optimizing for a set of metrics, I’m trying to ensure the right balance of performance across these five pillars:

Train — and rest: seizing four to five sessions per week, making sure I’m training hard, but most importantly, I plan and respect the days off.
Stretch: something I’ve never paid attention to before, but now taking into serious account. I’m making huge progress on this area, as flexible as I’ve never been 🤸‍♂️
Sleep: that’s simple, aiming for 8 hours per day, no excuses.
Eat: yikes… say hi to the pillar with more room for improvement. I’m currently overeating, no secret: around 3200kcal per day and doing an especially poor job with regards to sugar. This is definitely homework that carries over to the next month.
Meditate: I want to bundle meditation into the whole performance pack, and despite it might not be strictly related, I’m convinced it will help me thrive in the long run.

Next month, with more data available, I will break this section down with the classic Good | Bad | To Improve framework. This month, though, clearly could have benefited from less eating and a little bit more sleep.

Metrics

As I said, it is still early to start looking at the data. Yet a certain data-driven personality comes by default. And while I want to use it to improve my marks, I don’t want the data-obsessed side of me to take over and run the entire show.

The first month remains about setting everything up and creating momentum. Get this foundation right, and metrics will inevitably follow. For the time being, just to ensure I’m not plateauing and making healthy progress, here are some basics:

Volume: 247.2km
1k: 00:00:33 — the 21st of September
10k: 00:43:45 — the 19th of September
Half marathon: n/a
VO2max¹: up from 52 to 59

Another “easy one” I could add to the equation is weight. Although it comes already factored into the PRs — less weight means less energy required to push the body, thus better performance — I think is also a good metric to keep an eye on, especially given the fact that eating is by far the biggest area for improvement.

Here’s my weight log these lasts months 👇

Coming Up

Next month I want to maintain the momentum and clock 200 to 220km. This is less than this month because the 29th of September I’ll be running the Mitja Pirineus and I don’t want to show up there overtrained, so a little bit of rest will be welcome during the early phase of the month.

On top of that, I’ve got a few trips booked for October — that will certainly disrupt a little bit my training agenda. Nonetheless, I’m aiming for new PRs for the 10k, below 00:43:00, and also completing the first half marathon training, below 01:40:00.

So, my homework for the next month 👇

Volume: 200 — 220km
10k: <00:43:00
Half marathon: <01:40:00
Mitja Pirineus: <01:55:00
Improve eating habits — get weight down to 63.5kg
Start meditating
Research about training plans

I’ve read plenty of research pointing out that wrist heart rate based VO2max is not the most accurate way to estimate this value, but since my watch provides it, I thought it was cool to include it as well.↩

Now — Late 2018

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Training

I’m back to the running track and (seriously) preparing to run a sub 3h marathon sometime next year.

By the end of the year, I hope to get my marks back down to 40min for 10km and 1h25min for half marathon.

I’ll also be running the Valencia Marathon on the 2nd of December — hopefully under 3h15min.

You can follow me on Strava to know how am I doing…

Making

After finishing the DAND and the RDND, Udacity offered the possibility to become a mentor for future students of their programs.

I was hesitant at first because such commitment would occupy a lot of time. But the idea of giving back and helping out other students achieve their goals definitely won me over and I decided to start mentoring Udacity students on the React Nanodegree.

On top of that, I’ll be wrapping up other “unfinished” projects of mine:

Complete the moving of collado.io.
Finish both ES6 and JS30 Wes Bos courses that I started early this summer.
Read for once and for all Eloquent JavaScript — tried several times before, but never managed to commit until the end.

Reading

I want to maintain the healthy habit of reading a couple of books per month. My late 2018 picks will double down on a topic that has recently caught my attention: the intersection of physics and psychology.

A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design — I read these two a while ago (back in college actually…) and I hope that re-reading them will get me in a “quantum mood” to start with the psychology stuff.
Thinking Fast and Slow and The Undoing Project — I read the former a few years ago and it profoundly changed the way I approach decision making, period. Recently, a friend of mine told me about a Michael Lewis book that narrated the twisted relationship between Daniel and Amos. I couldn’t resist the “temptation” so I’m going for both.
The War of Art and Man’s Search For Meaning — Everybody keeps on recommending these two and now it is the time to go get them. Bonus: nicely aligned with the psychology theme.
Measure What Matters and 12 Rules For Life — Finally, not really the type of book I’d actively seek by myself, but these are Ironhack’s Book Club picks for the month… so I have no choice.

Going Sub3

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Last year — also by the end of the summer, I challenged myself to finish the 2018 Barcelona Marathon under three hours.

Long story short: I failed miserably.

The ~~excuses~~ reasons why range from poor training, unfortunate injuries… A sufficiently resourceful mind can convince itself of whatever it wants. Truth is I didn’t work hard enough, I didn’t want it enough. Afterward, I bounced around denial, anger, guilt, and finally told myself that was the last marathon I’d ever run, that I had enough.

Well, apparently, I changed my mind.

The reasons why lay beyond these lines, but this time around I will turn the challenge into a (pseudo public) project. Not because I need the external accountability (which I am sure it will also help), but because I want it to be continuously measured, attentively managed and flawlessly executed.

To echo the wise man:

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

The Starting Point

I wanted to first address this “background check” because it is vital in order to give the project context and help assess “how difficult” getting there would actually be.

My relation with running started early. I was part of the track team at my school when I was fourteen and stayed there for a couple of years, but nothing serious. Then forgot about it altogether¹ for a few years. Suddenly, for reasons unknown, in 2011 I started joining some friends for weekend trail runs.

I kept hitting the trails, but it wasn’t after almost an entire year, by the end of 2012, that I run my first race, ever: a 10k. The next week, my second: a half marathon.

After that, I walked into a love-hate relationship with running and races that has remained up to this very day. I could either painstakingly train for the months leading to a race or just shut myself down, drop the shoes for half a year — as it happened after the 2018 Barcelona Marathon².

For the record, I have never followed a training program or stuck to a strict diet; instead, I have always had an intermittent, unstructured approach to running. On the other hand, it is also true that I have been gifted with fairly “privileged set” of genetics — that has always helped me stay away from injury and recover fast, and a reasonably high threshold to endure physical pain.

Throughout these years I have run dozens of 10k and half marathons; and six marathons — the first one in 2013, but for those of you who prefer the data, here are my PRs as of 2018:

10k — 00:40:57
Half marathon — 01:28:26
Marathon — 03:18:20

Here is where I stand: six months to skim more than eighteen marathon minutes on top of a non-supervised, but fairly active and healthy life.

Challenge accepted!

Why I Failed In 2018

The short answer is because I still hadn’t read this book.

To quote Steven Pressfield on the exact reason I failed:

How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.

Resistance won over my will.

The long answer is also closely related to the underlying causes of my binary, intermittent approach to running itself — and ~~most~~ many other things in life for that matter.

I wouldn’t say I have a hard time focusing on a single project. On the contrary, I tend to focus “too much” — if such a thing exists. What I found difficult — and this is a lifelong recurring theme of mine, is to strike a healthy balance between different activities. Most projects aren’t usually dropped because of lack of interest, but rather because they create a huge imbalance in other areas of my life and I can’t sustain them over the long term³.

Back to running, I basically failed because I lacked the consistency and didn’t put in the hard work it takes; I kept a passive mindset. I have never “sweat” to achieve my marks neither I had the discipline to train hard. I just checked the bare minimum required and let faith decide the rest. And yet finishing a marathon is not an easy endeavor, all my PRs have come fairly easy, without deliberate training or a huge sacrifice on my end.

But going sub3 is a whole other story and doesn’t come naturally to anybody. Not even the most privileged genetics or the best self-talk will get you there without a decent, structured amount of dedicated training.

The 2019 Challenge

Easy 😰, run a marathon under the three-hour mark in 2019.

Am I certain that this year I’m going to make it? Nope. But at least I know that I will be consistent, put the necessary effort and measure and act upon what works and what doesn’t. Otherwise, this whole project would be a wasted effort.

One more time, from Steven:

The pro concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

And finally, why do it in the first place?

First of all, because the challenge will help me become more consistent with my practice, and regardless I make it or not, I’ll end up in a pretty decent place anyway. Nothing bad comes out from being physically active.

But I don’t want this to be just a simple series of posts — the topic is way too “me-centric” and I don’t think it has a broader appeal or interest. I just want this project to help me analyze in depth my training log, and understand how the different inputs affect my overall performance.

The idea behind starting this project goes back to the very idea of why I started this very site in the first place. Back then I was afraid to forget about the things I learned. My life consists in a series of self-imposed experiments — ranging from walking everywhere for a month, eating strict paleo for a year or squatting 100kg following the 5x5, that I’m logging nowhere but on a handful of notebooks.

This time though, I want to be strategic with my efforts and measure the training in a way I didn’t before. Everything will be publicly available at my Strava profile and maybe I share some updates in the future as follow up posts under the tag sub3 that you can check here.

Not that I quit exercising, despite never being a professional athlete, I’ve always maintained a fairly active lifestyle. During this gap, from fourteen to eighteen, I trained regularly with the sailing national team. We didn’t run much, but it kept me quite busy.↩
To illustrate this particular case, after the 2018 Barcelona Marathon in March, I didn’t run again a single km until July. I stop training altogether, overate during months and almost gained 10kg, from 59.6kg to 68.4kg. This was a couple of weeks ago, the turning point when I realized that I had to do something with my life.↩
Rereading this paragraph I sound like an indecisive maniacal bouncing around from project to project as if there was no tomorrow. Well, fortunately that’s not the case, believe me, I am fine :) but I needed the example to explain this idea and maybe I took the analogy too far, anyway, you got the point.↩

Moving collado.io

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

For more than five years I have been consistently jotting down thoughts and ideas at collado.io. Topics ranging from product stories at iomando, the experience at Ironhack, summaries of the books I liked or just random thoughts that kept me awake at night. They all have accounted for more than one hundred fifty entries so far.

What started as a way to crystalize what I learnt, has become a journey of discovery in itself. In the early days, writing meant to me no more than stitching words in front of the other, yet I started because I was afraid of forgetting the ideas on the books I was reading.

In other words, I wanted to create a backup drive for my brain, you know, just in case.

But soon I realized that the sole process of sitting down and write was also teaching me how to think: broadening my perspective, structuring my reasoning and slowly smoothing my roughest thoughts out. An invaluable asset nowadays I couldn’t live without.

Writing has profoundly changed the way I approach problems both in my personal and professional life.

Squarespace

collado.io’s content has always been hosted at Squarespace.

But, why Squarespace?

Simple, yet a little bit embarrassing. If you have ever wondered who has “clicked-bait” at one of those Squarespace codes the whole podcast tribe throw at you show after show during the ad break, wonder no more, you just met a “success story”.

I kept hearing “the ads” — right at the time the thought of starting a blog wandered my mind, and the rest… well, I suppose the rest is how brand advertisement works. You just get 20% off your first month and stick with them for the next five years. They surely know a thing or two about LTV.

After these years, Squarespace has been an extremely reliable partner. Despite that if I were to go back in time and do it again maybe I’d choose another tool, I only have words of gratitude for the service and the team behind. During all these years they flawlessly kept the show up and running and never failed me, not even once.

I can’t recommend them enough and I have nothing but admiration for their product. Unfortunately, my time with Squarespace has come to an end.

Going Solo

collado.io is moving to a new place accompanied by a new partner, and these are the reasons why:

Gain (full) ownership over my content. At some point, I realized that my posts were, in a way, part of my small history. I trusted Squarespace and I was not paranoiac about privacy or control, but owning my content was personally important. Maintenance-wise, it is much easier to let Squarespace “do the magic”, but I like the idea of self-hosting a bunch of markdown files, that could be moved around from one place to another without worrying much about walled gardens.
Big plans for collado.io. Right now collado.io is just a personal blog that could be hosted elsewhere without the hassle of taking care of the entire site. It is reasonable to argue that, for the sole purpose of writing, Squarespace — or any other blogging platform, is a better bang for the bank. True, but collado.io has big plans for the future and wants to move beyond “basic blogging” and Squarespace was not the right tool for the job anymore.
Learn by doing. During the last couple of years I’ve been devoting almost all my free time to coding. What started as a naive exploration with Ruby, that led me to discover the world of data science, has become a love story with Javascript, specially, React. The idea of “aligning” my largest side-project (collado.io) with my newly acquired skills sounded like something I’d definitely wanted to do.

The simplicity and the beauty of running my own lightweight site, something I built myself, and the eagerness to learn throughout the process are the main drivers behind my decision.

A decision I know won’t be easy: most of the posts have to be manually imported and rewritten in markdown, the site’s management won’t be as plug-and-play as it used to be, and devops or security are new areas I don’t have any expertise or experience with… the list goes on and on.

This “move” will cost me a lot in terms of time and frustration, anyone who has learned to code knows exactly what I am talking about. But as with other ~~crazy~~ projects I embarked in the past, I know I will figure it out.

Above all, I am ultimately convinced the journey will be rewarding and, in the long run, I’ll look back with proudness over what I did.

The Move

Finally, if you made down here, I assume you are interested in the how does this work or how it affects a random reader at collado.io.

You can check out the detailed project roadmap in the GitHub Board I set up in the site’s repository, but oversimplifying, the move consists in four distinct parts:

Setting up the Gatsby site and achieving feature parity with Squarespace. This one is partially completed, because the Gatsby site is obviously up, but not all the Squarespace’s features are yet available. I’m currently working on it; and expect to complete it by the end of Q3 2018.
Moving the content from Squarespace. Here it comes the painful, cumbersome part. I know there are ways to “automate” the process, but since the amount of content is not in the “thousands” and I derive (some) pleasure out of rereading stuff I wrote some years ago, I decided to do it “manually”. I still moved some pieces from 2013 and 2018; and expect to complete the entire “moving” by the end of Q2 2019.
Sunsetting Squarespace. Until the end of Q3 2018 I will maintain both sites in parallel: the Squarespace site will remain live at collado.io and the Gatsby site will live at next.collado.io. Starting Q4 2018 the Gatsby site will be moved to collado.io and it will be the only one maintained and receiving new content. During this period (from the beginning of Q4 2018 until the end of Q2 2019) the Squarespace site will still be accessible at archive.collado.io, but no longer receive new content. The Squarespace site will be finally phased out by the end of Q2 2019 when (2) is completed.
All in with Gatsby. Starting next week I will release the first Gatsby-only project (this one in particular won’t be in Squarespace, despite being released before Q4 2018) which will keep me fairly busy until the end of (2). Once all the content has been moved to Gatsby I will start “unveiling” all the new projects I keep in the backlog for collado.io.

Exciting times ahead for collado.io — stay tuned at its GitHub repository.

Udacity React Developer Nanodegree

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

If you asked me three years ago, I’d have never predicted that, at this point in time, I’d be writing a review for a second Udacity Nanodegree, and third truly intense learning experience in a row.

In 2017, after my transition back again to product management at Ironhack, I enrolled the Udacity Data Analyst Nanodegree (DAND) — not to become a data analyst myself, but to bring a little bit of sanity into (what I thought to be) an overly opinionated environment.

Prior to that, in 2016, as a campus manager, I enrolled Ironhack’s Part-time Web Development Bootcamp — not just to experience our own product first hand, but out of a genuine curiosity to learn web development.

Fast forward to 2018 and it has been all about React. One step along the way has been graduating from the Udacity React Developer Nanodegree (RDND). Same I did with its data sibling, this is my attempt to write the kind of post I wish I had read before I enrolled myself: explain why I did it, who is it for and, of course, how the overall experience was like.

Why I Did It?

Regardless of my technical background — and not having had enough coding-related training during the last two years — there were still times when I could feel quite disconnected from our engineering team’s bread and butter.

All Ironhack’s platform is currently built on React, and more often than I’d be willing to admit, I found myself dealing with technical situations — mostly implementation details — its scope I didn’t fully comprehend. Which truth be told, made me feel a little uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong though, I blindly trust the engineers on my team. But at the end of the day, I believe that the ultimate responsibility for any product decision is on the PM. A technically poor move could end up costing the organization a lot, both in resources and morale. That’s the reason why I didn’t feel at ease “outsourcing” this kind of decisions.

It goes without saying that a PM working with digital products (and nowadays this distinction encompasses almost all products) should have, at least, a bare understanding of how the underlying mechanics of the thing she is managing ultimately works.

Yet in my opinion, this is not a debate about facts, but about respect and humility. As PMs we are gifted being surrounded by remarkably talented individuals that are able to craft astounding digital experiences. Learning to code, not only puts you in a better position to make the right decisions, but it signals a genuine curiosity for developers’ work, it signals that you care.

This is how you create empathy, this is how you earn the respect of your team, and of course, this is how you lead.

I’m not going to make any statement about whether PMs should learn to code or not. The PM’ desired toolkit will always depend on the nature and stage of the product. Coding skills might be desirable sometimes, but the same way being a great marketer or an insightful analyst might be desirable in others. I don’t think there is a predetermined formula of skills every single PM should check. That’s the beauty of the craft, each PM brings her wide range and a weighted combination of skills to the table — and that’s what makes products unique.

That being said, full disclosure: I like to code. Most important though, I also like to support engineers and help them think more broadly about the problems we are trying to solve for our users. Work together, challenge them — as far as my technical chops allow for it — and come up with creative solutions. This is one of my favorite facets of my job as a PM, and undoubtedly, coding skills play a major role in fulfilling this vision.

Long story short, despite the Udacity Nanodegree is mostly targeted to job seekers, career changers, and acts as a first step towards the developer community, my goal for this program was not about getting a job as a developer afterward.

And while I’m pretty familiar with how in-demand React developers currently are (this is the stack we teach at Ironhack’s Web Development Bootcamps across 11 locations and the placement rates across graduates remain outstanding), I can’t comment on Udacity’s outcomes and career services, since I totally skipped that part of the program.

The Program

Coming in from the DAND before it switched to a term-based structure, felt enrolling the RDND a radically different experience.

First of all, you could not start whenever you wanted. Cohorts started once a month, aimed (I suppose) to create a sense of synchrony that translated into an enhanced Slack communication amongst your course peers. While still far from what you get out of an offline experience, the course channel definitely felt more vibrant and contextualized, since the struggles across the students were kind of related.

Switching to a term-based structure was a nice attempt to improve the sense of community most online experiences lack. Yet the most notable effect it had was its ability to create pressure amongst its participants — another factor where most online courses still fall short.

In other words: the course had a deadline.

You get four months to graduate. Boy, that was pressure. For the amount of work you’re asked to carry on — and I don’t have access to Udacity’s graduation rates — I think the deadline is quite aggressive. It took me a little over three months to finish, but believe me, it became my top priority (aside from my full-time job, of course) for almost all that period of time.

While I previously approached the DAND more like a side-project and had huge ups and downs when it came to the dedication, the RDND felt more intense — if you’re somewhat serious about finishing it, beware that the program will ask for a huge time commitment on your end.

The course is broken down in three main projects:

MyReads — React Project
Would You Rather* — React & Redux Project
Flashcards — React Native Project
- Flashcards API — Flashcards’ GraphQL & NodeJS backend (the API was not required in the project’s rubric, but I wanted the app to have a server and database, so I went “full-stack”)

Update from late-2018: after graduating from the RDND I kept working on the Would You Rather project, adding more features, and later on renamed it to Magis.

The course’s learning curve is really well thought out since it ramps up smoothly from the basics of React, then using Redux to show you how to manage global state, and finally developing for mobile devices with React Native.

The projects feel hands-on from the very beginning and they are nicely aligned with its learning outcomes. If you complete them, you’ll certainly have learned what the program promises.

The entire course is led by Tyler McGinnis, an amazing educator and developer. My only Udacity related comparison point here was the DAND, and frankly, the RDND was a far better experience both in terms of content quality and course structure.

First of all, because having a single teacher guiding the whole experience creates a deeper empathy with the course itself and contributes to the feeling of “this guy knows what he’s talking about”.

But most important, while the DAND lacked a cohesive narrative between units and felt like jumping all over the place, the RDND created a sense of layered progress, constantly stacking new ideas on top of prior concepts.

I felt like learning more, with half of the effort, but it all came packaged in a more intense and engaging experience.

The Experience

Finally, if you would ask me “how is it like to go through the program?” I think my answer would be along the lines as the one I gave for the DAND, and I quote:

I won’t lie: it is hard. Although the course structure is extremely clear, the materials are first class and all the projects really engaging, still, setting aside the time to work on your own, without social pressures of any kind, remains the most challenging endeavor, even for Udacity.

Most of what I wrote about the DAND applies here as well in terms of “the experience”, but there are a few distinct catches that are worth emphasizing.

Keep

The term-based and the cohort-like structure keeps the students in sync and stimulates the sense of community.
The program was extremely well thought out and the contents are nicely tied to the learning outcomes.
Tyler McGinnis is an amazing teacher and having him from start to finish is great — yet some of the materials were pulled out straight from his courses, which are way cheaper…
The course theme is aligned with the industry demands, and by the end, you’ve amassed plenty of front-end skills.

Improve

The quality and production of the videos were far better than the DAND, but still, the course feels very much lonely. There is a lot of room for improvement (not just for the RDND, but for e-learning in general) to deliver more engaging experiences.
Despite the program is not marketed to train full-stack developers, a little bit of back-end integration wouldn’t hurt.
A closer look to the projects reveals that they are somehow “refined versions” the official documentation. For the self-taught students out there, the premium you end up paying for the “hand-holding” might be too high.

Drop

Just one thing: the mentorship program.

I haven’t mentioned it until this point because I think you can go through the entire program ignoring the fact that it even exists, but the experience itself is a complete mess.

The idea is that you get assigned a mentor you can chat with whenever you want. Mentors can provide support both in terms of motivation, and also solve any technical question you might encounter during the course.

Maybe it was just me, that I’ve got a “careless mentor” (you could always ask for a new one, which I never did), but all the support I received from him was mostly useless. For example:

He was based in a (completely) different time-zone, which made communications even more difficult. If the point of a mentor is to provide a more customized help than the forums, why put six hours between the two?
The follow-ups he gave me felt bot-like and automated. Again, if the point is to have a more individualized experience, you should at least expect a more personal communication. Otherwise, just put me into a drip campaign and call it a day.
The interaction is done through an in-app chat. Mentors are strictly instructed to keep the communications in there, but sharing code and other assets within the chat is really difficult. Udacity should consider either enrich the chat experience or allow for the relationship to go beyond its own domains i.e. GitHub, Skype…

I totally get Udacity’s reasons to create this figure. I also get that you can’t have a dedicated mentor in a course that “only” costs 500€, the numbers just don’t add up. But still, if you want to keep it, Udacity should reframe the way it is marketed and also reset the expectations around what you’ll get from it.

In A Nutshell

So, upon graduation, if you were to ask me: would you recommend it to a friend?

For the most, yes, without even hesitating. But I’d add some caveats here, depending on whether the desired outcome is for the sake of learning or there is a career opportunity at stake.

Looking back (hindsight bias alert), if your end goal is “just” to get your hands dirty with React or learn the basics coming in from a different technology, I might go for cheaper options. Content-wise they will cover almost all (if not more) of the RDND syllabus, but of course, don’t expect its quality and refinement.

On the other hand, while the 500€ premium might be too high for some, if you are aiming to become a React developer and landing a job afterward, Udacity’s is definitely an option you should consider.

This is the price you pay for a coherent educational structure, an engaging community, but most importantly, the “badge of honor” and public recognition coming from the Nanodegree — and later on from Udacity’s career services.

Career-wise any graduate that has worked hard during the program will most certainly end up in a position to land a job as a React developer. Yet I still think the program lacks a more holistic approach to web development — making a potential transition to the industry too harsh because of its narrow in scope. The flip-side of this argument though, is that the program also comes in as a perfect complement prior to joining a more intense experience, such as a coding bootcamp.

Hence, great course, great value — definitely an improvement over past Nanodegrees — still better suited for career changers and job seekers rather than career boosters.

The War Of Art

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Showing Up

It is not a matter of “how much” I produced or “how good” is the outcome as long as the focus remains on the long term. The craftsman — the pro — is the one that shows up everyday.

He persists and devotes himself to the craft.

How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.

The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Do I really believe that my work is crucial to the planet’s survival? Of course not. But it’s as important to me as catching that mouse is to the hawk circling outside my window. He’s hungry. He needs a kill. So do I.

🔖 Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro.

The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.

Friends sometimes ask, “Don’t you get lonely sitting by yourself all day?” At first it seemed odd to hear myself answer No. Then I realized that I was not alone; I was in the book; I was with the characters. I was with my Self.

Resistance

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Some things about Resistance

It is the space between our life and the the unlived life within us.
Derives from any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.
It will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.
- It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean.
- It cannot be reasoned with. It understands nothing but power.
- It is an engine of destruction, programmed from the factory to prevent us from doing our work.
Resistance is fear. But it is too cunning to show itself naked in this form, then it brings in Rationalization.
- A series of plausible, rational justifications for why we shouldn’t do our work.
The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. Therefore, the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
It aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us.
Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it.

This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.

📍 What does Resistance feel like?

First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.

Trouble, critics and self-made conditions

The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble.

Trouble is a faux form of fame or attention. It’s easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman’s wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad.

Entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. […] Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Janie shows up for church with an Oakland Raiders tattoo. It’s more fun than a movie. And it works: Nobody gets a damn thing done.

If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

📍 Conditions

How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us.

The acquisition of a condition lends significance to one’s existence. An illness, a cross to bear. Some people go from condition to condition; they cure one, and another pops up to take its place. The condition becomes a work of art in itself, a shadow version of the real creative act the victim is avoiding by expending so much care cultivating his condition.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.

Artists and fundamentalists

Who am I? Why am I here? They’re not easy because the human being isn’t wired to function as an individual. We’re wired tribally, to act as part of a group. Our psyches are programmed by millions of years of hunter-gatherer evolution. We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don’t know is how to be alone. We don’t know how to be free individuals.

🔖 The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue, the mystery of their existence as individuals, but fundamentalism and art are mutually exclusive.

The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. […] He believes in progress and evolution.

The fundamentalist entertains no such notion. In his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation; it has already been revealed. The word of God has been spoken and recorded by His prophet, be he Jesus, Muhammad, or Karl Marx.

His creativity is inverted. He creates destruction.

The fundamentalist cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of his race and seeks to reconstitute both them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To fundamentals.

Pro

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell: a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

Shows up every day.
Shows up no matter what.
Stays on the job all day.
Commits over the long haul.
Stakes for him are high and real.
Accepts remuneration for labor.
Does not over identify with his jobs.
Masters the technique of the job.
Has a sense of humor about his jobs.
Receives praise or blame in the real world.

Knows how to be miserable. This is a great asset because it’s human, the proper role for a mortal. It does not offend the gods, but elicits their intercession.

🔖 The professional understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare.

Gives an ear to criticism, seeking to learn and grow. But she never forgets that Resistance is using criticism against her on a far more diabolical level.

The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.

🔖 The pro concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

Muse

We can’t be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

📍 Our calling

It is our calling, you owe it not just to you, but to the world. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

📍 Working territorially

I trusted what I wanted, not what I thought would work. I did what I myself thought was interesting, and left its reception to the gods. The artist can’t do his work hierarchically. He has to work territorially.

Idle Time

Wed, 30 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

As a thought experiment, imagine you were restricted to use a single device to interact with the whole digital ether. Exclusively one: laptop, tablet, smartphone, e-reader, you name it, but for the rest of your days, this is the one and only device you would ever be “touching”. The good news is that you get to choose, of course.

I have presented this riddle to many friends and, invariably, their answer is always the same: smartphone. To their surprise, my answer is — and has always been: old fashioned PC, precisely, macOS¹.

My answer to this question has its raison d’être, since most of my waking hours go by in front of a computer. Not just at work, but even during leisure time. The computer is the tool I use to funnel my creativity: from writing, coding, designing, reading, communicating… but also my go to device for absolutely everything.

I do not dislike smartphones, I understand you can get plenty of stuff done with them, but for me they never “clicked” as creation tools. My iPhone home screen is almost factory settings and the main uses it gets are limited to podcasts, audiobooks, music, messaging and hailing a cab from time to time.

The computer is the machine I grew up with, the one I discovered a whole new world throughout: from DOS to the dawn of the Internet, I learned to love its design, appreciate its craft, but ultimately, I became fascinated by how it worked.

For these reasons, I have always been drawn to the keyboard as an input device, hence keyboard shortcuts are my thing. Although I don’t use them as much as I love them, still today, every time I invoke one, something feels right deep inside.

My approach to remember, use and learn new keyboard shortcuts has always been the same. I do not employ heavy machinery such as Text Expander or Keyboard Maestro. I just try to be aware and spot routines I repeatedly perform with the mouse, until the inevitable thought of “I’m sure there’s a shortcut for that…” pops up. Then research for the shortcut and meticulously log it in a “Shortcuts in Use” note that has been in the works forever.

Believe, after this 500 words introduction detour, the story eventually lands somewhere. As a matter of fact, this post was inadvertently and without permission seeded in my mind a few months ago, when this product escalated to the very top of the Product Hunt ranks. It caught my attention immediately because somebody just “productized” the list I had been curating for years, I loved it.

After a more than deserved “upvote”, the product itself inspired a broader examination on how we interact with our devices and the impact they potentially have in our minds.

Before we dive in, please, keep in mind that these lines are not grounded in academic research, there’s plenty of studies available documenting this phenomenon. But rather my personal journey and a humble observation on how to ensure our time is well spent in front of our devices.

My working assumption revolved around the idea of how much of the time spent in front of a computer had actually become idle time. Non-productive time, without a clear task or particular goal to achieve, but rather wandering around, just being with the computer, or well, procrastinating.

For a curious, monkey mind, sitting down in front of a computer with no predefined task to accomplish, will inevitably become a recipe for failure. In my particular experience idle time meant playing around with some app settings, re-reading an article or rethinking the way my filing system worked. Unremarkable activities that directly translated to anxiety.

While in idle mode your mind runs fast, it operates in autopilot, but it is going nowhere. This is a nasty loop, because it feels effortless and comfortable being in idle land, but at the same time you are also aware you shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Well, at this point you might be wondering what keyboard shortcuts have to do with idle time and if there’s even a connection between the two. A few months ago, I was wondering exactly the same. It turns out they have a lot to do with one another and, indeed, such connection exists.

The trick that ties everything together is one of the simplest, silliest things I’ve done lately, that has had a major impact in my daily life: setting aside the mouse to the left of the keyboard.

Its immediate consequence: using the computer now required deliberate effort.

Thoughtless, fast paced, muscle memory mechanics were not available anymore. Therefore wandering was not an option because the ease in which I used to navigate the computer was completely gone. Every single time I was about to fall back to idle mode, I encountered the inconvenience of a lefty mouse, not easy, then the itch immediately vanished.

The computer wasn’t effortless as it used to be, I just unlearned — to put it in Star Wars terms, thus our relationship was changed, forever, for the best. Now every time I sit (well, stand) in front of the computer I have a clear goal in mind. It has earned back its purest creation soul.

It is a funny feeling, though. Everything I could “do” now ties back to my keyboard expertise — or, well, if I want something badly, I know a fall back to the uncomfortable mouse experience is still an option. This has inevitably expanded my shortcuts portfolio in ways I could have never imagined, to the point that I stopped logging the new ones onto my note — and where Shortcuts.design came in handy :)

Finally, and most important, the anxiety associated with the idle time has completely gone away and I find myself in “flow” state more often than ever before.

That was quite a long story, so, to wrap everything up, I want to go full circle, back to Michel van Heest, the man behind Shortcuts.design. This week I randomly came across his Medium post about the “behind the scenes” story of his product, which I not only clapped the shit out of it, but also reminded me how much my life has improved just by embracing the keyboard.

That’s a subtle distinction though, because the question presumes platforms, which is not entirely fair. I’d rather use white labeled hardware running macOS, than a MacBook running Windows or some Linux distribution. But that’s beyond the point and food for an entirely separate conversation, that won’t be happening in these lines either.↩

Months And Terms

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I have been receiving quite a lot of feedback from my recent post about enrolling the Udacity’s Data Analyst Nanodegree. Unexpectedly, even prospective students contacted me asking for advice on whether they should enroll or not, which totally came as a pleasant surprise.

One of the questions that recurrently showed up during these conversations was the fact that I deliberately stuck to the monthly structure rather than switching to the updated term model, given the opportunity.

This is actually a great question, but one that I am not going to answer here. I will instead focus on why I think the term-based structure is a superior approach when it comes to incentivizing student retention. On top of that, I will also drop some thoughts about bridging the gap between offline and online education and how to replicate the social aspect of in-person programs within online experiences.

From Months to Terms

All Udacity programs used to be served as a monthly subscription. The student paid each month and she was presented with an incentive to get to the “finish line”, thus decreasing dropouts. The incentive couldn’t be clearer: get half of your money back if you complete the program in less than a year.

It is a clever approach because it seems the student would be primarily driven to finish as soon as possible since her money is at stake. The sooner she graduates, the less money will end up paying. Although after taking a closer look at the issue — but also having gone through the experience myself, I would argue that this is not how incentives ultimately work, at least when it comes to education.

A lot of research has been already published around the topic, but long story short, the takeaway is that extrinsic incentives, i.e. getting some of your money back, only work to a certain extent. Udacity’s money back strategy is a paradigmatic example of these dynamics at play. Getting your money back is a perfectly reasonable motivator, but when dealing with hard, creative and non-repetitive tasks, there is something more at stake: we just stepped into “unreasonable territory”.

Here is precisely where intrinsic motivators kick in and this is why a term-based model is better suited to recreate the conditions for the student to thrive.

A Time Constraint

On the other hand, term-based programs provide something far more valuable than getting your money back: synchrony and a time constraint. Synchrony is all about the sense of community and sharing the learning experience with other students. The time constraint helps handicap the program from a time perspective.

While the monthly model places an imaginary, soft deadline of twelve months to get your money back, it doesn’t set a specific point in time where the program ends. In other words, as a student, you can get stuck, indefinitely paying every month until the end of time, without having graduated. The term structure instead delivers a much clearer time framework, because of you either graduate within the given term, or you don’t.

A healthier relationship comes out from the fact that if you don’t commit to the given time frame, you won’t graduate. Which ultimately means you’ll lose all your money. A clearer, more transparent and of course, far more effective value proposition.

Synchrony

Finally, and most important, a term based approach brings synchrony to the cohort and the sense that you belong to a broader community, aka. peer pressure.

During my time enrolled at the DAND, I felt lonely. I knew more students were simultaneously going through the same experience, but I had no way to “feel” it. Despite there was a dedicated Slack community aimed to bridge this gap, overall, it felt scattered and it was difficult to cut through the noise. Each student was in an entirely different stage of the program and the sense of “class” was nowhere to be seen. You were absolutely on your own.

Terms improve, to a certain degree, these dynamics. I don’t have Udacity’s exact graduation numbers, but the fact that each term starts at a fixed schedule must help students feel closer to the rest of the group, sharing questions, struggles and most important, aligns them around the vision of graduating.

Despite trying to recreate the social aspect of an offline experience through an online program remains extremely challenging and something nobody, as far as I know, has entirely figured out.

Online experiences are exclusively focused on having cutting-edge curriculums, the latest and greatest materials, but still missing the point on how “the 99%” of people learn. These programs are truly amazing but sadly targeted to the “1%“.

Because at the end of the day, life will throw at you a shitload of distractions and other priorities. The lack of offline attachment to other students and teachers make these programs the perfect candidates to be the first thing you will set aside.

Yet this is a separate discussion, way beyond the scope of this post.

I do believe a term-based program is a step in the right direction, but still far from the place where social dynamics, arguably the most powerful of the incentives — especially for obligers, can kick in.

Ready Player One

Wed, 09 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Last month I went to the movies.

This is kind of an extraordinary event by itself because I never go. Turns out a wise friend extended the recommendation, told me the movie was worth it, and as I always do, I trusted his advice.

I knew nothing about the movie until I found myself staring at the backlit billboard, next to the cinema’s front door. It read ”Ready Player One”, never heard about it, but truth be told, the artwork looked really cool — something I could enjoy, I thought.

Long story short, I loved it; good thing I trusted my friend, as I always do.

I’m not here to talk about how much I liked the movie though, but the follow-up conversations I’ve been having with several people about its underlying message. The last one, just a few minutes ago, and actually the spark that led me to start typing these very lines in the first place.

The widely shared opinion I keep hearing about RPO is that the movie belongs to the science fiction realm; that it is a good thought experiment for something that will (most certainly) never happen — or it will far, far, far away in the future.

In other words: “it is just a movie”.

I felt kind of lonely on the other side of this argument because I strongly disagree.

I’d argue we are already living in the early stages of this “dystopian” reality. Nowadays, as a society we are building (with an astonishing amount of success) parallel, digital worlds — say games or social networks, for people to ~~lose~~ immerse themselves into. The results of this massive societal experiment speak for themselves, anywhere you go or look.

Despite our current means to recreate these experiences are still flat, bi-dimensional, backlit matrixes of colorful dots (aka. screens), just pay close attention at how these devices, still far from rendering an accurate picture of reality, are already captivating human attention.

Look no further: during my commute, despite the multitudes, I can still count the number of people I see with their heads up. Although if you want to experience this phenomenon in its full extent, watch out for younger generations, the truly digital natives; they’re the ones that grew up with an iPad attached to their fingertips: they live in there.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in love and deeply fascinated with technology, but our current gadgets pale next to the ideas envisioned at RPO. Our state of the art smartphones is still far away from rendering fully immersive experiences.

Precisely for this reason I am convinced this future is inevitable. If given the current state of our technological development, we are already attached in ways we could never foresee fifteen years ago, imagine how it will all look like with mainstream availability of devices capable of recreating RPO.

I don’t think this last point can be even argued, but this is just one side of the problem. The true, underlying narrative I see around this whole “parallel world” debate is not technological, but societal.

The question we should be asking is not “if” we’ll eventually be capable of developing a digital world virtually indistinguishable from ours. Not even “when”. This is inevitable and we all should acknowledge it is going to happen, sooner or later, period.

The question we should be asking, the one this movie is subtlety exposing, is at which point it will become cheaper to recreate an entirely new (digital) world rather than fixing the one we live in.

Just food for thought 🤔

Better Than Before

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

A behavior becomes a habit when it no longer requires a decision from you.

Habits, by definition:

Are the invisible architecture of daily life.
While it takes self-control to establish good habits, once established, habits themselves eliminate the need for self-control.
Require no decision from me, because I’ve already decided, habits free us from decision making.
Thus, when we change our habits, we change our lives.

A “habit” is generally defined as a behavior that’s recurrent, is cued by a specific context, often happens without much awareness or conscious intent, and is acquired through frequent repetition.

The freedom from decision making is crucial, because when I have to decide — which often involves resisting temptation or postponing gratification — I tax my self-control.

(Usual) buckets for most people’ habits:

Eat and drink healthier
Exercise
Save, spend and earn wisely
Rest, relax and enjoy
Accomplish more, stop procrastinating
Simplify, clean, clear and organize
Engage more deeply with relationships

If we embrace habits:

Life becomes simpler
Time speeds up
Visible architecture of daily life
Create (better) fallback options when everything else fails

📍 The four tendencies framework

We face two kinds of expectations: outer expectations (meet work deadlines, observe traffic regulations) and inner expectations (stop napping, keep a New Year’s resolution).

Upholders: respond to both, inner and outer, expectations.
Questioners: question all expectations, and will meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified. They only respond if that makes sense for them.
Obligers: respond readily to outer expectations, but struggle to meet inner expectations.
Rebels: resist all expectations.

If we’re trying to persuade people to adopt a habit, we have more success if we consider their Tendency.

🖋 Be [YOU]: different solutions for different people.

I don’t like animals, fancy food, travel, movies, games, music, shopping…

The most important thing is to know ourselves, and to choose the strategies that work for us.

The world is divided in:

Owls / Larks
Marathoners / Sprinters / Procrastinators
Under-buyers / Over-buyers
Simplicity / Abundance
Finisher / Opener
Familiarity / Novelty
Prevention / Promotion
Minor steps / Big steps

🖇 Related to Why We Get Fat:

Widely accepted facts about how the body works
Observations of large populations
Review of the scientific research

Effects of insulin, the hormone that’s the main regulator of blood sugar and the use of storage of fat. High insulin levels cause the body to move glucose into fat cells to be stored, low insulin cause glucose to be burned as fuel. Then, ultimately, what causes insulin level to be high or low are carbs.

📍 Desire, ease and excuses:

Abstaining, convenience and inconvenience: shape habits adjusting the amount of effort — abstaining makes things simpler, you don’t have to think or make decisions, since the decision has been already made.
Safeguards, loophole-spotting and distracting — they help avoid failure and temptation
Reward, treats and pairing — learn to derive pleasure from good habits

Abstainer: it is easier to resist, rather than moderate. “I can’t drink a little”. The only way to resist of a temptation is to yield to it. It is confusing to have “a little”, how much is a little? Is now permitted? Rules are not clear and a binary approach might work better for other people.

Counterintuitively, the less we indulge in something, the less we want it. When we believe a craving will remain unsatisfied, its desire goes away. In other words, cravings are more provoked by possibility rather than by denial.

📍 FFFF: Free From French Fries

Flip the restriction idea on its head by turning it into a positive resolution.

Free From potatoes
Free From candy
…Free From X

Illness of adulthood: flawlessly execute things that you shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

Question your habits: why am I doing this in the first place?

Tomorrow is always a day away

📍 Think of days as quarters: if you get way off track for some reason, don’t think of the day as “lost”. Try to make it back on the next “quarter” and fail small.

📍 The Strategy of Scheduling: habits grow strongest and fastest when they’re repeated in predictable ways, and for most of us, putting an activity on the schedule tends to lock us into doing it.

Scheduling is one of the most effective ways to building better habits.

Forces us to confront the natural limits of the day.
Makes that time unavailable for anything else. Which is good especially for people who have trouble saying no.
Consistency, repetition, no decision — this was the way to develop the ease of a true habit.
Restricts the time spent on an activity, it is a powerful weapon against procrastination.

The Strategy of Scheduling helps us make time for the things that are most important to us.

If, then, planning — generate automatic (healthy and predetermined) responses to certain triggers:

if I write, then I close email
if I’m offered wine, then I say no

A ‘routine’ is a string of habits, and a ‘ritual’ is a habit charged with transcendent meaning.

📍 Loophole spotting:

Causal: I eat more because I have exercised before
Opposites: I can’t work out because I have too much work, I can’t read because I don’t have time (usually they are not mutually exclusive, but a narrative we place in our mind)

One coin loophole — the coin and the growing heap:

If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin, then another… finally you’ll have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so. So even though a single coin can’t make a man rich, a man only becomes rich adding one coin after another.

The heap grows one coin at a time, but adding one coin has a two sided benefit, first the healthy habit itself, but second it strengths and protects the habit.

The habit of the habit, is more important than the habit itself

📍 Safeguards — Dante’s 9th Circle: using stumbles in ways to protect a habit, don’t see stumbles as signs of weakness, but a consequence of habit formation.

A stumble might prevent a fall

Poetic justice of bad habits, the punishment bewailers to fit the crime. The punishment for a bad habit, is the bad habit.

Do not buy the narrative of “life’s to short not to eat this brownie,” maybe you’re happier by not eating it. Building up the habit of not eating sugar is more rewarding (for you) in the long run than eating this one brownie right now.

Surprisingly, stress doesn’t necessarily make us likely to indulge in bad habits; when we’re anxious or tired, we fall back on our habits, whether bad or good. For this reason, it’s all the more important to try to shape habits mindfully, so that when we fall back on them at times of stress, we’re following activities that make our situation better, not worse.

📍 Habits and identity

Beware of tying habits to who we are of how do you want to be perceived. Do you meditate because you want to, or because you want to be perceived as a meditator? The things we do define and set our identity (for the best and for the worst).

Similarly, if you do something every single time, people will go over it and start respecting your habit, on the contrary, if you place exceptions all the time, the “rest of the world” won’t take you seriously.

The fact is, changing a habit is much more challenging if that new habit means altering or losing an aspect of ourselves.

📍 The book’ takeaway

This is not about breakthrough changes, this is not how habits work at all, not in the slightest. The key is to gradually move to a place that is “Better Than Before”.

Udacity Data Analyst Nanodegree

Sun, 04 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Last January I proudly finished the Udacity Data Analyst Nanodegree (DAND) and this is my attempt — I hope in 1.000 words or less, to publish the kind of post I wish I’d read back before I enrolled: relate why I did it, who is it for and, of course, how the experience was like.

Why I Did It?

Despite Udacity’s Nanodegree programs certainly claim to employ their students¹ in the most cutting-edge, on-demand jobs, the main reason I joined the program was to level up my (data) game in my current job as a Product Manager at Ironhack, not to start a new career as a data analyst.

More often than not, I found myself dealing with situations involving data flows I didn’t fully comprehend. The idea of making decisions without a solid data-driven foundation backing it up made me sometimes feel uncomfortable about the path I was leading my team towards. Product meeting after meeting, I had this nagging thought of knowing that there was something missing all the time, that we were not getting the whole picture because of our data ignorance, but still, couldn’t see it.

Let me be crystal clear here before we move on: by “data” I’m not referring to the “big data” everybody is talking about as if it was teenager sex. Believe me, very few people deal with truly “big” data. The DAND is also not about “big data,” but neither “big data” was what I was looking for. On the contrary, I wanted to address rather smaller things: statistically inclined issues, biases or widely opinionated meetings that were clouding our decisions and ultimately setting the stage up for a HiPPO driven environment.

After an unreasonable amount of research — let’s save this for another post, and factoring in my time constraints, a random Wednesday of April I decided to enroll. It was my first attempt to commit to an online program this big, and I must admit, for better or worse, back then I didn’t fully understand what I was signing up for.

In a nutshell, I didn’t aim to become a fully fledged data analyst — despite Udacity claimed you could if that was your goal. I just wanted to bring the data skills to my current job, hoping they’ll help me with these:

Ensure our product team was accurately using and making the most out of our data
Set up an environment led by healthy and meaningful metrics
Back and make decisions supported by data as an anchor of an agreement, kind of a source of truth for our team
Leave behind this wild guessing mode we were living in and start doing things right :)

The Program

The whole curriculum was broken down into eight modules (seven-plus introduction)², requiring a dedicated project delivered by the end of each one. Each project came with its own submission process — which they don’t take lightly, where a Udacity reviewer inspects and grades your work until it meets the rubric’s criteria.

It goes without saying that in order to graduate you must submit and get all your projects approved by the reviewers.

Despite the program structure has changed a little bit since it shifted to a term based structure, the topics it covers still remain mostly the same:

Statistics: both descriptive and inferential
Exploratory data analysis
Data wrangling
Machine learning³
Data visualization

On top of that, each module and project builds on top of different technologies: R and Python for data analysis and statistics, Numpy and Pandas for data wrangling, Scikit Python library for machine learning and of course, Tableau for data visualization. And if it was not enough, certain modules also brought in additional libraries, which made the tech toolkit even more fun — and complex.

The amount of topics and technologies covered during the program is massive. You definitely walk out of the program with a solid understanding of both the fundamental concepts behind the data analysis and the tools a “real” data analyst will encounter in her daily routine.

This a great approach for the program if its ultimate goal is to put their students in a job ready position with the least amount of time. In my particular case though, I felt the program was a little bit too broad, especially judging by the number of “supporting tools” you have to learn from scratch lesson after lesson.

Let me explain: while learning this wide range of technologies (R, Python, Tableau…) is definitely an enriching experience for the mind, it also dilutes the value of the learning outcomes by changing the underlying technology all the time.

If I were to design the program around my personal outcomes, I’d have bet for a single technology, say Python, and build all the curriculum on top of that. The benefits of this approach would have been twofold. First, the students would have achieved a higher level of “code mastery” in said technology, which would have enabled them to build stuff quicker and with more ease, even after the program. Second, by not changing the underlying technology, the program would have been able to focus more on the content itself and go deeper at every stage, letting the technology fade away in the background.

Months after graduating, back to my job — and not working as a pure data analyst, I often find myself scripting some code with Python and building small helpers to automate some nasty, undesirable groundwork. But I’ve to admit that I’ve never touched RStudio, Tableau or Jupyter Notebooks ever since. I’m grateful to be aware they exist, but maybe I could have leveraged that time to go even deeper with Python.

But again, that’s just a personal opinion based solely on my own experience. And don’t get me wrong, the program design is superb, but maybe I was probably expecting something the course was not intended for.

The Experience

Finally, how is it like to go through the program? I won’t lie: it is hard. Although the course structure is extremely clear, the materials are first class and all the projects really engaging, still, setting aside the time to work on your own, without social pressures of any kind, remains the most challenging endeavor, even for Udacity.

I finished the program in eight months⁴, but I was not consistent with my schedule and the number of hours per week I was investing, which I believe is the ultimate “hack” to stay on the program’s track.

The main problem I faced would go like this: the amount of effort it takes to re-engage again with the course is (exponentially) related to the amount of time you spend away from it. In other words, the more time you stay away from the program, the more difficult it gets to just go past the Udacity’s login screen. It becomes an ongoing battle against your willpower.

I suffered from that, big time. I remember sometime around June where after over a month without completing a single lesson, the thought of dropping out even crossed my mind. I endured, but the chances of not writing this post right now were then higher than you might expect.

On the other hand, I also remember periods where I literally opted out of life and did nothing but Nanodegree. I was pretty unreliable with my efforts and, as far as I can tell, getting this right is something that will totally ease your way into the program.

Besides the disconnection from the social experience, which I definitely believe is the most pressing challenge online courses must solve for, the course was really good and definitely delivered on its expectations. The materials were well crafted, the projects had a clear purpose and the support you receive from Udacity is extraordinary at each step of the way.

So, upon graduation, if you were to ask me: would you do it again? I’d say “absolutely yes” if you are looking for a career move to a data related role. The DAND is the perfect bridge to land an entry-level job in-field or even as a prep stage before joining an immersive, full-time data science bootcamp.

But as a ”career booster” maybe I should have explored other softer options that would have allowed me to customize a little bit more my journey. As a counter to that, I’d also argue that it is easier to see this pattern looking backward, now that I’ve already explored the data analyst path. A hypothesis I couldn’t have articulated back when I started, because my depth of knowledge on the matter was way narrower.

Well, no matter what, beyond the program specs, overall I’m extremely happy I enrolled (and graduated) the DAND. Because it has not only helped me out at my job the way I expected and planned for from the beginning. It has, unexpectedly, also proved to be an invaluable resource for everyday life and has transformed the way I perceive, through the data lens, even the smaller situations and decisions.

When I enrolled back in April most Udacity programs were paid on a monthly basis and offered a 50% money back guarantee if you graduated in less than a year. On top of that, there were two payment options, the “basic” for $199/month and the “plus” for $299/month. Only the latter offered (subject to certain fine print) “jobs guarantee” and I quote from their marketing copy: “While all of our Nanodegree programs are built with your career success in mind, you must enroll in our Nanodegree Plus program to secure a jobs guarantee.” Since then, most of their programs have been gradually migrating to a term-based structure and their approach to “job assistance”, that’s just an opinion, has become less aggressive and looser.↩
The DAND program structure was upgraded two times during my enrollment. The first one, in September, was a small tweak to the curriculum structure, which I opted in. The second, in December, was a major change where they moved the whole program to a term based structure — mainly in line with the rest of their new Nanodegrees. Udacity kindly offered me to upgrade to the new one, but I personally stuck to the old model since I was about to finish anyway.↩
Machine learning is no longer available in the new curriculum, all the contents have been moved to its own Nanodegree program.↩
Ideally you’re expected to finish in six months, but you got half the money back if you did it in less than twelve. Now the program has shifted to a term model though, the option to get your money back if you were to finish under a certain time frame is no longer available.↩

Curiosity Trumps Everything

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

If you are somewhat up to date with the news coming up from the education world, you will have noticed some controversy, to say the least, around inaccurate placement metrics, programmers bubbles and this whole apocalyptic narrative about bootcamps and the future of education.

Under other circumstances, I would not indulge in commenting on such a critical subject. But after more than two years as the GM at Ironhack here in Barcelona¹, I almost feel the obligation to tell the story of what it is like to join a bootcamp and the prospect of getting a job afterward.

The Students

First of all, I wanted to shed some light on the background of the students we take in and demystify this whole Computer Science myth. While it is true that a small subset of our graduates already held an engineering degree when they joined the bootcamp, the majority of them did not. With the data right in front of me, I can assure you there is no correlation at all between prior “formal engineering education” and higher hiring rates at the end of the program.

Our students are usually recent grads or early career changers. They are attracted by the prospect of doing creative work, mastering the craft and joining the tech industry. They come from very diverse backgrounds, true, but they do share something unique: they are insanely motivated individuals that want to see a change in their lives.

This is not a coincidence though. It is no secret we select our students — of course, we do. But we don’t do it in an are-you-already-an-engineer basis. Our criteria are easier than that: we look for passion, grit, and resilience, regardless of your background.

So is a bootcamp suitable for everybody? No, it is not. A bootcamp is a remarkably hard experience. But it is also not a matter of being a CS or not, it is a matter of willingness.

I do believe anybody can learn anything, but the question is: are you willing to sacrifice, prioritize, commit in order to fulfill a larger vision and build a remarkable future?

Again and again, the ones who answer “yes, I do” to this question are our students.

The City

I was born and raised in Barcelona. I have been living here for almost my entire life, but what has happened to this city during the last five years is beyond extraordinary. I do not have the proper words to accurately describe what it has been like to go through this whole transformation, but I can focus on a small portion of this change: the tech ecosystem.

For several reasons, beyond the scope of this post, Barcelona has become home to the creation of countless startups and incumbent tech companies headquarters. They have turned the city into one of the most prominent European ecosystems.

Want it or not, tech companies create tech jobs. Barcelona has been an exceptionally fertile tech ground, and as a byproduct, the demand for tech jobs — i.e. Web Developers, UX Designers or Digital Marketers, has exploded. Thus “where to find tech talent” is a conversation I am having, without exception, every single day. At this pace, it is about to become the favorite water-cooler theme.

To put it in other words, there is a gap: companies need certain skills that traditional education is not providing. We aim to close this gap by teaching the skills these companies need. While I understand this gap is not infinite nor will it last forever — as with any other market need, osmosis will take care of it, I can assure you, at this point in time, we do not graduate enough students to even begin to meet this demand.

The Hiring Week

The last week of our programs is called the Hiring Week. As its name suggests, this week is the mechanism that fulfills our vision of being an outcomes-driven institution, maximizing the ROI of each penny students invest.

Just think about it for a second: for any given investment, you expect a return, the bigger the better. We do not understand why education should be any different. We are convinced returns can be measured anywhere, and our golden metric is, without a doubt, the ability to employ our students right after they graduate.

But let’s not detour from the topic, because for all intents and purposes, going through a Hiring Week is a remarkable experience² by itself. The week starts with two entire days where recruiters and HR professionals come in and simulate mock interviews, review CVs, optimize LinkedIn profiles… It is a two-day sprint (right after a once in a lifetime exhausting experience) in order to set everything up for prime time.

It is usually Wednesday when the magic happens, the day we summon all our hiring partners to come to campus and meet our recent graduates. Believe me, after two years and 300 graduates in Barcelona, ours has become a BIG network. Regardless of its reach, I personally curated this network and I do know every single person attending to hire our students. It is a subtle detail, but it makes all the difference in the world. Because this is not a random job fair, this is the place where companies looking for certain skills come to meet people that have been specifically trained in this direction.

So it is Wednesday morning, all the graduates are already sitting at their designated spot, waiting for the doors to open and the companies to start flowing in. And yes, you have read that right: the students are the ones fixed in the hiring equation. Unlike most job fairs, where there is only a handful of companies and an ever-growing crowd of applicants, at our Hiring Week is the other way around: there are usually more companies than students.

That’s what happens when you are faced with an industry that is thirsty for talent.

The dynamics of the day are rather easy: companies come in and sit down, one by one, with all the graduates. For our students, the experience is as natural and fluid as it gets: wide-ranging, inspiring conversations with no time constraints around what they’ve built, their passions and whether they see themselves in a certain company. It is all carefully designed to recreate an environment where our graduates feel comfortable and secure, a place that enables them to show the full extent of their potential.

On the other hand, for companies, it is also a great place to be, where they can meet talent that most certainly will suit their needs. But it is at the same time a challenging situation where they come to realize they do not have the leverage the system they were used to. They find themselves without the hygge of their comfy headquarters and they can see other companies contend for the same candidates, the pressure is also on them.

The experience is intense. Conversations span the whole day, until late in the evening. On their way out, with no exception, they repeatedly share with me the same comment: “it is incredible they were able to learn so much in such a short period of time.” They are, indeed, impressed.

At the Hiring Week, tables have turned. It is the most vivid realization that talent is at a prime in the tech industry and there is no hint, at least in the short term, this situation is going to change.

What Will Get You the Job

The Hiring Week is a soundly engineered artifact that helps us get the job done (no pun intended), and it does work. In Barcelona, the combination of a thriving tech ecosystem and our relentless efforts to bridge the gap between industry and education is rewarding us with a hiring rate over 80% three months upon graduation — which no matter what, is in itself an impressive feat.

At the end of the day, getting our graduates hired is what success looks like from my perspective. It is actually one of my most important KPIs, definitely a pressing one. But after witnessing more than 200 graduates, I can assure you the most successful hires were not ultimately because of the Hiring Week. They were because of passion and hard work.

Passion and hard work were the ultimate reasons we could help a guy find a job “next to the beach, in a workplace where I can catch some waves during the lunch break.” Or maybe that one that wanted “a startup job” in a city that had no tech ecosystem at all³. Or a coal miner, a flight attendant, a photographer… the list goes on and on, but they do share something, and it is not a tech background.

Companies are not looking for a “Junior Web Developer”. Instead, they are looking for problem solvers, curious minds that can relate to the company vision and bring something to the table beyond mere technical skills. Don’t get me wrong. By no means, I am saying skills are not important. You need to know how to code to get a job as a programmer, but coding skills alone will only get you the interview, not the job.

Any hard skill will inevitably become a commodity at some point in time, even programming. But the ability to adapt, retool and learn new things are the wild card that will open countless doors and enable you to become the master of your own professional fate.

And that’s deep. In fact, its implications bring us again full circle to the very first paragraph. Because it moves the bootcamps-will-get-you-a-job discussion to a whole new dimension. It is abstracting the skills out the equation. So it is not a matter of what we teach anymore.

This is precisely what relieves me, what makes me believe that life changing education is possible and it will continue to be. Because it is not ultimately about the Hiring Week. Because it is not a matter of what we teach. It is a matter of attracting exceptional individuals and enabling them with the right tools, the ones that will get them through the company doors.

Then only wait and see how curiosity, passion and hard work, will do the rest.

As a Tech School we don’t limit ourselves to coding skills. We also have an extremely successful UX/UI program, with similar hiring rates than its Web Development sibling, and plan to open new tracks in the near future. Though this particular post is mainly focused on coding and the Web Development track, its conclusions apply to any other craft.↩
We have come a long way since our first Hiring Week and in just two years it has already gone through several iterations in each campus. While the essence remains the same, we have taken into account an insane amount of feedback, fine tuning the format, the contents and always optimizing and obsessing over hiring rates.↩
Still today I believe the guy literally got the first tech-related job in the whole town. In fact, he was the employee number one for that company. Therefore if the bare minimum expression of a tech ecosystem was ever created there, make no mistake, that guy was one of the founding fathers.↩

The Obstacle is the Way

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.

Most of our obstacles are internal, not external.

Many of our problems come from having too much: rapid technological disruption, junk food, traditions that tell us the way we’re supposed to live our lives. We’re soft, entitled, and scared of conflict. Great times are great softeners.

🖇️ Related to Naval Ravikant’s idea that “all our diseases are diseases of abundance, not diseases of scarcity”

The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity.

Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps.

Perception: how we look at our specific problems, our attitude.
Action: the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities.
Will: the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will.

Perception

Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of. In many ways, they determine reality itself.

Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.

—— Marcus Aurelius

Obstacles are not only to be expected but embraced.

Remain calm and imperturbable: we will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are — neither good nor bad.

What matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them.

Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

—— William Shakespeare

There is no good or bad without us, there is only perceptions. They are the thing that we’re in complete control of. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.

No, thank you. I can’t afford to panic. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we’ll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check.

Does getting upset provide you with more options? Sometimes it does. But in this instance? No, I suppose not. Well, then.

Objectivity means removing “you” — the subjective part—from the equation.

Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Pretend it is not important, that it doesn’t matter.

🖇️ Related to Tony Robbins’ idea that “anxiety is just an excessive focus on the self”.

In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.

When it comes to perception, this is the crucial distinction to make: the difference between the things that are in our power and the things that aren’t.

—— Epictetus

To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line

Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead. We’re always trying to figure out what things mean — why things are the way they are. As though the why matters. Emerson put it best: “we cannot spend the day in explanation.” Don’t waste time on false constructs.

Remember that this moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life.

Action

And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Treat ourselves. Sleep in. Wait. It feels better to ignore or pretend. But you know deep down that that isn’t going to truly make it any better. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to start now.

They start. Anywhere. Anyhow. They don’t care if the conditions are perfect. Because they know that once they get started, if they can just get some momentum, they can make it work.

While you’re sleeping, traveling, attending meetings, or messing around online, the same thing is happening to you. You’re going soft. You’re not aggressive enough. You’re not pressing ahead.

What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better.

—— Wendell Phillips

The world is telling you something with each and every failure and action. It’s feedback — giving you precise instructions on how to improve. It’s trying to teach you something. Listen.

People fail in small ways all the time. But they don’t learn. They don’t listen. They don’t see the problems that failure exposes. It doesn’t make them better.

When failure does come, ask:

What went wrong here?
What can be improved?
What am I missing?

The process is about finishing. We’ve just wrongly assumed that it has to happen all at once, and we give up at the thought of it. We are A-to-Z thinkers, fretting about A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y.

Take your time, don’t rush. Some problems are harder than others. Deal with the ones right in front of you first. Come back to the others later. You’ll get there. The process is about doing the right things, right now.

There’s nothing shameful about sweeping. It’s just another opportunity to excel — and to learn.

But you’re so busy thinking about the future, you don’t take any pride in the tasks you’re given right now. You just phone it all in, cash your paycheck, and dream of some higher station in life. Or you think, This is just a job, it isn’t who I am, it doesn’t matter.

Everything is a chance to do and be your best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.

Respect the craft and make something beautiful.

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation. When action is our priority, vanity falls away.

How you do anything, is how you do everything.

Because all we need to do is those three little duties — to try hard, to be honest, and to help others and ourselves. That’s all that’s been asked of us. No more and no less.

Not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases.

Will

This too shall pass.

—— Abraham Lincoln

If Perception and Action were the disciplines of the mind and the body, then Will is the discipline of the heart and the soul. The will is the one thing we control completely, always.

In a world where we can beam documents around the world in nanoseconds, chat in high-definition video with anyone anywhere, predict the weather down to the minute, it’s very easy to internalize the assumption that nature has been domesticated and submits to our whim. Of course, it hasn’t.

We forget how light our grip on life really is. Otherwise, we wouldn’t spend so much time obsessing over trivialities. All of these are negated by death. All these assumptions presume that death won’t affect us, or at least, not when we don’t want it to. The paths of glory, Thomas Gray wrote, lead but to the grave.

Correct action depends upon focusing on the process and living within each moment of that process.

Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift. Someone on a deadline doesn’t indulge himself with attempts at the impossible, he doesn’t waste time complaining about how he’d like things to be.

Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you.

Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More important, you must keep them all in real perspective.

Back To Product

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Campus Manager Retrospective

Although mentally it feels like a decade, only two years have passed since I joined Ironhack. It has been intense. Yet looking back I’m astonished by the amount of progress we’ve made so far — not just in Barcelona, but across the globe.

To put these two years in perspective, and before we jump in to discuss what this article is truly about, let me share a handful of highlights of what our team has accomplished so far here in Barcelona.

Moved from a co-working to our own space at the heart of Poblenou — almost 1.000 square meters of pure delight.
Enhanced our product line and launched a brand new UX/UI Design Bootcamp, in addition to our Web Development Bootcamp. On top of that, we extended both programs to have their own part-time counterparts.
Doubled the amount of enrolled students each year. On our way to graduate more than 200 Ironhackers this 2017 alone. Which also means increasing our revenue by more than 100% YoY, twice in a row.
Despite this growth, our student satisfaction metrics weren’t hurt. On the contrary, student NPS increased by more than 30 points. Also placement rate¹, for the first time, recently crossed the 80% mark.
Assembled a local team of rockstars. That’s a big one; it might be the biggest one, actually. Scaling operations from a one-man show up to 15 passioned, hard-working persons — ranging from sales, marketing, teachers, etc. has proven to be a daring endeavor.
Launched key city partnerships, such as the strategic alliance with ESADE, to enable a new breed of hybrid profiles. Or the wallapop scholarships, to promote women in tech. Which reinforced our leading position among the community.

This was just the first two years. This has been just Barcelona. This is just getting started.

Back then, with close to zero information, I predicted my role to be something like this:

In short, it means I have to establish the entire company operations in the city, from scratch. Recruit the team, set up a community, enroll students, assemble a network of hiring partners… easier said than done 😅

In retrospect, these lines might read like a self-fulfilling prophecy. They turned out to be a remarkably accurate description of the things to come. However, they failed to capture the most inspiring side of the role. Something that was nowhere to be found in the job description.

I am talking about our mission, our purpose, the ultimate reason why Ironhack exists: changing people’s lives. Empowering every single student we graduate to change careers and join a thriving tech industry full of opportunities. I’m aware we are not reaching millions of people. Brick and mortar ventures do not scale as fast as server farms. But the impact we make in every single student we “touch” is massive.

Two years ago I wouldn’t have said that this “noble mission” could have the potential to be a determining factor when choosing a new job. Today I can safely say that it has become a critical component and something I couldn’t live without.

Missing Product

But back to the aforementioned prophecy, it also stated this:

The only concern I had though, is that the job was far removed from a product. This was the only thing that held my decision back a few days. I had to think about it but finally ended up realizing that Ironhack Barcelona was a product in itself.

Both turned out to be true as well.

First, Ironhack Barcelona was a product in itself, yes. A product like no other with the potential to, literally, change its students’ lives. Few products can live up to such high standard.

Building this “product” from scratch has been one of the most rewarding deeds I’ve undertaken so far. Something I’ll bring with me wherever I go. Something I’ll always look upon and feel nothing but pride.

Second, during 2017 this idea of “product” evolved. It reached a stage of maturity where it stopped behaving like the product it used to be. It outgrew me in ways I expected. The paintings were already on the wall.

As an organization, we gained momentum, but at agility’s expenses. There was no time for building anymore. My schedule turned into an endless array of meetings, presentations, and PR events. Being the campus manager was no longer about creating, it was about all about growing.

One trait I admire in a person is self-awareness. I have always believed that we underestimate how far in life a healthy combination of self-awareness and common sense can get you.

I was aware that the role of the campus manager had evolved. I was aware that it now required a completely different skill set than the one required two years ago. Back then Barcelona needed to go from 0 to 1; we achieved that. Now it needed to go from 1 to 100.

The campus manager job is not your 9 to 5; it is a lifestyle, a passion you live and breath every single waking hour. Hence it must be perfectly aligned with the person’s motivation. It requires the “right guy”. Otherwise, it does not make sense to keep going. If you don’t feel like this you’re probably doing it wrong. The infinitesimal misalignment of these values can compromise the whole edifice.

Fortunately, we were not yet at that point. But I started feeling that I was not the “right guy” anymore. My thing is starting things from scratch, and there was no more scratch around. I wasn’t enjoying the way I used to enjoy during the early days. My contribution was no longer optimal. The misalignment started to manifest itself and my days as a campus manager were coming to an end. It was the time for a change, a change for the best.

Build, Create, Again

So, I had it all figured out. I had a plan, and it looked like this: go to Ironhack’s founders, explain the situation and the reasons behind my decision, help them find the “next me” — no matter how long it takes, assist during the transition as much as I can, shake hands, and, finally, depart.

When the time came, I punctiliously deployed the first stage of the plan, sharing all the above with Ironhack’s founders.

Well, nothing went according to the plan.

In an unexpected turn of events, the conversation quickly shifted to another place. I’ll give you the executive summary.

These are founders talking:

Ok, so you know about products and like starting things from scratch, right? Well, Ironhack has grown a lot in these two years, however, we haven’t been doing a particularly good job with our product. We still don’t have a dedicated product team, we haven’t defined our product lines… In fact, we were currently thinking of launching this department; we already started looking for a product manager! Would you like to do it?

What? Say that again?

The unexpected turn meant that I was being presented with the opportunity to kickstart Ironhack’s product team. The proposal came bundled with the keywords “product”, “from scratch”, “impact”, and every single requirement I could be possibly looking for. It checked all the elements on the wishlist.

With an enthusiastic “yes” in mind (already making its way into my tongue), I think I did what any rational human being would have done. Behind a thick diplomacy filter, and in an effort to freeze my passion and sound ~~sane~~ politically correct, I responded that “I love the idea, I’d like to think about it, just give me a few days to puzzle over it”.

During the upcoming days, I made a thorough introspection around what all that meant. I wanted to understand what “product” at Ironhack was really about. Because when setting up any product venture you have to first go through the exercise of daydreaming about what it could possibly become.

To begin with, it’d mean to create unique, unforgettable learning experiences through software. Nonetheless, the beauty of it would be that this experience won’t be confined to the digital realm. Such tools would be able to empower our team of rockstars in an offline world. We have the potential to bridge the gap between the digital and the physical, creating a seamless experience that blends the best of both worlds.

From this perspective, the possibilities are limitless. Helping our teachers with better tools to deliver their lectures. Creating products to optimize the matching abilities of our outcomes managers and hiring partners when it comes to employing our graduates. In the end, getting back to the front lines to actually build the tools and products that will enable our students to not just learn, but help them transition to the industry — get a better job.

So, here we are again, back to product, a blank canvas, a new challenge, and about to start a new thriving epoch in my life. And of course, as you might have guessed, I said “yes”.

The Placement Rate is the ratio of students finding a full-time job after three months of their graduation — by all accounts our golden metric and true north star.↩

Traveling Is Overrated

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

August 15th marks the epicenter of the Kingdom’s summer. Nothing moves. There is nobody around. The whole town has agreed to drop the ax at once and go on vacations. Hence I can’t think of a better time to share a controversial thought around a sensitive topic everybody seems to agree with, but me.

Everybody likes traveling.

Tons of empirical data out there back this statement up. Traveling has become one of the most cited interests under the hobbies category for any resume to look sane — with belligerent competition coming from reading books and going to the movies. It also seems to be ranking high among the best topics to craft the perfect water-cooler pitch, while signaling social adaptation. But jokes aside, here’s the controversial opinion.

I don’t like to travel.

More precisely, I dislike performing like a tourist in a foreign country. Your typical summer vacations, visiting a city or country following the worn down steps of millions of vacationers before you. And because I have been there, my assumptions derive from personal experience — I am not a theoretical hater.

The thesis revolves around the idea that most of us travel for the wrong incentives. When visiting a new place, we aim to do it all: learn about their culture, history, architecture, gastronomy, and all that is physically possible given the small amount of time at our disposal. We treat the experience as a checklist we haven’t come up with, but one everybody seems to agree upon.

Rushing from one place to another, superficially dispatching layers of concrete with funny shapes, taking the mandatory pictures, visiting museums we don’t care about, and eating at the most crowded restaurants. At the end of the day, emulating the exact same steps of an endless stream of tourists willing to outcompete us by fitting one more landmark in their agenda. A crazy race to the bottom.

Here’s where I stop and can’t help but ask: do we really like all this? If we liked it that much, how come aren’t we behaving like this in our town? How many times have we visited hometown’s landmarks or museums? Have we ever entertained this thought for just five minutes? I’m not making a case against tourism, but I’d argue it has a fundamental flaw.

There’s another way to frame it: assuming most people invest their spare time doing whatever they like most, it follows that if we were to rank somebody’s activities by time-spent we’d probably find the ones they like the most at the very top. Or in other words, we (usually) do whatever we like during our spare time.

The problem is that for some strange reason, this logic breaks during travel time. None of the most liked activities is performed while in tourist mode. We stop doing what we like most and start doing tourist things. The context transforms us.

This I don’t understand: if we don’t usually do something during our “regular routines” must be because we dislike it. Otherwise, we’d devote more time to doing it. Then why, all of a sudden, we switch modes when stepping food abroad and embark on activities we aren’t even interest in?

Travel Different

What I suggest might be a better approach to tourism, would be to apply some common sense and double down on the things we know we like in the first place. Align our traveling desires with what we enjoy — more precisely, with two key ingredients: personal interests and friends. Travel becomes then a way to explore, nurture, and develop a genuine interest of ours in another geography, surrounded by people we care the most. We get to be the new locals in a foreign place.

Doing more of the things we already like. Being curious about how other cultures approach the things that excite us. Taking an active role in the journey, instead of being presented with the boring defaults.

Travel becomes then a way to explore, nurture, and develop a genuine interest of ours in another geography, surrounded by people we care the most. We get to be the new locals in a foreign place.

On top of that, I found out, interest-based traveling has other unexpected side effects.

Escaping the crowd. By pursuing something we love, we are constraining the scope of the journey. Leaving all the rush, pressure, and masses behind. Plus avoiding competition because we will be chasing a niche that won’t be listed in all tourists guide.
Built-in enjoyment. Since we will be following a passion of ours we are flipping the travel equation: instead of being passively presented with random, inconsequential tourist stuff, we are actively looking for something personally meaningful.
Become an active character during the trip, instead of a passive one. Layman’s tourism ends up being boring because of the lack of domain knowledge around our visits. We become passive consumers presented with whatever the city or the tourist guide has to offer. Seeking what’s already an area of expertise puts us in the driver seat, taking active control of the journey.
If on top of that we’re visiting a friend, we’ll get the added benefit of avoiding the tourist places and discover go where locals go. An insider visit of sorts, experiencing the city through their own eyes. Plus he or she’ll be delighted you came to visit, hence making sure you are having a great time.

These are my five cents about why traveling is broken and how to fix it. Just give it a try. Look inside, ask yourself what you enjoy the most. Look around, research which countries are doing interesting stuff around your passions. Plan a magnificent trip around the things you like (ideally with a local partner) and you’d have changed traveling forever.

Building Our Community

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Out of the blue, last month, one of the most prominent startups in town invited me to lecture their marketing team about the lessons we (at Ironhack) have learned building our amazing community.

On one hand, I was happily surprised they extended such invitation. Just the fact their top-notch marketing team was curious about our community building efforts was a pleasant wink at our work, and something we should definitely feel proud of.

On the other hand, there was this nagging thought I couldn’t get off my head: the more I mulled over the content of the presentation, the more I felt I truly didn’t know what to say or even where to start.

At Ironhack, our community is one of our most precious assets. We devote tons of time and resources to develop and nurture it, without even expecting the slightest return in the short term. We do it because we care. Because we truly believe it is the right thing. But I had never written down an ordered list with our tactics or how-tos when it comes to building a community.

To begin with, I am neither expert in marketing nor I thought of myself as knowledgeable about community-related strategies. But since I wanted to prepare the lecture, I started drafting ideas, thoughts… and dived deep into the raison d’être, the building blocks of our community. I rejoiced and found the exercise fascinating and I wanted to share a few lines with some of the takeaways.

Why Do You Want One?

First of all, it is important to understand why, nowadays, all the cool kids want to run their own communities. The upsides of a healthy community are well understood and kickstarting one seems rather easy. But the hidden challenges of building and nurturing one are far less documented.

A community is neither a build it and they will come thing, nor a passive asset that takes care of itself. It takes time, resources and dedication. Most people don’t have time and usually, resources are constrained or better allocated to other, shorter term, projects. That’s the number one reason communities don’t endure, they lack care and fade away.

I have witnessed countless community attempts announcing their brand new thing. Over time I have learned to contemplate it with a deeper perspective and wonder how many of those will still be there in the long run.

This is the first realization I came across: your community must be embedded in your DNA. In other words, unless you run an NGO, the community must be supporting and reinforcing some aspects of your culture or business model. Otherwise, chances are you will fail to invest in it. Incentives matter, a lot.

In order to thrive, your community must be deeply integrated into the way your business operates. That means all your stakeholders should derive value from nurturing the community and your business should get healthier when the community is engaged.

Identity, Product, Partners

But back to our community at Ironhack. After giving it a lot of thought, I came to realize our community reinforces three key aspects of our business and culture: identity, product, and partners — this last one dealt in a separate post.

When it comes to identity, there are many factors playing in, some of them we control, others we do not. A community is something you can, to some extent, manage or control, but its implications extend far beyond what you might presume. Our community shapes the way people perceive us: what they say about us, how we look like in people’s minds and, ultimately, how we fit in the world.

I find fascinating this ability to ultimately control the shape of our own perception. We do it through our events, the strategic involvement of alumni, random interactions around campus, all of it, every single bit adds up. It is a reflection of our culture, one in which our community is deeply built in.

I don’t know why, but at the end of the day, I picture some friends, having this informal conversation over dinner. They talk about us without us being there, and this is exactly how our identity spreads without our full control. Nowadays when we (almost) can send a rocket to Mars, the most powerful referral is still the word of mouth. Therefore, each member of your community will define who you are, one interaction at a time.

But of course, we need to constantly remind ourselves that we are here to deliver an amazing educational experience. It is precisely at this point where the integration with our product is the most transformative.

At this moment in time, where all educational content is being commoditized and distributed for free, the experience becomes not only more important but essential when it comes to having the best product. Given this environment, I would argue that our community is the most powerful asset we have to compete in this new axis of performance.

Our community is the answer to the question: how are you different than your competitors? Why are you a better choice? I once struggled with answering this question. But now I see it crystal clear: a strong, deeply engaged community is the most powerful answer to why you should join Ironhack.

Community and Culture

I like this idea of defining culture as what happens when nobody is looking. Sometimes we take it for granted, but in a way, community and culture are two sides of the same coin.

Alumni, hiring partners, other friendly groups, public institutions… all of them orbit around us, helping create a unique environment for our students to develop their craft. Scattered people working together under the Ironhack theme to provide an educational experience that none of our students would forget.

This idea of community doesn’t come naturally to me. Like it or not, my engineering background makes me perceive the world in 0s and 1s. A community is an extremely complex artifact composed of the most polyhedral entities: human beings. This makes analyzing, even talking about community a really challenging endeavor.

But also simpler things, from how we deal with the dishes after lunch to how we open the door and receive random people to our campus. Definitely not something we have fully engineered, but figure it out by doing, by imprinting our care and passion for what we do.

It is our culture who attracts our community, and at the end of the day, all of it happens because we care to the extent other people would think we are insane. The amount of attention and devotion we put to everything we do goes way past sanity by standard metrics. All of us want to see our culture winning, and this feeling radiates across the whole organization.

Building Yours

As we discussed, community (potentially) pays off in the long run. Its growth follows kind of an exponential path. At the very beginning, you feel like you are investing plenty of time and resources, but cashing almost no returns. The early efforts clearly do not scale and most attempts fail at this stage.

Past a certain point, your community will greatly pay off, but most won’t make it there. Building and scaling a healthy community is not an easy endeavor and the future returns can’t be your primary motivation.

A community is an end in itself, one you must appreciate, care and nurture beyond rationality or balance sheets. The main takeaway of these lines is that the community is one of the most powerful tools to differentiate and build your business on. But the approach when it comes to creating yours, can’t be transactional. You must definitely care, love what you do, only then gravity will do the rest.

10% Happier

Wed, 03 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT

What’s the point of meditation?

Practicing meditation and mindfulness will make you at least 10 percent happier.
Being mindful doesn’t change the problems in your life, but mindfulness does help you respond to your problems rather than react to them.
Mindfulness makes you appreciate the present more, decreases your anxiety over the past and future.
Ultimately, it helps you realize that striving for success is fine as long as you accept that the outcome is outside your control.

The Power Of Now

It’s fixated on the past and the future, to the detriment of the here and now. It’s what has us reaching into the fridge when we’re not hungry, losing our temper when we know it’s not really in our best interest, and pruning our inboxes when we’re ostensibly engaged in conversation with other human beings.

We’ve been incredibly blessed with the number of pleasant experiences we’ve had in our lives. Yet when we look back, where are they now?

Hedonic Adaptation

📍 Hedonic adaptation: the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.

🔖 No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete: the ego is never satisfied.

The lie we tell ourselves our whole lives: as soon as we get the next X, we’ll feel really good. We live so much of our lives pushed forward by these “if only” thoughts, and yet the itch remains. The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

The ego is constantly comparing itself to others. It has us measuring our self-worth against the looks, wealth, and social status of everyone else.

🖋 It totally reminds me of one of my all time favorite Wait But Why articles about our “tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of future events” and our ability to simulate future situations to predict what it’ll be like to experience them, but that simulator doesn’t always work so well and tends “to make us believe that different outcomes are more different than in fact they really are”.

To wrap it up, the previous two ideas, combined:

Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy. Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress.

On Obsessive Eating

[…] my habit of hunting around my plate for the next bite before I’d tasted what was in my mouth. As he described it, “I do not want to experience the fading of the flavor — the colorless, cottony pulp that succeeds that spectacular burst over my taste buds.”

[…] I would tell myself I would be moderate, but once the frenzy started, I couldn’t stop. I was feeding the pleasure centers of my brain rather than my stomach, and I was particularly bad with dessert.

Buddha’s Main Thesis

In a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last.
We suffer because we get attached to people and possessions that ultimately evaporate.
We and everyone we love will die. […] We may know this intellectually, but on an emotional level we seem to be hardwired for denial. We comport ourselves as if we had solid ground beneath our feet, as if we had control.

Then the proposed solution is:

In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to recognize what is happening in your mind right now—anger, jealousy, sadness, the pain of a stubbed toe, whatever—without getting carried away by it.

📍 Mindfulness: create some space in your head so you can “respond” rather than simply “react.”

Learn how to be happy “before anything happens.” This happiness is self-generated, not contingent on exogenous forces; it’s the opposite of “suffering.” What the Buddha recognized was a genuine game changer.

Keep On Giving

Some of the traits we think are fixed like a quick temper or moody-ness or compassion are learned skills, not fixed characteristics.

🔖 Most improvements in life make very little difference and that’s fine. We spend so much time searching for transformational change in one easy step, but can we all just admit that were looking for the easy way out here? Just because you can’t change everything at once doesn’t mean you can’t get better. In many cases, most cases in fact, you are only going to see a very small increase from each action.

The key is to embrace these daily marginal gains rather than dismissing them because they are small.

The new view took into account a long-overlooked branch of Darwinian thinking, namely the observation that tribes who cooperated and sacrificed for one another were more likely to “be victorious over other tribes.” Apparently nature rewarded both the fittest—and the kindest.

I found that applying the “price of security” maxim by proxy — worrying about other people’s professional challenges — was much more easeful than applying it on myself.

Meditation

Meditation helps you shut down your monkey mind for a moment.

Meditation is like doing focused reps for your mind. Focus on the breath, lose your focus, bring it back to the breath, repeat. This is the whole game. Keep bringing your mind back to the breath.

Mindfulness represents an alternative to living reactively.

Being mindful doesn’t change the problems in your life. You still need to take action, but the key is that mindfulness allows you to respond rather than react to the problems in your life.

Striving for success is fine as long as you realize that the outcome is not under your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. Be as ambitious as possible, but let go of the result. This makes it easier for you to be resilient and bounce back if the result is poor.

Anything You Want

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT

If you think your life’s purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you’ll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you. If you think revolution needs to feel like war, you’ll overlook the importance of simply serving people better.

It immediately reminded of Adam Robinson’s framework to put fun, enthusiasm and delight in everything you do:

Connect with everyone you encounter, make an effort to make a connection.
Create fun and delight and approach each person with enthusiasm.
Lean into each moment or encounter expecting magic.

As Adam puts it: “none of them have anything to do with “you”. Fun, enthusiasm and delight is for the other person. You are there to delight the other person, not to get the job or the date. This gives you infinite power, because you want nothing and you are offering everything”.

Because you are in total control of these three things, this is a game you can’t lose.

🖇 Related to Delivering Happiness: “I believe that there’s something interesting about anyone and everyone — you just have to figure out what that something is”.

We’ve all heard about the importance of persistence. But I had misunderstood. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.

🖇 Related to Tim Ferriss idea of: you could be as efficient as you want, but yet performing an unimportant task. Being effective is what matters, prioritizing things that are important over the ones that are not.

It’s a big world. You can loudly leave out 99 percent of it. Have the confidence to know that when your target 1 percent hears you excluding the other 99 percent, the people in that 1 percent will come to you because you’ve shown how much you value them.

🖋 What internet does, by definition, is taking niches, making them available online to the entire world thus making them big enough so meaningful business can be built around them.

The Internet has created a world where percentages don’t matter anymore. Is the Ben Thompson’s theory of the Rainforest all over again: having a small fraction of a huge market is enough to thrive as a business. The Internet has unlocked infinite niches, and that of course makes owning a niche more difficult, but once is yours, you will have a sufficiently large market for your business to flourish.

Same reason why back in the 80s the Mac struggled in a PC dominated world: having a small percentage of the PC market was not enough to attract developers and create a sustainable ecosystem. The PC market was simply not large enough. But on the other hand iOS is today able to thrive with a small percentage of the mobile market, because the mobile market is times larger than the PC’s ever was. Again, once you have a big enough market, percentages don’t matter anymore.

More business related takeaways would be:

When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. It becomes your utopia.
Ideas are worth nothing unless they are well executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
Make every decision according to what’s best for your customers.
When it comes to grow your business, also think of the tiny details that really thrill people and make them tell all their friends about you.

When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won’t understand. They’ll assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way. But that’s forgetting about the joy of learning and doing. Yes, it may take longer. Yes, it may be inefficient. Yes, it may even cost you millions of dollars in lost opportunities because your business is growing slower because you’re insisting on doing something yourself. But the whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! That’s it! You might get bigger faster and make millions if you outsource everything to the experts. But what’s the point of getting bigger and making millions? To be happy, right?

The book is full of references correlating simplicity and happiness. There are a lot of great ideas, but they all gravitate around three main axis.

First, craft — learning and building, is an end in itself and what you ought to pursue in order to achieve happiness. To have something, on the other hand, is just the means. Again 🖇 related to Delivering Happiness where it draws a similar conclusion.

In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have. To have something (a finished recording, a business, or millions of dollars) is the means, not the end. To be something (a good singer, a skilled entrepreneur, or just plain happy) is the real point. When you sign up to run a marathon, you don’t want a taxi to take you to the finish line.

Second, focus your time and energy on the things that make you happy. Seems obvious, but there are so many distractions and prejudgments around certain ideas that is easy to get trapped into a task — or life, you did not want to begin with.

I loved sitting alone and programming, writing, planning, and inventing—thinking of ideas and making them happen. This makes me happy, not business deals or management. So I found someone who liked doing business deals and put him in charge of all that.

And third, it rounds back to material possessions. There is an appropriate balance for everybody, but generally the less you own, the more freedom you will earn to focus on craft and stuff that makes you happy.

Material happiness is not long lasting happiness, but on top of that it adds an additional layer of complexity and you will be entitled to:

Store it, both mentally and physically.
Maintain it.
Worry if it breaks.
Sell it when it comes the time or you just get bored of it.

🖇 Related to Transcendental Money and the idea that one person can’t actually spend all that much money with the constraint that you actually have to use what you buy — and the burden that comes with taking care of the properties you can’t use.

I live simply. I don’t own a house, a car, or even a TV. The less I own, the happier I am. The lack of stuff gives me the priceless freedom to live anywhere anytime.

A Guide To The Good Life

Thu, 30 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Main Characters

Philosophical thinking took a giant leap forward in the sixth century BC:

Pythagoras (570-500 BC) in Italy
Thales (636-546 BC), Anaximander (641-547 BC), and Heracleitus (535-475 BC) in Greece
Confucius (551-479 BC) in China
Buddha (563-483 BC) in India

Featured Stoics:

Diogenes Laertius
Epictetus
Epicurus
Lucilius
Marcus Aurelius
Seneca
Zeno

Rules For Life

If you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life.

Whatever philosophy of life you adopt, you will probably have a better life than if you tried to live without a coherent philosophy of life.

Pursue things genuinely valuable — otherwise when you are on your deathbed, you will look back and realize that you wasted your one chance at living.

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.

Periodically meditate on the events of daily living, how you responded to these events, and how, in accordance with Stoic principles, you should have responded to them.

Stop blaming, censuring, and praising others. Stop boasting about ourselves and how much we know. Blame yourself, not external circumstances, when your desires are thwarted.

Stoicism In A Nutshell

Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.

To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature. The Stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life.

A Stoic sage, according to Diogenes Laertius, is “free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report.” He never feels grief, since he realizes that grief is an “irrational contraction of the soul.” His conduct is exemplary. He doesn’t let anything stop him from doing his duty. Although he drinks wine, he doesn’t do so in order to get drunk. The Stoic sage is, in short, “godlike.”

Thus, for the Roman Stoics, the pursuit of virtue and the pursuit of tranquility are components of a virtuous circle —indeed, a doubly virtuous circle: the pursuit of virtue results in a degree of tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue.

Logic And Rationale

Stoic logic showed an unprecedented degree of sophistication. The Stoics’ interest in logic is a natural consequence of their belief that man’s distinguishing feature is his rationality. Logic is, after all, the study of the proper use of reasoning.

By studying logic, they hoped to perform well one of the functions for which we were designed; namely, to behave in a rational manner. And by studying physics, they hoped to gain insight into the purpose for which we were designed.

Students who knew logic could detect the fallacies committed by others and thereby prevail over them in arguments.

We experience hunger; this is nature’s way of getting us to nourish ourselves. We also experience lust; this is nature’s way of getting us to reproduce. But we differ from other animals in one important respect: we have the ability to reason. From this we can conclude, Zeno would assert, that we were designed to be reasonable.

Simple Living And Happiness

“The gods had given to men the means of living easily, but this had been put out of sight, because we require honeyed cakes, unguents and the like.” Such is the madness of men, he said, that they choose to be miserable when they have it in their power to be content. The problem is that “bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters,” and because they cannot control their desires, they can never find contentment.

You are living in what to your ancestors would have been a dream world. You take for granted things that your ancestors had to live without.

He believed hunger to be the best appetizer, and because he waited until he was hungry or thirsty before he ate or drank, “he used to partake of a barley cake with greater pleasure than others did of the costliest of foods, and enjoyed a drink from a stream of running water more than others did their Thasian wine.”

Whereas Seneca wanted to appreciate what he had, Epicurus wanted to examine the things he thought he needed so he could determine which of them he could in fact live without. He realized that in many cases, we work hard to obtain something because we are convinced that we would be miserable without it. The problem is that we can live perfectly well without some of these things, but we won’t know which they are if we don’t try living without them.

Seneca, after advising us to enjoy life, cautions us not to develop “over-much love” for the things we enjoy. To the contrary, we must take care to be “the user, but not the slave, of the gifts of Fortune.”

The Stoics see nothing wrong, for example, with enjoying the pleasures to be derived from friendship, family life, a meal, or even wealth, but they counsel us to be circumspect in our enjoyment of these things. There is, after all, a fine line between enjoying a meal and lapsing into gluttony.

People are unhappy, the Stoics argue, in large part because they are confused about what is valuable. Because of their confusion, they spend their days pursuing things that, rather than making them happy, make them anxious and miserable.

When, as the result of being exposed to luxurious living, people become hard to please, a curious thing happens. Rather than mourning the loss of their ability to enjoy simple things, they take pride in their newly gained inability to enjoy anything but “the best.”

Likewise, we should keep in mind Seneca’s comment to Lucilius that “the man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.”

Find delight in your own resources, and desire no joys greater than your inner joys.

More generally, it is perfectly acceptable, says Seneca, for a Stoic to acquire wealth, as long as he does not harm others to obtain it. It is also acceptable for a Stoic to enjoy wealth, as long as he is careful not to cling to it. The idea is that it is possible to enjoy something and at the same time be indifferent to it.

The first step in transforming a society into one in which people live a good life is to teach people how to make their happiness depend as little as possible on their external circumstances. The second step in transforming a society is to change people’s external circumstances.

Negative Visualization

Appreciate the things we have.
Prepare for bad things to happen.

“He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.”

Misfortune weighs most heavily on those who “expect nothing but good fortune.”

Epictetus echoes this advice: we should keep in mind that “all things everywhere are perishable.” If we fail to recognize this and instead go around assuming that we will always be able to enjoy the things we value, we will likely find ourselves subject to considerable distress when the things we value are taken from us.

To them, living as if each day were our last is simply an extension of the negative visualization technique: as we go about our day, we should periodically pause to reflect on the fact that we will not live forever and therefore that this day could be our last. Such reflection, rather than converting us into hedonists, will make us appreciate how wonderful it is that we are alive and have the opportunity to fill this day with activity.

And besides contemplating the loss of our life, say the Stoics, we should contemplate the loss of our possessions. Most of us spend our idle moments thinking about the things we want but don’t have. We would be much better off, Marcus says, to spend this time thinking of all the things we have and reflecting on how much we would miss them if they were not ours.

Instead of merely thinking about what it would be like to lose your wealth, periodically practice poverty: content yourself with cheap fare and rough dress.

Ensure you never get too comfortable. Periodically experience discomfort that you could have avoided. Underdress for cold weather or go shoeless. Become thirsty or hungry, even though water and food are at hand.

Do not inflict these discomforts to punish yourself; rather, do it to increase your enjoyment of life.

We need to keep firmly in mind that everything we value and the people we love will someday be lost to us. If nothing else, our own death will deprive us of them.

Hedonic Adaptation

You are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless you can overcome your insatiability.

We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.

One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: we need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get.

The easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

Not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself. If you are exposed to a luxurious lifestyle, you might lose your ability to take delight in simple things.

In particular, he says, she should remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission — indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, “we should love all of our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever — no promise even that we may keep them for long.”

Self-control

For the Stoics self-control will be an important trait to acquire. After all, if we lack self-control, we are likely to be distracted by the various pleasures life has to offer, and in this distracted state we are unlikely to attain the goals of our philosophy of life.

More generally, if we cannot resist pleasures, we will end up playing, Marcus says, the role of slave, “twitching puppet-wise at every pull of self-interest,” and we will spend our life” ever grumbling at today or lamenting over tomorrow.

What Stoics discover, though, is that willpower is like muscle power: the more they exercise their muscles, the stronger they get, and the more they exercise their will, the stronger it gets. Indeed, by practicing Stoic self-denial techniques over a long period, Stoics can transform themselves into individuals remarkable for their courage and self-control.

By practicing self-denial techniques over a long period, you can transform yourself into someone remarkable for your courage and self-control. You will be able to do things that others dread doing, and refrain from doing things that others cannot resist doing. You will be thoroughly in control of yourself. This self-control makes it far more likely that you will attain the goals of your philosophy of life, and this in turn dramatically increases your chances of living a good life.

Work

Perform with resoluteness the duties we humans were created to perform. Nothing else should distract you. When you wake, rather than lying in bed, you must get up to do the proper work of man, the work you were created to perform.

By internalizing his goals in daily life, the Stoic is able to preserve his tranquility while dealing with things over which he has only partial control.

Any time and energy spent on events you can’t control will have no effect on the outcome of events and will therefore be wasted time and energy.

Internalize your goals. Make a goal not to change the world, but to do your best to bring about certain changes. Even if your efforts prove to be ineffectual, you can rest easy knowing you accomplished your goal: you did what you could do.

Be fatalistic with respect to the past and present. Refuse to compare your situation with alternative, preferable situations in which you might have found or might now find yourself.

Don’t work out of fear. “If I don’t perform they will fire me.” The main driver for good work should be internal. You also should strive for recognition from your peers and community.

Love your work as a whole. Aim for the big picture. Every aspect of your work deserves care and attention if you think of it as a whole i.e. street artist that has to put up with city regulations. She maybe doesn’t enjoy the visits to the city council, but she keeps in mind the big picture, and it just becomes part of the mission.

Community

Marcus suggests, lessen the negative impact other people have on our life by controlling our thoughts about them. He counsels us, for example, not to waste time speculating about what our neighbors are doing, saying, thinking, or scheming. Nor should we allow our mind to be filled with “sensual imaginings, jealousies, envies, suspicions, or any other sentiments” about them that we would blush to admit. A good Stoic, Marcus says, will not think about what other people are thinking except when he must do so in order to serve the public interest.

Avoid befriending people whose values have been corrupted, so their values won’t contaminate yours. Instead seek people who share our values and in particular, people who are doing a better job than we are of living in accordance with good values. While enjoying the companionship of these individuals, work hard to learn what you can from them.

Social fatalism: when dealing with others, assume they are fated to behave in a certain way. It is therefore pointless to wish they could be any other way.

Delivering Happiness

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I made a list of the happiest periods in my life, and I realized that none of them involved money. I realized that building stuff and being creative and inventive made me happy.

🖋 Money and happiness do not correlate linearly. Its relation looks to me like a logarithmic curve, where deltas in money at the very beginning have a huge impact on happiness — because they unlock fundamental and necessary things, such as food, health care or shelter. But as you move to the right, the curve flattens out and additional amounts of money do not have a noticeable impact on the overall happiness. At that point, happiness is entirely up to you and what do you want to make of it.

At the end of the book, there is an accurate framework to categorize the types of happiness, I paraphrase:

Pleasure: is about always chasing the next high. I like to refer to it as the “Rock Star” type of happiness because it’s great if you can have a constant inflow of stimuli, but it’s very hard to maintain unless you’re living the lifestyle of a rock star.
Passion: is also known as flow, where peak performance meets peak engagement, and time flies by. Research has shown that of the three types of happiness, this is the second longest lasting. Professional athletes sometimes refer to this state as “being in the zone.”
Higher purpose: is about being part of something bigger than yourself that has meaning to you. Of the three types of happiness, this is the longest lasting.

This last bullet is also a recurring theme during the book. The idea of “being part of something bigger than yourself,” not only at a personal level, but it also can also be extrapolated at a company level.

📍 Being part of something bigger than yourself

🔖 One of the things that he found from his research was that great companies have a greater purpose and bigger vision beyond just making money or being number one in a market.

Having a vision of a higher purpose means being about something bigger than whatever you are selling. It transcends mere profits and drives the whole organization towards a larger goal.

They were expensive lessons, but I guess what I ended up learning was that it’s a bad idea to invest in industries you don’t understand, in companies you don’t have any control or influence over, or in people you don’t know or trust.

I realized that the day-trading and investing I was doing weren’t really fulfilling. I didn’t feel like I was really building anything. It felt more like I was gambling, but with the odds stacked against me because I was investing money in things I didn’t understand.

Do not invest in business you do not understand. There are two main ideas merged together here:

Be curious and learn as much as you can. This should be a state of mind by default. It does not matter if you think of the subject as “useless” knowledge, there is no such thing. Everything is related and learning, in opposition of money, compounds and therefore, is exponential.
Do not get involved in things just because of money. Money does not have a soul and can’t be considered an end in itself. Going back to the first quote: building stuff and being creative and inventive is what really gives life a meaning. Money is a powerful external driver, but it won’t get you too far.

To me, connectedness — the number and depth of my relationships — was an important element of my happiness, and I was grateful for our tribe.

Connectedness, and feeling like part of a tribe makes people happy and creates a sense of fulfillment. Both are strong motivators. When a group of people feels connected, like a family, there is a strong sense of obligation to the whole team, to work harder and treat each other better.

🖋 Here there are several apparently unrelated, but deeply connected ideas floating around: happiness as a function of building stuff and being creative, getting money and material possessions out of the equation. Then the idea of vision or purpose larger than yourself, which in itself is related with the connectedness and this sense of tribe, empowered by the aforementioned vision.

Every interaction with anyone anywhere was an opportunity to gain additional perspective. […] I believe that there’s something interesting about anyone and everyone — you just have to figure out what that something is.

🖇 Related to Anything You Want: each interaction is an opportunity to learn something new. Each person is unique in some dimension, if you learn how to how to spot that uniqueness and exploit it, you will develop a super power and create an ubiquitous, always available supply of knowledge.

So the challenge to everyone is this: make at least one improvement every week that makes Zappos better reflect our core values.

There are more references of compounding effects throughout the book, but this particular one is a really good framing of how small improvements can have a huge return over time.

I started thinking about all the things that I took for granted in life, and how much more I should appreciate the things I had.

A clear reference to the stoic negative visualization.

As unsexy and low-tech as it may sound, our belief is that the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. You have the customer’s undivided attention for five to ten minutes, and if you get the interaction right, what we’ve found is that the customer remembers the experience for a very long time and tells his or her friends about it.

Usually you tend to look at a call center as a cost from an expense minimization lens, a necessary evil that comes from getting more customers. But this fresh perspective on the matter turns this assumption on its head and leverages it to delight the customer once she is on the line.

Hidden Gems

Business

Cutting marketing expenses and refocusing on customers who had already bought Zappos forced them to deliver a better customer service.
One of the biggest mistakes they made was to outsource on of their core competencies. A third party would never care about your customers as much as you would.
Do not try to chase the attention of the press. If you just focus on making sure that your product continually WOWs people, your will naturally create interesting stories as a by-product of delivering a great experience and eventually, the press will find out about it.

Company Culture

In the section about Core Values, you’ll read stories of how Zappos employees apply the same values outside the office. Without a separation of work and life, it’s remarkable how values can be exactly the same.

If you are passionate about something, you do not make any distinction between life and work, it becomes a continuum. You speak about it either during a dinner with friends or a meeting room. The context becomes unimportant.

Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company. […] Over time, as we focused more and more on our culture, we ultimately came to the realization that a company’s culture and a company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin.

Celebrating small wins and having employees telling stories — an extremely powerful medium — creates an atmosphere of empowerment for the rest of the team.

Be Humble is probably the core value that ends up affecting our hiring decisions the most. There are a lot of experienced, smart, and talented people we interview that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But a lot of them are also really egotistical, so we end up not hiring them.

Sometimes “humble” is negatively associated with “poor” or “lack of resources”. But the term “humility” actually comes from the Latin word humilitas, a noun related to the adjective humilis, which may be translated as “grounded” or “from the earth” which I think is a more accurate definition.

Others can copy our images, our shipping, and the overall look of our Web site, but they cannot copy our people, our culture, or our service. And they will not be able to evolve as fast as we can as long as embracing constant change is part of our culture.

Think of a moat, differentiation or competitive advantage not in the supply chain, not in a patent, but rather in the people, in the culture. Is a really powerful idea.

Leadership

At Zappos, we think it’s important for employees to grow both personally and professionally. It’s important to constantly challenge and stretch yourself, and not be stuck in a job where you don’t feel like you are growing or learning. We believe that inside every employee is more potential than even the employee himself/ herself realizes. Our goal is to help employees unlock that potential. But it has to be a joint effort: You have to want to challenge and stretch yourself in order for it to happen.

To build a great company, you have to pursue growth and learning. Continual growth should be a goal for your overall business and for all the people that are part of it.

The best leaders are those that lead by example and are both team followers as well as team leaders. We believe that in general, the best ideas and decisions are made from the bottom up, meaning by those on the front lines that are closest to the issues and/or the customers. The role of a manager is to remove obstacles and enable his/her direct reports to succeed. This means the best leaders are servant-leaders. They serve those they lead.

Lead by example and create the necessary conditions for others to thrive. Simon Sinek masters this idea: leadership is the practice of putting other people before ourselves in a regular basis.

Alignment

Sun, 19 Feb 2017 00:00:00 GMT

It is sometimes shocking how easily we get used to things others find fascinating. Boundary conditions define your new normal and it has to be somebody else who suddenly comes in, to remind you how biased your perspective is.

It just happened this week. I was explaining our application process to a prospective student. Which consists, first, in a personal interview to ensure the applicant is aligned with our mission. Then a technical interview to test their motivation and capacity to learn. And finally, if our admissions committee decides to accept the student, she has to complete an online pre-work before she can start the program.

After this brief explanation, she was gently surprised, especially by the first step, the personal interview.

But before we move forward with the story, let me digress and explain the idea behind this first interview.

All of our programs are extremely intense experiences, if you have not been there, you can’t even begin to imagine what it is like. During two months, every single day, students spend +12 hours coding, designing, learning, struggling. It feels overwhelming at the beginning, but it compounds at the end. When that happens, it is life transforming.

I know it because I have seen it many times. People with no prior coding experience, transitioning their careers into tech and becoming software developers, in just two months. It is powerful and rewarding. You are bending reality, redefining your limits and what you thought it was possible. But during the process, if you do not feel exhausted, you are clearly doing something wrong.

It sounds hard because it is and one of the key aspects of the endurance is wanting it so badly.

But we only have twenty seats per edition and we want to make sure they will be filled with the ones that want it the most. The most committed students, the ones that will succeed no matter what.

This is precisely the raison d’être of this first personal interview: to test and ensure the class is filled with this attitude.

I have seen many cohorts come in and out. This dynamic in a class is the prerequisite for the whole group to succeed. In my humble opinion, there are two reasons for that.

To understand the first, let me tell you something. Before I went to college I used to compete in sailing - Europe class for the curious. Our team traveled across the country for the national championship, and it felt like family to me. We developed such a profound friendship and trust with each other, that I have never felt with, say, college friends. It is also a relationship that has gone beyond our sailing days despite choosing completely opposite life paths.

I used to take these relationships for granted until somebody unexpectedly told me the reason why: the harshest and rough environments become the catalysts for the strongest relationships to develop. In my story, sailing in the ocean.

Back to Ironhack, there is the exact same dynamic at play here. It is a tough experience, but you see all the people looking at each other faces, they feel they belong there. They know everybody shares the same goal and it relieves them. They are not alone in this crazy two-month mission and the bonds they create with each other transcend the bootcamp itself.

This is how your class becomes amazing and inspiring, but also a safe environment for the students.

The second one is what I call the marathon effect — and yes, I just made that up, but bear with me, it all makes sense. If you have ever taken part in a race you know what I am talking about. Say you are running a marathon. You get there in the morning, all the crowd prepared for the race sharing this same goal — by now this should sound familiar — and you blend yourself with this bright atmosphere.

You are aiming for 42 km, but you are not running alone anymore and the atmosphere literally pushes you beyond your capabilities, it lifts you. You achieve what you thought was impossible and it is because you run with the people. It has happened to me, many times. I am unable to run a sub 3:20 marathon on my own. I tried, and I failed. But I did it the race day.

Ironhack is no different than that. Having twenty extremely motivated students that share the same goal help each of them achieve the impossible. Something they would have never done alone. It is the magic of having a group of students that share a common vision in the same room.

This is how your class becomes a transforming experience where each student can unleash their true potential, far beyond what they could even imagine.

Maybe you do not remember, but we were talking about my interview with this student. She was gently surprised because she remembered her experience back in college. She told me everybody in there had a different aspiration. She was passioned and had this clear goal in her mind, but could not relate to anybody. She felt powerless and alone.

She remembered me the importance of creating these dynamics in the class. In a way, she remembered me the importance of having this first personal interview. Something I definitely knew but never thought from this perspective. I got used to it and took it for granted.

We live in a society where college is this place you go because you turned eighteen. You go there because this is what you are supposed to do. It is what your parents did, it is what your friends are doing. But many of you, like me, did it without purpose. It was so embedded in our society, that it seemed to be the next step in life, no questions asked.

Because of it, the college has become an end in itself. It has lost purpose. They just put random people in a big building, with completely misaligned goals, and passively wait four years until they come out on the other side. Nothing good comes out on the other side.

College should be a system designed to help you achieve your life’s vision, not just a place you go and exchange four bright years of your life to earn a useless paper. You do not need a paper, there are plenty of those out there.

Today our society needs passion and craft. Enthusiasm to build great things. The best way to foster this mindset is to just have these enthusiastic students in the same room. Sharing a common vision and pushing one another. Only then is when the magic happens, but the necessary condition is always the same: alignment.

Detachment Strategy For The Apple Watch

Sun, 21 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Apple has hit roadblocks in making major changes that would connect its Watch to cellular networks and make it less dependent on the iPhone, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company still plans to announce new watch models this fall boasting improvements to health tracking.

Every single time I run into an Apple Watch user, out of curiosity, I ask about their experience with the device. Hence I have heard plenty of valuable feedback, beautiful user stories, but also curious challenges they encounter. But without question, the main complain they usually bring up — besides battery life, of course, is the ability to untether the Apple Watch from the iPhone.

It is a perfectly reasonable claim though. At the end of the day, the narrative for the Apple Watch is about bringing technology closer, creating a more intimate experience without the inconvenience of having your phone in your pocket all the time.

But this narrative breaks down every single time the Apple Watch loses the “connectivity support” from its parent. Which usually happens when you need it the most: hiking, going to the beach or any activity where you would prefer “not to” bring your phone with you.

Some improvements have been made along the way with the introduction of watchOS 2 and the ability to connect the Apple Watch directly to a Wi-Fi network. But in order to get full autonomy, the Watch needs to connect to a fully fledged cellular network, the same way an iPhone does. But of course, it is tricky. On one hand, data transmissions through cellular connectivity drain batteries quicker than BLE or Wi-Fi. On the other, the smaller the footprint of the device, the smaller the batteries you can fit inside. If your challenges come from both ends, it follows that from a technological standpoint, we are quite not there yet.

Regardless, there always have been rumors about Apple becoming its own cellular carrier. Which makes perfect sense, since it would allow Apple to integrate the single most important chunk of the experience they are not in control of. It would automatically translate into seamless activation of the devices, cross-country compatibility, simplification of the product line and an endless list of enhancements ultimately benefiting the customer experience.

But it remains an extremely complex endeavor. First of all, closing deals with operators that are now partners. Then scaling capacity to provide data to all devices, in every single region. Google did something similar last year with Project Fi, but the service was deployed in a more controlled environment, only for selected Nexus models. Which not only accounted for fewer devices but also targeted a more early adopter type of user.

Where I want to drive this at is: what if Apple rolled out the next generation Apple Watch with a built-in, low power, worldwide, cellular connectivity that helped detach the device from the iPhone. Of course, I am not talking about a 4G connection here, but something more like (please, I need a leap of faith here): SigFox. The nature of this network would not be intended to watch videos on YouTube, but rather to receive an important notification or send a critical message that can’t wait until you reach the phone.

Probably this would be the kind of service only Apple apps could use in the very early stages. Maybe afterward would be accessible to third parties through a private API with highly strict rules, as it has happened in the past with the rollout of other Apple products. Moreover, the Apple Watch would be the perfect device to start with: it is already targeting pre-chasm users, more willing to support “experiments”, and also operate at a smaller scale than the iPhone does.

It is not the exact same thing, but Amazon has been doing something similar for their Kindle lineup for more than ten years now with outstanding results.

I acknowledge there are plenty of flaws in the idea. But wouldn’t it be a clever way to bridge the detachment gap of the Apple Watch, while laying the foundation for a worldwide network to power every single Apple device in the long term?

The Designer I Wanted To Be

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT

This fall, at Ironhack, we are introducing a brand new UX/UI bootcamp. Despite this writing has nothing to do with that — well maybe a little bit, but more on that later, it is a great segue to a more personal story that recently has brought back some memories from my 23-year-old self.

The launch of any new product at Ironhack always involves the industry from the very beginning in order to craft an educational experience that trains students with valuable skills for employers. Since we started researching for this new bootcamp, we have already met with a lot of companies to understand their needs, reached out to dozens of experts to iterate on the curriculum or gathered our industry friends to discuss the importance of UX.

Because of it, I would say all the team is right now pretty fluent in UX parlance. But at a personal level, from the beginning, I was especially passionate about this new bootcamp. I kept providing resources, apps, blogs, people doing great work in the field… and consequently, my team kept asking me the (reasonable) question: how do you know all of this?

And I know all this stuff because believe it or not, when I was 23, fresh out of college, I wanted to become a UX professional. Maybe back then I did not coin the exact UX term, but it was crystal clear to me that I wanted to be the guy who designed the interactions with products.

Crafting the experience, what actually happens when you tap that button, felt absolutely mind-blowing to me. Back then I did not understand how this role played out within a team or if it even existed inside a regular company, but I loved the idea of designing a holistic experience: Design with capital D.

But despite this has been a recurrent theme of mine after college, it is obvious that I have failed to become a UX professional. Life routed me to other paths, but the obsession with interaction and design, has stuck with me in every single thing I did.

That is the reason why regardless I have been pulled away from explicit design roles as my day job, I have always tried to embrace design principles when making product and business decisions. I quote from iomando’s design recap I wrote last summer:

During my years at iomando I understood that design is a much more profound concept than “how it looks”. To me, design means falling in love with the problem. You are really designing when you break the problem down to pieces and get to the roots of it. Because getting features out of the door is an easy task, but getting the right ones, the ones that are really solving a problem in a meaningful way, that is hard.

Yet this precise thing, the joy of building great products and putting them in the hands of people is the ultimate reason why I started this company. And my job, every day, is to just try to instill this enthusiasm in every single corner of iomando.

We built an entire company around this foundation because we deeply cared about what people experienced when they interacted with our product. That is exactly what I mean with “embrace design principles.” I loved the idea of designing for experience, and despite I could not allocate all my time to this endeavor, I have always made sure we were putting attention to the last, smallest detail. I think I put it much better in here (emphasis mine):

I co-founded iomando almost 4 years ago with just one goal in mind: building an amazing product and putting it in the hands of people. That’s all I cared about. I was thrilled watching our customers fascinated by the fact that they were able to access their parking, factories, or whatever place, with their mobile phones. That feeling was the fuel that kept me going, and to me, the most tangible expression of happiness, aside from my family.

Crafting this experience, building something that people were actually in love with, has always been my guide, my little contribution to the world.

I have countless examples like these. But going back to the point, despite learning some of this fascinating stuff on the side, and doing my best to deliver a great experience in everything I did, I did not become the UX designer I wanted to be.

Back when my professional career started, I did not know where to start. I did not know what the hell a UX job was. Plus I was afraid because it was not clear to me how I would get a job out of this. It was 2011 and some industries have changed a lot since then, but I am sure nowadays someone who wants to become a UX professional, still shares the exact same fears.

Luckily for all or them, there has never been a better time to be a UX designer. I keep hearing people talking about UX and how we desperately need to put more care in the products we design. I hear it and read it over and over again. How we need to humanize technology and ask ourselves whose problems we are solving. Without a question, the demand for these skills is right in front of us.

As technologies commoditize entire product categories and industries, the experience will be the differential factor that will drive the next generation of successful products. The information age has brought us stuff that we could not even imagine a few years ago, but it has also overwhelmed us with tons of products and data.

Now more than ever, we need to allocate time and resources to make sure the products we build are actually useful and aimed to address real needs. Circling back to the beginning of the post: what an amazing time to be a UX designer.

It made me think a lot about my 23-year-old self.

The doubts I had back then, and what would have been of me I had pursued that path. I wish I had found a program such as the Ironhack bootcamp to kickstart my career back in 2011 because I was not brave enough to go on my own. The frustration that derives from knowing where you want to go, but not where to start, is usually the precursor of giving up.

Looking back it seems that all I needed back then was somebody to trust. Somebody that clearly knew what was talking about and could light the path up.

Maybe a mentor, or maybe a program that not only would teach me how to build stuff but also connects me with the industry and create the opportunities so I could get a job at the end.

I have never thought of that from this perspective, but this is exactly what we are doing at Ironhack for our students.

UX designers have one of the best jobs in the world. It is a job for the curious minds, a field that nurtures itself from countless disciplines spanning from Technology, Psychology, Data Analysis… being in this intersection must be fascinating.

I could go on and on, but for you, aspiring designers of the world, you have been presented with a unique opportunity to become the UX I have always wanted to be.

What If I Had Skipped College?

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Since the day I joined the Ironhack team, I have witnessed — from the very first row, more than one hundred students graduating from our bootcamp here in Barcelona. Right after the program, most of them successfully land amazing jobs as developers or start working on their own projects. Because of that, sometimes, I can’t help but ask myself what would have happened if I had skipped college altogether.

I know it is a useless exercise and just food for thought — I’m not getting back my college years anytime soon. It helps me, though, better understand how I got here, and also share with the newcomers what I have learned — and got wrong, from the experience.

The best way to frame this exercise is to go back to your eighteen-year-old self, facing the decision of “what to do next”, right after school. Giving some thought to the subject, you soon realize that there were three main factors driving the decision:

Lack of information
Peer pressure and societal momentum
Asking the wrong question

Lack of Information

Back to the eighteen-year-old, fresh out of school, preparing for a long summer and with an unclear picture of what would happen in September. With this encouraging, yet confusing scenario, you are given a few days to make, arguably, one of the most important decisions of your life: what to do next.

Maybe, maybe, you have already discovered your life passion during your childhood and laid out a master plan for the next five years. The data notes that this is not usually the case among school graduates and, if I may, although you think you know, you are probably wrong anyway.

In other words, the poor eighteen-year-old has no clue of what happens next.

I presume each country would have its own rarenesses in the way college programs are chosen, but for the most part, it was not clear to me how to link studies of choice with a future professional path. Sure, I got lots of propaganda, lots of workshops, but I did not get a clear understanding of which options were available outside the box.

Because of the lack of information, it is almost impossible to decide on which path is the one that will get you closer to your future goals. At least to me, it was not clear how such programs would help me get industry valuable skills.

Despite the lack of knowledge, somehow, I wandered with the idea that in order to get there — this promised land I didn’t even know what it was, I had to enroll a college program. I didn’t understand how it worked, but the message I got sounded like this: proper citizens have meaningful jobs, obviously, you want a good job, but you can’t have it right now (don’t ask), first, you have to do something to be worthy.

The most fascinating part to me it is not how the argument was laid out without a structured logic reasoning behind, but this one size fits all approach and the number of things it presumed to be true:

Being employed is always the end game.
In order to be employed you need help from a 3rd party, you won’t get there by yourself.
This third party looks a lot like college.
You are useless the way you are — because the end game is being employed, right now you are not, but you can’t fix it on your own.
A good job looks like you wearing a suit sketching something in a meeting room’s whiteboard.
If you enroll college, then you will get a job. Despite the data says otherwise and the process is not clear to you.
You have to choose right away because losing a year is an unmitigated disaster (a topic for a whole other post).

With these points in mind, let’s go back again to how the eighteen-year-old felt dealing with all this stuff. I can’t remember which were the exact feelings I had back then, but I guess they were related to fear, anxiety, but mostly, failure.

Yet here comes the most interesting part: when avoiding failure becomes the main driver for decision making, the natural reaction is leaning towards the safer place, not taking risks, and this is the moment when peer pressure and societal momentum kick in.

Peer Pressure and Societal Momentum

These are the main reasons why college still prevails as the central mechanism we are educating the new generations on. When you are about to make a decision and there is an asymmetry in the amount of information available for both parties (those being you and the University) you always default to the safer choice in order to decrease risk.

Your incentive is not about winning the most but losing the least. In this situation, less risk means mimicking your peers’ path.

Once everybody is thinking exactly the same, the line that points straight to college is already drawn.

The main drivers for the decision making are not aligned with starting a meaningful career. They are influenced by the fear of making a bad choice, or worse, one that can disappoint in societal terms.

This gets us to the most worrisome part. If the newcomers are joining college because of a false promise, the lack of information and the fear of getting it wrong, then Universities are not incentivized to provide an outstanding education. Because whether they do it or not, students will keep joining for a different set of reasons.

That is the worst (depending on which side you are at) thing that could happen to an industry. If you are not judged by the quality of your craft, and business keeps going because of a societal momentum, you are not incentivized to improve or innovate. You are just ripping the benefits of a false construction that we have all agreed on, for the time being. Enjoy while it lasts.

Asking the Wrong Question

Although we can acknowledge the former points, as a fresh school graduate looking for the best choice, there is not much you can do.

What you could do, though, in order to choose a path that is intimately aligned with your future goals, is ask yourself why instead of what.

The default thinking goes about asking what to study because the rest of the options have already been already preselected, for you. Asking what presumes the path is already set, but you get to choose the flavor.

Maybe instead of what, you can ask why you want to study.

The answer to why will get you much further down the road and will reveal several options that were previously hidden. Answering this question will force you to think of the career as a way to fulfill a vision, not just an end by itself.

Despite every industry keeps evolving and changing its needs, college degrees remain exactly the same. They are not incentivized to adapt, because they thrive under other premises separate from preparing the students for their next job.

For example, if you want to become a carpenter, maybe you don’t need a mechanical engineering degree. The same applies if you want to build software, maybe you don’t need to go for five years of CS.

Just try to figure out which is the end game and trace the path backward. Sometimes it might not be 100% defined, and that’s OK, but at least try to understand how each step in the way will help you move closer to your end goal.

That being said, I am not, by any means, against University or college degrees. I believe they provide a ton of value and they are a great choice for a lot of people. I have both admiration and respect for Universities and I look up to them, from time to time, as a source of inspiration.

What I am not comfortable with, is the way we have set the path for education, and how we have created a false correlation between college degrees and preparing for a job. I know a lot of people who have pursued the college dream because of the false promise of getting a job at the end.

I am not sure how we got here, what I do know is that we have created the false illusion that college is the one fits all solution for a properly working society. I don’t want to hold a dogmatic truth about it, maybe even I am completely wrong. But I find it worrisome that we have rooted this issue so deep in our societal believes, that we are not even questioning why is it there in the first place.

The Power Of Not Knowing

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT

It is almost a cliché that, sometimes, when you start up in a new job you pretty much don’t know what you’re doing. Which is not in itself a bad thing — if you are eager to learn and aware of your limitations. You just put yourself in the right spot, about to start walking on a path to personal growth and professional development.

But looking back at my firsts days at Ironhack, this idea of “not knowing” was maybe, just maybe, a little bit too literal.

While I was no strange to start things from scratch, I was a total newcomer to the education world. Yet that was not “the” problem.

Not many people know about this, but by the time I joined Ironhack, I was the first to hold the Campus Manager “job title” (or GM, for General Manager, as others prefer to call it). There were not, neither had been in the past, other GMs in other cities. The reason being was that the only two operational cities at the time were Madrid and Miami, both held respectively by the company founders themselves.

In some ways, Barcelona was the third addition to the Ironhack family, but the first “founderless” city. An operational experiment nobody knew how to handle entirely.

This is important to note because one might think that I was handed a “city launch playbook” and told to deploy it step by step. On the contrary, what I was given instead looked more like a pad in the back and all the luck in the world.

I would never say I had no support since the whole company and its amazing team was there to (remotely) help me out if I needed it. But it is also true that, during the firsts six months, I was literally alone, handling operations, marketing, sales, customer support, even teaching and assessing coding exercises!

In other words, looking back I’d say that my job was to establish the city operations, true, but at the same time assembling the playbook that would serve for the future GMs in other cities. The one I would have killed to have in the first place.

Along these lines, Gonzalo — one of the company founders — uses to joke that he was afraid I didn’t fully acknowledge the trouble I was about to get myself into. This is because when we were interviewing for the position, I was asking plenty of questions about how success would look like in such a role. To me, essential priorities any sane person about to launch such a venture would like to get straight. But surprisingly he was answering none of those questions, not because he didn’t want to, but because not even him had figured them out at the time!

It is funny to look back and acknowledge the asymmetry of the situation: he was setting me up for a crazy ride, and I was not even aware of where I was getting myself into. I was even excited about it!

It is curious though, that in the end, this clueless attitude turned out to be a great thing. Because if that very moment I had been told, objectively, every single thing I had to overcome in order to succeed, maybe I would have thought it was impossible and dismissed the opportunity altogether.

Yet the fact that I was completely naive about the job to be done, turned out a fool’s errand into an amazing challenge I couldn’t miss on. Which totally reminded me of the experience I had with iomando. Same thing: if somebody had told me, step by step, all the things that had to be done to start a company that would manage accessibility through mobile devices in 2011, I would have thought that it couldn’t be done.

I would have missed all the fun :)

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not advocating for ignorance as a key entrepreneurial asset. I’m just fascinated that inadvertently, the same story has repeated all over again without me even noticing it. The fact of not knowing what was behind the door is sometimes the necessary spark that causes you to open it in the first place — which sounds kind of twisted but it is as real as it gets.

The lesson learned here I assume it goes something like: the next time you’re faced with an opportunity like this, run some security and sanity checks, so you don’t get hurt, do your research, but not too much. Don’t get discouraged by the fact that it “seems” impossible, maybe this is the reason why nobody has yet given it a try.

Drivetrains And Free Time

Sat, 04 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Autonomous cars will be commonplace by 2025 and have a near monopoly by 2030, and the sweeping change they bring will eclipse every other innovation our society has experienced. They will cause unprecedented job loss and a fundamental restructuring of our economy, solve large portions of our environmental problems, prevent tens of thousands of deaths per year, save millions of hours with increased productivity, and create entire new industries that we cannot even imagine from our current vantage point.

Never heard of Zack Kanter before, but his post about self-driving cars definitely caught my attention. I do not entirely share his dramatic view of the job market fallout. I ultimately believe we are tool builders, that’s what we do. New tools always spur new opportunities and create needs that were not even imaginable before.

There are countless examples of this narrative, from profound industrial shifts, such as the transition from craft production system to the mass production system — where the figure of the Industrial Engineer and a subset of highly skilled workers erased massive portions of the craftsman workforce, to more contemporary figures such as bloggers, YouTubers or an enabled distributed workforce, that simply was not even possible ten years ago.

I do agree though, that this transition will bring along huge societal changes, but further than that, Zack’s words made me reflect on how autonomous cars might reshape cities and shake some patterns that we, nowadays, consider as a given.

First of all, we have to acknowledge that this is already happening. There are several partially self-driving “ideas” in the market such as self-driving trucks fleets crossing entire countries, and this party is just getting started.

On a more emotional layer the interest in cars is dropping among younger generations. Smartphones are replacing cars as a proxy for freedom and social status, and paradoxically, they can’t used while driving. Nowadays cars embody a wide range of negative values such as pollution, accidents, congestions… even Toyota’s USA President, Jim Lentz, agrees:

We have to face the growing reality that today young people don’t seem to be as interested in cars as previous generations.

The problem though, is that most conversations I hear are revolving around self-driving cars when in fact they attempt to describe three different — and partially independent, dynamics.

Drivetrains moving from ICE to electric i.e. Tesla
Ownership moving away from individuals to fleets i.e. Uber or Lyft
Operations moving from human to computer-based i.e. Google’s self-driving project

Drivetrains

In an ICE-centered world, the engine is the most complicated and important component of a car. Electric motors are much simpler than their ICE counterparts. An ICE engine is built out of hundreds of components, moving parts and complex mechanical systems, think of it as a mechanical watch. On the other hand, electric motors are extremely simple, they can be easily assembled with less than ten components.

The immediate consequence of this transition is that barriers of entry for the industry are torn apart. The ICE is by far the most complex piece of a car and few manufacturers can afford the capital expenses required for its development. Moving to an EV centered world, engines get commoditized, it literally means that they can be bought from a local supplier.

In other words, the craft and expertise amassed building ICE cars is worth nothing when EV simply use batteries, computation and software to control a drivetrain.

Another interesting factor to this narrative has to do with batteries, since they will be the most critical component of an electric vehicle. Even more important — and that’s pure speculation, EVs might only be a piece of a much larger shift in energy usage and generation. Batteries, on wheels or stationary, might become a key role as the link between multiple energy generation sources.

Ownership

Owning a car is expensive, one of the largest expenses of an average family. On top of that it is a really crappy asset, since it quickly loses value, it is hard to maintain and it is not liquid in the marketplace.

On top of that, the (sad) fact that cars spend more than 95% of their lifetime parked, doing nothing, has created an entire new market of transportation as a service, led by Uber, Lyft, Cabify and an army of local operators.

If this model gains traction and becomes the default option for most people to move from A to B, it follows that cars will be owned by fleet operators, not individuals. Which in turn has even more profound implications:

In an individual ownership world, manufacturing and selling are bundled. But if ownership changes, car manufacturers are left in the middle, with no leverage across the value chain.
It is not just leverage, but also incentives. Car manufacturers are currently incentivized to optimize for driver’s delight i.e. getting a ZF transmission that shifts smoother and quicker. But if the driver is not the buyer anymore, does it matter?
Does it mean that flying in a Boeing / Airbus or economy / business becomes much like hailing a BMW / Mercedes or UberX / Uber Black?
Parking is interesting as well. Cities are nowadays built around cars, at any given moment there are more cars parked than moving. Although this is a given for most of us, we can all agree that it doesn’t make much sense, since parking is wildly mismanaged and it is probably our most inefficient use of resources within urban areas. But if cars are not owned, but hailed on demand, what happens to the parking industry?
The issue goes deeper though, no parked cars, means less cars, since its idle time will dramatically decrease: the perfect on-demand car is one that never stops. It follows then that less cars reduce collateral industries as well i.e. $198 billion automobile insurance market, $98 billion automotive finance market, $100 billion parking industry and $300 billion automotive aftermarket will be most certainly threaten.

Operations

The most interesting piece of this triangle is the transition to self-driving or what happens when we add “autonomous cars” to the equation.

The obvious one is that driver as a job won’t be needed anymore. On one hand this is a good thing because we have to admit it, overall we are really bad drivers. The bad news it that driver represents the single largest profession, in the USA and around the world.

This inevitably ties back to the EV conversation, since automakers will find themselves with misaligned incentives when it comes to pursue self driving capabilities: how come they can compete selling a “driving experience” when there’s no driver in behind the wheel? It’s just a “feature race” to a place where they don’t matter anymore.

It reminds me to the PC industry in the 2000s, when PCs started being purchased by consumers, but the other way around: the purchaser stops being the driver, but a fleet, who values other things.

I could go on and on, but what fascinates me the most is the amount of combined time we will save as a whole. Millions of hours we will get back “for free” to engage in creative endeavors, leisure, family time, reading, drawing, whatever!

And of course, the most important question: what we will make of it?

Little Hacks

Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Our goal here isn’t to be defensive and resist our phones but to ask the question, “how can we make our home screen a livable place?” A place we can return to frequently, knowing it will respect our intentions and support our conscious use. And a place that makes room for the thoughts and concerns we want to have, and not the ones we don’t.

From time to time, I ask myself which is the single habit I can easily stick to right away, that will have the largest impact in my daily life.

For example, a few years ago I read The Miracle Morning — good book, where I came across a seemingly harmless quote, that might strike as a rather obvious statement at first, but ended up radically transforming the first hours of my days.

Well, hitting the snooze button keeps us from waking with a sense of purpose. Each time you reach for that button, you are subconsciously saying to yourself that you don’t want to rise to your life, your experiences and the day ahead.

I simply tried it: put the alarm clock across the room, in a place where I had to stand up in order to stop it. I have never hit the snooze button once again since. Now I wake up every single morning at 6am and get a ton done before 9am. In fact, I’m writing this because of it.

Little action, huge impact and upside.

Along these lines, last week I read this article and something similar happened. My home screen and notifications settings were already a reasonably quiet place, but the article made me revisit some habits and the overall relation I had with the device.

Since, I came up with a simple set of rules that have radically changed the way I interact with my iPhone.

Home screen

Two screens: first of all address the amount of screen real state to place apps. Having a predefined number of screens in the springboard acts as a natural constraint for the number of apps you can fit in the canvas. Moreover, I found that avoiding mindless swipes between screens reduces the time “wasted” on the device, doing nothing.
No folders: keep everything visible. Hiding complexity under the rug is usually not a good long term solution, but on top of that, folders are the cheating mechanism for the previous rule, so avoid them.

Apps

Stick to the ones you actually use: this seems like a simple rule, but spring cleaning apps can become a rather unpleasant task. The nagging thought of “maybe I need it for X…”, “I used it that one time…” will never remiss. That’s the reason why I took a radical opposite approach to tackle this issue: I started with zero apps and installed them as needed. You’ll be surprised with the few apps you actually use: right now, my phone only has 16.
Default to defaults: require a really compelling case to install 3rd party apps that mimic Apple stock ones. This can be controversial for two reasons: first one, because we all love 3rd party apps, but second, because Apple stock apps are usually not that great. Then the question: why do it? I found that “staying default” limits “what you can do”, reduces duplicity and complexity across the OS. If there’s no strong case to do it, stay default. Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Weather, Photos, Safari… are great examples of stock Apple apps that can suit most of our basic needs.
- The exception to that rule, of course, exists. If the delta of functionality (and enjoyment) the app provides is so massive that is worth dealing with the added complexity, so be it. In my case, Bear, Spotify or Citymapper are clear examples.
- Then of course there is functionality the OS doesn’t provide by default. In these cases, of course a compelling case is still required, but the utilitarian aspect here becomes more relevant.

Notifications

Last, but most important, notifications. The single feature that can make or break the experience of using a your phone.

The most important realization about notifications is that they clearly map out as an 80/20, even 99/1. In other words, 1% of the apps, produce 99% of the notifications. This 1% being messaging apps, where their very nature of 1-to-N communication layer turn you into a random node of the network, able to receive notifications from any node that can potentially connect with you.

The problem though, falls back again to the defaults. The moment you accept the app request for sending notifications, you’re granting any person on Earth the ability to light your phone screen up at their will. In other words, you are giving free, ubiquitous access to the backlit mechanism of your most precious and personal device.

This is simply madness.

In order to avoid this, I created three distinct states an app can inherit as notifications settings (slightly updated for iOS 10, which changed the way History and Lock Screen worked).

Off: these are messaging apps. Turning their notifications off by default have three combined benefits: 1/ your screen won’t be flashing every minute because of an unimportant WhatsApp group notification, 2/ your battery will last way longer, 3/ you won’t be peeking at your phone looking for the next dopamine shot, because you already know it will be none.
Only show in history: this should be the default mode for almost all apps, but messaging. You will silently receive notifications, but they won’t light up the screen and quietly stack in the history tab, waiting for you to go there and check them out.
System default: stay to the defaults (this is lighting up the screen, sounds, badges… the whole pack) only for critical notifications such as reminders, important calendar events or potential security warnings.

Following these three simple rules had transformative results that truly changed the way I interact with my iPhone. Things as easy as rearranging apps, forbidding red bubbles, avoiding colors and limiting to just two screens, literally, gave me an extra hour per day out from “wasted time” and made me be more present, relaxed and sharp.

Again, little hacks, amazing outcomes.

The Laws Of Simplicity

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Reduce

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

“Reduce” is all about removing functionality as the simplest way to create simplicity.

When in doubt, just remove, but be careful of what you remove.

📍 SHE framework

It helps helps make thoughtful reductions. But beware of the inevitable tension of how simple can you make it and how complex does it have to be.

Shrink: as technology is shrinking, i.e. becoming ‘smaller’ and yet more powerful, this approach is about designs conveying the impression of being smaller, lesser and humbler. This means that as a user your expectations of the product will still be fulfilled even though you might not think so, purely from looking at the product.
Hide: hide the complexity through brute-force methods. Expose only the information you want to convey — examples: a progress bar or a Swiss knife.
Embody: products might lose the sense of value as features go into hiding and products shrink. Thus it becomes ever more important to embed the product with a sense of the value creating the perception of quality, which can be done through marketing or product design (better materials).

Organize

Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

📍 SLIP framework

Sort: sort and group information
Label: name each group with a relevant name
Integrate: integrate groups that appear significantly like each other
Prioritize: use Pareto’s 80/20 rule

Great examples of integrations are the pattern forming (Gestalt) seen in the Bauhaus movement and also Monet’s aesthetics of the blur.

Time

Savings in time feel like simplicity.

Reduce user’s frustration caused by time wasted. When any interaction with products or services happens quickly, we attribute this efficiency to the perceived simplicity of experience.

If time savings are not possible, it is also useful to supplement and double down on the customer experience.

Learn

Knowledge makes everything simpler.

While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.

The best designers are those who marry function with form to create intuitive experiences that we understand immediately.

📍 BRAIN framework

Basics are the beginning
Repeat yourself often
Avoid creating desperation
Inspire with examples
Never forget to repeat yourself

Differences

Simplicity and complexity need each other.

The more complexity there is in the market or product, the more that something simpler stands out.

But beware that simplicity in design requires making complexity consciously available in some explicit form.

📍 White space: the opportunity lost by increasing the amount of white space is gained back with enhanced attention on what remains. More white space means that the less information is presented, more attention shall be paid to that which is made less available. When there is less we appreciate everything much more.

📍 Background and foreground: what lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral. Bridging the experience between background and foreground can be a great strategy to enable the foreground to stand out — i.e. enhance the taste of a meal in a white room.

Related to a common trade-off between providing people with direction versus leaving them to explore for themselves. “How directed can I stand to feel?” versus “How directionless can I afford to be?“.

Another good example is Google complex algorithm, necessary to deliver a simple search experience (the former is required in order to the latter to work).

Emotion

(counterintuitively) More emotions are better than less.

SHE made some products cold and fragile, for this reason people put iPods in covers, also as a form of self-expression to create more emphatic objects.

Same as Form follows function, the feeling follows form.

Feeling > Form > Function

(carefully) Choose the right kind of more: feel, and feel for.

When emotions are considered above anything else, don’t be afraid to add more ornaments or layers of meaning.

Shintoism has a Japanese tradition at its roots for Animism, the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. A good product example of this is the love for a Tamagotchi.

B&O doesn’t focus on the quality of the sound, but on the quality of leaning back to achieve relaxation as a desired state.

Trust

In simplicity we trust.

There is always an innate tension between the effort required to learn about a system on the one hand and the trust offered by the system on the other. This gets magnified with the emergence of big tech giants, it raises the debate of privacy — since we let others do the heavy lifting.

📍 Omakase: it literally translates to “I’ll leave it up to you” — this is a person worthy of absolute faith. You let him make the choices for you trusting he’ll deliver the best experience.

Failure

Some things can’t never be made simple.

There’s always an ROF (Return on Failure) when you try to simplify — which is to learn from your mistakes.

Complexity and simplicity have a symbiotic relation.

KEYs

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

Key 1 — AWAY: more appears like less by simply moving it far, far away i.e. SAAS.
Key 2 — OPEN: openness simplifies complexity i.e. Windows vs. Linux, “open source” technologies and Application Programming Interfaces (‘APIs)’
Key 3 — POWER: use less, gain more i.e. dependency on batteries with electronic devices. In the field of design there is the belief that with more constraints, better solutions are revealed.

The Ironhack Experience

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

This Saturday the 2nd of April, I will be enrolling the Ironhack Web Development program, in its part-time format. It spans six months: two afternoons during the week and the whole Saturday, accounting for more than 400 hours of accelerated learning.

Despite it is not as intense as the full-time format, the goal remains the same: turn you into a full-fledged digital builder, with the abilities to develop web applications by yourself, but at the same time, embracing best practices and learning the underlying principles behind digital products.

As a campus manager, my daily tasks at Ironhack are far away from technical endeavors. My role consists of managing and inspiring the team, but also ensuring we are delivering on our promise of providing the best possible educational experience.

The main difference with our flagship, full-time, bootcamp program — that has already trained more than 500 people with outstanding results, is the part-time format has been specifically designed for people who are currently employed. The materials team has done an outstanding job structuring all the contents in a way that can be digested, but demanding enough so you can still feel the strain that comes with these intense programs.

I have put a lot thought into this decision. We all run busy lives, and it is definitely a huge challenge on top of anybody who already has a challenging job. I acknowledge that going through this experience will inevitably imply saying no to a lot of things, and despite I’ve been told otherwise several times, I am profoundly convinced that enrolling is the right call.

In this post I will explain why I decided to join, and why I firmly believe that everybody in a managing position, technical or not, should join, too.

My Role at Ironhack

As a campus manager, my daily tasks at Ironhack are far away from technical endeavors. My role consists in managing all aspects of Ironhack’s operations here in Barcelona while executing on the company mission. At the end of the day, I find myself not only managing and inspiring the team but also ensuring we are delivering on our promise of providing the best possible educational experience.

It translates into sales, business development, planning and executing marketing actions, leading hiring processes, ensuring we have an awesome work environment and representing the Ironhack brand by interacting with students and other ecosystem partners.

In other words, I’m kind of the last responsible for Ironhack’s success here in Barcelona, but as you can see, there is no coding involved.

Therefore, the legitimate question to ask here would be: “how come learning how to code, will help you succeed at your job since there’s no coding required at all?”

Alignment With the Company Vision

I profoundly believe that in order to achieve greatness, no matter what your job title is, you must understand, embrace and align yourself with the company vision. It might sound abstract, but I have come to realize that for a company to be successful in a market, for an employee to thrive within a company, and in most facets of life, the alignment with the bigger picture is always a prerequisite for success.

Markus Leyendecker — Harvard MBA student and also Ironhack alumni, has already done an amazing job explaining this issue. As he points out in his article Pre-bootcamp: Why would a future Harvard MBA learn how to code? the understatement of the building blocks of your business is key for anybody that attempts to lead any team or company.

If one accepts the hypothesis, that companies, which are at-heart digital, will continue to outgrow the competition, one should realize why I want learn to code. It follows a very basic logical chain: Everyone working at a company should be able to understand what the company is best at: selling the right product to its customer segment. For instance, one would think that a Boeing CEO would understand, at least much better than a CEO from another industry, how an airplane works and which steps of the value chain Boeing excels at.

I could not agree more. But as devil’s advocate, one could argue that if a company is not competing in the software industry, and say it is selling razor blades, then the code should not be a lever for success. Which brings us to the second point: that software is becoming a transversal discipline.

Digital Transformation

As I already pointed out in The Rise of the Hybrid Profile, programming is not only for programmers anymore. Instead, it is starting to permeate across all industries, changing the way we interact with products and how customers want to be reached in order to deploy effective marketing actions.

All the components involved in the creation, distribution, and sale of a digital product are, in some way, influenced by the same digital ingredient: code. For this reason, the ones who acknowledge this situation and learn the fundamental principles underlying digital products will inevitably have a considerable advantage when having to deal with this new breed of products.

What this excerpt from my article conveys is that we should approach each market, business or product, from a more holistic perspective. Meaning that despite certain end products will remain hardware based, its surroundings: distribution, marketing, operations and ultimately, the customer experience, will be profoundly affected by the digital transformation that lies ahead.

Going on with the razors analysis, the only player that comes to mind that is growing like a rocket, curiously enough, is Harry’s. The blueprint for how to enter a mature, saturated market, leveraging technology in order to enhance the customer experience. Harry’s is not a software company, but I would bet that employs plenty of software engineers and their digital strategy is core to understand their success.

Earn Their Success: Speak Tech

The conclusion that derives from this premise is clear: as a manager, you will be dealing with software issues at some point. That might come in the flavor of the project that you are working on or it may be the core competence of your team. Either way, you will need to prove that, at least, you have the slightest clue of what you are actually managing.

After more than five years involved in products at tech companies, I have seen plenty of issues such as PMs not respected by engineering teams because they did not have technical chops or marketers who were literally mocked for not understanding how something worked. Believe me, as a manager, it is a harsh situation to overcome.

We have drawn some kind of line between tech and non-tech, placing more value on the former by default. As a manager, this is a harsh situation to overcome.

I am not saying this is a good thing, but we have drawn some kind of line between tech and non-tech, placing more value on the former by default. If you want to earn the respect of your peers and make informed decisions you will need to understand how stuff works, and the only way is playing by their own rules.

Management entitles lots of things. But at the end of the day, you will find yourself making key decisions and you want to do that through the eyes of every person in your team, even better, through the eyes of the company as a whole. You will be setting the table on behalf of a lot of people, and you will only earn their respect you if you know what you are talking about.

Why Am I Doing This?

In my particular case, first of all, I am doing this because I want to experience first hand what it is like to go through our Bootcamp. I think it is not fair that I am rooting for a product that I have never experienced. I have repeatedly seen how we are helping our students pivot their careers and ultimately turning them into digital makers. I know it is amazing and I know it works, but I don’t know what it is actually like to be there.

Therefore, from an evangelist perspective, I am absolutely convinced that by fully understanding the experience not only I will improve my ability to communicate why somebody would benefit from learning how to code. But also get insight and make a better case for the untapped market we might be solving a problem for, but still don’t know.

From the inside I hope it will help me better relate to the student experience and have informed conversations with them, as we were discussing before, it is like speaking their language. Because I would be able to understand what they are going through, I will have a better chance when it comes to earning their respect. And looking into the future, having this shared connection can also be a great way to create stronger bonds that will help enhance the collaboration with our alumni community.

I have repeatedly seen how we are helping our students pivot their careers and ultimately turning them into digital makers. I know it is amazing and I know it works, but I don’t know what it is actually like to be there.

I also expect to gain credibility from the team, mostly in the academic side. Because I would be able to analyze the full scope of every decision I make for the campus, from the layout of the desks, the acoustics of the room to the number of TAs we will need for the next cohort. Only by having a better comprehension of the market, the product, the team and everything in between, I will make the right calls and earn the respect of my peers, by being able to speak their language.

Again it is about understanding and aligning yourself with the company vision, only then you will be in the position to achieve greatness. Learning how to code is a prerequisite for comprehending the full scope of your company, in education, technology or razor blades. Then that’s the ultimate reason why I am going to learn how to code and why you should, too.

Watching Google's AI Play Go

Sat, 12 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

At first, Fan Hui thought the move was rather odd. But then he saw its beauty.

“It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move,” he says. “So beautiful.” It’s a word he keeps repeating. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

The move in question was the 37th in the second game of the historic Go match between Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top players, and AlphaGo, an artificially intelligent computing system built by researchers at Google. Inside the towering Four Seasons hotel in downtown Seoul, the game was approaching the end of its first hour when AlphaGo instructed its human assistant to place a black stone in a largely open area on the right-hand side of the 19-by-19 grid that defines this ancient game. And just about everyone was shocked.

It’s at the same time exciting and terrifying see how we are able to teach machines how to think.

The most remarkable feat though, is how despite we are using algorithms to emulate the way we learn, machines are developing their own way of thinking. Fanu Hui thought it was not a human move, which seems like an obvious statement, but it outlines an amazing reality, which is that the current state of the machine’s mind followed a development path with no human intervention at all.

It inevitably reminded me of PlaNet the deep-learning machine (also developed by Google fellows) that worked out the location of almost any photo using only the pixels it contained. It plainly beat humans guessing photo locations, but it didn’t rely on some of the cues we are used to, instead “we think PlaNet has an advantage over humans because it has seen many more places than any human can ever visit and has learned subtle cues of different scenes that are even hard for a well-traveled human to distinguish.”

The Rise Of The Hybrid Profile

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Proactive, emphatic or focused; these are some of the buzzwords and trending skills that every job offer should contain. Yet, within the tech industry, we are witnessing an increasing demand for a new kind of profile. Geared with a technical toolkit and aimed to thrive among digital products, we call it the “hybrid profile”.

For thousands of years, products consisted of physical goods, such as wheels, shoes or drawers. Nonetheless, today we are interacting more and more with digital products. This transition from the analog to the digital comes with a new set of implications that extend beyond the mere interaction with the end user. It involves a wide range of processes that span from logistics, manufacture, or design, up to the formation of specific teams responsible for the development of the product itself.

The ones who acknowledge this situation and learn the fundamental principles underlying digital products will inevitably have a considerable advantage when having to deal with this new breed of products.

All the components involved in the creation, distribution, and sale of a digital product are, in some way, influenced by the same digital ingredient: code. For this reason, the ones who acknowledge this situation and learn the fundamental principles underlying digital products will inevitably have a considerable advantage when having to deal with this new breed of products.

The Internet has enabled a radical redefinition of the word product that demands a new kind of thinking. Ultimately, that’s the reason of existence for the so-called hybrid profile: people with a strong expertise in traditional areas such as sales, human resources or marketing, that also complement them with technical abilities.

Programming Is Not Only For Programmers

For a long time, coding has been perceived as a vertical and isolated discipline. Disconnected from the rest of the company, programmers were seen as the “computer-experts” dudes sitting in a dark room doing mysterious stuff that nobody really understood. You would only acknowledge their skills when your computer didn’t work: you would simply hand it to them and take it back later on, magically fixed.

The good news is that today programming is not anymore for programmers only. Technology has trickled down in a way that several tools that once used to be exclusive to programmers have now been democratized so more people can have access to them. Technology is becoming more human, and this phenomenon has created a deep link between the digital world and professional roles that used to be isolated from it.

This is our daily routine at Ironhack. Professionals with a wide variety of backgrounds, absolutely unrelated to coding or technology, enroll in our bootcamps to explore what lies in the intersection of technology and their craft.

Being able to read and write doesn’t implicitly mean that we will all be poets. Similarly, having a basic understanding of programming and technology doesn’t necessarily imply that we will code for a living.

The implicit outcome of this trend is that programming has become a completely transversal skill, from human resources to accounting. This argument is not meant to deploy dogmatic statements like “everybody should learn how to code”, it is just the articulation of something that is already happening across all industries.

Being able to read and write doesn’t implicitly mean that we will all need to be poets. Similarly, having a basic understanding of programming and technology doesn’t necessarily presume that we will code for a living. It simply indicates that we will possess a new universal skill which can enrich our professional career.

No matter what you are currently doing, chances are that sooner or later you’ll need to deal with code or with someone who codes. The parallelism seems inevitable, learning how to program in the 21st century can be compared to studying English today: we won’t necessarily write a new Shakespearean play, but we will surely need it in the new cosmopolitan work environment of international companies and start-ups.

The Digital Transformation That Lies Ahead

In a “traditional” company, both product and business units were nicely coupled. They understood what their counterpart did, thus creating a healthy relation and a smooth communication between the two. Salespeople, for instance, had a clear understanding of the product and how to pitch it to suit their customers’ needs. Marketers comprehended the value proposition and clearly identified the go-to-market strategy.

But the moment the product transitions to a place that you no longer understand, a huge disconnection between product and business arises. It generates knowledge asymmetries between the sales force and customers. Marketers no longer understand where their users are to be found and how to target them appropriately. Overnight, the rules of your game have dramatically changed and the only way to keep playing is to adapt.

In a “traditional” company, both product and business units were perfectly aligned. They understood what their counterpart did. But the moment the product transitions to a place that you no longer understand, a huge disconnection between product and business emerges.

As a campus manager here in Barcelona, I’ve been lucky enough to see remarkably smart people going through such digital transformation.

Markus for instance, is a Harvard MBA 2019 which currently works as Global Venture Developer at Rocket Internet. When he enrolled in our Web Development Bootcamp, he told me: “my desire is not to become the world’s best developer. Maybe I will never again write a line of code after the bootcamp. However, I want to understand how to develop the products of the future - through software. This skill will help me in just about every industry”.

Markus is the poster child example of a great marketer that has “hacked” the digital channels to reach their customers and find new market opportunities. But it’s not only about marketing though, Andreu, came to Ironhack Barcelona to transition from consultancy to a software PM position. Today he’s working as a PM at the startup Onebox. His experience at our bootcamp turned him into a true hybrid profile, with a clear technical understanding of digital products. In his own words: “Ironhack is more than just coding skills and learning best practices. I came out with a new mentality and a better understanding of the entire software development process. This is a priceless asset for a product manager like me”.

The Need For A Hybrid Profile

Yet the need for hybrid profiles in the industry is just the tip of the iceberg. With the increasing growth of digital products, the gap between non-technical and technical profiles will only get broader. At the end of the day, when you are starting up and your whole team still fits in a room, you’ll barely notice such disconnection. But truly native digital companies that have scaled to +100 employees are already suffering from that.

That’s where the value of hybrid profiles comes in. Hybrid profiles are able to bridge this gap and establish again a healthy relation between parties inside the company. This is something that might not be a mainstream issue yet, but we are seeing it day after day at Ironhack.

Not only is technology drastically changing the set of skills required in a modern job, but it is also reshaping traditional roles. Hybrid positions today earn a salary which is 25% above the average. Just in the United States, more than 250.000 hybrid jobs will be created in the upcoming years.

It is really important that we face this problem and we empower the next generation to lead this transition to the digital world. We are flooding the market with digital products faster than our ability to understand them. So it’s our responsibility to care about the things we put in the hands of the people, not just from a P&L perspective, but understanding what they are and the implications they’ll have in the long run. All of this will require a new way of thinking about products, and it will certainly involve code and programming skills.

We/Code Barcelona

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

This post was originally published at Ironhack’s official blog and has been updated here to include links from collado.io content.

Software is spreading across most industries way faster than our ability, as a society, to teach people how to code. Despite the most influential organizations and personalities already acknowledge the importance of software as the building blocks of the digital age, we still perceive it as some kind of magic, performed by creepy guys inside the dark rooms of big corporations.

This vision of software, though, can’t be farther from reality. Software has already become the underlying glue for almost every discipline and industry. Product managers, human resources, customer support, journalists, even CEOs… rather sooner than later every single profession will be touched by code in one way or another, so we better get prepared for this new challenge ahead of us.

We wanted to bring together 200 enthusiastic people, eager to learn more about code, and show them that it was possible, that anybody could do it. The aim was to build stuff, to turn thinkers and managers into digital makers.

From a societal standpoint these are really great news. Software has the ability to reshape entire industries, as we’ve already seen with hospitality or transportation, and bring with it a whole range of new job opportunities for everybody. We couldn’t be more excited about it and that’s why, at Ironhack, we are preparing the next generation to learn how to code.

Because of this, last week, we hosted the We/Code: the largest coding festival in Europe, where we aimed to teach how to code a simple web app to more than 200 people, in just one day. We did it because we truly believe that it is our duty to bring code closer to people and to create the necessary awareness of the importance code already has in our society.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/147948784

With this simple proposition in mind we partnered with MOB to host the first edition of the We/Code. Despite we did not plan for a massive communication campaign, more than 600 people signed up, surfacing the real interest a certain layer of society already has for the matter.

We were perfectly aware that we weren’t going to train 200 developers in just one day, we weren’t aiming for that. We wanted to bring together 200 enthusiastic people, eager to learn more about code, and show them that it was possible, that anybody could do it.

We hosted the most diverse backgrounds, that shared one single treat: they were extremely curious about code and wanted to learn more.

Although we expected certain demographics to attend, we got deeply surprised about the mixture of people that finally joined us at the We/Code. From 16 to almost 50 years old, friends, fathers and sons, couples, work colleagues… we hosted the most diverse backgrounds, that shared one single treat: they were extremely curious about code and wanted to learn more.

With this set up, the We/Code punctually started at 09:00am in the morning. All the attendees started to fill the MOB and we carefully distributed them within groups of ten people and then assigned a teacher to each group that led the group through the day. The teachers (that kindly volunteered the entire day) all came from Ironhack’s alumni network, and patiently explained the basic stuff required to kick start their way into web development.

It was amazing, most of them got to the point where they started looking up to blogs and online resources to impress their peers and show off the new feature they just implemented.

With this simple approach, that we’ve seen succeed again and again in our bootcamps, we wanted to just give the minimum amount of basic knowledge and build up from there. Within two hours most people already knew how to put together a bare bones product and understood the basics of HTML and CSS, enough to just start playing around and learning by doing. From there, with some help of the volunteers, all groups started to build new stuff following the proposed exercises, but without being told over and over the theory behind it.

It was amazing, most of them got to the point where they started looking up to blogs and online resources to impress their peers and show off the new feature they just implemented. We deeply believe that coding is meant to be a social activity and only by doing you’ll advance through the process. That’s how we designed our bootcamp since the beginning, and we were seeing the exact same thing happening here in a smaller scale.

After almost four hours of coding, we gave them a break and went out for lunch, because the best part had yet to come in the afternoon. Now it was about time to start their projects. We proposed that every group chose a popular website and tried to replicate its design with their own code. This approach turned out to be a great idea because it was both challenging and they also saw value into their work because it resembled something they use almost everyday.

All of them were absolutely devoted to product they just created and this sense of ownership and engagement was definitely the mark of success for the We/Code.

The whole project was a team effort from the beginning. The groups worked in pairs in the same code base, in real time. Each pair built a feature or a block contributing to the whole project, so this way all the efforts were directed towards the same goal. The environment the We/Code created was just amazing. All the teams were enthusiastically working on their project, trying to push the envelope to include some new feature or that transition they just learned on the Internet.

After more than 3 hours immersed on the projects, we couldn’t make them stop to present to their peers. They wanted more and they were all begging for 10 additional minutes so they could fix the mobile view or add a cooler shade in there. All of them were absolutely devoted to product they just created and this sense of ownership and engagement was definitely the mark of success for the We/Code.

At the end of the day, all groups presented their projects and you could not believe what these people build in just 3 hours with no prior coding experience. Somehow it reminded us of the Hackshow, the event we host at the end of each Bootcamp, and it felt great.

We wanted to translate all the experience we’ve gathered through the bootcamps and apply the same formula to engage people and help them close the gap from zero to one.

When we envisioned the We/Code we wanted to bring code closer to people. We wanted to translate all the experience we’ve gathered through the bootcamps and apply the same formula to engage people and help them close the gap from zero to one. The We/Code became the perfect space for people who understood that code is important, and wanted to know more, but they were not ready to start for one reason or another.

Coding is not just for programmers anymore. It belongs to all of us since the moment it’s touching every single industry. And that’s a good thing, because it means opportunity. The We/Code has turned out to be the best way to approach this new world in a fun way, surrounded by motivated and enthusiastic people that share the same goal. So, for people who wants to know more, who wants to get their hands on the code, we are already waiting for you to join the next edition.

Ad-Blockers And Market Niches

Sat, 10 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Following the heated debate that Apple has unleashed around ad-blockers and the whole monetization model of media outlets on the Internet, I felt there was a lot to unpack. I started going down the topic and found myself overwhelmed with ideas about why and how we’ve got here in the first place.

This is my attempt to put them all together — therefore these are not original ideas, but bits and pieces I scrapped from different outlets, put them together in a way that makes some sense in my mind.

How We Got Here

Before the Internet, at any given region or country, certain media formats dominated the space and tended to monopoly because of two things:

Barriers of entry: think of a newspaper, in order to print and deliver the thing, you had to own the presses and the distribution channels. Which account for a massive upfront investment that made it really difficult for new competitors to enter the space.
Advertisers followed the money: in an era where precise ad targeting, such as Google Ads, was not possible, advertisers allocated their budgets to the channel that had more reach.

That created a really interesting phenomenon that has become the underlying journalism’s foundation: the editorial side became decoupled from the responsibility to make money. Huge deal. Which made possible things like investigative journalism and put the focus on the quality of the content, leaving financial tensions aside.

Ultimately this environment was defined by the nature of the channel and the constraints under which operated — which were basically three:

Limited space: the available amount of space was determined by the medium itself. In the case of the newspaper, the limitation was obviously the physical form factor of the product.
Limited reach: because of its physical nature, the distribution had certain constraints in itself. A newspaper, for example, a low margin item with a built-in 24-hour expiration date, didn’t make economic sense to distribute across the world.
News selection: because of the separation of money and content, journalists became the ones who decided “what is news”. On top of that, editors determined what made it to the cover page, having also the ability to decide “what is important”.

The Internet

Then the Internet comes along and flipped all these assumptions on their head, opening the possibility of a new breed of publications developed and optimized around this new paradigm. Which by nature, was diametrically opposed to the one we just described:

Unlimited space: on the Internet, there is no limit on the amount of space available for the news. Therefore, the marginal cost for an additional page becomes virtually zero.
Unlimited reach: newspapers were tied to its own geographic region, but with the Internet, the addressable market becomes literally the entire world. More importantly, though, is that everybody had access to this new “feature” because there were no barriers to entry — as distribution had, for example.
Hyperlinks: in my mind, this one gets a special mention given that everybody seems to take it for granted, but it shouldn’t. Because of the hyperlink, individual stories can now be accessed without visiting the home page, which fundamentally it implies that front pages don’t matter anymore. Similar to what happened to the CD as a unit when songs could be purchased or streamed independently. But back to news, this means that social links become far more important when it comes to raising awareness.

Altogether it created a new environment where old newspapers, with obsolete print-centric cost structures, were simply not prepared to compete. On the other hand, new online-only publications, built around these new Internet dynamics, quickly spread across the web.

Free from the aforementioned constraints, plenty of these new online publications popped up, they all wanted in. Regardless, in their attempt — lacking the domain knowledge to assess what worked on this new medium — they all inherit the monetization model that newspapers had been successfully using during the old days.

They simply placed ads alongside the content in the way newspapers always did. Turns out though, online ads don’t work exactly the way its physical siblings do. Online ads are, by nature, inherently deflationary because of the unlimited amount of space available on the Internet.

This begins to explain the tricky monetization dilemma most online publications are currently facing, that ultimately, ends up hurting content quality.

Ben Thompson put it in better words in his article The Facebook Reckoning:

This resulted in a bit of a prisoner’s dilemma: the optimal action for any individual publication, particularly in the absence of differentiated ad placements or targeting capability, is to maximize ad placement opportunity (more content) and page views (more eyeballs), even though this action taken collectively only hastens the decline in the value of those ads. Perversely, the resultant cheaper ads only intensify the push to create more content and capture more eyeballs; quality is very quickly a casualty.

Mobile

In the midst of this painful transition, yet another remarkable event took place: enter the mobile era.

Mobile was not only built on top of these three Internet assumptions, but it actually went further, embraced them, and took them to its most extreme form.

Mobile means a computer in our pocket, all the time. This is a huge philosophical departure from the PC era, and it comes with a new set of implications. Before mobile came along, we actually went to a computer, with intent, only when we needed something. Mobile radically changes this idea, because mobile is omnipresent, always with us.

In other words, mobile still fulfills intent, but on top of that, our relationship with mobile has also extended to a new space: it is what we do while we are not working.

It fills empty moments, boredom. Checking out what our friends are up to while waiting in line, or reading the news as we commute. These empty moments mean attention, the most precious resource advertisers crave for — and mobile revealed a whole new dimension in terms of attention.

Yet monetizing attention, of course, comes at a cost. If online ads were already a deflationary proposition, because of the infinite space, mobile made it even worse:

Poor ad quality: unlike a PC, which has a lot of screen real estate to display ads alongside content, content on mobile necessarily takes up the whole screen — which ultimately leads to a worse experience for the reader.
Clicks are expensive from a user experience perspective: not only do PCs typically have faster broadband connections to download assets and more powerful processors to render pages, but they also have multiple windows and tabs — mobile do not.

Thus a formula that wasn’t even working on the desktop, mobile just made it worse.

Then publishers and advertisers were charged with the hurdle to fix this advertisement mess, which had to be done through one of these paths:

Sell or display more ads: which is problematic because of the prisoner dilemma situation outlined above.
Sell more effective ads, that better engage the viewer: which would result in better conversion rates, that somehow would fix the infinite space, ever deflationary situation — so that’s good.
Sell better-targeted ads that reach the advertiser’s target audience: which would address the reach problem, because leveraging targeting capabilities ads would only be displayed to the people that are supposedly interested — which is also good.

Yet the latter assumption was enabled through the massive social media platforms that emerged alongside mobile, and with them, the idea of online identity.

Although we’ve always had an online identity built up from cookies in our browser since forever, social media platforms were able to refine our profiles to an insane extent.

There are many reasons for that, such as the ownership of the device that came along with mobile — desktop computers were more likely to be shared among families, but most importantly, because of the amount of information we were willing to share with these platforms in exchange for the “free” product.

It all set up the stage for a new wave of the online advertising model that has proved more effective — and profitable — across all platforms.

In this new environment, the Internet allows publishers to reach people at a more specific level and with great detail. Thus targeting them in a way it wasn’t possible before. Which means that it is easier to reach a particular segment, but it’s more difficult to stand out among the crowd.

Internet-Enabled Niches

All this 1.500-word explanation was the drumroll to get to the place where I could make the final point.

The result of having this profound knowledge of our users means that as publishers or entrepreneurs for that matter, we end up with far more niches to tackle. Entire hidden, unserved communities become addressable all of a sudden. The most obscure interest becomes now visible and is waiting for new businesses to serve them.

But wait, there is counter to that. At the same time, capturing each niche takes now more effort. Your message has to be more personal, more focused, and people expectations rise when it comes to being reached.

It makes me truly optimistic about the new possibilities being open for new business to create products and services around totally unserved, unaddressed markets. When your reach is literally the entire world, there are no such things as “small markets” — because when a market becomes large enough, percentages don’t matter anymore.

This idea of niches and the amount of effort required to capture each niche, tells the story around the way advertising has evolved alongside the Internet and the challenge it presents to incumbent companies to adapt their structures to compete in this new era.

Hi From Ironhack

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

A few days ago I stepped down from iomando. As a co-founder, and after more than four years, this was undoubtedly one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever faced.

I didn’t have much of an idea of what was waiting for me on the other side. What I did know for sure, though, is that I would take a few months off — to learn new things, go deep down into my Kindle wishlist, enjoy some time alone and deeply think about what to do next.

Do not expect the kind of fancy sabbatical most people envision though — involving crazy trips or endless partying. I do not like to travel. I like quiet and simple. My monthly expenses don’t go beyond some 9.99€ subscriptions and a handful of dinners out with friends.

Your mileage might vary, but I could run on this sabbatical mode for quite a while — not that I have endless resources, but my needs are rather small.

An ideal sabbatical looks like learning to code, big time, and an endless book list waiting to be checked off. Despite I haven’t created a Trello board to organize all this stuff — shame on me — there are three things a sabbatical should accomplish to assess its success:

Get out on the other side as a more knowledgeable, better person. In other words, the sabbatical itself has to work as a self-upgrading mechanism.
Have plenty of time to build. My life so far has featured this recurring theme that has pushed me towards more management roles, but away from technical positions. I started building the product at iomando, but ended up leading the team and more involved than I wanted with fundraising. If I’m taking a sabbatical, I’m setting the rules, thus I’ll be building.
Recreate a clearer picture of what to do next. I won’t be jumping into a job just because the opportunity presented itself. First I need to understand “why am I uniquely qualified to do that job” or “why I want to devote the next X years to that project”. I want to know that I’m the man for the job, that I’m passioned about what the company does, and I’m committing for the long run.

Good, everything seemed to be in place. That was the plan so far. But long story short, my sabbatical lasted, literally, twelve days.

The day after I decided to step down from iomando a friend of mine reached out. She heard about something I “couldn’t miss out”. Of course, I said that “I’m not interested, I’m on a sabbatical”. She insisted, again. I said no, again.

I wouldn’t say I prepared to deal with such temptations. It is always hard to say no to opportunities. In such position it is difficult to step back and think strategically, that more opportunities will come — that first comes the thinking, then the hunting.

I didn’t prepare enough. I said, “ok cool, let’s meet the guy”. She was right. I couldn’t miss out. My sabbatical had officially come to an end.

I’m joining Ironhack.

I don’t know if this is the right call. I don’t know if I should have stuck to the plan. Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe I will. What I do know, though, is this is once in a lifetime opportunity and one of the most exciting challenges I have ever been faced with.

Ironhack is a coding school, transforming how people learn about technology. Changing the way education works by tying its success to student outcomes, flipping the entire educational model on its head. Instead of believing that learning is an end by itself, at Ironhack learning is a support mechanism to its student’s goals — i.e. getting a job, changing careers, becoming an entrepreneur…

My job? Campus Manager in Barcelona. And it means? In short, it means I have to establish the entire company operations in the city, from scratch. Recruit the team, set up a community, enroll students, assemble a network of hiring partners… easier said than done 😅

This is a unique challenge on its own, no doubt about it. It also unfolds itself in the intersection of technology, education, and startups — definitely some areas I know a thing or two about.

The only concern I had though, is that the job was far removed from a product. This was the only thing that held my decision back a few days. I had to think about it but finally ended up realizing that Ironhack Barcelona was a product in itself. I never thought of a product like this before, I’ve always thought of product as an array of 1s and 0s.

But the definition of this product is broader than that.

It means starting from scratch, solving a problem for our students, optimizing resources, hiring the best team, setting the right metrics, thinking of the go-to-market strategy… I never encountered a more holistic challenge than establishing an entire city operation.

It is for me a new definition of a product, a bigger one. It encompasses way more variables and possibilities than iomando ever did. It is also an opportunity to do something memorable, truly change people’s lives (no cliche) in a deeper, meaningful way.

Ultimately, I hope something worth setting aside a sabbatical for — a sabbatical that I promised myself, will eventually happen.

Stepping Down

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Last September, I stepped down from iomando, the company I co-founded almost four years ago. Arguably, the most difficult and also painful decision I’ve ever faced in my professional life.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/144225766

When Victor and I founded iomando in our dorm rooms, and setting aside the fact neither of us knew what we were doing, we did it with just one thing in mind: building an amazing product and putting it in the hands of people — that was all we cared about.

We were thrilled watching our customers fascination with the fact that they were able to access their garages, factories, or whatever they were accessing, right from their mobile phones. Back then it was a bold insight, and definitely way ahead of its time.

That feeling of creating something people perceived as valuable was the fuel that kept us going despite the rough beginnings. To me, personally, the most tangible expression of fulfillment and self-actualization.

Crafting this experience, building something that people were actually in love with, has always been my guide. And what later I have come to consider my little contribution to the world, as little as it might be.

And while it is true that building iomando has come at a cost — mostly missing out on friends, vacations… as a matter of fact, I’ve enjoyed the journey so much, that now that I look back at what we’ve done, I have no regrets and I acknowledge the cost as the price I have paid for pursuing what I loved the most.

I believe in pursuing what you love, and if this happens to be work, so be it.

I don’t mind pouring my soul (and time) into something I deeply care about. I don’t believe in work-life balance. Instead, I believe in pursuing what you love, and if this happens to be work, so be it. I don’t see the point on stop doing what you love just because there’s some kind of social convention that labels it as “work”.

Fortunately, in the times we live in, there are jobs as exciting as what could be considered the most refined leisure from just a few decades ago. I just happened to be fortunate enough to create one of those jobs.

Nonetheless, after four years, some things changed.

My job became less and less about crafting our customers’ experience, and more and more about arguing with investors and partners. Endless discussions that I didn’t want to take part in, and were far from building amazing products.

We reached a point where our investors and the team running the show had completely different visions for where iomando should go. The kind of problem that, as I come to realize, has no straightforward solution.

It is difficult to relate to such a complex problem without falling into a misleading “good and bad” narrative. The closest I can describe it is that it felt as we decided to stop in the middle of the road and start a pointless argument that led nowhere, while the world around us kept moving. But we were not paying attention anymore. We were just stuck in meaningless fights with one another, that lead nowhere.

For the first time, I felt what burnout means. It was not because I was working longer hours than usual, on the contrary, I was “working” less than ever. But I found myself working on something that was not moving the company forward anymore.

Since this very moment, I felt I was burning time in the wrong direction. I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing anymore. My daily activities started revolving around politics and were far from “building something that people were actually in love with”.

Coming in every day became an exhausting experience, one I was not willing to pour my soul into. I felt powerless for not being able to course correct the situations. Fake politics won me over. Work started to feel like war, not something I actually enjoyed — it felt wrong.

Because of this, I have decided to quit.

This is the saddest words I’ve ever written in this blog. They are not intended to sound insightful or smart. Plain and simple, this is how they came out.

I’m just sad and I can’t hide it.

Stepping down from the company you’ve created is arguably one of the most painful experiences I’ve gone through. Yet something in my gut tells me this is the right thing to do. At least this way iomando will continue, who knows in which direction, but at least, forward.

The Electric Car

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

If you’re a car enthusiast, these are quite interesting times to think about the industry. For years we’ve been talking about the rise of electric cars and how cars will operate in the future. This has always been an isolated conversation around ICEs vs. electric drivetrains. But over time, the debate has evolved and it is not only about its technical nuances anymore, it goes deeper.

The car industry is on the verge of enduring a profound shift that will completely redefine what a car is, how it’s designed, and, maybe, its entire ownership structure. We might be fortunate enough to see all this story unfold during our lifetime. This post will focus on the challenges that the industry will face transitioning to electric drivetrains.

Electric means simple

This conversation revolves around many unknowns, but one thing we know for sure: sooner or later, the shift to electric is going to happen. Incumbents only hold onto ICEs because it creates huge barriers of entry and protects them from upcoming competitors.

Yet from a technological point of view, electric motors surpass ICEs in every single way. Electric motors reduce mechanical complexity in ways we can’t even imagine. They are simpler and have fewer moving parts. There is no need for a gearbox, nor pistons going up and down thousands of times per minute. This means less friction, less heating, less energy wasted, and ultimately, more efficiency.

The moment cars are based on electric drivetrains, critical pieces from the ICE could turn into software — the same way that electromechanical calculating machines or cameras turned into software a few years ago. This ultimately has a huge impact on the overall car’s performance and gives electric vehicles a competitive edge that ICE counterparts can’t match.

The implications of this shift can’t be overstated, because they span beyond technical nuances, to redefine entire layers of the market. From dealerships, repair shops, gas stations, up until the very factories in which they are made.

Rethinking how a car is made

The engine transition from ICE to electric, tells only part of the story. While it’s true that it lowers some hurdles when building a vehicle, the key for a new entrant to disrupt the car industry goes back to manufacturing — in fact, it all goes back to manufacturing.

The Ford Model-T was a huge success because of its innovative manufacturing process. It allowed Ford to bring production costs down and compete asymmetrically with hand-operated assemblers. The car industry works the way it does because of how cars are built. The sheet metal process on which modern cars are built determines everything. Capital expenses, resource allocation, cost structures, the way factories are laid out, everything.

The ultimate cost of putting a car on the market and in a sense “what is possible” is constrained by the production process. Therefore as history has already shown several times, if a new entrant wants to disrupt the industry, a necessary condition will be closely linked to a competitive advantage in the production process. This leads to an interesting intersection where changes in both the power train and the production process collide.

Because of the complexity and capital required to design and assemble an ICE, virtually zero new car manufacturers have emerged during the last century.

The car production chain has always been vertically integrated. The factories often belong to the large auto groups and their main purpose is usually assembly, not direct manufacturing. But in an environment where cars become simpler, the new entrant might kick things off by buying commodity components off-the-shelf. The car industry will probably end up looking more like PCs or smartphones than we think. This not only opens the door to potential new manufacturers but also reshapes the entire assembly stack.

The entire production stack moves from almost from in-house factories to outsourced contractors as Apple does with the iPhone. These also present new challenges for the incumbents. Because in this scenario all the supply chain gets layered and optimized, and companies like Mediatek start to pop up, bringing costs down in each layer of the supply chain.

So, with these simple tweaks, all the industry landscape has been turned on its head. Entering the car business would need much less IP and much less capital, so companies without factories, just buying components out of the self and outsourcing manufacturing to a specialized contractor might be putting cars on the road.

Redefining what is important

In an environment like the one we’ve described, there’s a clear shift of what’s important when it comes to building a car, at least, from a technological point of view. Batteries are the most important component of an electric vehicle and some design constraints of the ICE vehicles simply don’t apply to EVs.

Some assumptions inherit from ICE cars are no longer valid. Tesla is a great example of this: why an electric car needs a front grille? They don’t. But there’s more: a huge front hatch, a spacer, and a stick between the front seats… you won’t need any of this in EVs. In a nutshell, an ICE car is just an inefficient heat machine and all its design revolves around generating as much chill to dissipate it. A closer study of an ICE car will quickly reveal that all its design is constrained by this assumption.

Then how could Tesla — or other new entrants — can compete with the decades of supply chain refinement? The answer is that they don’t need to. Different rules apply to them, they’re just playing a different game.

What Tesla has accomplished so far is arguably the best that has happened to the auto industry in the last decades. It has shown that it is possible. Tesla is already way ahead of the competition, but the breakthrough is not yet complete, because, at its core, its production process remains the same as incumbents.

In theory, nothing is preventing other automakers to replicate Tesla’s playbook. However, the most difficult thing to replicate about Tesla is something more subtle, sometimes overlooked: its vision of the car. Despite the production process remains the same, Telsa’s fundamental breakthrough is that it thinks of a car as a computer with wheels. The rest of the industry is still thinking about how to put better computers into cars.

In other words, they still have a hammer, and to them, everything looks like a nail.

Random Thoughts On Berlin

Tue, 25 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I do not like to travel.

Well, what I dislike is not exactly the travel part (despite airports are definitely not my thing). What I do not like is going to a place just for touristic purposes.

In my mind, this makes no sense. People just fly to a destination in order to do things they would not usually do in their hometown. Which is not always the case, I know, but sometimes it’d be healthy to ask yourself whether you are not doing such things in your hometown because you dislike them in the first place…

(Most) tourists go to museums while unable to name three museums from their hometown (less so museums they’ve been to).

(Most) tourists visit churches just for the sake of claiming that they have “seen” them, having no historical background or curiosity whatsoever on what that church “truly means”.

I could go on and on, but you get the point.

However, I do travel from time to time. Yet I have strict policies around it. When I travel it is exclusively for either one (or both) of those purposes:

Explore any of my current interests in a foreign place: things like visiting car or plane factories or run the city marathon.
Visit a friend who can show me “the place” through his or her eyes: having a local ally on the ground, usually helps unlock hidden gems from the destination that are usually unavailable to mere tourists.

This summer, though, I wanted to try something different. I thought it would be a good idea to visit Berlin, and set a remote for our product team. Kind of a “working retreat”.

I first checked with my travel principles, and they seem to align pretty nicely: thriving startup community (we do like technology and startups, check), amazing historical landmarks (we do like history, check), plus, the Bauhaus Museum 😉, it looks like we’ve got a winner!

This post though has nothing to do with my travel policy or how cool Berlin’s startup scene could be — but it was a nice segue into this second part.

Instead, I’ve tried to recap some facts that have surprised me the most from the city. Think of this as random thoughts coming from someone born and raised in Barcelona (with strict travel rules).

The city is huge and walking distances are an illusion. Back in Barcelona, everything is at (reasonable) walking distance. You can cross the entire city in an hour. Yet Berlin’s blocks are huge! What looked to me like a ten-minute walk, usually turned out to be closer to half an hour.

Get a bike. Because of the long distances (among other things), the bike is by far the best way to move around, at least during the summer. Despite public transport works fine, the city is specially designed to ride. It is flat, has bike lanes all over the place and car drivers are aware of them. Moreover, they are not stolen! Surprisingly, you can park them anywhere and don’t worry about it. Peace of mind.

Bike lanes are sacred. You don’t dare walking inside a bike lane. Bikers get really angry about it, and they are pretty vocal about it.

Some drivers are really aggressive. It is habitual to hear car engines loudly roar at a green traffic light. They take pride showing off their cars’ power or something.

I’ve spotted an unusually high number of Teslas. To be fair, there’s also a lot of American muscle cars, both original models from the 70s and the current revised models.

Smarts can park orthogonally. I’ve seen lots of them and the police didn’t seem to care.

Uber works great. I know this is not a big deal, but back in Barcelona, the service has been banned for a long time.

Drive Now. I spotted a lot of white BMWs and Minis with Drive Now stickers. I didn’t know what that was, but two things stroke me since the beginning: cars were not average (all of them premium city cars, also well equipped) and they’ve got plenty of users since you could spot them around the city. I made some research on them and it turns out that it is a joint venture between BMW and Sixt that provides car-sharing services.

Traffic lights algorithms are suboptimal. There’s a huge overlap where both lights in an intersection are simultaneously red. Moreover, the pedestrian light goes directly from green to red without blinking or warning that it is about to change, leaving a really small window of opportunity to cross.

On the bright side, I must admit that when transitioning from red to green, on the car end, they get an intermediate state where the yellow turns on for a moment, so you know the green is coming. That was clever.

You never know in which direction a street goes. It’s really confusing because there are no marks on the road and traffic lights are inexistent on smaller streets. The best option is to go all in and try because it is usually bidirectional.

There’s no center. Once you start rambling around the city you get the feeling that there’s no such thing as a “center”. Instead, there are several centers! This is a particular manifestation of an underlying trend across all over the city: Berlin has almost two of everything. It makes sense though because after the wall fell in 1989, the city was kind of duplicated in a way.

Neighborhoods are not uniform. Usually, each district has a unique theme. This is not an exception in Berlin: you have the Turkish neighborhood, residential areas, more commercial ones… But what it is really surprising is how within the same district, the landscape can suddenly change. By that I mean, housing, architecture, street layout… you just move one street away and it seems you have changed cities.

The city feels safe. It’s pretty amazing the sense of security that the city radiates in every single corner.

There is no police wandering around. You barely see police cars on the road, neither police officers patrolling the street.

People drink in the street, all the time. There are a lot of people shamelessly sporting beer bottles on the street — they even drink in the subway and police seems ok with that.

There are broken glasses all over the place. First, I didn’t understand what it was going on and blame drunk people for that. I was wrong! It’s not (for the most) that people break their bottles out of pleasure. As it turns out, you can get (some) money back from your empty bottles. The broken glasses are just there because some people leave them in the street (with good intentions, so other people can grab them and earn the thing), but an unexpected event broke them before. Large numbers at play: leave a lot of bottles in the street, inevitably, some of them will break.

You can smoke inside some places. At first, I could not believe it, but some venues, such as restaurants or bars, allow their customers to smoke.

People makes a lot of outdoors living. At least during the summer. It’s remarkable the number of people and the variety of activities people do outside. Barbecues, yoga, read clubs, board games… the preferred spot for those is usually their huge parks.

Parks are H-U-G-E. The amount of green area the city has dedicated to public parks is mind-blowing. One that I particularly liked was Tempelhofer Feld: a “real airport” (yes you hear that right, where planes land and stuff) where you can run, bike or whatever you want to do in the same runways airplanes maneuvered.

Respect for historic events. Praiseworthy how the city has preserved and celebrated the remaining pieces from the war. Sure no one is proud of what happened, but they hold onto it to show future generations what was really like.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The most amazing monument I’ve ever, not seen, but actually lived. It’s brilliant how the architect captured and recreated, inside stark, plain concrete blocks, the sorrow jews experimented during the nazism.

There are a lot of bees. Back in Spain people are afraid of them, I mean, not without reason, they can bite you — and it hurts. Here people have learned to seamlessly live with them. You get used to having them around.

People party all the time. (At least during the summer) there are outdoor clubs, pubs, spontaneous gatherings on the street, even after hours parties running all the time.

People is eating all the time, too. Maybe because of the mix of cultures, eating times overlap with one another and this translates to busy restaurant tables at any given time: you’ll never know if they are having lunch, dinner or the thing in between.

Small business thrive. Although I don’t have the data on how well they actually do, there’s a huge amount of small shops and retail that you don’t usually see in other cities.

The city is home for lots of cultures. There are literally people from all over the globe. Despite, locals don’t speak the great English northern countries are known for.

There’s not that much work. (Outside the tech world) if you don’t speak German, there are not that many options for you in Berlin. Otherwise, if you happen to be a software developer, you are more than welcome.

It is cheap. (If you go to the right places) the city can be cheaper compared to the rest of the country. Notwithstanding the touristic places and the most commercial areas will quickly prove this statement wrong.

No credit card. Only the fancy restaurants and “premium” business will accept credit cards. Bring cash for the rest.

The sun raises early. But not Spain-early, the first day I woke up at 5:00AM because the sky was already plain blue. Roll the curtains to avoid waking up by the sunlight. I was told that winter is the other way around.

Big windows. Northerns love light. Windows are huge and I haven’t seen a single one with blinds. First floors don’t have fences, which also relates to the security thing.

There are no elevators in residential buildings. If you want to go up, take the stairs.

No air conditioning either. Which makes sense though, because it’s hot for 2 weeks a year.

Many apartments don’t have living room. The epicenter of the Spanish home, the living room, is somehow removed from some apartments. I even found some kitchens with the bathroom inside, which I found at least curious.

Hello, wallapop

Wed, 27 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

🙋‍♂️ This is the second part of a two-post story around peer-to-peer, second-hand marketplaces — here you can find the first part of the story, make sure you read that one first!

wallapop has grown to be the poster child of Spanish startups. At its core, it is a second-hand marketplace, but beyond its “market label”, wallapop’s product has truly understood the problem it is aiming to solve, way before rashly jumping into a given solution.

Second-hand marketplaces aren’t new phenomena. It is already crowded with dozens of players, but as I noted in the previous post, this doesn’t mean the problem has been properly solved.

The opportunity in the space is not novel and has always been both interesting and obvious for companies trying to take a cut out of people willingness to buy and sell stuff.

Yet the fact that it was so “obvious” tied the platforms creations early in the desktop era of computing — mainly because back then mobile hasn’t even entered the picture. Inevitably, as new means of interaction (like mobile) emerged, they opened up the opportunity for entirely new, more optimized experiences to be created around it.

And while most legacy products born in the desktop era have already released their mobile version in order to remain competitive in the space, most of them still carry around a lot of weight from the web 1.0. They are just minified experiences of their desktop product, not something designed from the ground up with the mobile assumption in mind.

wallapop is clearly an exception to this trend. They have no desktop app. Its first product is a mobile app, thus it was born with no strings attached to the past. The product feels like it has been designed not just to be mobile-friendly, but mobile-only.

It sports its own personality but also has ~~shamelessly~~ cleverly borrowed some patterns and cues from well-established apps (such as Instagram or Pinterest). They’ve ultimately bundled it together to make a great mobile experience out of buying and selling stuff.

The next sections will discuss several aspects of the wallapop experience and product design choices, using the previous post as a reference.

Publisher tools

In just four easy steps. Instead of the endless form, you were presented in eBay’s page wallapop features a simple four-step approach to publish an article.

Take a few pictures: each smartphone happens to have a built-in camera, how come you aren’t we using it? Upload the pictures you just took right from the smartphone and the rest of the job is done behind the scenes. Compare this with the old (flash-based, really) eBay uploader and both friction and time it takes to upload the pictures is dramatically reduced.
Enter a title and a short description: this is a clear example of how a deliberately constrained design leads to a more focused and cohesive experience. Browsing on eBay you’ll rapidly notice huge design inconsistencies across listings, all featuring ugly fonts and confusing information. wallapop has taken the opposite approach: plain text and ridiculously small editor. It forces you to be brief and concise, while it gives a cohesive look across all listings.
Set the price: just type a number and it’s done. eBay’s fields instead are crowded with drop downs, payment methods, types of auction, when to publish… it’s a mess compared to wallapop’s simplicity.
Choose a category: from just eight, plain and simple. Think about what people have to sell, almost all listings will fall into one of those categories — it is 80/20 at its best. And if it doesn’t, hit “Other” and get over it.

Finally, hit “Publish” and you’re done. This is as easy as it gets. The form is obviously not as feature rich as eBay’s, but that’s the point. If you miss any of those features, wallapop might not be the right tool for you. wallapop has definitely followed the classic startup playbook: design and build something that appeals to a narrow, underserved segment of users (this is individuals looking for selling their unused stuff), optimize for them, solve their problem like no other can, and from there, grow by capturing adjacent channels.

Discoverability

The same way publishing has been designed around individuals and occasional sellers, discovery has also been optimized with a mobile experience in mind.

To begin with, the feed is the default view when you launch the app. It reveals Pinterest-like navigation with a handy filter at the top that shows you available items ranked by proximity to your current location. This is not just a clever way to leverage mobile-only capabilities, such as GPS. It also honors the screen real estate by presenting a few items at once, while it increases the chances of closing a deal because you can presume the seller is not far away from you.

Leveraging location and the card-like infinite scroll (with huge pictures and clear fonts) are proven patterns that induce the user to keep scrolling and engaging with the content. It tricks your mind and succeeds at recreating the ~~anxiety~~ illusion that you might be just one scroll away from the desired item you are looking for.

This kind of navigation and interaction pattern is by wallapop’s founding principles. As obvious as ranking items by proximity might sound, the designers behind the product could only make such delivered decisions because they assumed a mobile device was at hand.

On the other hand, if you know what you’re looking for in advance, you can type directly in the search box or use the filters to limit your scope. A wide range of filters is available, such as price, category, accepts-trades and many other useful dimensions. The UI for the “fine tuning” is well presented, but it is deliberately hidden under the top right button — clearly aimed to advanced users.

Identity

Up to this point, all the features presented were relevant in order to craft a great experience. Yet this one is especially relevant today because online trust is the foundation of the modern web. Nicknames were huge in the 90s, but as the Internet has become more social you want to know who you are dealing with.

When you install the app, the first thing you are encouraged to do is verify your phone and link your social profiles in order to show the world that you are a real human.

The profile is accessible and straightforward. In a glance, you can see all the reviews from the user, what she’s bought or sold and all the deals she’s made. It doesn’t sport fancy metrics, it goes to the point — the information you need to know.

It shows designers have deeply thought and asked themselves what a user (both a buyer or a seller) wants to know when entering a negotiation. Because wallapop’s deals are closed in-person, the “meeting-barrier” can be daunting for some. Having a clear picture of who you’ll be meeting with, derisks the feeling and creates a sense of confidence that, ultimately, smooth transactions.

Talk instead of bid

We are entering into delight territory here. wallapop did plenty of things right, but the fundamental thing they understood is that the experience should revolve around a human conversation, rather than the item itself.

This is a critical shift in how the service works because it flips the foundation of a marketplace in its head.

Texting is the thing. It is unobtrusive — at least to a certain extent — direct and built right into our very nature. wallapop has turned the chat into the buying experience itself. The CTA is not “buy” or “bid”, but to “talk” instead, and it is brilliant.

Same with the location, because of the narrowed focus nature of the service, wallapop could make assumptions that eBay could not. wallapop could assume their users would not be huge stores, with thousands SKUs, thus conversations could be managed at a small scale.

It is a clear example of how a constraint turned out to be an asset when it came to making a product decision. Chat becomes the simplest and easiest way to communicate between parties and to put it in analog terms, the service resembles more a Bazaar in Marrakech than a Walmart mall.

The chat is, of course, private — it doesn’t expose you to read receipts and also has built-in useful functionalities like a counteroffer. The experience of chatting with the seller is unmatchable because it gives an illusion of proximity to both parties and that, again, reinforces trust between them.

Pricing

For now, wallapop doesn’t charge you for any transaction. They even reinforce the idea of exchanging in-person instead of closing deals through the app (which is a place where they could monetize the success of the transaction). They don’t even hide it, on the contrary, the “in-person exchange” is being exposed as a “feature” and core to the experience.

This idea feels diametrically opposite to eBay’s foundation of anonymity, disconnection between parties, ultimately rooted in the “old Internet”.

Yet like it or not, eBay’s nature is also what enables its business model. The end-to-end control of the transaction makes it easier to create friction, own distribution and ultimately, monetize.

On the other hand, wallapop’s nature encourages its users to pay in cash, rendering the “take a cut” option virtually impossible. At this time this might not be a concern for wallapop since their focus is on growth and the only way to get there is by offering a free service. Yet we should be aware that this situation might have an expiration date, and at some point, they ought to figure out how to make money.

A better experience

wallapop is taking on a large problem, but it has done so by first narrowing down and focusing on a niche. And despite its initial market has been subsequently reduced, I’d argue that’s a good thing. It might not appeal to everybody, but that’s the point of their focused strategy. The service is leveraging these constraints to enhance the experience and optimize for their selected users.

The exchange feels personal, more connected, and that builds trust, the foundation of a peer-to-peer sale.

On top of that, wallapop has also externalized to the users almost all the friction points, such as payments or delivery — a trade-off most users embrace since it enables the power of a free service. This also works in the benefit of wallapop, because it unlocks growths and helps build a huge user base.

In a nutshell, the mobile-first experience of selling a product at wallapop is unmatchable and it is no wonder how much traction the platform has gotten in such a brief period of time. It is ultimately a great lesson of how understanding the problem first, and only then delivering a thoughtful solution, always leads to the best products.

Self-Driving Trucks

Wed, 20 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Those 3.5 million truck drivers driving all over the country stop regularly to eat, drink, rest, and sleep. Entire businesses have been built around serving their wants and needs. Think restaurants and motels as just two examples. So now we’re talking about millions more whose employment depends on the employment of truck drivers. […]

Robot trucks will kill far fewer people, if any, because machines don’t get tired. Machines don’t get distracted. Machines don’t look at phones instead of the road. Machines don’t drink alcohol or do any kind of drugs or involve any number of things that somehow contribute to the total number of accidents every year involving trucks.

Never heard of Scott Santens before, but I came across his article and I found it fascinating. It starts with an analysis of the truck industry and the impact it had on the drivers. And then it touches on the key question: we tend to think of technology as a job replacement mechanism, but the implications go much farther, it impacts how the overall economy is shaped.

From a purely rational and technical point of view, the argument is appealing: let the machines do the driving because we are so bad at it. But once we’ve passed that point, you start thinking of the small economies that work around the truck industry. The fact that this is the most common in the USA. The local ecosystems surrounding these incomes. This time around the alternatives might not create additional jobs.

So without you even noticing, the topic has shifted from the imminent unemployment of truck drivers to the extinction of car ownership, and the accumulation of capital toward corporations and away from the middle class.

Farewell, eBay

Sun, 17 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

🙋‍♂️ This is the first part of a two-post story around peer-to-peer, second-hand marketplaces — here you can find the second part of the story, but make sure you read this one first!

I’ve been an active eBay user since 2007. It all started the day I figured out I could get some money out of my PS2 in order to buy the brand new PS3. Back then I was 19 years old and it became a great revelation. It felt like magic: write a quick description, take a handful of photos, upload… and next thing you know I’ve sold the PS2 for what I considered to be a reasonable amount of money.

In the beginning, I struggled to understand how eBay worked. The idea behind auctions and (really) how to ship something — since I’ve never done it before — became a little bit of a challenge for the 19-year-old version of me, but long story short, I ended up buying the PS3 for much less than I’ve expected.

From that very moment, I’ve become an advocate for the company and sold dozens of items through the platform. I got rid of a lot of stuff I didn’t use — things I would never have thought were “eligible” to sell. Because eBay, to an extent, enables people to sell the products they don’t use, thus reducing waste and extending the lifespan of our stuff. Now consider — or at least guess — the scale they are operating at, and that’s ultimately a good thing.

eBay’s scale and ability to connect buyers and sellers is fascinating. I’ve uploaded really niche items, yet always found a potential buyer. Yet from a product perspective, such scale has come at a cost, and it is also true that the experience doesn’t feel optimized for the single individual that wants to sell her stuff online.

eBay was one of the first players in the space, undoubtedly the most successful. They aggressively colonized an empty market and appealed to a broader and broader audience as they grew, because of course, they could. I’ve already written about this idea because we have also gone through a similar situation — obviously at a way smaller scale — at iomando.

In a nutshell, the problem is that during a massive horizontal expansion, you keep capturing plenty of unrelated verticals, becoming a jack of all trades along the way. At some point, though, you have to focus and say no in order to tune your product to a certain audience, but that’s hard. But if you don’t, inevitably, someone else will. And they’ll come with a more optimized product, capturing your underserved niche with a more targeted experience. Think of how many services have thrived just by peeling away Craigslist verticals.

That’s exactly what eBay feels like today. Maybe they have chosen to optimize for larger sellers and retailers because it has turned out to be a more profitable space. Yet for the solo-user who wants to sell her unused stuff online, the experience feels exactly the same today than it felt when I sold my PS2, seven years ago.

In my mind, eBay has always been the go-to place to sell things online, and while the experience felt suboptimal, there was no alternative, it got the job done. But that’s not true anymore: a new breed of mobile apps optimized around the solo-user have taken over and surfaced eBay’s weaknesses when it comes to addressing this segment of the market.

Here are a handful of eBay’s flaws when it comes to selling an item, from the solo-user perspective. In the next post, I’ll do the same but coming from the other end, and analyze why these new mobile-first peer-to-peer marketplaces outdo eBay’s product in this particular segment of the market.

Overly complex publisher tools

In order to get an item out of the door, what could be reduced to a brief description and a handful of pictures, has become a confusing, endless list of options. While this might be great for power sellers with a wider range of items and categories, can feel overwhelming for a less sophisticated seller.

This is “only” the part you need to fill in order to set the starting price and the way you want to get paid. There is still a lot of scroll to be done until you reach the end.

There is now a mobile app and a simplified interface that eliminates some of the options, but still, it just hides some of the complexity — it is not intentionally designed to serve this market.

Item discovery is hard

There are hundreds of different categories you can choose from and sometimes the frontier between them is blurry. eBay promotes this pattern because they get more per publication if it ends up appearing in more categories, but it makes navigation and discovery way more difficult from the user perspective.

It has to be a better way to classify items 🙄

Identity

eBay was founded in 1995 when the Internet was still mostly based on anonymity and nicknames. Nowadays the Internet is built around trust and identity. Success stories like AirBnB wouldn’t be possible without its personal validity and the ability to build communities around real identities. If you are going to pay for something, you want to know who you are dealing with.

This is me at eBay, the only online place I haven’t set a real profile picture.

Communication

I always think twice before judging a certain feature or express my personal opinion around a product. If you haven’t been “there”, you can’t fully comprehend the range of constraints the team might have operated under during the product development and its lifecycle.

That being said, I’m having a really hard time understanding how eBay’s chat or internal communication tool came to be. Really, I can’t understand how its product manager “is able to” sleep at night.

I don’t think I need to say much about it… just let this screenshot speak for itself: this is a small excerpt of an email sent to a user to notify that a certain item has been published 😳.

Commissions

I get that in order to build a successful, healthy business, at some point, you have to charge your users. eBay’s pricing structure makes little sense for a solo-user, mixing fixed and variable costs.

As a seller, you’ll be charged at several stages of the process:

Publication
Successful sale
Payment (if you use PayPal)

Which makes it difficult for the user when and how she’ll end up paying for the sale — especially worrisome with low-priced items, where the commission might end up taking almost the entire profit.

On top of that, the shipment is not managed through eBay’s platform, so the risk is totally handed down to the transaction party and also added to the entire “cost structure” of the deal.

Suboptimal buying experience

During these years, I’ve sold way more than I bought on eBay. Yet I’ve always thought for a buyer who “trusts” on another party to ship the thing once you have already paid is a little risky. What if the article doesn’t resemble the (low resolution) photos you were presented with? What if upon arrival it is broken? What if it never ships?

Paying for the item in advance puts the buyer in a really risky position, more so if you can’t later claim to the buyer, because she is hidden behind a fake nickname (see the point around Identity).

This is a random list of things that have occurred, top of my mind, just by thinking of my overall experience with eBay. And while I’m sure there’s more, you get the idea: the platform wasn’t intentionally designed for peer-to-peer transactions, and it remains like this. However, the lack of alternatives and amount of users participating made most of its solo-users stick with it.

But something’s changed: this week I’ve tried a new service that turns peer-to-peer transactions into an amazing, fun experience. This week I sold my first item through wallapop. In the next post I will discuss how wallapop has taken in consideration all eBay’s weaknesses and has leveraged the current state of technology to make of them their main competitive advantages.

Lifestyle Businesses

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT

If I were to start a business again I’d make sure it doesn’t scale. Not scale in PG’s definition. But being comfortable with the idea that the main focus of such a venture is not growth.

Nothing against enterprises that reap the scale of the Internet, it’s just that I’m not up for the challenge, once again.

When we started iomando, we did it driven by the sole joy of building delightful a product. That’s the reason why we founded the company — because we deeply cared about the craft. Particularly, it meant the world to me.

We were naive. By 2013 I didn’t even know what a P&L was. My scope was extremely limited to the product side of things. One could argue — and rightly so — that I had no idea of what I was doing.

We didn’t plan for what happened afterward.

The implications of committing to a venture-backed business are, literally, bigger than you. And while I don’t regret any step along the way, it is true that nobody warned us of where we were headed.

We quickly went from crazy-garage-idea, to hiring people, and planing for new product lines. Next thing you know, we were pitching in front of investors. We were dealing with a radically different business. Gradually, then suddenly, I felt pushed away from the product, and closer to the business side of things.

The stuff that kept me awake at night shifted from nifty product details to ~~boring~~ discussions around CACs and EBITDAs. Want it or not, these are deeply connected to the product health. However, I felt disconnected from the building, what I loved the most, without having signed for it.

This unwanted move, away from the craft I was seeking, made me think deeply about the kind of business we had created. The first step of such exploration, led me to a better understanding of the different types of business that exists — and to some extend, to these words you’re now reading.

Here’s an over-simplistic TL;DR: there are two kinds of businesses, the ones that scale, and the ones that do not. Indubitably, all businesses need to grow at some point, but not all of them are designed to scale — we’ll review the scale idea later.

Businesses That Do Not Scale

The main idea behind the non-scalable business is that, somehow, they are subject to gravity. There is a physical component that prevents them to go from 1 to N with no marginal costs associated with such growth. I refer to this business as a lifestyle business (LB).

In my mind, a restaurant[1] is the poster-child for a business that doesn’t scale. Imagine that you have settled for a location. You are given a fixed amount of square meters, where you can fit a limited amount of tables. By definition there is an upper bound on the number of people you can serve each day.

Physical space handicaps the revenue. However, it is also the driving force that allows them to focus on the product and thrive under quality premises.

Non-scalable ventures keep its core experience isolated from business development. If you had done some basic math and (correctly) planned for green margins beforehand, the health of your business will mostly depend on you delivering a great experience to your customers. You won’t become filthy rich overnight, but you’ll certainly be OK.

It’s not the only factor, but other things being equal, your customers will prefer a better UX. What is fascinating about this attribute is that it is not possible to overshoot. There’s no such thing as good enough in this axis of performance.

While it is true that, in an LB environment the physical limitations are ultimately constraining the revenue, they are also the driving forces that allow you to focus solely on the product. The UX is never capped in this regard.

Which leads us to the double-edged sword of LBs.

The problem you are solving for in an LB is probably well understood. There will still be room for innovation, sure, but its core experience has already been mastered by countless others before.

This is good news since you won’t have to reinvent the wheel. But on the other side of the blade, fierce competition will be awaiting. At the end, it is a tradeoff. However, another opportunity to focus on the core experience. What matters the most in an LB.

We hear the best product doesn’t always win. Within the LB realm, I’d argue, the best product does win. Few other market dynamics play out. Hence the single and most important lever you have to win over your customers is craftsmanship.

Businesses That Scale

From a societal angle, though, we tend to reward the CEOs behind the unicorns of the world. Organizations attuned to the Internet dynamics — where adding additional units of capacity comes at no marginal cost. Serving one or one billion is “almost the same” in terms of their fixed costs. They were born around Internet assumptions, thus able to leverage these capabilities from the get-go.

By the same token, it is precisely this underlying principle that ends up setting up winner-take-all environments. Market spaces where you either grow or die. If you are not up for the challenge, another will. When you are playing growth, staying small is not an option.

I’m not saying these companies don’t place importance on the product side. On the contrary, most of them are product-driven, and emphasize product above all.

But unlike lifestyle businesses, UX acquires another dimension that allows them to acquire and retain customers. The experience is directly affected by the sole fact that more people are using the product — the often called “Network Effects”.

If deltas of usage by any given customer increase product value for other customers as well, then it follows that the main motivation should be placed on growth. An irrelevant factor for LBs, but the most important one when dealing with unicorns.

Ben Thompson calls them “Aggregators” and defines them around a virtuous cycle:

By extension, this means that the most important factor determining success is the user experience: the best distributors/aggregators/market-makers win by providing the best experience, which earns them the most consumers/users, which attracts the most suppliers, which enhances the user experience in a virtuous cycle.

Ok, so what?

I’m not saying that one is better than the other, I’m just laying relevant facts for the next business idea. At the end of the day, it’s all about personal motivations and incentives.

On a more personal note, I deeply enjoy the feeling of closeness that LBs radiate. It might be the craftsmanship, that you can manage the operations from end to end, that you can see, that you can literally touch the business.

This idea of simplicity, but at the same time, never ending refining, is what attracts me the most to LBs.

On the other hand, in a business with uncapped scale, expectations overcome you, the scope is almost infinite and the ambition of the project is insatiable. You’ll feel like you are never doing enough, this is an exhausting feeling.

As a society we tend to reward people behind growth business, and they absolutely deserve it. At the end of the day, they are the ones pushing humanity forward, making everybody’s lives easier because of their creations.

But we should also make room for the little, delightful things. We should not be worried about the size of our passion, what matters is being passionate about something and stick to it.

If some day I found myself in the situation of starting a new venture, I’ll make sure that it doesn’t scale, so I can primarily focus on delivering the best possible experience.

Thoughts on modularity

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

During the last Apple Keynote there was no mention of the possibility of upgrading the Apple Watch, and the topic is getting really interesting — because this intersection between performance and obsolescence is something technology has a hard time dealing with.

When it comes to technology, the rules are clear: you know what you’re getting into — early obsolescence, more memory at cheaper prices, and faster processors every other year. But when it comes to fashion and jewelry, other rules apply. A $20,000 Rolex is meant to be handed down to your son; you are paying for perpetuity, to some extent. But when you add technology into the equation, that perpetuity is fundamentally constrained by Moore’s Law.

Before the Apple Watch was announced, there was some speculation around upgradability, and even programs where you traded in the old device to repurchase a newer model. But during the Keynote, there was no official word on this. It’s also true that afterwards there were some articles claiming the battery could be replaceable — but that’s about it.

My thoughts on upgradability have been evolving and bouncing back and forth over these past few weeks. That’s why I wanted to lay out some facts that might help better understand the issue.

I’ve always thought of upgradability as a fundamental piece of the technology lifecycle. Initiatives like Project Ara made me believe that it was actually possible to build a sustainable business out of modular technology. It makes so much sense. They still have to prove everything, of course, but they are clearly exploring an interesting path.

The goal of upgradability is to extend the lifecycle of a device so that, in the end, we produce less waste — by replacing components with newer ones as technology evolves, while maintaining (at least for a longer period of time) the basic structure that holds those components together.

When the Apple Watch was announced in September, rumors about its upgradability started to pop up. It made sense. But when you think of Apple and upgradability, the trend is clear: none of Apple’s newer devices are upgradable, and the ones that once were — like the iMac or the MacBook, no longer are.

So why would the Apple Watch be any different? I don’t have the answer to that, but there were two reasons that fueled this argument:

The S1 SoC seemed to be specially designed to be swapped as a bundle, making it easier to replace all the components in a single operation.
The jewelry approach — because watches are meant to endure. If the Apple Watch became obsolete in three years, nobody would want one.

I understand the S1 argument, and it makes sense. But imagine you bought the original iPhone in 2007 and today walked into an Apple Store to join an “Upgradability Program.” See where I’m going? There is such a fundamental misalignment between how the original iPhone and the current iPhone 6 were conceived. The iPhone was meant to be a complement to the Mac; now it’s the centerpiece of our digital lives.

It’s not just about upgrading the processor, the RAM, the antennas — there’s a lot more than just “specs” to upgrade. Some might say “The S1!” Yes, it’s a closed structure that could be easily replaced, but: 1) it may have been designed that way to perform underwater, for all we know; and 2) this is the first iteration of a product that might do a lot more in just three years. The same thing that happened with the iPhone will happen with the Apple Watch, and these fundamental design changes driven by technology can’t be planned ahead of time.

The other argument is the jewelry angle. This was the one that kept my hopes for upgradability alive — but I recently found myself with mixed thoughts again. Imagine Apple had only released the Sport Edition. It’d just be called the Apple Watch: aluminum case, rubber band, $349 and you’re good to go. If that were the case, would we even be discussing upgradability? I don’t think so. What would be the difference then between an iPhone and an Apple Watch? Both are pieces of technology we use in a particular way. We don’t think differently about something because an iMac sits on a desk and an iPhone rests in a pocket. So why make the distinction between pocket and wrist? At the end of the day, when the battery dies or it feels “slow,” you go and buy another one. End of discussion.

But here’s the real crux of it. It’s not the idea of a watch that makes you think of upgradability — it’s the idea of a luxury watch as a perpetual object. The conflicting point is how to justify selling a device that costs the same as a Rolex but will be obsolete in five years, while the Rolex is built to last forever. So the problem isn’t that this is a watch — the problem is that there are watches on the market that cost a lot of money and whose “strong suit” is precisely that they endure.

This is the fundamental wrong assumption. We are comparing these devices on an obsolescence/durability basis and missing the bigger picture. Yes, when you buy a Rolex you expect durability to be the main feature — but when you buy an Apple Watch, you’re getting a lot of other features you simply won’t get from a mechanical watch. That has to be factored into the price. The short story is that the Apple Watch may not be competing “directly” against luxury watches at all. It’s a whole other category.

We can’t judge all of the Apple Watch’s value on a time-aging basis, because it’s doing a completely different job than a mechanical watch does. It would be like blaming a mechanical watch for never getting software updates. A couple of examples that might help illustrate this:

There’s a huge market for $1,000 bags that might be used three times in a lifetime. People buy them not on a rational basis, but driven by a kind of aspiration — the same aspiration the Apple Watch is trying to tap into, in its own way.
Some people pay $25,000 for a transatlantic flight that lasts fifteen hours, while others take the same flight, to the same destination, in the same amount of time, at a fraction of the cost. Are those paying $25K being irrational? I don’t think so. And no one complains about not arriving any sooner for having paid more. In other words, judging the Apple Watch as cheap or expensive only by comparing it to a traditional mechanical watch is both wrong and unfair.

I would never buy a gold watch — not Apple’s, not Rolex’s — but I can see why many people would want one. Is this a huge market? I don’t think so. But maybe the point of selling this watch is less about volume and more about drawing a line — separating Apple even further from Samsung and the rest. Nobody knows yet how well it will sell, but it is clearly an interesting move, and the first serious attempt to overlap fashion and technology in ways that have never been done before.

Love what you do

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Balancing work and passion has always been a bit of a puzzle for me. Sure, I’ve tackled the topic in casual chats, but I’ve never arrived at a rock-solid viewpoint I can hang my hat on.

One thing’s for sure, though: when you’re passionate about something, you don’t just “like” it, you’re magnetized by it. Work becomes less of a chore and more of an irresistible pull, leading you into that coveted state of flow.

Paradoxically, the waters get murky when you blend passion with obligation. Notice I didn’t say “work”, because the nuance here is crucial. You might work long hours on a side-project, but that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to. On the flip side, you’re pretty much obligated to trade time for money to, you know, keep a roof over your head.

This is where Paul Graham’s essay, How to Do What You Love, becomes a must-read. He starts by drawing a line between work and fun, challenging the childhood notion that they’re mutually exclusive.

There’s this narrative: “Do what you love, and the money will follow”. Sounds neat, but it’s overly simplistic. Passion doesn’t come with a built-in business model. The journey from passion to paycheck is more of a creative maze than a straight line.

When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing.

Jason Fried of 37 Signals offers a more grounded perspective. He argues that love for what you do isn’t a prerequisite for success. Instead, he leans into intrinsic motivation — doing something because it matters to you, not because you’re head over heels for it.

I’d say that, if you want to be successful and make a real contribution to the world, you have to be intrinsically motivated by the work you do, and you have to feel good about spending your days on it. Love might grow — and it’s a wonderful thing if it does — but you don’t need it up front. You can succeed just by wanting something to exist that doesn’t already.

We often spotlight people who seem to love what they do because they’re successful. Take Travis Kalanick, the Uber guy. We talk about him because he’s disrupting transportation, not because he’s enamored with his job. Let’s not forget the hypothetical guy who also hated San Francisco cabs but just became a cab driver… He’s not making headlines, is he?

On top of this confusion between work, passion, or “love what you do” fallacy, there’s a broader discussion that needs also to be addressed. I recently tuned into a podcast called “Why We Work”, which delves into unconventional career paths. It got me thinking: is this “work-love” conundrum a Millennial thing? Our parents might have had different happiness metrics, like providing for the family or ensuring a good education for their kids.

Here’s Why We Work’s take, I’m paraphrasing here:

Maybe now we think more about this idea of happiness and doing what you love. But our parents might not have that, and that’s OK. Because maybe for them the standard of happiness would be to provide for the family or give a good education for his sons. They might not even think about do what they love because they had other priorities beyond this. They measured their happiness with another scale.

The point is subtle, but I’d never thought of that. That made me reflect and led me to a few takeaways.

Survivorship bias: we often mix up passion and work. The loud ones are usually the successful people who are passionate about what they do. But what about the quiet winners who aren’t all that passionate? They’re out there; they just don’t make as much noise.
The “you’re special” myth: post-millennial folks have been told they need to find meaning in their work. That’s a lie. Loving your job is rare and not always sustainable. Most tasks are not “to be loved”, there are only so many “dream jobs” out there.
Passion follows work, not the other way around: you usually get passionate about something you’re good at. You get better, people notice, you get even better, and so on. It’s a positive cycle, but it starts with the work, not the passion.
Purpose over routine: you might not be head over heels for your daily tasks, but you can still find passion in the bigger picture. Like, if you’re a runner working in shoe design, you’re still part of something you care about — even if your day is full of emails and spreadsheets.

Maybe we’re too hung up on this “love” thing. What if we shifted the focus to overall happiness? Seems like a more realistic and useful way to look at it.

Person-first design

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Last week, Microsoft’s big reveal on Windows 10 piqued my interest. However, it wasn’t just about another OS update — there was a little something extra. It was a window (pun intended) into a fascinating shift towards an person-first experience in tech, where content is transitioning seamlessly across devices.

By now, we’re all familiar with the mobile-first mantra. But let’s be honest, some people think it’s only about cramming websites into pocket-sized screens. But, it’s so much more. Benedict Evans elaborates on this brilliantly in his essay Mobile is Eating the World, a clever nod to Marc Andreessen’s “Software is Eating the World.”

Evans lays out some game-changing insights:

Tech is now consumer-centric, touching billions — not just for IT managers.
Mobile is often the first and only internet experience for many around the globe.
Mobile tech uses built-in sensors to both create and capture data in revolutionary ways.
The real meat of the mobile-first approach goes way beyond screen size; it’s a radical change in how we interact with the digital world.

Evans goes deeper in his post, but in a nutshell: we’re now at the gates of a paradigm shift in how we think of the Internet.

For all these reasons mobile is a big deal and not just a fancy word analysts use to fill articles and slides. We’ve been talking about mobile first from a design perspective for a long time now, but the true implications of mobile run deeper than pixels and inches.

Here’s the kicker: what if it’s not just about mobile anymore? Enter the “person-first” approach. This concept means your digital experience should be seamless, whether you’re scrolling on your phone, typing on your laptop, or even glancing at your smartwatch.

The idea of a experience first approach is crafting a seamless experience as you move around. Starting at your wrist, up to phone, tablet, or laptop. It is the content that moves with you and the challenge is now to provide a cohesive experience across devices. The focus moves away from the device, to the person.

Apple’s ecosystem embodies this person-first approach, from your iPhone to your Mac and beyond. Although there are conceptual and marketing distinctions between Mac OS X and iOS, the end goal is to sell a connected environment.

The challenge now is to design experiences that are cohesive across any and all devices you might use.

Now, back to Microsoft’s event. Windows 10 seemed like a big nod to these emerging trends. They’re starting to get that the world they once dominated has evolved. And the first hint? Their Build conference a few months ago, where they showcased their horizontal strategy for cloud integration.

Windows is the greatest example of absolute domination of the old world. They owned the whole PC market. They had and understood the IT manager. Being in that position and realize that the environment you used to rule has dramatically changed is hard. But it seems they’ve understood that and they are willing to come around.

But here’s where things get messy. Microsoft seems to be juggling two conflicting ideas. They’re talking about a more personal tech landscape, but their demos were, ironically, quite impersonal, focusing solely on Windows.

To succeed in this new world, Microsoft needs to reconcile these contrasting vertical and horizontal strategies. Because let’s face it, in the real world, people might use an iPhone at work and a Windows PC at home. The lines are blurring, and it’s adapt or get left behind.

I’m really confident that Microsoft has a place in this new environment, a good one though. But I’m not sure Windows has one either. The problem is that Windows is so deeply rooted in Microsoft that I suspect that nobody has the guts to say “hey Windows, it’s been a great time, thank you, but it’s time for you to go home”.

Inspiration and credit for this post comes from the episode 32 of Exponent — a fantastic podcast by Ben Thompson and James Allworth that I can’t recommend enough.

A Kindle Tribute

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Here’s the thing about the Kindle: it works. When you read a book on it, the hardware and software disappear. The content itself becomes the only thing. This is a product doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, and doing it without a fuss, without begging for my attention.

Reading these lines about Kindle’s virtues made me mull over the number of hours I spent using this device, while at the same time, how underappreciated it still goes when we think about “cutting-edge” technology or good product design in general.

Faced with a thought experiment in which you rank the devices you get to keep in an “I can’t live without them” basis, aside from the Mac (which is undoubted “my one and only”), the Kindle e-reader would arguably be the runner up in this list. Definitely ranking higher than the smartphone, and in a close call with the headphones.

Thus it is “not fair” that I never comment around this product and how remarkable it is from a product design perspective. Yet again, reading these lines from Jonathan Courtney left me with no excuse other than to jot down some thoughts around the Kindle — and in short, this is what this article is about.

The Kindle is an example of a product that thrives on technological and budgetary constraints. This forces its designers to keep their priorities straight and their focus sharp.

Within the realm of Product Management, the Kindle represents one of the pinnacles of clear, well-executed product priorities. Despite already being a mature product, focus and the courage to say “no” still, remains at its core. Over the long run, few products thrive under the premise of being great at just “one thing”. Most succumb to the glorified promises coming from capturing adjacent verticals or moving up-market. Often creating feature-bloated, unusable products that end up doing everything, but speaking to nobody.

Trade-offs and compromises are at the heart of every product design process. Some companies are very good at focusing on the core experience of a product (see Amazon, Apple). These are the companies that understand that a product doesn’t need to do everything, please everyone, all in one go. They add features and improve the product iteratively: after the core experience of the product has been established.

For the sake of the argument, let’s shift the discussion to an oversimplified (and opinionated) trade-off between the reading experience of the Kindle e-readers versus the good old paper books.

Paper books present three major flaws:

Weight and volume: paper books quickly fill up space and can’t be easily carried around in bulk. On top of that, if you are an avid reader, your apartment will quickly turn into a book storage facility.
Single source of notes: while it is a pleasure to annotate and highlight paper books, its notes remain isolated and not accessible or searchable from a single source. It makes collecting and connecting knowledge from different books really challenging.
Random styles: some books sport amazing fonts and page quality, its reading experience becomes almost “magic”. Unfortunately, others are, style and quality-wise, an unmitigated disaster. As a buyer of the book, not being able to control its “CSS” is something I find truly annoying.

Note these arguments come from a self-declared Kindle proponent. That being said though, one can’t cover up the fact that a paper books constitute a unique experience in themselves.

Although all three arguments presented above point to a rather suboptimal experience, it is hard to argue against the emotion a paper book can evoke to its reader. The smell, the contact with the paper, the turning of the pages, annotating them, even the sensation of walking into a second-hand library and picking up a random book. It is purely irrational, because its own flaws turn it into a delightful experience.

Yet finally, let’s leave our romantic views on paper books aside, so I can drop my Kindle cold, obliterating facts.

Starting with the ones pointing directly to the three flaws stated above, and ruling over any irrational experience a paper book could inspire:

Storage: virtually endless book-space within the device. Having a life-long library in such a tiny device represents a manifestation of minimalism that is difficult to match.
Unified notes: despite Amazon does not make it easier to export them, having all your (digital) annotations and highlights in a single place is a peace of mind.
Customizable styles: one of the most unspoken features of the Kindle e-reader is the fact that all books look the same. What’s more, not only they look the same, they look exactly how you want them to.

Aside from those, we can also enter a more ambiguous discussion where I’d argue the Kindle e-reader magnifies its dominance even more:

Better screen: leaving paper lovers aside, the fact that the screen has its own front light integrated is really handy. On top of that, pixel density for e-ink displays has already surpassed a threshold that far exceeds printed-quality material.
Waterproof: while I don’t advise to immerse the Kindle e-reader under water (no need to, actually) the tranquility that comes with knowing that a splash won’t ruin it, is priceless.
Unmatchable ecosystem: by far the number one user complaint around Kindle (the fact that Amazon keeps its own proprietary format and the ecosystem rather closed), makes of it one of its biggest strengths. An integrated store, where you will find all the titles, just one click and a handful of seconds away, is something that just a few years ago was, simply put, unimaginable.
It gets better over time: a paper book is a static product. Once you buy one, the best you can wish for it is to “age well”. But you know for sure they won’t improve. A Kindle e-reader, thanks to its regular software updates, keeps getting better.
Whispersync: this is not a feature I often use, but it is definitely one of the most praised gems of the Kindle experience — and something that can only be done because of its software-based nature. In short, Whispersync means seamless transition between devices (even switching to listening to the audiobook companion), and on some occasions, it can be extremely useful.

Wow… that was almost a love letter to the Kindle. Now I feel like I should drop an affiliate link or something 😂. Unfortunately, I don’t have one 😓. Yet I hope it has, at least, convinced some Kindle skeptics to give it a try.

Ideas for a better reading experience

Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMT

I love reading. Books, blogs, articles, you name it. But even my voracious reading appetite has its limits. There’s just too much out there, and the content factory seems to be accelerating rather than slowing down.

Even if reading was your full-time job, you couldn’t begin to scratch the surface of what’s being produced at any given moment. And that’s a problem. Because you don’t want to waste time, and you have a (very) limited amount of time to devote to the articles of the day.

That’s why curated newsletters, aggregators, or news apps exist. They outsource the tedious task of hunting for great content, relying on a third party to deliver the best stories based on its criteria (which might or might not align with yours).

But even with these platforms doing a great job, it’s still overwhelming. You’re bombarded with a torrent of articles, sites, or products that vie for your attention.

Say you like to read Medium posts. Well, I do. The platform has found a sweet balance between delivering great content and presenting it in a way that resonates with readers. I could spend hours on its website and never have enough.

To gain control over this, I signed up to receive just one email per day with top stories. They do a pretty decent job at tailoring this based on my interests, but even this fantastic digest might take 2 hours to complete. And that’s just Medium.

Now add your news aggregator, favorite blogs and magazines, Twitter feed, Hacker News… You started at 07:00 am with Medium, and now it’s lunchtime, and you haven’t even begun your work.

To me, this reading routine is broken. What worries me most is the quality of the reading. Presented with 15 articles and only 30 minutes to spare, I can’t savor the experience. Reading becomes a race to the bottom, a task to complete rather than a pleasure. Reading was once a peaceful escape, but now feels like a neverending chase for the latest story.

So, I’m writing this post to break free from this reading treadmill and enjoy an activity that’s meant to be pleasant. Here’s my set of rules for the ultimate reading experience:

Limit your sources: Control your information flow by carefully choosing the sources. From magazines to platforms like Feedly, handle them wisely. Even podcasts count; they’re great for commuters.
Click and read: Don’t flood your browser with tabs waiting to be read. It only magnifies the “inbox zero” sensation. Engage with content one piece at a time, maybe through a mobile device for focused reading.
Less content, more quality: Tricky but vital. Choose wisely, read less, enjoy more. Don’t fear missing out. If something matters, it’ll find you.
Write it down, take notes: Summarize or jot down thoughts after reading. It deepens your engagement, turning each article into a standalone experience rather than just another task.

I know it’s not easy, but with practice, it gets better. By embracing these rules, we can transform reading from an overwhelming chore into a delightful journey. Let’s reclaim our reading sanity.

iomando Brand Redesign

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

One of the most surprising things I’ve learned in almost three amazing years at iomando is the inherent value of a brand and how it is perceived. Shipping great stuff is key, but the frame you design and the story you create around it are, at least, just as important.

A company is an ever-evolving creature. It is constantly touching customers and stakeholders, leaving a trace or impression behind each interaction. Therefore, the sum of every interaction is what ultimately builds your brand and how you are perceived from the outside. Brand value is really a complex, beautiful idea that we wanted to better understand at iomando.

Because of this, the story you create around the company and the message (in whichever form) you deliver is ultimately what you’ll become. The brand is also built by the product, of course, but this only tells you a limited part of the story. The whole brand is a polyhedric figure that goes from the product, the message you get outside, the tone, your marketing material, the customer support, the culture within the company… and even trickles down to the sole fact of who does the dishes late at night in the office.

Although we’ve never had a dedicated person to guide brand value at iomando, we recognized its importance from the beginning. For that reason, we’ve only had one simple rule at iomando to steer brand value: common sense. I know it’s broad, not particularly specific, and even confusing, but it worked for us. It worked mainly because of the way we hire and how we look for enthusiasm and a set of shared values in new candidates. Because of that, we have the assurance that we are all looking in the same direction when it comes to building the company.

That’s a story for another day, though, because today I want to focus on one of the most important and visual aspects of the brand: the logo, its colors and the imagery that wraps every bit of interaction we ship, from the mobile icon in your phone home screen to the signature on the bottom of an employee’s email.

At iomando we’ve always tried to embed clarity and ease of use into every aspect of the company. We’ve always put a lot of effort into crafting the experience and trying to understand each step of the process, and, as a co-founder and product owner, I’ve always wanted to embrace those values in our product language. We stand for a clearer and easier approach to access management. At the end of the day, we are changing plastic for bits, so it doesn’t get much simpler than that.

For this reason, as a team, we collectively took two steps back and honestly looked at our current brand image with a broader perspective. After we swallowed our pride, we delivered a brutal dose of honesty and admitted that we could do better than that. We were shipping amazing products, but our brand was not reflecting this freshness by any means. It felt abruptly detached from the company vision.

After this huge realization, we slept on the problem, and during the summer we gathered the whole team together in order to design an image that reflected the true spirit of the company. We wanted the involvement of every single person on the team. It didn’t matter their role or background; we wanted everyone to give their opinion and ideas so the final design contained a bit of every person on the team. We wanted each of us who looked up at our new image to instantly feel the connection, identify with it, and see his or her contribution in there. It had to be us. And I must say, it definitely is.

Where tech meets fashion

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This week, it seems like every tech giant is unveiling their latest smartwatch. But let’s be honest, they’re basically strapping a mini-smartphone to your wrist. It’s like the pre-iPhone days when companies tried to cram a computer into a phone. Long story short, it didn’t work well.

Apple nailed it back then by considering screen size, user experience, and other factors. Now, we’re facing the same challenge with wearables. Everyone’s trying to shrink a phone onto your wrist, and it’s just not cutting it.

However, the buzz is that Apple will reveal the wearable solution soon. Everybody expects them to do it. But no leaks so far, just rumors and whispers — and that’s a lot of pressure on Apple’s side. They’ve been game-changers before, but who says they’ll get it right again? They’re only human.

Here’s my main concern: fashion. Tech and fashion are like oil and water; they don’t naturally mix. Tech companies can’t just waltz into the fashion world and expect to be embraced. But on the other hand, fashion also can’t stay stagnant.

In this scenario I can see the race to pick your dance partner. Who will get Apple on board? Or just the other way around, who is going to land Armani or Louis Vuitton? I mean… who will get the most leverage in the deal, tech or fashion?

Maybe the solution is to let each industry do what it does best. Fashion brands have the design chops and market trust. Tech brings the innovation. One provides the tech, the other the style. It’s like what Fitbit did with Tory Burch, but on steroids.

Yet the big question remains: who’ll have the upper hand? Will tech companies dictate the terms, or will fashion brands? Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some universal standards that let you mix and match brands. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

The Problem with Wearables

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 00:00:00 GMT

But we need to look beyond the watch, because something amazing is about to happen that we might be overlooking: technology is entering a new area, a whole different space where other rules apply, fashion.

On the one hand, this is fantastic because every area technology touches is turned upside down, allowing for more innovation and evolution, and ultimately better experiences for the user. However, we may have overlooked some issues in this wearable technology trend.

As we mentioned earlier, the fashion industry has a set of rules that, in some ways, are immune to pure technology as we know it. While brands like Beats and Apple embody culture and trends in their products, the transition to wearable technology implies profound changes in the way we think about tech.

Fashion is subjective, differentiation, personality, uniqueness — values that do not share a common pattern. Fashion allows you to express yourself to the world, and sets you apart. This uniqueness is accentuated when we jump across different cultures, where fashion patterns are vastly different.

This is a significant challenge that tech has never encountered before. Desktop PCs never had these problems, but portable PCs and smartphones brought them into more open environments. Which also explains the raise of cases, sleeves, and add-ons for your phone. However, watches, clothes, accessories, and jewelry targeted by tech companies require a precise understanding of fashion to be appealing globally.

Tech companies are global and can’t imagine selling different products for each demographic and region. Product lines will become chaotic, and causing a great impression at a party is way more important than counting the number of steps taken so far.

Moreover, wearable things must fit different sizes because everyone is different. Fashion companies have been around for a while and have understood market dynamics to stay in business. They built a reputation and prestige, representing their products and intangible values that brands stand for.

It’s clear that technology is coming to wearables, and a watch might be the first step, but who knows what’s next. The key to mass adoption will be the understanding of fashion and trend. The products must speak to people in a way they’ve never done before in a fashion way.

In the next post, we’ll discuss how wearable technology could work out.

The Smartwatch

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Back in 2011, I bought a Garmin Forerunner 610 — my first GPS-enabled watch to track runs, hikes, and this kind of stuff. Among other reasons, one driver for my purchase decision was because it sported a touch screen display. Which was Garmin’s main selling for the device point at the time, something you wouldn’t find in other watches and I believed to be a killer feature.

After three years of heavy usage, I can assure you that the touch screen wasn’t a great product idea. The tiny display made the experience confusing because some gestures couldn’t be performed as intended. The touch-based interaction in such a small device wasn’t as remarkable as I thought it would be. Moreover, Garmin didn’t go all-in with the touch bet and kept its buttoned interaction as well, which made it even more confusing. It felt like the watch wanted to be somebody else, it lacked personality and empathy.

With that experience in mind, I started the hunt for a new watch. During those three years I remained fairly disconnected from new releases, but the first thing I noticed was how fast the wearable market had evolved. What I thought was simple research for a niche device — I wouldn’t consider a fitness watch to track runs a mass-market category — ended up being a discussion on how technology is getting closer to us.

After the smartphone wars — with technology getting personal — the race for bringing technology closer has just started. Right now, nobody has a clear answer of how it will settle, and we’re are at that exhilarating point of divergence where the market is coming at the problem from many different angles.

For example, some have agreed that the wrist could be a great place to put this device because we are so used to wear them. But even if that turns out to become the winner proposition, there are several other form-factor competing approaches: armbands, wrist trackers, rings…

The interesting thing though, now back to the Garmin, is that what initially seemed a niche category — the running watch — has an opportunity to become the “the facto” smartwatch form factor. Because on one hand, smartwatches are turning their attention to fitness tracking, but on the other hand, GPS-watches, are also adding lifestyle features to their lineup. The question is who will get there first.

The reason why I’m bullish on the GPS-watch route in the short term is that new smartwatches, as they are being presented to the market, are simply stuffing a full-fledged smartphone in your wrist. That reminded me of how Microsoft approached the mobile market during the pre-iPhone era — ignoring the full potential of the form-factor and the new possibilities it could enable.

Right now, these smartwatches feel like strapping a tiny smartphone screen in the wrist, and still have to deal with many unsolved problems: they are intrusive, with unfiltered notifications buzzing all the time; the battery doesn’t last long, putting an LCD screen on it, equals having to charge it every day; but also fashion, since getting closer to the body means you are navigating an area of aesthetics and subjectivity — where form might not follow function — that tech hadn’t dealt with before.

A wearable technology, in whatever form it comes, has to go beyond the smartphone. It has to reach the places the smartphone can’t. It has to take advantage of a closer position to the body, the sensorial capabilities, and its always-listening mode to enable a whole new set of experiences the smartphone simply can’t.

Leveraging the aforementioned capabilities, a wearable can come up with novel approaches to areas like health, connectivity, or accessibility. None of those are about buzzing your wrist every time you receive a message, maybe not even having a display.

For those reasons I don’t think smartwatches as we know them will become the norm. They feel misplaced the same way my Forerunner 610 did. Like any technology that is ready to take off, it will require early adopters to be excited — and neither the LG G Smartwatch nor the Samsung Gear Watch has anybody excited.

But on the other hand, some niche markets like running GPS watches can move an already existing community to adopt its technology differently — i.e. blending performance with activity tracking within a health frame. This way, what used to be a niche, maybe can mature and get some early adopters on board, driving awareness to the market.

Technology is getting closer, that’s inevitable. Yet we still haven’t found the edge that will make it thrive and take off as the smartphone did. To do that, we need to better understand what these devices are uniquely positioned to bring to the table. The problem we want to tackle, the job to be done that nothing but them can solve.

From mobile to web app

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Last week, we introduced the iomando Dashboard v1.0. It represented a significant advancement over our mobile app in terms of management features, which our customers had been requesting. Since its release, we’ve received a wealth of feedback, mainly questioning our decision to move away from mobile.

It’s intriguing, isn’t it? At a time when the whole industry is gravitating towards mobile-first strategies, we’re moving in the opposite direction. Yes, this is a deliberate strategy, and I’ll explain why we believe it’s the right choice.

Background

iomando was launched back in 2012. Prior to that, we explored various approaches to build a business around the technology we had developed. Although we pivoted towards a more product-focused approach, our primary target remained residential and small community markets, where we saw potential for less friction and faster growth.

When iomando was initially launched, it was targeted at small homeowners who prioritized comfort and ease of use over a wide range of features.

After a year of solid sales but limited market traction, we faced challenges in finding our niche in the market. This led us to reevaluate our strategy completely. We pondered over our unique advantage that set us apart from our competitors.

Thus, we shifted our focus to larger organizations where access control was a critical issue, putting our technology to work in scenarios where it could truly make an impact and solve real problems. Since this pivot, we’ve experienced accelerated growth and have dedicated all our efforts to building an exceptional service that redefines access systems for the mobile era.

We realized that scalability was our key strength — the ability to add units of capacity at no additional cost was unique to our product. This was an area where our competitors couldn’t match us. However, we were serving a market that didn’t fully leverage this advantage. It was like having a superpower that we weren’t using.

With this necessary historical context, we can begin to understand why certain decisions were essential to meet the expectations of our new customer base. Here are the three main reasons we transitioned from a mobile platform to a web app.

Professional management

Originally, iomando was designed for small homeowners who valued convenience over a wide array of features. The management tasks required were minimal, typically involving initial family activation and occasional use for guests.

This scenario was ideal for a mobile-first management tool, reducing complexity and encapsulating the entire experience within a single app.

However, as we began catering to large spaces with thousands of users and extensive use of permission assignment features, our new professional customer base required more robust tools than what a mobile app could offer.

Access managers sought data visualization, advanced customization, CRM integration, bulk editing, import/export capabilities, and more. Although we considered developing a new mobile app solely for management, we ultimately chose a web app for these purposes (more on that later).

As our company and customers evolved, the tools we initially had were no longer sufficient. Our customers now prioritized features over convenience, and a web app was the best solution.

Mobile app focus

Initially, the ratio of users who were also customers (thus utilizing the management features of the mobile app) was approximately 1:10. However, this ratio has now shifted dramatically, coming closer to 1:100 and is still increasing rapidly. Consequently, it didn’t seem logical to overload the app with features that less than 1% of the user base was utilizing.

The second point revolves around ensuring clarity for mobile users. As the user base expanded, customer support received an increasing number of calls. Contrary to the ideal scenario where a great service runs smoothly leading to everlasting customer satisfaction, the reality proved to be quite different.

We were inundated with emails and calls from users seeking guidance and clarification, stretching our capacity to respond to everyone. This challenge further justified our decision to simplify the app, focusing on doing one thing exceptionally well. Striving for simplicity and effectiveness, detaching the management capabilities from the app provided us the perfect opportunity to achieve this goal.

Our role evolved to resemble more of a web service provider than a mere end-client interface. Creating a distinct experience for the management tool allowed us to tailor and optimize both aspects (management and access) independently, addressing their inherently different requirements.

Evolving faster

The final reason for our transition to a web app was its inherent flexibility and the ability to rapidly iterate and customize the solution.

Our newer clientele, utilizing the management tool, expressed a desire for a more personalized experience, including adding their corporate branding and seamlessly integrating with third-party software they were already using. Our shift towards a more horizontal approach necessitated complete control over the solution. At times, we felt akin to a web service rather than just an end-client application, especially as we fully integrated with other applications serving as front-end interfaces for our clients.

This situation exemplifies the challenges I discussed in a previous article, where transitioning from a vertically integrated solution to a horizontal service provider led to less than ideal design choices, diminishing our overall value proposition.

In summary, the transition from a mobile to a web app was driven by multiple factors:

A demand from customers for more sophisticated, professional tools.
The need for independent optimization of distinct experiences (management and access).
The requirement for a modular approach and comprehensive customization, which was more feasible with a web app.
And, of course, the preference for a larger screen interface.

iomando Dashboard 1.0

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:00:00 GMT

When we introduced iomando v2.0 in April 2013, alongside a hardware update, we also launched a beta version of our management console. Initially, it was intended as a supplementary tool to the existing management features within the mobile app, which we have been enhancing since its launch. Over time, however, it has evolved into a standalone product.

We previously announced ambitious plans for the control panel nearly a year ago. However, the introduction of new product lines slightly delayed its deployment. Despite this, we are thrilled to announce that our control panel has now shed its beta status, rebuild as the iomando Dashboard, and is ready for release.

Web Based

The most significant update for the iomando Dashboard is its transition to a web-based platform, moving away from being a native mobile app. I’ve elaborated on this decision in an additional post, but the primary reasons for this shift are:

Our customers expressed a need for more professional tools, and we wanted to leverage a larger screen to maximize the potential of the iomando Dashboard.
The tasks related to access and management began to diverge significantly. To optimize each experience independently, we separated the management capabilities from the mobile app.
Our transition from a vertically integrated company to a horizontal service provider necessitated additional tools for integration with third-party services and for offering more customization options than a one-size-fits-all solution for end-users.

As a side note, starting December 1st, we will discontinue support for the mobile management tool, integrating all its features into the new iomando Dashboard.

Inside the iomando Dashboard

Upon logging in, the first thing you’ll notice in the iomando Dashboard is a comprehensive list of all your spaces. Selecting a space directs you to its Home section.

We’ve improved the navigation and enlarged the controls for better compatibility with touch interfaces and tablets like the iPad. The interface is intuitive, divided into four distinct sections:

Home
Access Control
User Management
Settings

Home

In the Home section, you’ll find a prominent map showing the location of your space, along with important data like active user count. We have significant plans for the Home section and are currently developing additional features and analytics, such as access frequency, open rates, and more.

Access Control

In the next tab, you have Access Control. This feature lists all the events that have occurred at each door, including a detailed log of user accesses, Door Status, and a ‘Back in Time’ capability, which allows the administrator to view the state of a door at any given moment.

Real-time, remote features such as User Management and Access Control set us apart in the industry, and have become a testament to the foresight of our past design choices.

User Management

The third tab is dedicated to User Management, the core area for management activities. In this section, we want to highlight two new features: Groups and New User.

Groups

Groups have become the fundamental unit for grouping users with the same access level. You can see all Groups listed in the left column. A Group is an entity within the space that shares specific parameters, meaning every user included in a Group automatically inherits its permissions.

Every Group shares these features:

Name.
Accesses: The administrator can set the Group’s available accesses.
Geofence: The administrator can also set the maximum distance from which group members are allowed to open doors.

For instance, an administrator might create a “Managers” Group with unlimited access throughout the building and no geofence restrictions. Conversely, for employees on the second floor, another Group could be created with access limited to second-floor doors and a geofence restriction of 100 meters.

New User

After creating a Group, the next step is to add users and set their time permissions. Adding users with the iomando Dashboard is more streamlined than ever. Simply navigate to the desired Group and tap ‘New User’. You can choose between basic and advanced modes.

Basic mode is incredibly straightforward. Just enter the user’s phone number to grant them 24/7 unlimited access. Given that over 54% of total activations on our platform are 24/7, a basic mode seemed essential.
Advanced mode, accessible with just a tap, unleashes the full capabilities of the iomando Dashboard. It enables the administrator to set restricted time frames, specific days, and even expiration dates for permissions.

So, to continue with the example above, you might use Basic mode for the Manager, granting unlimited 24/7 access. However, consider a new freelance employee on the 2nd floor who is only permitted to be present on Wednesday and Friday from 09:00 to 17:00. To set this up, simply activate the advanced mode, follow the steps, and you’re all set.

Settings

Finally, in Settings, we’re keeping things familiar for those who have used the Beta version. Here, you’ll find standard options like email, password, billing information, and other similar settings.

Final Word

The launch of the iomando Dashboard is a significant milestone for us. We always find joy in delivering new products to our customers, but this release has broader implications for our product team.

By separating the management tool and creating the iomando Dashboard, we can now independently address both aspects of the access experience — opening and managing. This separation enables us to innovate and refine each use case more effectively, free from the limitations we previously faced.

We are excited about what lies ahead for iomando. In the coming months, expect to see a lot more from us, as we dedicate our efforts to creating the best possible access experience for the mobile era.

Continuity

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Last week, I wrote a post exploring the possibilities of modularity and convergence in the search for the ultimate device. Unexpectedly, the team picked it up and it became the recurrent theme over several lunches at iomando. It also made me realize that I was probably missing the point by ignoring how the IoT could shape the tech landscape over the long run.

In this “round-two”, I’ll attempt to go beyond the ideas surfaced during our conversations, but first, let me extract the signal out of the lunchroom’s noise by giving you the executive summary and the right context to frame the upcoming paragraphs.

Despite synchronization and sharing data between devices has become easier than ever, multiple devices can still add undesired complexity. […] The minimalist in me wants to believe that, in a not so distant future, we might have multi-purpose devices that will outperform each task-specific device at any given job. A device that, no matter the task at hand, will always be the optimal choice.

There is beauty behind this idea of having one device to rule them all, however, with the advent of the IoT, they might be at risk of missing the point. In an uber-connected world, the war won’t be just about replacing devices. Instead, it might well be in their ability to transfer state and how “aware” they can become of their surroundings.

A month ago, during WWDC, Apple introduced Continuity. A step away from any modular or convergence trend. A bold statement around its conviction that each device exists to enable the best experience at any given situation.

I’m no fool though, I understand their incentives. At the end of the day, they want to sell more devices. Period. Yet I’ve heard so many times their execs emphasizing this idea of “not different devices, but unique experiences”, that one starts thinking that it might be something there worth exploring.

To put it in other words, their vision is that each device enables a certain experience. It solves a particular problem and outperforms a multi-purpose device in a way that the UX delta is worth paying for.

Regardless, in the same way, it is true that dedicated devices better suit each use case, it is also true that syncing and transferring state between devices is a problem that remains unsolved.

But going back to the IoT world. At iomando, we’ve been struggling for months with this idea of making our devices context-aware. How can we make our hardware seamlessly understand that you are actually “there”. How to convey an intention to a device that has no way to tell you apart or communicate back with other devices.

We are moving into a world with more devices, not less. A world swamped by a wide range of always-connected devices and sensors constantly generating data from its environment. The opportunity to create a new data layer that can network this new breadth of devices will become synergetic to a point we can’t even imagine. Unfortunately, nobody has figured this one out, and in my opinion, we are farther than we think we are.

That’s the reason why our team has been so inspired by Apple’s Continuity feature. If you can’t transfer the device, we might well be transferring its state. A first attempt in the direction of devices able “sense” each other and understand these transitions from one to another.

Again, Apple is not releasing features because we can do “more” stuff. They really thought about what problems could imply their way to address a multi-device environment and gave a clear and direct answer to that. They looked for the problem and then figured out a good solution, not the other way around.

So, until we are not able to deliver a device that can perform the best on several spaces (and for sure this time hasn’t arrived, yet) Continuity seems to me a great approach to managing data flows in a multi-device environment.

The Ultimate Device

Sun, 20 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMT

When it comes to devices and getting stuff done, it seems we’ve all come to a shared agreement that different form factors perform better under distinct use cases. Writing code remains exclusive to PCs, email on the go has become mobile, and tracking workouts belongs to the wearable category.

Despite synchronization and sharing data between devices has become easier than ever, multiple devices can still add undesired complexity. However, the tech industry disagrees. It has flooded the market with desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, e-readers, and all kinds of wearables. The fact that each one performs better than its siblings at any given task, seems to justify its existence.

The minimalist in me wants to believe that, in a not so distant future, we might have multi-purpose devices that will outperform each task-specific device at any given job. A device that, no matter the task at hand, will always be the optimal choice.

This is not science fiction though. Several attempts at this have already shown up in the market. Unfortunately, none has gained enough traction to be considered a commercial success. However, one can already spot two courses manufacturers are nearing the situation: modularity and convergence.

This article will explore and compare both approaches. Without jumping into any conclusion, it’ll attempt to answer some of the questions around the subject.

Modularity

The modular approach always involves a handful of pieces that combine themselves in a synergetic way to compose a better experience than the sum of its individual components.

They usually involve a smaller form factor, such as a smartphone, you can dock into other places to extend its capabilities. Smartphones’ computing power is growing exponentially, hence it makes sense to tap into this computing well and use it in other places.

Different approaches have already emerged around this idea of modularity:

Ubuntu for Android: this product was shown for the first time at MWC 2012. Since you most certainly already own a smartphone, why not use it to run a true desktop experience through a dock attached to a big screen? Your smartphone becomes the core engine of not just the mobile experience, but the desktop one.
Asus PadFone: sports a similar idea, though aiming to bridge a narrower gap in terms of usability. It assumes that both phone and tablet share the exact same internal components (processor, memory, camera, sensors… even OS), the only difference being the screen size.

Both products sprout from the same underlying idea, and both benefit from their docking stations when it comes to enhancing the core component capabilities. Upon docking, the peripherals can extend its batteries, supercharge its graphics card or add external memory.

However, a huge challenge still remains from a software standpoint. Since its hardware morphisms inevitably imply radically different user experiences, not just the apps, but the entire OS has to be prepared (and maintained) to accommodate the user intent. Managing these transitions and how the OS and apps behave depending on the use case can be a daring challenge and a potential threat to the modular approach.

Convergence

Another trend on the lookout for this ultimate device has become convergence. Instead of bundling several pieces together around a shared core, convergence creates entire new product categories that sit right in the middle of existing ones. The most prominent example being the phablet. The problem that convergence is trying to solve with the phablet is somehow akin to the PadFone’, yet the solution is radically different.

Phablet devices were intended to get the best of each form factor into a single device. A larger screen, but not too much, so you can still carry it around in your pocket. I’ve personally owned a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and, bear in mind this is a personal opinion, the best of both worlds turned out to be the worst of each. It wasn’t mobile enough to fit into my pocket comfortably, yet not big enough to watch a movie or read an ebook on it.

Other popular convergence product has been the Yota Phone. This product focused on getting the best out of two screen technologies into a single device. On one side, the main smartphone screen would remain an LED, which benefits from color and faster refresh rates. On the other, an e-ink screen would also be used as an e-reader, ala Kindle, but also to support notifications and convey status. Since the power required for displaying static information comes from free on e-ink, it looks like a good trade-off.

These are just two examples, but the convergence trend doesn’t stop here. I’d argue that it is currently bigger than its modular counterpart. Other manufacturers are capitalizing on convergence with different points of leverage, such as tablet and laptop. Its flagship example being the Microsoft Surface.

Software Obsoletion

These merges will eventually happen, it seems inevitable. We’ve seen it already with the smartphone inheriting features from other single-purpose devices such as the phone, the camera, the alarm clock, the music player, or the calculator.

One can’t help but consider if these trends will eventually happen on the hardware layer or instead, on the software layer. The smartphone didn’t “modularize” or “converge” with the camera. It just rendered the product obsolete and fully absorbed its capabilities from a software standpoint. Same with the phone, or the calculator, it turned a single-purpose device into an app living within the OS.

Again, one can’t help but consider if all these moves on the hardware layer are just reactive responses to push new product categories into an already saturated market, or they arise from a true customer need.

Iteration vs. Innovation

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMT

You can do anything, but not everything.

—— David Allen

The quote that inspires this post, not only has had a huge impact on many of my daily decisions, but it also depicts a lot of truth about today’s tech scene.

Right after Apple WWDC and Google I/O it’s becoming even clearer who’s dominating and leading in the world of tech. Apple and Google are directly competing with each other in a very aggressive market, but curiously they are approaching their endeavors from opposing viewpoints.

On one hand, Apple makes money by selling devices at a premium. They provide services too — and recently showed a lot of interest in them — but its revenue comes mainly from their hardware business. While Google, on the other, monetizes user data through advertising within their ecosystem of free services.

Here’s where things start getting interesting. They are stepping into others’ toes by competing in similar products, yet they do it in a completely different way — a very uncommon setup in technology that usually tends to converge in the long run.

For instance, Apple doubles down and derives as much value as possible from their devices — they use the cloud just as an add-on, and only when strictly necessary. Google, again, relies on their cloud engine and treats devices like thin clients, mere displays to deliver the content rendered by their powerful servers — which perform the heavy lifting.

Both try to crystalize their vision of how the building blocks of technology should be architected, but this is not the main difference when it comes to business strategy and vision. What caught my attention is the stark contrast of the long-term story both try to convey.

Nobody knows what these companies have in mind for the future. But it’s curious how Apple remains focused and private about its strategy. They sit on the biggest pile of cash any corporation has ever hold, yet you can put their entire product line on a desk. One doesn’t think of Apple as the company that will come up with a cure for cancer or sponsors a mission to Mars. The next thing you expect from them is an iPhone with a “bigger screen”. Probably the best smartphone you could buy, but far from the utterly grand tale Google sells to the world.

The search engine corporation started less than twenty years ago as an input text field where you could search on the Internet. Today a lot of people think of Google as simply the Internet. But setting apart this cliche and taking some perspective, Google wants to be perceived as something more profound. A Weyland Industries of sorts that is pushing the boundaries of humanity through technology.

Barely scratching the surface of what you’re “allowed” to see, Google is exploring so many daring problems at once, that few companies would have the courage to embark on a single one: ubiquitous Internet access, robots, healthcare and human aging, self-driving cars… and only God knows what’s currently happening at Google X. Yet getting back to the aforementioned quote: you can do anything, but not everything — not even if you are Google.

What I’ve been pondering lately is whether to achieve something truly remarkable, is it better to go with a portfolio approach, as Google does; or just focus on a handful of bets, dive deeper into those, to later capitalize on larger ventures.

The latter reminded me, for example, of the health market, arguably one of the largest in the world. Google has gone all-in with the daring challenge of curing death with Calico. That is a risky, binary bet, that will require to take over the entire market from the bottom up — it might work, it might not. On the other hand, Apple stands on the chance to gradually capitalize the opportunity by building an integrated ecosystem on top of their, already deployed, devices.

The iPhone is probably the most successful product we’ve seen in our lifetime. It seems that also some kind of wearable is in the works and it’ll be unveiled soon. Technology is getting closer and given the restless iteration Apple approaches its platforms and hardware, we can’t even imagine the services that will potentially flourish from such endeavor.

Given some recent critics over Apple stalling innovation — in stark contrast with Google’s shiny bursts on different markets — I’d argue that despite it looks like iterative models feel more static, they can potentially unlock greater opportunities in the long run.

Hard Choices

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been just a couple of months since we released the iomando API and we couldn’t be happier with its reception among developers. Beyond the four launching partners, we are already in advanced conversations with more than a dozen potential integrators that will roll out its product featuring the iomando API by the end of the year.

Along these lines, I wanted to share some thoughts about the unexpected consequences derived from the release of the iomando API. More precisely, the tensions that arise when you develop two products that are not perfectly aligned in their end goals.

The Problem

From the very beginning, we understood that releasing an API we were rooting for the creation of a platform where third-party developers could build on top of. A horizontal strategy of sorts. On the other hand, our core product is not chasing third-party developers, instead, it is looking to sell our “packaged solution” to an end customer. Here we’ve been pushing for a vertical strategy for almost two years.

Like it or not, pursuing both a horizontal and a vertical strategy at the same time will eventually cause some friction down the road. This is not a new thing. We’ve seen these dynamics play out countless times. Even well-established companies like Microsoft struggle when it comes to balancing priorities between its developer platform and products such as Windows.

We knew this one was coming. Nevertheless, we chose to turn a blind eye to the problem and hope for the best. Maybe the business gods had a different path prepared for us, one where horizontal and vertical can happily thrive together.

And from the outside, one might think: “what an ~~unprofessional~~ curious way to manage products you guys have at iomando…“. And you’d be absolutely right. Looking back this ranks among the poorest product decisions we’ve made so far because we agreed not to decide at all. But more on that later, let’s focus on the problem first.

How We Ended Up Here

During the last year, iomando was growing faster than we could have never imagined. Growth itself attracts new opportunities, some of them are good and worth pursuing, others will only distract the business. The iomando API came in as a new opportunity we could explore on top of our main business. It might have potential, but still unproven success.

The team liked the idea from the beginning and some customers were already showing their interest to implement it. The product was somehow selling before it was even built.

But the iomando API brought a misalignment with our core product. A recipe for losing focus. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not against coming up with new product ideas. At iomando, we do it all the time. It is the path to growth and also a synergetic strategy with existing products that will probably reinforce the overall value proposition. But tensions arise when such products are not strategically aligned with the overall company vision.

The Consequences of Not Choosing

Not deciding is a decision by itself. It means not only postponing a painful choice, but also setting yourself up for a path of sustained future suffering, and it is only going to get worse.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

—— Richard P. Feynman

By not making a choice, you can fool yourself by thinking that you just spared yourself a decision. But you just ignited a chain reaction that will follow you down the road.

However, if all this stuff is well understood, why don’t we choose in the first place and save ourselves from the future suffering? Well, I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve come to realize that when you are faced with an either/or choice, the most “human” thing to do is to keep both. Although that’s not choosing at all.

Choosing is hard. Because when you choose, you make decisions and expose yourself to be wrong. We are afraid of being wrong. We derive more pain from negative emotions than joy from positive ones. It’s an asymmetric reward mechanism, hence the default mode is to hold on and remain still.

Here is where the unexpected part kicks in.

As we mentioned earlier, once you’ve decided not to decide, you might have avoided a high dose of a “one-shot” pain. However, you just “subscribed” to a long term series of uncomfortable small cuts.

You have exchanged one-time, acute pain, for recurring suffering.

Because once the choosing moment has passed, more decisions will still need to be made. If you’d chosen to say “no” in the first place, your decisions would now be clear, and straightforward. Your incentives would be aligned.

Your choice could still have been either right or wrong. With the available information, there is no way to know. But at least the decisions you’ll face down the road would have aligned incentives. And when incentives are clear, decision making is rather easy.

But if you haven’t chosen in the first place, more decisions that need addressing will eventually come anyway. And here is when the recurring suffering comes into play: after a won’t-do-decision, whatever you decide next will certainly be wrong. Because your product goals won’t be no longer aligned, so decisions will revolve around suboptimal choices. You will be paying the price of not deciding.

Mistakes Will Be Made, But That’s OK

The next and final phase of the won’t-do-decision framework is paralysis. Not choosing is only about postponing decisions, remaining quiet rather than going forward.

Making decisions will expose us to failure. Mistakes will be made, but that’s OK. That’s good thing actually. Because it also means progress. If we break something… good, we’ll fix it. Then we’ll learn and grow as a team, as a company.

Don’t obsess about not making mistakes as we did. Mistakes are going to be made. Just don’t make it a habit. Try to avoid them, learn from them, but recognize that you’ll inevitably make some. If you are not making mistakes it’s because you are not trying something new. If you are really pushing the envelope you will bump into problems, hard choices will arise. But when your vision is clear and your incentives are aligned with the overall vision, making decisions will become rather easy.

iomando API

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Back in 2012, when we first launched iomando, we did it with a clear goal in mind: we wanted to create a better access experience through mobile technologies. The first step of such quest was to build a cloud-managed keyless access solution that runs on mobile devices. Which in plain English just meant opening doors using a phone.

And despite getting it wrong — not just once — and not knowing much what we were doing… we persisted. Slowly but surely we kept delivering on our promise to create a true accessibility platform for the mobile era.

As we’ve walked down this path, more and more, we believe that technology will redefine what it is possible with access control. But in order to fulfill this vision, we asked ourselves “what’s next for iomando” — beyond opening doors with a smartphone.

And the answer to this question is our boldest and most ambitious step since our foundation and what we believe will become the future of our company.

Today, we are introducing the iomando API, a licensing program that will allow developers to, create, build and integrate new products on top of our access technology.

What Is It?

The iomando API is the toolkit we’ve developed to allow developers to create, build and integrate new products upon our access technology. This means that if you want to create (or already have) a service that could somehow benefit from accessibility, you can now seamlessly integrate our access technology into your service. By integrating with the iomando API we’ll do the heavy lifting and handle all the access control operations behind the scenes so you can focus on your business — what you do best.

Moreover, as you will see later with our launching partners, we are also extending our API usage to third parties that want to develop full-fledged applications on top of our existing technology. For instance, if you have a great idea that revolves around access management, you will also be able to leverage all of our existing technology from the get-go and start building your product right away.

Why We Did It?

A few months ago, we realized that iomando performed at its best when operating at a large scale.

Despite our product works well in small places like houses or shops — because the underlying technology enables features that are simply not possible with old keys and remotes — we are not solving a “real problem” in these scenarios, we are a more convenient feature.

We struggled for a long time trying to figure out our true north — what problem we were ultimately solving. iomando’s core technology fits within a lot of different use cases, and while this might sound like a good thing, it has ~~distracted~~ persuaded us to be a jack of all trades, yet we ended up being master of none. The kind of mistake you can’t afford when you are starting up and one we learned the hard way.

iomando API realigns our vision with the core nature of our product and technology. It defines a new paradigm, and makes the scaling of the product faster, beyond our current salesforce capabilities.

From the very beginning, we knew we couldn’t fulfill this vision alone — under the operating framework of our business model. We are aiming for a huge change, and if we want to push iomando as never before, we are going to need a ton of help.

Here’s where the iomando API enters the game and the rationale behind its existence: instead of outcompeting everybody at their own game, maybe we need to choose wisely which battles we want to fight for — and join forces with others in the ones we decide not to, so they can flourish on an ecosystem fueled by iomando’s technology.

In tech parlance, we aim to build a platform. One where our API developers can integrate their services or create new products on top of our technology. Thus iterating and bringing them to the market faster, and ultimately focusing on what they do best, their business.

Who Is It For?

When you release tools intended for developers to create, you’d have a hard time predicting how the technology will end up being used. You might think you know, but developers’ creativity will always exceed your wildest expectations. This is precisely the beauty of an open platform, and also the reason why we are thrilled with the possibilities this API could unlock for so many industries.

That doesn’t mean we have no clue where our API will end up being used. After quite a while in the market, we did our homework and already spotted a few niches and potential integrators that could derive value from our new API.

From the get-go, we see two natural fits and use cases for iomando API:

Integration: this is a product or service not directly related to accessibility, that at some point, its development could benefit from accessibility-like features in one way or another. Under this use case, iomando API enters the picture as a feature that delivers value to the integrator existing application.
Custom development: for lack of a better name, custom development is an entirely new application built around iomando’s technology. It gives third-party developers — whose core business already revolves around accessibility — the possibility to build brand new services from the ground up, leveraging all our access technology and taking advantage of futures developments. Under this use case, developers are able to architecture entirely new lines of business and create growth opportunities for the organization.

To kickstart iomando API adoption, during its development we’ve been closely working with four companies (two integrators and two custom developments) that have already committed to rolling out their products featuring iomando API in the upcoming months.

Smartsea

Smartsea is a prominent Spanish startup that offers a service aimed to yacht clubs, recreational boat owners and harbor managers. On one hand, its app helps boat owners discover facilities, services and unlock all the leisure associated with yacht clubs upon arrival. On the other, it gives essential tools to admins in order to manage their facilities and provide a seamless experience to its visitors.

When the team at Smartsea heard about iomando API, they immediately recognized its potential in combination with their service as an integrator. On top of offering a wide range of features, such as paying for fuel or arrange a dock for a boat upon arrival, with iomando API their customers would be able to literally interact with the yacht club physical facilities.

Here’s when Smartsea meets iomando API, since it provides a way to natively integrate all the yacht club accesses within their app. When a boat owner arrives at the harbor, on top of all the Smartsea features, she also has full control over the accesses right from her smartphone.

Apparcando

Here’s another example of playbook integration, one that also makes us feel nostalgic. Not only because Apparcando is an awarded startup and part of the prestigious acceleration program Lanzadera, but because of what they do.

Apparcando is a service that enables their users to share and monetize their private parking spaces while they are away, working or on vacation, sounds familiar?

If it does, it is because this was precisely our original idea for iomando, the one we deprecated because our customers were more interested in the mobile-based access control technology.

Maybe we entered the market too early, maybe we didn’t know how to deploy such an ambitious project. No matter what, more than two years have passed, and the market seems to have evolved a lot since: the park-sharing era might have come.

Apparcando is not in the business of making hardware to open doors — and that might be the reason they end up being successful. They focus on creating a peer-to-peer marketplace for private parking spaces.

Yet they struggle when it comes to sharing the spaces themselves. Their users have to meet in advance, in person, share keys… a painful process that is neither comfortable for the user nor scalable for the business. Both their growth and customer experience are suffering because of that.

With iomando API integrated within the Apparcando app, their users can share and access parking spaces on demand — just for the time they are granted permissions. Moreover, the entire process is performed transparently in the background, so the only thing their users have to do is select a space, hit open and safely park their cars.

UP3

After these two examples of integrators, let’s move on to the custom development use cases.

The first one is UP3, a door manufacturer based in Spain. They excel in the designing, manufacturing, and distribution of tailor-made aluminum and glass doors for retail applications.

Despite their outstanding craftsmanship, door manufacturing remains a really competitive business. The crowded space has driven margins down to a point that the product has almost been commoditized. UP3 is struggling with an army of no-name competitors trying to outcompete their products with lower-quality devices that solely differentiate on price.

Because of this, UP3, a company that relies on great design and craftsmanship as the main value proposition for their product, has decided to seek another differentiation route in order to break out from this race to the bottom. They have trusted in iomando API to build their own mobile-first accessibility application for their customers to use.

During the time we spent with them helping set up their own custom app, they admitted they tried to create such service on their own in the past. Yet they repeatedly failed because of their lack of knowledge building software solutions.

They know how to manufacture outstanding doors and automatisms, but not mobile applications. iomando API gave them all the tools they needed to develop and deploy a service that integrated with their doors out of the box.

Terraminium

Finally, the last use case of custom development is Terraminium: the largest real estate service provider in Spain, with more than forty thousand properties under management — including parking, buildings, residential areas etc. Like UP3, Terraminium is also competing in a tough environment.

Recently, a new breed of digital-first competitors entered the space, aggressively targeting Terraminium’s with impossibly low fees. Because of that, Terraminium was looking for new growth opportunities and new services to offer to their existing customer base, in order to increase retention rates and LTV across the board.

Long story short, they used the iomando API to build a brand new digital product that allowed their existing customers not only to manage several aspects of their properties but to gain full control over the accessibility. A step ahead from its competition and a unique offering their current competitors simply couldn’t match.

Final Word

When we started iomando, we could have not foreseen this development path for our product. Yet when it all got started, we didn’t fully comprehend the true nature of “the creature” we brought to the market. As the company has evolved, though, some unknowns started to reveal themselves and signaled the marks of the future path that was still ahead of us.

At iomando, we truly care about creating an amazing experience out of access control systems — one that can touch as many people as possible. We can’t think of a better enabler for this vision than the iomando API, tapping on our most valuable asset, our technology, and letting other companies build on top of it.

This way iomando will reach places previously unavailable: yacht clubs across the world, thanks to Smartsea; the retail market, thanks to UP3; thousands of new properties and buildings, thanks to Terraminium; and last but not least, fulfilling our original vision of sharing private parking spaces, thanks to Apparcando.

We believe our product shines the most at scale, and we see in iomando API the best tool to get there. We can’t wait to see what products developers will come up with and all the innovation this will bring to iomando’s ecosystem.

Changing Behavior

Sat, 12 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT

One of the toughest issues to deal with when starting a company is that nobody knows you. While obvious, its implications span beyond what most people think. It is also something difficult to acknowledge from the inside since it usually goes unnoticed amongst the team due to its availability bias. They are spending an insane amount of time working on it, thus creating a huge perception asymmetry between you and the rest of the world.

Ultimately this can lead to poor product decisions based on what you believed to be true, rather than what the rest of the world actually knows or thinks about your product — which tends to be approximately close to nothing.

This idea is not a binary subject, though. For instance, if your product is a direct substitute for something your user has already been using for a long time, you are mostly dealing with the problem of awareness.

Communicating the product’s value prop, its uniqueness, and why the prospect should care, might be enough for your niche to get started. Don’t get me wrong, standing out from the crowd is not an easy endeavor, but at least the battle for “why I need this product in the first place” has already been fought.

If your product is good enough to substitute the one they’ve been using, the moment you get the chance to deliver on their expectations you’ll have higher possibilities that your customer sticks to it.

This is not what happens at iomando.

It is true that we aim to substitute something that already exists, such as keys and remotes. But we do it in an entirely different fashion — the awareness battle still awaits us. The main problem we face is that our potential customers don’t know that opening doors with a phone is even something they can do.

On top of the awareness problem and the fact that nobody knows our company, we have to layer the fact that most people don’t realize that what we do is even possible.

Therefore in order to bring in new customers, we needed to execute in three areas.

Create awareness so our name resonates within the market.
Explain that opening a door with a phone is possible.
Deliver a great experience, so the moment they try the service, they don’t want to ever look back.

Getting the attention of potential customers, especially at the beginning, can be tricky. This is a problem all new companies will eventually face, but on the other hand, the Internet is surfacing a plethora of new niches that were not available before — making it easier for vertical products to capture.

The catch, of course: mastering a certain niche is getting more and more expensive, thus you have to balance how hard it is to own it versus how big it is the opportunity behind the niche.

Ben Thompson nailed the idea in his weekly article about P&G and its strategy shift:

I think that means the opposite is the case for smaller players: the Internet may be noisy, but it also makes it possible to identify and reach niches that were previously too hard to segment or reach at a scale great enough to support a business. As I wrote last week, independent app developers ought to pursue a niche strategy, but so should writers, musicians, and even CPG startups.

Another related misconception I wanted to tackle is the idea that coming up with a “brand new” product or service that has no prior matched behavior gets you the blessing of having no competitors.

In my experience, having no competitors doesn’t help either — and I’d even argue it is not a good thing.

First of all, the world is big enough that if nobody is also exploring the same space, I would worry whether the opportunity you’re pursuing has value at all.
Second, creating awareness alone is a bad place to be. Competitors will definitely help you heat up the place — when the market is not yet saturated.

In other words, nobody dies from competition in the early days. The opportunity remains huge so it won’t be “them” the ones lowering your prospects of success. For the reasons stated above, even a big player entering your space is good news, because it has recognized you market as a good business opportunity and it will also bring attention to the niche.

For instance, some people at iomando thought we were doomed when Apple released HomeKit — yet that very week, we saw — by far — the highest amount visits hitting our website and also scored a 15% increase in sales MoM.

What HomeKit did for startups in the space of the Internet of Things (and specifically related to appliances and utilities) was to light up the entire market and show the world this is an important category everybody should be paying attention in the future.

The takeaway would go along the lines of whenever you launch a new product, ensure the category is well understood and maps to existing customer behaviors, otherwise, you’ll have to also fight the battle of explaining that the thing your product does is even possible. On top of that, keep in mind that given your product retains a unique edge, competition is not bad, but encouraged.

As a final remark — related to taking new ventures off the ground — I wanted to mention that during the building of iomando we’ve also come to realize the importance of retention at a deeper level. Not retention in terms of LTV, or the fact that once the customer gives you an opportunity, you have to deliver a great experience. That’s mostly a given. If you don’t, then all the efforts to bring the customer to your door render themselves worthless.

What we’ve noticed is more about how to engineer retention in a way that is strategically built into the product. For instance, these days we see a lot of products trying to keep you engaged by sending timely notifications, emails, messages… Push after push, they are trying to reshape your habits so you can make some room and fit their product in.

iomando is different in this regard, because (once the battles of awareness are settled) its value does not rely on a “newly acquired behavior”, but something you “have to do” you like it or not: opening doors.

Once the users have installed the app, they will be coming back by themselves any time they need to access the place. In other words, the need for our product comes from an intrinsic motivator, rather than an external one. Of course we have to deliver value — otherwise, users will fall back to their keys and remotes. But we don’t need to remind them about its use case since it is already ingrained within a social or behavioral construct.

Turning Weaknesses Around

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The opinion that hardware-based businesses don’t scale is widely accepted at this point in time.

Our product contains a hardware component that requires installation in order to work. Doors don’t speak the same language as phones do, so we need to plug a little device into the door’s electronics in order to bridge this gap.

Yet what sounds easy on paper, if you have ever dealt with your door’s electronics board you already know it is not a pleasant experience. That’s the ultimate reason we intentionally hid this process from the user as much as we could and relied on a network of partners.

We are aware that this decision implicitly constrains our growth to the point that we are somehow dependent on their capacity to handle new installations and ours to expand such network. Yet I’d argue that the benefits of delightful customer experiences in terms of retention, quickly outweighs the price we have to pay for slower growth.

Growth

The fact that each sale comes associated with a slow installation might strike the startup crowd as the wrong way to approach business.

And while it is true that we can’t grow virally as some other digital products do, it is also true that our retention rates are usually higher.

Once iomando has been installed, we just need to prove that we are more convenient than a key, then people use it. Not because our product is better than your typical marketing SAAS, but because we cover a transactional necessity — which is going in and out of places — people have to deal with anyway.

On the other hand, a harder sale also means a longer relationship with the customer.

We acknowledge that our service is not “a click away”. But the chances of retaining the customer are also much, much higher. Once the hardware is installed, it becomes a zero-sum game. If you use our service, you are certainly not using our competitors’. Because of this, once the sale is done, you are more likely to stay and retain your customer for a longer period of time.

Finally, I’d argue that it is easier to monetize atoms than bits.

When it comes to paying, people have a hard time with intangible assets, like an app. I don’t have data on the matter, but I’m under the impression that the fact that you are getting “something” in return for your money makes you more confident with the exchange. Because the app is “just” the support function of the service, then paying for the whole pack becomes easier.

It is obvious that delivering pieces of hardware holds our growth back compared to a software-based shop, but it is also true that the hardware helps us monetize and retain our customers for a longer period of time.

Hardware is one of the main reasons we need to rely on installation services. But unlike the hardware itself, the installation process didn’t prove itself to be a competitive advantage, or at least, that’s what I thought.

Turning Weaknesses Around

Since the very beginning, we were concerned with the installation process. It was by far the most relevant “W” in the SWAT page of our business plan, and we had a hard time arguing back the potential benefits to both customers and investors.

Conversations in our offices revolted solely around the idea of “if only we could make it auto-installable people would buy it directly from our website or impulsively from retail stores”.

To the point that we worked obsessively and invested more than we’d like to admit to an auto-installable solution. And while we certainly removed a lot of friction from the process, we failed to deliver an auto-installable solution to the market.

But someday, a friend of mine (and one of the smartest person I know) made me realize one of those small pieces of evidence that have been there all the time, but somehow you haven’t been able to see. An elephant in the room of sorts.

If you couldn’t do it, with all the effort you poured into it, maybe it can’t be done at all. And that’s a good thing because nobody will be able to do it, either. So instead of looking at it as a problem, think of it as an opportunity.

And he was absolutely right. Each of our competitors faced this exact problem, so we were gifted with the opportunity to turn this problem around and transform it into a delightful experience. He might be stating the obvious, but it was something no one had ever thought before.

So we diverted all the resources we were pouring into the auto-installable unicorn and allocated them into building an amazing installation service, one you can’t forget of.

Simple things like these made all the difference and surprisingly, we didn’t think of before:

Started to handpick our distributors and rolling out a quality assurance program to unify the experience across the board.
Created the “iomando official partner” program, an engagement program for installers who wanted to distribute and invest in the product.
Developed a specific training program to directly teach our installers and give them great resources and materials.
Designed a step by step guide of what it was like to buy our service, from the first call to follow up visits. We actually build it going ourselves through each stage of the process in different locations of the country.

With a huge focus on making the installation process into a great experience, we turned what we thought it was a weakness into something our customers loved. Because at the end of the day, we were freeing our customers from reading the manuals, dealing with the crappy door electronics and all those things you want to avoid. In their minds, iomando just works.

Because sometimes you obsess over something and get stuck, frustrated. You are dealt option 1 and 2, but never wonder if option 3 even exists. Yet maybe is not a matter of digging a deeper and deeper hole, sometimes you need to just go, and start digging in another place.

Plastic For Bits

Sun, 16 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMT

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the two-layered business model iomando was simultaneously operating, and how this strategy was designed to make the most out of iomando’s uniqueness.

Rereading the thing I feel like I tried to get too many points across and bundle way more information than a single 1000-word post could handle.

Yet it uncovered something worth emphasizing.

It may not be a marketable feature, nor something our customers can explicitly articulate — I don’t think they are “buying us” because of this. But it is definitely the underlying driver that has enabled our product so far.

Our sales pitch has always been packed with words like security, cost-reduction, control, management, ease of use, even how cool it is. But you seldom hear the ultimate cause, the reason why all of this is even possible.

We are replacing plastic for bits.

That’s all there is, it is as simple as it sounds. Our entire business thrives under this premise. Everything else is just a consequence of this underlying principle. It may seem like such an obvious, subtle detail, but it makes all the difference.

While our competitors are manufacturing and distributing physical keys and remotes, we are just sending ones and zeros through the air.

Atoms cost money per additional unit of capacity, but bits do not.

When it comes to producing anything, there will always be some fixed costs. That is machinery to manufacture a physical good, or a bunch of software developers if your product is an app, whatever.

But when it comes to scale and replicate “the thing” over and over, the software shows its strengths. In our case, adding additional units of capacity to our service has virtually no cost. Each new permission equals an app download, it is not physical, thus it has no cost.

In stark contrast, each time an admin had to grant a physical key, a huge logistic chain had to be deployed in order to make that happen. This meant resources, complexity, friction, problems, and ultimately, money.

On the other hand, being able to replicate additional software keys at no marginal cost means we can deploy our service on a larger scale without skyrocketing operational costs. And this has huge implications because we can serve large organizations with thousands of users at a fraction of what they were used to pay.

The larger the opportunity, the bigger our customer’s savings.

Moving atoms around is expensive, but bits are not.

Being software-based, we are able to automatically deliver and set up all the customer’s permissions instantaneously at no cost. Imagine a spot with thousands of users — a public facility for instance. Now imagine what happens when its council has to grant keys or remotes to every user. It is madness.

The first problem, again, is cost. But even if you are past cost issues, an inevitably and arguably worse problem still awaits: distribution and management.

Deploying thousands of physical devices through a massive disorganized crowd requires a massive, coordinated effort. Pick up or deliver each key, track who has one, be aware that nobody makes a copy… the list goes on and on and it is a nightmare for the teams in charge of access management.

That’s because moving atoms around costs money and time. But software can be quietly delivered, in the background, instantaneously. iomando is able to handle massive deliveries at no cost at all. Yet again, more savings and fewer problems.

On top of that, if those weren’t enough reasons, software is malleable in a way hardware is not. Once it is delivered, it can be modified, updated, improved. Possibilities that their physical counterparts would never match. It is not a matter of business, it is a matter of physics. And I would never bet against physics.

Every single feature that our customers love is a — more or less direct —consequence of this: bits enable additional creation and delivery for free.

That’s what software does by definition, it enables and reaps the benefits of scale.

And this is how we are leveraging it to change the way access management systems work.

Double-Edged Business Model

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Investors looking for new deals ask a lot of questions. A never-ending list ranging from an exhaustive, technical audit of the business to the most mundane morale and relationship’s health of the founders.

There’s one question though, one they always ask, that keeps me awake at night.

How do you protect your business from other competitors, or in startup parlance, what’s the unique trait about your business that makes you the most likely to succeed.

The reason why, for a long time, I’ve struggled to answer this question is that I’ve been framing it wrong. As an engineer by trade, when it comes to protection, I’ve always thought of the technology as the solution that would eventually fix it all: understand the problem better than your competitor, build a great product and “they will come”.

This assumption, I’ve learned, is perfectly flawed.

It presumes an ideal scenario where the product or the technology is not constrained by any other factor, it is all there is. Yet constraints are all over the place. Protecting a business exclusively with technology might be possible to an extent — especially in the early stages — but definitely not in the long run.

When investors ask for defensibility they are implicitly asking for an “unfair advantage” — what do you know that others don’t. They are trying to asses whether you have already studied the end game.

Each time I was asked along these lines I started to ramble around technology, only interrupted a few seconds later with the inevitable “so anyone could do it, right?” — they were not expecting a technical answer.

Again, I had a hard time making my head around this one and only learned it the hard way.

Technology is not an end by itself. It should be rather the support function for something bigger: the business model. Only when business model and technology work together towards a certain vision, incentives are aligned.

Easier said than done though. There are many factors at play, but the creativity required to come up with a unique, innovative business model usually derives either from being an insider or naive enough not to know what you’re doing. Outsmart any given market is not an easy endeavor if you don’t fully understand its in and outs beforehand.

Bringing the conversation back to iomando, we chose the latter, the naive route. We entered the access control market with a new technology assuming that “everybody’s wrong, but we know how this should be done“.

Of course, we knew nothing.

We built a product for a market that we recreated in our minds. We didn’t consider how the market was shaped, and we were confident our product would just fit “out of the box”.

The way out of this situation was to distill the core nature of our product, find something unique, and leverage it in order to create something our competitors could not replicate.

iomando’s uniqueness was its software-based nature — within a traditionally hardware-based industry. This characteristic both defined and limited us when it came to delivering on our value proposition. But still, it was the best shot we had to lay out the foundation upon which to build a sustainable business model.

We also had to account for how our sales channels already operated: distributors were still the gateway to reach small, disaggregated customers. Yet they weren’t used to work with software. They understood and were incentivized by markup over sales, not future subscription revenues.

Our distributors didn’t speak LTV. They spoke installation cost, that was their bread and butter and what their customers were used to pay for. Thus we had to create a model for iomando that fit their expectations and the way they were used to do business.

We course corrected and split our hardware and software operations. We let installers play their own rules and manage the hardware side of the business — alongside the customer service relationship.

This way distributors benefited from a huge markup on every sale, which included the electronic unit plus the installation. This is the way this industry has operated since forever, and this is the way iomando makes some room for itself.

And here comes the best part: regardless of how the sale was managed, iomando remains a software-based solution.

This means that we could deliberately sell the electronic unit at a cost — because we would get our share from the subscriptions — passing down all the margin to the partners. Our distributors were highly incentivized to sell our product because it came with far more revenue associated than usual.

This is why iomando features a double-sided business model that incentivizes each step of the chain:

Classic markup model for distributors running on the bottom.
SAAS business managed by iomando, which is high margin, recurrent, and potentially expandable with new offerings.

Every time a distributor installs a device, the device automatically connects to the internet and ties back the customer to our service. This is what enables our customer to make use of the cloud-based service and the mobile apps. The customer is ours, and so is the possibility to deliver a great service and earn a subscription service that could endure for a long time.

But it is also risky. If we wouldn’t deliver a great experience, the customer could cancel the service at any time. And while our installer “doesn’t care” because she has already cashed out the sale, we could be left out with nothing but a couple of subscription payments.

Therefore we are also extremely incentivized to deliver a great service because keeping one customer is worth the same than acquiring a new one.

The doubled-edged model — that both incentivize distributors to push our hardware and keeps us working on delivering the best product — is our way to align our strengths with our business model. And, ultimately, the story we tell investors every time they ask for that question.

iomando Door Status

Sun, 23 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This post was originally published on November 2013 on the official iomando blog and it announced the first major update of our product.

A few months ago, the introduction of our last major product release, iomando 2.0, brought along, among other features, a redesigned interface, passwordless login, support for multiple doors, and location-based permissions.

Right after the release, we launched a minor update that also brought the praised ability to instantly push and sync changes to mobile devices.

There was yet another feature though, that was appointed for 2.0 release, and we had in mind from the very beginning. Unfortunately, we didn’t deliver on time because there were some technical problems we couldn’t get our heads around.

After almost six months, today we are introducing Door Status: a new technology that will allow every admin to check, at any given moment, in real time, their door status.

Door Status is the logical extension of having each door connected to the Internet and the first feature of a new class of services, beyond opening doors, that we will be rolling out in the next months.

SAAS At Its Best

At that point, you might be wondering how come iomando knows whether the door is opened or not since we haven’t installed an additional sensor in there.

And you’d be right: checking the door status is definitely dependent on a hardware thing. Not the kind of update you wake up within the morning and “it just works”.

Fortunately, Door Status is something we had in mind since we started sketching iomando 2.0, so in a way, we already thought about that.

Alongside iomando 2.0 we also introduced a new hardware and the commitment to update all our existing customers’ units, at no additional charge.

Since April, we’ve completely updated every single deployed device, thus all of our customers’ doors are already running on the latest hardware — this is huge, a massive operational effort coordinated across all our national partners.

Ultimately this is why we believe SAAS models are superior when it comes to delivering the best customer experience because this kind of operations wouldn’t just be possible under “one-shot” payments.

Door Status

Ok, so SAAS is cool and everybody’s on the latest hardware version, great, but what this has to do with Door Status?

Glad you asked, because the new version of iomando’s electronic units are already equipped with everything you need to start using Door Status.

This means that in order to enable Door Status in your access we will need to install the sensors, but no new electronic unit will be required.

Then the next steps: your iomando installer will bring to your place the sensors required to enable Door Status technology. The is really easy, some early beta testers that have already been testing it, report that they can be installed in less than 10 minutes.

In other words, you don’t need to do anything at all: your installer will reach out to schedule an appointment for the installation.

Overcoming Focus

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The underdog can’t afford to fight several wars at a time, but it can certainly win the one that matters most. In order to do that, focus becomes an important tool. Any effort or investment not pointing to the right direction should be immediately dismissed. Focus means ruthless optimization, insatiable obsession, narrow execution, and going beyond where no other human has been before.

It all looks good on paper, yet reality tells a whole different story. In this article I’ll relate my personal struggles with focus at iomando. Because as much as I understand and love the idea of focus, when you find yourself in the context of a growing company, the lines become blurrier than the success stories you read on TechCrunch every now and then.

Empty Space

When we first launched iomando, back in early 2012, our offering was truly unique. There was nothing like iomando. On one hand, you might think that’s great since we faced no competition. Truth is though, because of the lack of market structure, we were conflicted in two ways.

The lack of competitors worried us because we thought we might have entered a market where there was nothing worth fighting for.
Creating awareness for the product became a really difficult endeavor. Since our product required to change the user behavior, our first step, even before the sale, was to let people know that opening your door from the phone was a thing, that it was even possible.

The problem though, cut both ways.

The market was literally empty and we could start wherever we wanted. We had the first mover advantage, but we were also walking a path nobody had walked before, exposing our steps for others to learn. On top of that, making a decision meant opportunity cost — or a mistake we might not be able to recover from given our early stage.

We were afraid of making a decision in the dark.

Our reaction to that was to simultaneously explore several options. Since our product was unique in the market, most of our customers were satisfied with the small delta of improvement we offered. The first consequence of the combination of a market with plenty of empty space and the activation of several channels at a time is, inevitably, growth.

As a result, we set the focus problem aside, pretending it didn’t exist, in order to postpone the decision. Money kept coming in from our different sales channels and it is truly difficult to say “no” to money when you’re starting out — even in small amounts.

Our sales were growing, but the diversity of our customer base was growing even at a faster pace; and that was a bad thing. They keep asking new features — that our competitors that actually made a market decision were already offering — but we couldn’t keep up with all the requests coming in from such a vastly different range of customers.

Looking back, this ultimately led to one of the biggest mistakes we’ve ever made at iomando. It was one of those situations where everything seemed “so far so good” and by the time we realized something was broken, it was already to late. It reminded me of Hemingway’s quote:

How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

To recap, on one hand, our customer grew more sophisticated and wanted more features, but since our customer base was abnormally diverse because we wanted to be everything to everybody, we couldn’t keep up with their requests.

On the other, more and more competitors started popping up with optimized solutions for certain verticals. Unlike ourselves, they saw the first mover mistakes and could learn a lot from ~~our~~ its errors.

Then product management became a nightmare because it was impossible to maintain a healthy balance among all the use cases. For instance, an admin of a city council had a totally different set of problems than a homeowner or a small retail might have. All of them used our product because we were afraid say “no”, but we just opted in for a bigger problem down the road.

Yet it got worse. Tensions started to pop up everywhere across the company: sales blamed development teams because they weren’t delivering and our competitors were advancing faster than we did. Development blamed management because we were not communicating a clear strategy. Investors blamed all of us because churn was increasing and sales were stalling. We were going through an all-time low at iomando, and we were all suffering because of this.

We were overspending in product development, because we needed to keep up with a dozen, more optimized, competitors. Each of them had mastered one layer of the market, and we had to compete against everybody in its own terms.

Marketing and sales strategy was confusing, we weren’t able to craft a targeted message that resonated with an audience, because our audience was diverse, granular and scattered all over the place.

Yet worse, we couldn’t get to deeply understand our customers because we were spreading ourselves too thin. Consequently, we were running out of money faster than we could have ever imagined.

And this inevitably led to the next big problem.

The SMB Disease

Paraphrasing, the playbook says that a startup is able to grow in a harsh, saturated environment because it serves a narrow subset of the market with an optimized approach that an incumbent can’t match. From there, VC money helps accelerate growth and capture value from adjacent verticals and competitors have a hard time keeping up.

While there is money in the bank, you can stay true to the initial plan, despite the current returns might be unsustainable in the long term. The money in the bank (among other things) buys you time to keep at it, stay focused and eventually come up successful.

But when something doesn’t go according to the plan, and eventually start to run out of money without compelling metrics, you find yourself in a really bad position. I call this situation the SMB disease, when the entire company has to turn on the survival mode. Instinctively, the first measure is to cut expenses all around the place in order to become cash flow positive as soon as possible and auto sustain the business. From there, start growing organically until the company recovers the strengths to fly high again.

But the SMB disease is a bad place to be, because the remedy to the short term is usually the precursor of greater problems in the future.

Cutting expenses means focusing on tomorrow, not on the long term. Paradoxically this means not being able to execute a long-term strategy, because all the money is good money and thus you should say yes to everybody. Then keeping your burn rate low means under spending in product development, while you get tangled again in the aforementioned problem with your customers pulling from every direction.

The worst part though, is that while organic growth is healthy, it’s usually not enough to keep up with your competitors and your own survival is always shadowed under a lot of uncertainty, which creates a lot of strain within the company.

Beyond Focus

I won’t claim to have the solution to the problem. iomando got out of this self-destructing path almost by chance and necessity. Because at the end of the day, we all get focus, on paper. The problem is not focus itself, but carrying on with all of its consequences.

Sometimes, focus comes at a cost, and if you don’t plan for focus from the beginning you’ll eventually find yourself in a spot where focus is almost impossible to regain.

That being said, both in business and personal life, focus is a great value to hold onto. So the next time I’m presented with a choice I’ll make sure to say “no” before it is already too late.

A Fly On The Wall

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT

An unpredictable working schedule, it is usually not compatible with sitting next to the stereo, timely, when a radio show is broadcasted. Yet, I wanted to stay up to date with the live radio shows I loved.

This is how the first show popped up in my podcast player.

Next, I tapped the “Discover” tab. An entire universe opened up. An open buffet of all the shows were listed there. First, I started following more live radio shows I already liked, but on-demand. The shift to the listening pattern somehow reminded me of how Netflix made it easy to watch TV shows on-demand, but for radio.

However, as I discovered more and more shows, the whole idea of podcasting transitioned from a mere tool to listen to stuff I couldn’t catch, to an entire content platform to discover great content.

But more importantly, it was the moment I started listening to the ones “made for the medium” — not just the rebroadcasting of live shows — when the thing clicked. The “aha moment” of sorts.

But wait, why is that?

First, the audio-only medium. Despite I keep stumbling upon articles preaching about the death of radio — and how a more enriched mediums will replace it — I still have faith in its future.

The “pessimist” rationale makes sense from a feature-only perspective: video signals a leap forward from a pure technological standpoint because it adds a new dimension layer to the communication channel.

Fortunately, more does not always mean better. It is not all about content depth, but more factors play out a critical role that makes the experience nothing like TV.

Incomplete, in a good way: the fact that you aren’t able to see the show, forces you to imagine and recreate the story — like when reading a book.
Comes with you: removing one layer of depth to the medium also makes it easier to store and play. Therefore, the player itself comes with you wherever you are and the listening experience, more flexible overall.
Passive experience: unlike video — that demands all your attention — audio can fade and become part of the background. This makes it the perfect companion for semi-distracted activities such as walking, cooking, or driving. Opening more opportunities to engage and expanding the listening time available.

And last but not least, the intimacy, the immersion, the magic. When you combine a passive experience — plugged directly into your ears — with accurately handpicked content you identify with, you melt with the experience. An immersive experience that I’m not feeling with other mediums, in a way, you are almost there, joining the host.

There is a little confirmation bias here. But the point is that, somehow, podcasts give anybody the “superpower” to mutate and become a fly on the wall at any conversation you would like to be part of.

For example, I love founder histories. I relate to them because I’m living through it. One way to “fulfill the need” would be attending to Meetups. Listening to other’s struggles and experiences about how they got started or the challenges they faced.

Now imagine having this power, the possibility to join any founder story (or whatever you like) around the world, on demand, waiting for you, right in your pocket to be listened to.

To wrap it up, I wanted to take a moment and celebrate all the inspiring minds and talented folks that make this ecosystem happen, thrive, and contribute to it. Otherwise, without them, podcasting would stay just a static, on-demand catalogue of radio shows. Some sort of PDF file for a digital newspaper.

Discovering As You Go

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Two years ago we — accidentally — built a technology we thought we could turn into a product. By that time, we didn’t know some of the basic stuff, such as great products are all about identifying real problems. More important, that you have to really understand the problem before you even write the first line of code.

Curiously, iomando was — unintentionally — designed the other way around.

Our first approach to the market was directed to solve a problem that turned out nobody had. The fact of being wrong was a tough lesson at the time, but it wasn’t a defeat in itself. The process helped us become “experts” in the field, which unveiled new opportunities we would exploit later on. Such opportunities were simply not available before, because we didn’t understand the market well enough.

As I see it, the process of industry or field discovery is like visiting a new country for the first time. It makes sense over time, as you go. Stepping onto small things, friction, little details, that surprises and changes you in ways you couldn’t expect. Then they start compounding. They ignite a chain reaction that builds upon and connects previously acquired knowledge, forming a new paradigm.

This is exactly how I think about our journey with iomando, as an Age Of Empires map. Initially black, full of unknowns, slowly but surely revealing itself as you advance, at the right time.

As we advanced we became more self-aware of the implications our technology truly had. Tiny details we didn’t notice before but soon articulated really powerful ideas. I put it better in an interview last week for a local radio when asked about “how we decide what to build next”.

iomando provides an access solution based on mobile technologies. The same things you do with keys or remotes — like opening doors or fences — but instead, using your smartphone. It is that simple. Since iomando is the first company I’ve found, I’m not very well suited to answer questions about long-term success, but I clearly see the path forward as a never-ending iteration, constantly refining and adjusting. This process is what has worked for us so far and showed us where to go next.

When we started, we thought of iomando as a plain replacement for keys and remotes. We acknowledged several problems with them — as we noted in the release of iomando 1.0 — and we set out to deliver a better solution leveraging mobile technologies.

We started out under the hypothesis that keys had four major flaws:

You needed one for each door or place you wanted to open.
Expensive replacement.
Security weaknesses.
Static management, they couldn’t be safely shared, they weren’t “smart”.

Somebody smarter than me, once said that if “the only thing you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail”.

Our thinking of iomando “as a plain replacement for keys and remotes” blinded us to opportunities beyond the domestic market. Because at the time, we didn’t know such market existed, thus we were offering a better and more convenient alternative to traditional access systems in a market we did know.

As we started to understand more and more why our service was enabling these opportunities, the foundation of our technology, we put ourselves in a position to truly unravel the full potential of our vision.

Don’t get me wrong though, replacing household remotes with our service was a great start. We were successfully solving a problem we knew. But as we dived deeper — as we unraveled the AOE’s map — we discovered people facing hard problems where iomando could really offer a lot more value.

We just discovered the access control market.

We discovered there were individuals solely dedicated to access management. True specialists in the field that were working — as we perceived them — with “sticks and stones”. They were trying to organize and recreate the access experience for thousands of persons in places such as industrial areas with keys and remotes.

These tools were simply not meant to do that. Yet these professionals never asked questions because they had taken the tools for granted, they had always thought “this is how it is” and moved on. When you reach this point, you become hopeless.

After endless talks with building managers, mobility administrators, people in charge of maintenance in large industrial facilities… we realized that access management was a mess, an unmitigated disaster where iomando could deliver an unprecedented solution.

Under the hood, iomando had two fundamental traits that made our value proposition unique for those use cases in a way that competitors simply couldn’t match:

Adding additional units of capacity came without an associated cost. In terms of traditional access systems, if you wanted to deploy a new key or a remote to a customer, you had to actually make and pay for the thing. This a perfectly reasonable thing to do — pay for your cost of goods that you’ll later sell, but something that didn’t occur with iomando. Creating more permissions was freed from a manufacturing point of view since the key itself was composed of 1s and 0s. From a cost basis perspective, it was virtually the same to serve a little shop or a huge city council with three million users.
Putting the service in the hands of our users was also free of charge. Not only adding new units of capacity was virtually free, but the distribution of those new units themselves was also free. Since we are changing the plastic for bits, the permissions were also distributed through the air. A huge competitive advantage in places with a larger user base, because not only the owner saved a lot of money by not purchasing the key itself, but it also removed the need for the distribution afterward.

This realization made us rethink our business model. We were allocating almost all our resources and efforts chasing small communities and houses because they were far easier deals and we “understood” the consumer market. But our nature, our ability to reap the scale that came from being software based, made us a better fit for larger organizations and places where access control was a matter of thousands, even millions.

The takeaway of all this is that in order to seamlessly integrate your product to the right market, two things need to happen — which coincidentally or not, at iomando happened almost at once.

The first thing is to undercover potential market opportunities that can be hidden at the beginning. We didn’t know someone had a problem managing the access of thousands of people. We didn’t know that an industrial area had a problem when a cargo was coming at three in the morning. We didn’t know that was someone’s problem or that there was somebody employed to do that. We had to keep at it, immerse ourselves into the market and stay curious in order to understand it.

The second is to acknowledge the true nature of your product. Our technology solved all of those problems out of the box, but we’d never thought of iomando in these terms. Sometimes is hard to get off your blinkers and realize that the use case you envisioned for your product was wrong. The hammer and nail thing over again. If you’ve already predefined a use case for your product, it is sometimes difficult to move beyond.

iomando Is Now Able To Push

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been more than a month since we introduced iomando 2.0, alongside a revamped electronic unit. If you haven’t read it, we also attempted to unpack some features in a ”behind-the-scenes” type of post.

Despite iomando 2.0 brought a handful of new features, there was “one more thing”, though, we were extremely excited about, but left out from the release because by the time it wasn’t fully baked.

But now, it is.

Yesterday, we issued an update to our apps, 2.0.1, a minor one. The kind of point one that usually addresses some boring combination of “bug fixes and performance improvements” nobody pays attention to.

Yet this one was different. It contained a hidden gem that you might never actually “see”, but something you’ll definitely “notice”. A feature we’ve been praising for a long, long time.

For quite a while, we’ve been working to improve the communication flow between the server, the electronic unit, and the smartphone app. Since the very beginning, we’ve been introducing new features that made the product faster, more secure and more reliable. But there was still a loose end, waiting to be solved.

The actions our users made were not computed in real time. Which was, ultimately, the reason why this existed 👇

As an oversimplified picture of the issue, here’s an example: every time an admin made an edit to the management console — or the new mobile management tool released with iomando 2.0, the change was recorded on the server, but it was not sent to the affected devices.

So ADMIN wanted to update permissions for a given USER, and change her open schedule to start at 6pm instead of 8pm. So far ADMIN would make the change, but the USER’s app wouldn’t get this new schedule immediately, automatically.

This wouldn’t, in any case, lead to a potential security breach, because the truth would always be held in the server — the truth is in the cloud, they say. But it could be inconvenient from a user perspective since the app wouldn’t display the right information sometimes.

All this happened because we used to rely on the apps to retrieve, or pull, the information “manually”, producing some synchronization troubles when something like the aforementioned situation occurred. Which was more often than we wanted to admit.

The “one more thing” — that arrives more than a month late, is the kind of “thing” that will solve once for all these situations. To summarize the feature introduced with iomando 2.0.1: our communications layer will stop working on a pull basis, to start instead, pushing things around, in real time.

iomando 2.0.1 officially supports push communications.

This means that all the changes in the server side are pushed immediately to the devices, and boy it is fast. As always, there is no user intervention required, it should all work smoothly as soon as the update is installed in each device.

iomando 2.0 — Behind The Scenes

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This post was originally published in May 2013 on the official iomando blog and it dove deeper into the product story behind its three most prominent features.

This announcement also came accompanied by two complimentary updates:

iomando 2.0
iomando 2.0 — Hardware Update: a hardware-focused release notes.
iomando 2.0 — Behind The Scenes: the product story behind some of the new features.

Across all three you’ll find many insights around the design process and the challenges we faced developing the product from many perspectives.

Now, to the update.

Last month we introduced iomando 2.0 — an entirely new version of our product, both on the software and hardware end.

Since the rollout, we’ve been receiving a ton of feedback and curiously, a lot of people reached out asking why we had taken certain (product) decisions. We thought this was a great opportunity to expose the reasoning behind some of them.

Unfortunately, we can’t cover all the features released alongside iomando 2.0, because there were a lot of them. Remember, the new UI, the passwordless login, support for up to four doors from the same space, geolocation enhancements, new management tools, passcode lock, plus, all the hardware-related improvements.

A walk through all of them would take longer than a single post. Instead, we can focus on the three that we’ve sweated the most — and also the ones that we’ve been asked the most 👇

Passwordless (SMS) login
Passcode lock
Location services

We’ve been struggling with logins and accounts since the very first day.

For a moment, think of the boundary conditions and what the user is trying to accomplish when she downloads the app. iomando is not a place we expect to spend a lot of time, we are not a social network, we are a tool that provides a solution to a given problem.

We aim to solve a concrete situation for our users by being a better alternative for keys and remotes. We spare the user the bulk of carrying around her keys, which is great, but sadly, not enough. As it happens the solution also involves the creation of a delightful experience, faster, to the point.

Passwords and logins are painful because they create friction, thus slowing everything down. This is not something we came up with, it is a widely shared opinion, to say the least.

But we don’t like slow, we like fast. Remember, iomando needs to be fast. Yet it also needs to be secure. The password friction is then a necessary evil, the price we must pay to ensure our spaces remain secure enough.

It is a high price, though.

Our users don’t want to remember yet another password. We spend more customer support time than we wanted to solve password-related issues. On top of that, user data is of no value for us. Our business doesn’t “resell” user data to third parties nor we plan to do anything with the data we are collecting beyond improving our own product.

We reached a point where we wondered if “there was a better way”. We grab a whiteboard and ask ourselves: “if we were to build this again, how the best login system should look like”.

Then we identified three main characteristics:

Frictionless from the user point of view.
Private, yet manageable by the administrator — so she knows who is letting in.
Extremely secure.

The credentials had to be durable, reliable and unique to the person, but also easily verifiable and overall, something the user feels comfortable sharing. For example, a DNI excels at these three features, but its verifying process is slow and also is not something the user would be comfortable sharing.

After running over some ideas and surveying our user base, we agreed that phone number was the only one checking all requisites.

An email was also a final contender. It is public and easily verifiable but was not unique nor durable. I can think of people with more than three emails and also people who often change jobs and gets a new address each time.

The phone number is an identifier that is associated with you for a longer period of time — I have the same since I was 14. Thus an administrator is more likely to target someone by her phone number rather than one of her multiple email accounts.

It seemed phone number checked the “manageability” checkboxes, but we had yet to account for friction and security.

Curiously enough, it is widely accepted in the “security parlance” that these two characteristics are always a tradeoff, you can’t have it both ways. We thought like that, too.

In our ideal world, the user logged in once and she wouldn’t need a password again. But then, how you were reassured that she was who claimed to be in each future login? This was our main struggle. We knew we wanted something passwordless, but didn’t know how to make it work in order to ensure security in each subsequent login.

Meet the verification code.

When we tried to distill what security meant for iomando, we thought of a piece of information only the user knew (and remembered), but also something third parties wouldn’t have access to.

Eventually, we came up with the realization that flipped our previous assumption on its head: it wasn’t necessary to think of the “secure element” as something the user knew when it could be something the user had.

This small twist changes the entire mechanics of the problem. Because once you acknowledge that the “key” is something the user “has” remembering is then out of the picture. You just solved for friction. From here, the only thing you need to do is to bound this “key” with something unique, which we already had as we mentioned above: a unique, public and verifiable identifier the user had all the time 👉 the phone number.

If we could verify the phone number (which we did by sending an SMS with a code to the number the user provided) we could assure that the user was telling us the truth, therefore, we could tie together user identity to her phone number, forever, no further login or password required.

The user “had” the code, she demonstrated it by typing it in, that’s everything we would ever need to check for in order to ensure the user had the phone number she claimed.

Passcode Lock

Needless to say, also piggybacking on the first feature, security is a concern that runs deep at iomando. Paradoxically, while a passwordless login makes the initial pairing and authentication more secure than it ever was, it also makes it easier to access the app once the authentication has been validated.

This is not a unique trait of iomando. All apps assume a certain security threshold will be ensured behind the lock screen — that’s the reason why we don’t endlessly login again and again to each app every single time we launch them.

But we acknowledge iomando is an edge case, an outlier in security terms. We deal with access control and we truly understand the responsibility that comes along with that.

Then coming hand in hand with the passwordless login, one of the features we’ve introduced with iomando 2.0 is the ability (disabled by default) for the user to set a four-digit passcode that will be prompted every time the open button is tapped.

While developing the feature, we acknowledged we were messing up with one of our core values — i.e. speed in the execution. But on the other hand, it was also true that security, at this stage, was a far more critical concern, something we rather had to address sooner than later.

In iomando parlance, security trumps everything.

Yet in order to minimize the drag produced every time the open button is tapped, we’ve improved the password input speed by automatically showing the numeric keyboard¹. Despite we understand some smoothness was lost in the process, the feature will be candidly remembered in cases such as a phone gone missing — i.e. stolen or lost. Surprisingly, even some users reported early feedback of how the feature helped them prevent a door to open because of an unintended touch.

This is an interesting point. Since iomando may or may not be distance constrained (see next point), an unintended touch could be potentially disastrous. With a passcode lock, every time the button is (accidentally or not) tapped a passcode is prompted. The next time your kids are inevitably driven by the temptation to push the big green button, your access will remain safe.

Geolocation

One of the (many) side benefits of rebuilding the apps from the ground up to be fully native to each platform, was the ability to take advantage of the geolocation capabilities of the devices — both on Android and iOS.

Getting to know the user position in real time opened a whole world of possibilities when it came to managing user access from an admin point of view.

Since iomando is distance-agnostic when it comes to fulfilling accesses requests, the most straight-forward and obvious geolocation-related feature was to create a geofence around an access point.

In plain English, this simply means we draw a circle around an access with a certain radius — this is a distance set by an admin, which determines whether you are allowed to access or not. Then every time you tap the open button, the app will process your position, match it again the security radius, and decide — depending on whether you’re in or out of the circle — if you’re allowed to open.

The feature can be turned on either as a global setting, for the entire space, or in a per-user basis, assigning each user a determined distance that will override the global setting.

Restricting the geolocation can be helpful from a security point of view, but it can also be used to enhance convenience. We encourage users to set a reasonable distance — say 5km — in order to prevent unintended touches without the burden of having to set a passcode lock each time.

The passcode has to be a four digit number. We thought of creating more complex patterns, but again, speed was then truly compromised and the security provided by a four-digit number was “good enough” for the problem we were trying to solve here.↩

iomando 2.0 — Hardware Update

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This post was originally published in May 2013 on the official iomando blog and it announced the release of the second version of the product, focusing on the hardware updates.

This announcement also came accompanied by two complimentary updates:

iomando 2.0
iomando 2.0 — Hardware Update: a hardware-focused release notes.
iomando 2.0 — Behind The Scenes: the product story behind some of the new features.

Across all three you’ll find many insights around the design process and the challenges we faced developing the product from many perspectives.

Now, to the update.

As mentioned in a previous entry that explained how iomando’s business model works.

We are here for the long run. We truly believe in our mission and we want to build a sustainable business that focuses on delivering the best product.

A subscription-based model creates a more truthful relationship between the customer and the company.

Since we’ll be paid on a recurrent basis, we’ll always be under the customer evaluation. Therefore, subscription-based revenue forces us to always deliver the best possible service, because if you are not fully satisfied with our service you can easily opt out whenever you feel like it. […] The subscription-based model incentivizes us to place the same or even more resources to existing customers, generating a long-term commitment and a healthier relationship between the parties.

In a nutshell, it means that, among other things, we are equally incentivized to improve our current customers’ experience as we are to acquire new ones. Most companies deliver on this promise issuing software updates, which have no marginal per-unit cost, but we wanted to go a step further.

Starting today, we’ll be rolling out an updated electronic board that will enable some of the features released with iomando 2.0. As part of the update, all our customers will gradually get the new hardware as well. Something we would have never done iomando was a one-shot service.

Our new electronic board 👆 has been entirely designed and manufactured in-house by our team.

It sports three new features that can be useful in places with “tricky” accesses and also enables a handful of features announced alongside iomando 2.0.

Double Relay Bay

To begin with, each board mounts now a double relay bay. This means that from now on, each board that gets out of the factory will have the ability to control up to four doors, instead of one. This has the advantage of not having to install separated devices if you happen to have more than one door that is close to each other. It reduces installation costs and optimizes the hardware that’s being distributed.

Radio Communications Module

The double relay bay works when the accesses are close to each other. But imagine that you have multiple accesses and they are far apart. A situation we encounter often. Multiple relays don’t work under these circumstances because the installation costs of having to deploy long lengths of cables are high. Then you end up with the same problem of having to install one electronic controller per door, as we always had.

To fix these situations, the new hardware features a new low-power radio module that is able to locally connect via radio frequency to the master board — the one that has the SIM card and cellular connectivity.

This way we can reduce the installation costs — the radio module is way cheaper, the most expensive component of the BOM is by far the GSM modem, but also optimize the connectivity of the master board, that doubles down as a local hub for the rest of devices.

The main challenge to enable this feature was not the complexity of “making it work” or connecting the child-boards to the main hub — which was also hard. The biggest nut to crack was the installers’ experience. In other words, to design an installation process that all our partners could easily learn, in order to start deploying them as fast as possible with the least amount of errors.

Here’s 👆 a schema of the “hidden” process we had to create in order to enable our installers, so they could understand how to set up several radio-connected boards. This setup process that most certainly no end-user will ever see or care about, took almost the same amount of work to design as other front-facing, shiny features.

GPS Module

iomando 2.0 introduced location services in order to determine the distance someone is allowed to access certain place, determined by the place’s admin.

It all sounds nice and good, but we quickly realized that we don’t have full control of the final location of the devices we sell through a reseller or a distribution partner. The admin can later fix it through the admin panel, but this is not always the case.

That’s the reason why the new board will sport a GPS chip that will automatically report and update the position of the device. Then when an admin sets a geo-fence, the distance is seamlessly calculated.

To wrap it up: building hardware is hard.

It gets worse if you are a small company that is starting out. Building this new iteration of our electronics has been one of the hardest challenges we have faced so far. Nonetheless, we are confident that it will make the iomando experience way better.

The new hardware will be rolling out to our distributors next week and will be gradually updating current customers’ devices starting next month.

iomando 2.0

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This post was originally published in April 2013 on the official iomando blog and it announced the release of the second version of the product.

This announcement also came accompanied by two complimentary updates:

iomando 2.0
iomando 2.0 — Hardware Update: a hardware-focused release notes.
iomando 2.0 — Behind The Scenes: the product story behind some of the new features.

Across all three you’ll find many insights around the design process and the challenges we faced developing the product from many perspectives.

Now, to the update.

It’s been almost a year since we introduced iomando 1.0 and we couldn’t be happier because of the great reception it has had among our customers.

Last year [this is 2012] we’ve installed our service in more than three hundred spaces (ranging from parking, communities, buildings and small business) and recently crossed the 7.500 active users¹ mark. But most important, our customers are delighted with the product and a lot of them have recommended it to their family and closest friends.

2012 has definitively been a good year for iomando and, among other things, here are a few highlights that sum it up:

Closed our first seed round with local business angels and industry partners.
Released iomando 1.1 last summer [again, this is 2012], which included many new features such as the possibility to manage users right from the mobile app or a faster door-opening engine — which reduced the opening time almost 80% and increase its security.
Won the Barcelona Startup Network Smart Cities Edition.
Learned a ton about subscription-based business models and made some adjustments to the the way iomando is distributed.

We have a lot to celebrate, but we wanted more. During the entire year, we’ve been working hard to bring the next generation of our product to the market. As a result, today we are rolling out a whole new set of mobile apps, administrator panel and electronics for the door.

Meet iomando 2.0, the most advanced keyless access system.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/129191861

Before diving deeper into the details of the update, it is worth pointing out that this not only good news for new customers, but for our current user base, as well.

Because of our subscription model, they will benefit from all these new features without any additional cost, even the hardware will be gradually upgraded during the upcoming months.

Now that’s been cleared out of the way, let’s jump into the update.

Redesigned Interface

iomando 2.0 brings a completely redesigned UI and an array of new features: some following our roadmap, others — we didn’t plan for — as we encountered new problems our users revealed. The amount of unexpected things we have learned from our customer feedback has definitely surprised the whole team and we can’t wait to put this new version of iomando in the hands of our users.

iomando has moved away from “glossy” appearance and embraced current, flatter trends. Led by the industry movement towards flatter designs, the overall experience feels like it belongs to the medium again. The new colors stand out because of its elegant cues and a personality that makes iomando’s design truly unique.

Beyond the pure visual layer, we’ve also improved the responsiveness of the app, ditching our initial hybrid core and rebuilding it from the ground up, using native technologies. This makes the app feel more direct, both on Android and iOS, with plenty of richer interactions. Turning simple actions like swiping between spaces in the home screen, into a pure delight.

Finally, despite the navigation menu remains in the bottom, we moved the management system away from the center to improve clarity across the board.

Now the home screen is all about opening doors. We’ve removed the arrows on the corners and fully embraced the swipe gesture as the main interaction to navigate between them.

This is one of the most challenging features we have implemented so far, but also one that we hope our customers will love the most.

Here’s a fact: everybody hates username and passwords.

We have to remember dozens of them, repeat them across services, then forget them, and you know… 12345 is not always the safest combination for your accesses.

Fortunately, iomando 2.0 comes with a radically new approach to smoothly register and log in to the service.

Instead of relying on usernames and passwords, we’ve implemented an SMS validation mechanism that sends a code to the user’s phone number the first time she opens the app. Once she has validated that the phone number actually belongs to the user, she’s already logged in.

Here’s how it works 👇

No usernames, no emails, no passwords, no nothing. Just type your phone number, enter the code, and you’re off the races.

Along the way, the time required to create an account has always been dramatically reduced. Most important, we just got rid of the possibility to forget your password, because there’s none.

The passwordless system has advantages for administrators, too.

Prior to iomando 2.0, the admin had to “guess” the user email in order to activate the user — since a person can have many emails that can change over time, but most certainly one phone number for the rest of her life.

With the passwordless system, the admin has a unique, unchanging identifier — the phone number — that can be used to assign permissions across the service.

Up To Four Accesses

This is kind of a big deal. One of the most demanded features, especially among household customers, was the ability to manage multiple accesses or doors on the same screen.

iomando 2.0 now supports up to four doors within the same space and screen.

Now when you configure your space you can set up to four doors 👇

This new feature also comes alongside the addition of the second relay to our electronic board. You can read more on the hardware update, but the gist of it is that prior to iomando 2.0, each access required an independent device. The new electronics though, now support multiple doors, making it easier to install, but also way more affordable since only a single device has to be installed.

Geolocation And Enhanced Management

One of the consequences of iomando being powered by cellular connectivity is its ability to open the door from, literally, anywhere in the world. Is not a matter of distance, if you have cell reception, you can issue an open command wherever you are.

This is clearly a double-edged sword. On one side, it is great for users to have this location constraint removed, but on the other, it has been a major security concern for space administrators.

iomando 2.0 will start using geolocation services on the phone to determine if a user is close enough to a certain access, letting admins define a security radius outside of which the users won’t be able to use the service.

On top of that, there will also be more specific settings, so an admin will be able to fine-tune the feature and set the radius on a per-user basis.

iomando 2.0 also comes with the possibility to refine the management settings to a point where you can also set the time frames when the users will be allowed in. That means if you want someone to come in just for dinner, you can set him up for the night and the permission will expire as soon as he walks away from your home.

In addition to that, we are rolling out a web-based beta version of our management tool so you can access it from any computer. We want to provide the best experience when it comes to the administration, and we think the web is a big part of that. If you want to see what’s next while helping us improve the product, you are welcome at clients.iomando.com/beta.

But Wait, There’s More

Passcode lock: set a 4 digit code to secure even more your accesses.
Swipe to navigate: swipe between spaces if you happen to have more than one.
Space insights (admins only): real-time updates and statistics about the people accessing your managed spaces.
Parking list: redesigned parking list view, where you can get at a glance the status of all your accesses.
Faster open under 2G connectivity: opening doors in harsh conditions, when 3G is not available, is up to 50% faster.
Plus, it looks amazing in the new green iPhone 5C :)

We’ve been working on this update for almost an entire year. As always, we’ve poured a lot of care and effort building the new version of iomando. We couldn’t be more excited about putting this new iomando in your hands and we hope you will enjoy the experience as much as we did.

We consider an active user someone who has downloaded the app, had permission in one or more space and opened the door at least once in the last month. For example, someone that has used the service once 2 months ago and hasn’t used it again, doesn’t count as an active user.↩

I Sold My Car

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I love cars, things that move in general, but particularly cars.

They have always fascinated me since I was a kid. Back then I use to ~~study~~ read the final pages — those that listed each and every model with its specs — of all the car magazines I could get my hands on. I knew every single model’s spec by heart: horsepower, weight, torque, transmission, height… everything. I use to play this game with my parents, where I handed over the magazine and let them ask me anything: “what’s BMW 323i horsepower” or “the wheelbase of an Audi 80” and we could go on and on…

I’ve always thought of the road as an everlasting showroom for cars. They keep going and going. I remember stepping out of the house hoping to see some wild species among the utilitarians.

In 2008 I bought a car.

I was 20 and in the middle of college. I felt like I needed one — fast forward almost 10 years, I didn’t. But I was stubborn. I did my research, evaluating all sorts of parameters, from efficiency, performance, lightness and a large etc. It took me some time to decide on a market I already knew pretty well, but I’ve always spent a lot of time studying each purchase I did, this was not going to be an exception.

Finally, in June 2008 I had my shiny new car parked in my garage and I was amazed. I looked for any excuse to drive it. I use it for nearly everything, although some commutes could be done more efficiently by bike or public transport. I couldn’t be more materialistically — I just made that word up — happy. This was the early days, the heat of the moment.

But eventually, like every material pleasure, it faded away.

After some time, I found myself with a car, which I worshiped in terms of craft and engineering, but also hated because of the idle time it was wasted in the garage. That contradiction didn’t come overnight, but it grew on me the more I thought about it.

I started to think what meant to have an underused car. It terrified me. Not just the costs associated with the “having”, but also the fact of owning a piece of metal, plastic, and glass sitting quiet, useless, in my garage.

The Costs

The simple fact of buying that car means that the very moment you push the start button, the artifact is worth 10% or 20% less. In terms of economics, I would say that’s a pretty bad investment.

Worse, regardless you use it or not, its value will inevitably continue to plunge. It’s also not a current asset, so you can’t exchange it easily for money, and the process of selling one it’s tough and requires a lot of your own time.

So, immediate value loss assured lifetime deprecation and non-current asset. Pictured that way, nobody would bet on it, yet everybody seems to drive one.

The Breakdown

Gas: here we are talking a lot of money. With the current gas prices driving 750km with some medium class car translates to something like 100€. That’s just crazy, but gas prices continue to go up and people don’t seem to give up on cars.
Insurance: add from 500 up to 1500€/year, and that’s for basic insurance policies. If you want something that covers robbery or pays even if it’s your fault you could add an extra 500€ to the number I just wrote.
Maintenance: this cost depends so much on your car manufacturer and the kind of maintenance you are getting in for, but in my case, it was even worse. I didn’t use the car much. So one would think that no distance equals no wear, therefore no maintenance. It doesn’t work this way. Cars account the revision periods either by the mileage or by a time span… So either way, you should visit your beloved mechanic at some point.
Taxes, parking, wash, accessories… The list goes on and on, I’m not going into the specifics here, but I think I made my point.

Every year I kept my car, used or not, I spend on average more than 2.500€ on all the things I described above.

And that’s a ton of money.

Underused Stuff

Sometimes I think it’s healthy to look around and think about how much we use or need the things we own. I just did that with my car. I’m not saying every car is underused, mine just happened to be. It was sitting in my garage more than 95% of its lifetime — and yes, I did the math. I felt sad about it. That’s a lot of metal, plastic, glass and other commodities that could be better used in other places.

We all use cars to go places. That’s the way it is. It’s inefficient, expensive and a waste of resources, but sometimes we are left with no other options. That was not my case. I live in a big city, there are great communications, buses, underground, bikes… I get this may not suit everyone’s needs, but it suited mine.

Beyond usage, we user stuff as a proxy for determining social status. We were told that driving a fancy car pushes yourself up in some kind of social ladder.

That’s sad.

We have collectively lost track of what is valuable. Progress doesn’t mean that even the poorest guy should get a car, it means that the richest should be going to work by bike. It seems that we have forgotten about that.

I Sold My Car

After some months of dealing with possible buyers, I finally sold it. I felt conflicted, but in the end, it turned out to be a relief. If minimalism and owning less has a great impact on people’s life, selling my car was clear proof of this.

Ok, but what now? Sometimes I needed to travel long distances, and I had to deal with these situations, too. So I signed in for ZipCar. Zipcar is one of those services that when you tell people about, they say: “boy, that makes sense!“.

And it really does.

Why everyone needs a car that is not using if a company can hold it for you and you just pay them for the time you want it. It’s brilliant. Moreover, I live in Barcelona, one of the few cities outside the US that has the service, thanks to the company acquisition of Avancar, a Zipcar-like service that was operating here.

So those cars are better used because more people are riding them, they spend less time parked and you get to use a car whenever you need one.

Everyone wins.

There are more radical approaches to this concept, like RelayRides or here in Barcelona, SocialCar. Where you own the car and you rent it through the platform so other people can use it.

I consider myself an early adopter, but I felt that maybe this was too much. I went to Zipcar. And looking back I might say that this is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Because I uncluttered my life, get rid of some preoccupations and saved a lot of money.

Just because I sold my car.

The Industrial Engineer

Sat, 31 Aug 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Two years ago I finished my five-plus-one year degree in Engineering. The official name goes something like “Industrial Engineer specialized in Business Management”, and despite not quite feeling like one, my academic title says so. After more than five ~~long~~ years working hard to earn my degree I feel like I want to talk about it, share some thoughts on the matter and try to better understand the value of these kinds of degrees.

What Exactly an Industrial Engineer Is?

I’ll start with a brief description of what an Industrial Engineer (IE) is or, at least, was¹. And also why here in Spain, the figure of the IE is quite different than in other countries.

If we analyze its name, the common sense tells us that its main field of study will be closely related with the industry and factories — areas like supply chain, industrial organization, factory, and other industry-related issues aimed to boost the productivity and efficiency of large industrial processes and operations.

That’s exactly what an IE is supposed to do in the rest of the world, but Spain. That’s because most of the countries have engineering degrees organized following a logical structure depending on the field they study — Electrical, Mechanical, Software, Chemical… and so on. It makes sense.

Here in Spain — preBologna — Engineering degrees didn’t work that way. To begin with, there were two different kinds of grades: technical and superior.

Technical: three years grades focused on one key area, following the logical structure I mentioned above. After this three years you get a “Diplomatura”, and while this is fine to start your work path, the truth is that a lot of these students try to make their way up to a superior degree — since they get validated most of the credits they had already earned.
Superior: the superior Engineer (where IE is included) was considered a Licenciatura and for this reason treated as a superior degree from an academic point of view. In the superior Engineerings, you would find Industrial, Aeronautic, Civil, Telecommunications, Informatics and some others.

When searching for the IE in the Spanish Wikipedia you are immediately adverted with a paragraph that states: “Este artículo trata sobre la rama conocida como ingeniería industrial. Para las atribuciones dadas a la titulación en España, véase ingeniería industrial en España.” In other words, be careful because the Industrial Engineering you might be looking at is not what we teach in Spain.

They redirect us here. So what’s the difference between the rest of the world and the Spanish IE? The Spanish IE has a broader scope in terms of fields of study. It’s not limited to the industrial branch, even though it also covers this particular topic. Instead, it gets an interesting mix of knowledge covering mostly every science and engineering related field — from chemistry or physics to business management and science of materials.

I’m not going to discuss the specifics here, but historically, the Spanish IE degree originated in the middle of the nineteenth century. Back then the IE was conceived with a broad range of attributions in order to address the growing industrial development that the country was facing at the time.

Because Spain — and other European regions for that matter, were developing fast-growing industries, they needed a key figure who could deliver a holistic approach and lead this revolution. That’s exactly what the IE was intended for, and looking back we might say that it served pretty well.

How These Engineers Fit In The Modern Industry

Back in 1850, the IE was “created” with great scientific and technological skills, but also with great insight and business vision. Surely something the country needed back then.

Fast forward 150 years and times are changing.

Regardless, the main attributions and structure of the IE, for the most part, remain the same.

Back then, the power, in an academic sense, resided in the individuals. People who gathered so much knowledge and built great things around them. But this vision has drastically changed today and the power has shifted in favor of teams.

Individuals still matter, of course, but the key thing is the synergetic effect they can deliver inside a group of people.

This is exactly the main problem with IE. It’s still conceived for individuals. There’s no chance to develop great skills in work groups because most of the work during its studies is done by yourself. Even the project at the end of the five years must be individual.

Moreover, most topics are treated at a high theoretical level and on rare occasions you’ll be facing a real live problem. You end up with a group of “highly” skilled guys, who don’t know anything about how the “real industry” works.

I also see another problem here, these kinds of degrees achieve something extraordinary: they turn amazing knowledge into boring data. Let’s face it, more than 60% of the people I was studying with didn’t feel motivated at all, and I don’t think that was a random feeling.

You just scratch the surface of a lot of fields, really interesting stuff, you want more of it, but when you are nearly there, they told you to move on to the next thing.

“Because there’s so much to learn” you’re always told.

You don’t get the chance to deeply explore anything in depth, you just scratch a lot of things and get know a lot of stuff, but you can’t concentrate enough on something to really start appreciating it in a way you can fall in love with.

Obviously, I can’t just blame my studies for not focusing on something in particular. If you feel like something matters to you, you just get the time from anywhere to learn more and master the topic. My point is that having to keep up with a lot of different stuff doesn’t help either.

In my particular case, this lack of focus was also driven by being a little immature and didn’t quite know what I wanted to do next.

As an example, I have always loved cars. The European car industry tends to recruit so many Spanish IE because of their rich profile. But as a student only got one car-related subject during the whole degree. I mean, yes, lots of subjects related with car mechanics or physics, but just one pointed directly to them.

So What’s Wrong With Industrial Engineers?

Well, in fact, there’s nothing wrong with them. I think it’s a powerful degree where you get the chance to learn a lot of things across separate areas. Moreover, if you are a curious person, you are able to connect a lot of dots that seemed unrelated at the beginning.

You get a great deal of horizontal education that doesn’t put you in a job ready position, but it builds a strong layer of knowledge beneath you that gives you comfort in most of the situations you can be dealing with. Over time, you also discover that you start from a better position when you want to learn something new or face a new situation.

However, I lament that all of this knowledge was thrown at me and told to learn it. There was no purpose or goal. Everything was about passing the exam. Not the best incentive in the world. It turned the beauty of learning into a to-do list. It didn’t feel right.

It’s really sad because at the end of the day you invest so much time and money not just to collect knowledge that in you can also get straight from the Wikipedia. This approach made sense a hundred years ago when all the knowledge was not accessible and you should “go” to college in order to get it.

But today, the value of the University should lie in empowering its students to better face what’s next. Driven by outcomes and the capacity to fit in a creative group and get the most next to other individuals.

Learning should not be only a matter of passing an exam.

The learning side of the equation should be a supporting piece that comes along to fulfill a greater goal, and that’s exactly where college should come into play. Unlocking this path to greatness the knowledge you won’t find in books.

That’s something I understood, after all those years, in my own, the hard way. Because nowadays, you can walk down the street without knowing about quantum physics, but I assure you can’t keep the pace of this fast-evolving society if you don’t understand how to fit in a team.

Update from 2017. Fortunately, some things change over time and they have rendered this post obsolete. Due to some major European reforms to ensure comparability of higher education programs across the European Union, the figure of the Industrial Engineer was replaced by the combination of two separate engineering degrees.↩

We Were Wrong About Pricing

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

When we launched iomando we did it with a clear goal in mind: to provide the best keyless access system for our customers. In order to do this, we focused on having a great product, but also worked hard to emphasize the experience surrounding its core product.

To that end, we kept on building a strong and trustworthy installation network and a new approach to the way our customers paid for the service.

So far we have gathered a ton of feedback from our distribution partners and customers, and now we are in a position to acknowledge it.

We were wrong about our pricing strategy.

We weren’t wrong though in a way that our pricing made no sense. On paper it made all the sense in the world, everybody won on paper: the customer, the distributor, the installer and us. But as it turns out when you put all the pieces together and understand how it all plays out, you realize the whole model breaks down.

We are here to explain what we’ve learned, why we were wrong and what we’ve done to fix it.

Our Assumptions

Despite we wanted to blur the lines between them, we clearly run two separate business units that are built independently but work together shaping the whole iomando experience.

On one side we have a hardware device we install next to the door in order to manage and control it. On the other, we have the software side, the mobile app.

This distinction matters because those are diametrically opposed business models that we tried to bundle together in order to facilitate the understanding of the overall product. We had our reasons to do that, but to be fair (this was our fault, too) we got a little scared by our investors and advisors: they were deeply concerned about the scalability of the hardware side, therefore they “encouraged” us to hide it as much as we could.

As you can see above 👆 our combined selling price for the first year was lower than the acquisition cost for a given user. We aimed for a small subscription to attract more customers in order to hit an early critical mass of users that would, eventually, drive better unit economics to the business.

Because of that, we thought that the service would be more attractive if we sold the idea of “access experience” instead of “a piece of hardware attached to your door.”

The idea of paying for an action sounded like more goal-oriented than paying for a piece of electronics and a piece of software.

So we tied all together and treated everything as a SAAS packaged, that was billed annually to the customer. This way the hardware was “rented” to the customer for the time they had contracted the service. If for any reason, the customer wanted to stop using the product we can still get the hardware back and re-use it in another place as long as it was in good condition.

In a nutshell, this is why we thought that was a good idea.

The customer perceived us as a service, not a product that she had to buy.
We detached the installation from the customer — thus a better experience and an authorized partner from our network would handle it.
We had absolute control over the hardware since it was “rented” to the customer.
Every customer would run on the latest version of the hardware as well, if a new version comes out, we replace it at no additional cost.
The last one implies less complexity and fragmentation across the platform, therefore, money and complexity being saved on development.

What Really Happened

We faced two major problems. The first and most important was that our deals with installers and distributors weren’t closing as fast as we expected. The second was that a lot of customers had a hard time understanding our proposition and they didn’t fully understand what they were paying for.

The first problem was worrisome because this network was the fuel that propelled our growth among small and mid-sized customers. We couldn’t afford a sales team to chase this kind of customers, because they were extremely granulated.

We wanted to establish a revenue-share with those distributors and keep sharing it every year the customer was enrolled with the service. We assumed this model would incentivize the distributor to close as many deals as he could and would also keep the customer happy as long as they were paying.

It didn’t work.

It didn’t work because we assumed our business would develop in a vacuum where we were the only players. We couldn’t be more wrong. The truth was that our service interacted with other players that were already in place and that created some unresolvable tensions.

As it happened, distributors already had a business: we were naive enough to go to the distributor thinking that they will immediately embrace our service. We designed the revenue model with the assumption that they would be fully (and only) devoted to our product.

But distributors were used to business as usual model. That meant “I buy at x, then I sell at x+margin” the classic markup approach. Our SaaS model meant that the first year we might lose money on a single customer, the markup in absolute terms meant little money.

Distributors don’t want a long-term relationship with someone they never heard of (and that makes sense). For them, it would be like marrying the first person you just saw across the street.

We designed our strategy as if we were to be around for the next 25 years. We were confident that would be the case, but others outside the company were surely not.

In short, we thought we were going to improve their business with an absolutely new way of doing things from a company that was created a few months ago. You put it like this and wonder how we even tried with such strategy in the first place.

How We Fixed It

The strategy wasn’t working. Distributors passed because we didn’t fit into their mental model and that was blocking our way to small customers and therefore, our ability to grow and scale.

After hundreds of wiped boards and meetings with distributors, we came up with a clever approach that brought together the best of both worlds.

We’ve explicitly separated our business units, both hardware, and software.

Now, we directly sell our hardware to distributors. It has a price and they sell it to the customers with a markup and an installation cost. No more “renting”. The customer buys the hardware and owns it. Therefore, on this side, we drive a classic ~30% markup business that is paid up front and finances almost all the manufacturing costs and operations. Prior to that, the cost of the hardware was bundled onto the subscription and we were “losing money” on every single sale, hoping the LTV of the customer would account for that in the future.

This makes the distributors happy because they can run a business, as usual, their margins are higher in absolute terms and the customer acquires something and it feels like she is paying for atoms, not bits.

On top of that, with every sale distributors closes, we tie the customer back with a SAAS that provides the access control features. We make it everything plug and play and transparent to both the installer and the customer. The moment the installation takes place, our device connects to the internet and awaits to be activated by the customer. She only has to go to our activation portal, introduce the serial number and the number of licenses and it is already working.

This makes customers happy because the fee is lower (we can afford that because we have plenty of margins here since the solution runs entirely on software) and the setup is really easy.

But it also makes us happier than anybody because we transformed a SAAS model, into a double-edged business with an up-front revenue from the hardware that provides a stream of money to sustain manufacturing expenses, and a SAAS revenue from the software that brings scale and long-term profits.

iomando 1.1

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This post was originally published on August 2012 on the official iomando blog and it announced the first major update of our product.

It has been almost half year since we released the first version of iomando in the Barcelona area. We couldn’t be happier about the response it had since its introduction, but we’ve also learned a lot from our customers and installers during these months.

First of all we wanted to thank all of you who have taken the time to get in touch and send us feedback. We really appreciate it and we encourage every customer to write us about the experience, what feels right and what could be improved. This is our main guidance to deliver better products in the future, so the more the better.

Since February (2012) we’ve installed iomando in 90 garages of the Barcelona area (that’s one every two days and way more than we expected) and registered more than 1.000 active users. We have also closed deals with almost 30 installers and partners that will help secure our installation and distribution network; more on that later.

All these are great news, but there’s more.

Today we are excited to announce the first major update of our product. Since the introduction of our first version we’ve updated the app a couple of times to address minor improvements and some fixes. Today we are releasing two new major features and a big announcement that deserves to be explained in detail.

The Open Experience

iomando is all about access. When we designed our mobile experience to access and open doors we wanted it to be fast, reliable and secure.

Fast because no one wants to stare at the door waiting to be opened.
Reliable because we want it to work properly any time.
Secure, well, because we care about what’s behind that door, so we better protect it.

As discussed in previous posts, since our interaction model is primarily based on software, we are able to improve the experience as we better understand our customers needs, in a way keys or remotes can’t.

For this reason, our first update today is about the opening experience.

In short, iomando is getting faster. We aren’t getting technical in here¹, but we’ve reduced the time it takes from the moment the open button is pressed, to the open signal reaching the electronic board at the door by an 80%. That’s a lot percent.

How we’ve done that? We are not going to dive into the specifics, but we’ve worked in three different areas to achieve a compounded improvement.

We have updated our mobile app to be more responsive when it comes to process the requests to the server.
On the server side, where almost all the gainings come from, we’ve revamped the communication layer between the server and the electronics making it faster and more efficient.
We rolled out an OTA update to all of the installed electronics and now they handle the requests more efficiently while consuming less energy.

See if you can spot the differences between this updated flow diagram and the one used in iomando 1.0, shown in this post.

iomando is also getting more reliable. Here there’s a lot of technical stuff involved, too. But we are going to skip it altogether and, instead, we are going to focus on what it means for the user.

Before this update, when the open button was pressed, there was a moment of disconnection between what was happening and the information that was displayed on the screen. This uncertainty, despite being just a few seconds, caused a lot of anxiety to the user. We felt that, too.

That’s why we are rolling out a new technology² that communicates devices and doors, in real time. That means that the state of the operation is being reported in real time to the mobile. If the server detects that there’s a problem with the door, the user will be updated in real time. No more surprises.

Finally, iomando is getting more secure. We’ve discussed before why a cloud-based access system is more secure than a key or a remote.

But we wouldn’t stop there, we wanted even more.

The technology we used to make iomando faster, it turns out it’s also a lot more secure. That is because the devices in the field are not in reach for other people, only us can access to them from our servers. Think of a walled garden where the only way in or out is your home. You can’t access from the outside.

By the way, now that you just learnt what a VPN is, lets move on to the second announcement.

Mobile Management

iomando is not only an app to open doors, it’s also a management tool for the customers who want to restrict permissions to their places. Since the very beginning admins had an online panel where they could login and assign people to their managed properties. But since everything is going mobile, so do we.

With the new release of our mobile app, if you are logged in administrator, you’ll notice on the top of the screen two new buttons to manage your spaces right from your mobile app.

In addition to that, we’ve added the possibility to select the period of time in which the user could access. For example, if you want to invite your friends over dinner, but you want them to access only that day, now you can limit for this period of time, too.

We hope administrators will find great value in this feature when it comes to assign permissions to people that have restricted schedules. We’ve already talked to parking and building managers, but we are eager to see what our customers will make of it.

We’re Expanding Across Spain

Six months ago we launched in the Barcelona area because we wanted a controlled environment — home base, to release the very first version of the product. Despite some of you could install the product by yourselves, we wanted to include the installation experience as part of the service. We expected iomando to “just work” out of the box, so we wanted to remove as much friction as possible by also providing the installation service.

The installers don’t work “directly” for us. They are part of a network we are building as we grow, but building this network is hard because we have to select, interview, train and explain them every detail of the service. It is a valuable process, but it is also painfully slow because we want to ensure that every new installer meets our quality requirements.

We started in the Barcelona area with (only) five installers we trusted.

During those six months we’ve worked hard to expand our distribution and installation network beyond the city. Because of this, as of today, we are ready to ship and install to any city of the country in just one day notice.

So on one hand, we feel more confident about our product thanks to everything we’ve learned during those months. But on the other, we also have the infrastructure to support our growth across the country with a trusted network of more than 53 authorized installers.

Wrap Up

To recap, today we are announcing three updates:

Improved open experience: faster, more reliable and secure.
New mobile management tool and management features right from the app.
Distribution and availability across the country.

We are thrilled to announce these new features and we can’t wait to share with you all the new stuff we have already planned for the coming months. Stay tuned!

Believe it or not, every time we opened a door with version 1.0 we sent an SMS to the door. Yes, I know how you feel about that, I felt it, too. That was because our telco provider wasn’t able to provide static addresses to the SIM cards, so we couldn’t rely on they changing at any given time. That’s why we pointed to the only fixed parameter we had to open the door, and that was the SIM phone number. Despite being so (cost) ineffective, that bought us time to deploy the VPN with local IPs that we rolled out with version 1.1.↩
We discussed a few alternatives, but we felt like Node.js was the best fit to create the layer of communications on top of the solution, that could provide real time data across the board.↩

Betting On Cellular Technology

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

During several Meetups and panels here in Barcelona, we’ve been frequently asked about the hardware development at iomando. Particularly the decisions behind the technology we use to power our access systems.

Since this is a pretty telling story of how designing a product in a constrained environment can sometimes lead to a better outcome, I decided to write a few lines about the challenges we encountered during the design process building our hardware product.

The Tech

Lets start with a rough overview of our access engine:

There are three parts to it, the mobile app, the server and the electronics next to the door.

Mobile app: what our users download to open the door. The UI shows them the available doors, the time frame when they are accessible (according to admin permissions) and a button to open and close the door. It’s like the key, but instead of being physical, it is an app.
Server side: manages permissions and states in real time. If you were to delete permissions from a device because the phone has been stolen, the server could do that.
Electronic device: the piece of hardware we install next to the door. Smartphones do a lot of things, but talking to doors right out of the box is not one of them, so think of this electronic board as a translator between door and smartphone.

As the main point of this post is to reveal the reasons behind our decision to use cellular technology to power our service, we will focus on the electronics installed on the door; as we mentioned before, the “translator”.

There were several technologies available in the market — each one with its pros and cons, that could enable this “translation”. We came out with our first commercial prototype by the end of 2011, but is important to note that when we developed those early designs, we still didn’t fully appreciate the potential outcome of the business.

The moment we faced the blank canvas we had four candidates¹ on the table: GSM (cellular)², Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (not 4.0) and NFC. We prototyped each of them, and spent a lot of time trying to understand which one would be the perfect fit to our business model.

Finally, we opted for GSM; below are the reasons why.

Compatibility

Lets start with NFC: back in 2012 the introduction of NFC was seen as a major disruption when it came to interact with the real world (update from the future: wrong!). Of course NFC would be a great way to check-in with iomando, but presented three issues that rule it out from the beginning:

Compatibility: only Android was officially supporting NFC. Since the 39% of our user base³ run on iPhone, leaving more than one third of our customers out didn’t look like a smart move⁴.
Car access: iomando started its operations in communal parkings and by definition the user remained inside a car during the whole interaction. In such environment one can easily see how NFC forces to reach out to some element that is installed outside the car. It sounded like something we wanted to avoid.
Additional equipment: even though the experience of waving something outside the car was crappy, the idea of having to equip each parking with a clunky reader implied more costs and a difficult installation.

GSM seemed like a better option basically because it was rooted in the nature of smartphones. Sending and receiving packages over TCP/IP is the thing they do best. Moreover, if we talk about compatibility, GSM is compatible with all devices out of the box, without the need of explicitly toggling an additional connection.

Believe it or not, one of the most shocking takeaways we brought home from our user research was the amount of people that still turned off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth because “it drains my battery”. Since GSM was working out of the box for everyone, it turned out to be a more natural fit for our user behavior.

Installation

As we mentioned on the product announcement, iomando needs to be installed by an authorized technician. If you are familiar with the logic board that controls a garage door, you know how crazy those things can get.

For this reason, beyond having a great product for our end user, we also wanted to provide a great experience for the professional installing the device. After all he is our user, too.

To keep our installers “happy” we needed a product that was both easy to install and also kept the installation process the same no matter the external circumstances. In other words, the environment should not place any constraint to the installation process.

That immediately ruled out the Wi-Fi option — at least running in infrastructure mode⁵, because most of the time there’s not a reliable Wi-Fi connection available to feed the device. The versatility of our product (we can install in places ranging from small houses to big corporate buildings and public facilities) would lead to two problems if it was running on Wi-Fi:

Most of the time you just don’t have a Wi-Fi network available in the middle of the street or in an industrial environment.
On the occasions you have a network in range, in a community for example, neighbors don’t want to “lend” their own network for the sake of the service.

And if that was not enough, this also led to more related issues.

When there was a connection and the user would agree to use it, in a private house for example, there’s no easy way for the installer (who might know nothing about routing) to properly set the DCHP or configure the system to point to a particular IP.

Even more important, reliability. On such environment there’s no way we can grant the QoS if the connection doesn’t depend on us. If iomando is providing the service, the fewer intermediate dependencies we can’t control, the better.

Here is where GSM stands out the most, because it works out of the box.

The installer just needs to grant power to the device and connect it to the door. The GSM connection automatically registers the device to our platform and assigns it to the administrator. The only thing the admin has to do is log in to our online panel and start granting permissions to the end users.

Pairing

From the installer perspective a GSM enabled module made a lot of sense, but it also had to appeal to the end user. Here is where the concept of pairing comes into play.

Pairing a phone with another device has always been (at least before the introduction of Wi-Fi Direct and BT 4.0) a painful experience. We built some prototypes with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and we also tried some of our competitors products, but it was a nightmare when it came to pair the device with the smartphone.

That made us think deeply of the problem we were trying to solve and the interaction that made it possible.

Opening the door with a smartphone was not a lengthy action: launch the app and tap open. Old keys and remotes are not great products, but they are fast as hell. If we wanted to appeal to our customers we needed to, at least, match that speed.

Bluetooth technologies are great for long term relations, like a headset for streaming music, where the main experience is way longer than the pairing itself. In our case, the procedure was quite the opposite. You wanted the pairing to be fast, almost non-existing, because the shorter the experience, the better.

That was not possible with Bluetooth.

Each time you wanted to access you had to wait for the device to pair, even in some places where the entry point was far from the device, there were problems with the range of the network… It was not a great solution for the kind of experience we were envisioning.

Moreover, imagine the first time pairing, the on boarding process. Picture a public facility where thousands of people have access — we’ve got plenty of those. The people would have to go next to the device in order to pair their phone, as some kind of pilgrimage. Bluetooth doesn’t scale well beyond a reduced particular use.

From a pairing perspective, we went with GSM because there are several advantages using this technology:

Pairing is done server side: there’s never a direct communication between the smartphone and the device. That allowed us to manage and push the permissions at scale and in real time. Users didn’t need to pair anything because is the server that grants the permissions in a transparent and automatic process for the user. The moment the app is downloaded, the user already has a button to open the door, given the admin has already granted the permission, with no action required on her side.
Opening the door is way faster, between one and two seconds after the button is pushed. Since the connection is a TCP/IP request to the device, the time it takes to open the door is no longer than sending a WhatsApp to your colleague.

Again, mobile is at its best when transmitting data packages over cellular connections, so leverage that to build our platform was a no brainer.

Security

This one is tricky, because it is difficult to evaluate security in absolute terms. You can assert one thing is more secure than other, but “how secure is it in an absolute scale” might not have a direct or easy answer.

One of the great weaknesses of old systems, like remote controls, is that they offer poor security.

Because there is a local element you can interact with, finding a security breach becomes a matter of time. With the GSM connection we removed the direct link between smartphone and device, all the traffic was routed from the server.

Yet, more reasons

Real time: this is one of our costumers most valued features. It lets our users know when the door has been opened (even with systems other than iomando). Real time also fashions itself as a security feature, because permissions are updated instantaneously, so if an administrator has to grant or block access to anybody, changes occur immediately.

Remote open: as we said before, there’s no direct connection between the smartphone and the device. This unlinks the physical constrain when it comes to open, so one of the indirect benefits is that doors can be opened remotely.

Looking back, using GSM connections in our devices was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, and it gave us a huge competitive advantage from the product perspective.

It is true that the nature of a centralized GSM connection shaped our business in a way that some customers didn’t expect, but at the end, it allowed us to design an easy installation process and creating a frictionless on boarding experience from the user perspective.

There were actually more, but these four were the ones we were seriously considering. There were already products in the market that opened doors with missed calls and other crazy ideas. We spent a lot of time looking into them and tried to figure out the competitive edge each could bring to our business model. As a rule of thumb, we understood our service was standing in the shoulders of giants by means of running on smartphones, so anything that wasn’t pointing on this direction wasn’t even worth considering.↩
The communication layer was not running explicitly over the GSM protocol. Cellular might sound like a more accurate description, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll refer to GSM / GPRS / UMTS / LTE as cellular or GSM indistinctly.↩
Data from November 2013, but it has remained more or less the same since.↩
Update from 2014: iPhone 6 added an NFC chip, but it was only for Apple to use, so no API, no developers, yet.↩
The Wi-Fi version could come in three flavors: Access Point, Infrastructure or Ad-Hoc. The Access Point, creates an SSID on its own, that’s great, but we found out that in some places the network could interfere with the one you already had installed. The Infrastructure mode was useful if you already had a Wi-Fi in your place, but that was not the case in communities. And of course, dealing with DHCP was a mess. Finally, the Ad-Hoc connection is great for this kind of application, but the Wi-Fi direct protocol was not mature back then and there was poor support for it.↩

Services And Subscriptions

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Since the introduction of iomando 1.0 in the Barcelona area we’ve been incredibly busy attending customer requests and on boarding new partners as official installers, in order to ensure every new customer gets an amazing support and set up experience.

Overall, the service has been well received and we’ve been congratulated by both our customers and the press. There has also been a great deal of controversy around a particular issue and our customers have complained about an aspect of our business model: the pricing based on a subscription.

And to be honest, we saw that one coming.

For this reason we spent almost a third of the product announcement explaining our motivations and why we thought a subscription model was a better proposition in the long run.

We also knew subscription based models are not particularly loved in Spain and we spent a lot of time discussing alternatives or workarounds.

Long story short, we realized that to launch the product we wanted, the one that matched our quality expectations, we needed to lean on this business model. Otherwise it wouldn’t work.

But the reactions around the subscription model have been mostly negative and misleading information has spread on Twitter and other outlets. Because of that, I’d like to write a few words to address the situation and better explain the motivations behind our decision.

What We Stand For

First of all, even before explaining why we opted for such pricing model, it is important to state what iomando stands for, why we built it. Our ultimate goal is to leverage technology to create the best access experience.

This statement has two direct implications:

First: we rely on technology to enable and deliver the experience, and that’s a good thing because technology is the most powerful driver for innovation.
Second: technology evolves extremely fast, and that’s also a good thing because if we can keep the pace, we’ll be able to come up with better products from which, ultimately, our customers would benefit.

These two premises work in combination to ensure that iomando will always stay — product wise, on the edge of the possible and it will also cost less than their traditional counterparts.

With the caveat that the same way our competitors have no means to replicate our product, we also can’t replicate their business model — and therefore their pricing structure. Our technological breed, for better or worse, doesn’t allow us to do so.

How It Works

iomando works as an annual fee that it’s billed to the community — the customer, as other shared services, like the elevator maintenance or the cleanings staff, do.

With this annual fee we include:

An unlimited amount of licenses: you can activate as many users as you want. We won’t charge you more if you have 2 or 2.000 of them. So feel free to invite your family and friends and let them use your parking space when they come over for dinner.
A simple in-app admin tool that allows the owner to manage and grant permissions to users.
The hardware equipment that goes with the door: doors do many things, but none of them is to “talk” to smartphones out of the box. Think of this hardware as some kind of translator so the smartphone can “talk” to (and open) the door¹.
The installation service from one of our network of official iomando-trained installers.

The price for all these services is 99€ / year, a small fraction of what traditional access system would cost.

Price Syndication

The replacement of access system constitute a sunk cost in most communities. That’s because community members independently pay for their own lost or broken keys, but don’t syndicate the cost to a communal expense. Access system devices are not perceived as a direct community cost, because the buying happens behind the curtain.

It is reasonable to assume that when we ask for a yearly fee the entire community has to pay for, it is perceived as something extra, a cost they didn’t have before. In other words, community members don’t want to pay for the “other” neighbors access system.

We understand where this comes from, but the reasoning behind is flawed. It would be the same as arguing that people living in the first floor has to pay less for the elevator maintenance just because his rides are shorter.

If we surface all the sunk costs derived from each user iomando can save up to 80% of the community’s access control expenses.

The larger the community, the bigger the savings.

Think of an average place with 100 users. Suppose that the (optimistic) average lifespan of a remote is 2 years. This means the replacement rate for this community would be around 50 remotes a year. Since each remote costs more or less 40€, that adds up to 2.000€ per year.

The problem is that nobody “sees” this cost in their integrity, because when someone loses his own remote, he goes and buys another, nobody ever knows.

In short, we are trying to surface this sunk cost and offer a better deal: 99€ per year. Yes, it is a community expense. But it’s way lower than the sum of all the lost and broken remotes that community members replace on its own each year.

Long Term Commitment

We are here for the long run. We truly believe in our mission and we want to build a sustainable business that focuses on delivering the best product.

A subscription based model creates a more truthful relationship between the customer and the company.

Since we’ll be paid in a recurrent basis, we’ll always be under the customer evaluation. Therefore, subscription based revenue forces us to always deliver the best possible service, because if you are not fully satisfied with our service you can easily opt out whenever you feel like it.

One-shot payments might seem more appealing for some: “because I own the product” or “because I’m not locked in”. We’ve heard them all, but we couldn’t disagree more.

One-shot pricing frees companies of further improvement upon existing customers, because no additional revenue is generated from them. So all the efforts are placed in acquiring new customers, not in taking care of the existing ones.

The subscription based model incentivizes us to place the same or even more resources to existing customers, generating a long term commitment and a healthier relationship between the parties.

The Best Product

Technology evolves, so do we. When you get a remote — or any other access system for that matter, you are acquiring a piece of plastic that’s not going to change any time.

iomando gets better with time.

We release new versions periodically with new functionalities and improvements based on user feedback. We want every customer to be on the same page, enjoying the greatest and latest version of our service.

Every year there are major OS updates to each mobile platform. We’ll also update our apps in order to get the most of the new APIs, resources and capabilities available to developers. We want every customer on board with the latest technology, but we don’t want to charge “extra” for that.

Finally, think of 5 years ago: a service like iomando could not be possible. Technology looked like nothing we have today. An app was not “a thing”.

Now imagine 5 years from now.

5 years from now we may use some kind of new wearable technology, whatever, who knows. Unfortunately, we don’t know either. But we do know we will support whatever comes next because a subscription model will incentivize us to offer the best experience at any given time.

Recap

Keys and remotes have remained untouched for almost fifty years. We are now faced with an amazing challenge to approach the market with a fresh value proposition leveraging mobile technology.

We are convinced that mobile technologies offer an unique opportunity to build on top and create a better access experience that will delight our customers.

This is also good news for our customers, because they will not only benefit from a superior product, but also a cheaper one. To enable such product though, the pricing architecture has to follow and support the business.

That being said, we truly believe that this is for the best. We are here for the long run and we’ll continue to work in order to deliver the best product at the most competitive price.

Installing a device to the door it’s not an exclusive feature of iomando. Any automated door that works with remotes or magnetic cards will also require this device.↩

iomando 1.0

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

ℹ️ This post was originally published on February 2012 on the official iomando blog and it announced the release of the first version of the product.

Nowadays we use smartphones for almost everything: email, photos, music, alarms, notes… so why not also use them to open our doors and accesses?

This is what iomando is about: a new way to open doors and all kind of accesses right from the smartphone. Same way we use keys and remotes, iomando offers a whole new experience to access your spaces, specifically designed for mobile devices.

The Problem?

Keys, remotes and every other type of access systems belong to those kind of things nobody is in love with. Despite they offer a poor user experience, they also inexplicably stick around, patiently awaiting for somebody to come up with a better idea.

We are convinced we can deliver a better solution leveraging mobile technologies and great product design.

Among all the problems we’ve detected, here’s a quick list you might relate to:

Expensive: most of them cost more than 30€.
Unclear distribution: because door manufacturers don’t have the direct relationship with the end customer, you never know where to buy them.
Poor security: it is not only that they are easily copied or hacked, but if we lose a key or remote, anyone can make use of it. Oh, and we do lose them, all the time.
Not traceable: there’s no way to know who might be using them.
One per place: seems rather obvious, but we need different keys for different places and it gets way worse if there are multiple vehicles, like a car and a bike.

For these and many other reasons we are introducing iomando, our vision for an access system, designed for the mobile era.

What’s iomando?

iomando is a solution aimed to house owners and people living in community buildings to easily manage and open garage doors or communal accesses with the smartphone.

The solution is composed of three pieces:

Electronic device: we install a device next to the door, so the smartphones can easily communicate with it.
Server: managed directly by iomando, it provides an extra layer of security and checks the that permissions for each user are up to date.
Mobile app: the app is the “tool” to open the door¹. You can download it for free directly from your iPhone, BlackBerry or Android (coming soon).

Why is it Better?

The most important thing to consider is that iomando is a software based product. This has several fundamental implications:

Lower price: the marginal cost of creating an additional permission (the equivalent of “making” a key) is zero. Because of that we can bring the costs way down in comparison with traditional mechanisms, that have to deal with manufacturing and distribution costs.
Higher security: our mobile app never communicates directly to the door, it has to go through the server first. The server double checks the permissions, and only after it has verified the request, it securely communicates back to the door.
Revoke permissions: you can always revoke a permission in real time. If for whatever reason your phone gets lost or stolen, iomando has you immediately covered.
Multiple spaces: you have several places you want to manage? Great! With iomando you can easily open as many places as you want right from the mobile app through a unified interface, no need for “different” keys anymore.

How Much is it Going to Cost?

You can have iomando up and running for a fraction of what your old keys and remotes used to cost. The only difference is that iomando works as a subscription, not as a one time purchase.

Why is that? The short answer is because we want all of our customers to get the best access experience, regardless of what device they might want to use.

But we encourage you to read the long one below.

We strongly believe the subscription based model creates a more truthful relationship between the customer and the service. Since we will be paid in a recurrent basis, we will always be under the customer evaluation.

Subscription based revenue forces us to always deliver the best possible service, because if you are not fully satisfied with our service you can easily opt out whenever you feel like it.

One-shot payments might seem more appealing for some: “because I own the product”, “because I’m not locked in”, we have heard them all.

But we couldn’t disagree more.

The subscription based model forces us to place the same or even more resources to existing, paying customers, generating a long term commitment and a healthier relationship in the long run.

But for iomando in particular, there are even more reasons that led us to start as a subscription based service.

Technology evolves fast, and so do we: when you get a remote, you acquire a piece of plastic that’s not going to change any time. iomando changes that and instead, it gets better with time. We will release new versions periodically with new functionalities and improvements. We want every customer on the same page, enjoying the latest version of our service.
OS releases: every year there are major OS updates to mobile platforms. We’ll also update our app in order to get the most of the new APIs, resources and capabilities available to developers. We want you running on the latest technology, but we don’t want you to pay extra for that.
New devices: think what five years ago looked like. Just five years. A service like iomando would not be possible. There were another kind of devices that don’t look like anything of what we have today. So now imagine five years from now. Maybe we use some kind of wearable technology or a new set of devices… who knows. Unfortunately we don’t know either. But we know that we will support whatever technological trend that comes next.

In short, because of the subscription model we are committed to offer the best experience at any given time, and that means creating and supporting new tools for whatever platform emerges in the future.

iomando will cost 99€ / year with a 30-day trial period². That includes the device installed in the door, the installation of the device led by an authorized iomando professional and a license for up to 100 active users.

We are rolling out the service in the Barcelona area the 1st of March 2012 and we’d love to have you on board, so sign up at iomando.com.

An admin must grant permissions to the mobile user first.↩
During the trial you can opt out whenever you want, we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.↩

Pivoting iomando

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

By January 2012 we already had a working prototype of a product that could be used to open doors with a smartphone. Curiously enough, we were convinced that it was not possible to monetize and build a sustainable business around such product.

We then set out to build what we believed was a “more valuable service” leveraging our product. But failed to understand what problem we were ultimately trying to solve.

Fortunately, the sole experience of developing and pushing the product forward, revealed the true problems our customers had. We shifted our focus to the core technology to open doors and manage accesses, instead of the services that could be potentially built on top.

The First Business Model

Without even planning for it, our early prototype was redefining the way access systems worked. Our access technology had a simple feature that no one else had at the time: it was software based, running on a mobile app. This subtle twist enabled some key capabilities that our competitors couldn’t match.

From a mobile app the user could open the door from a smartphone. The app replaced the physical keys and added a layer of security and convenience on top.

Old systems like keys, remotes and all the stuff used to access most places, were hardware based.

That meant mainly three things:

They cost money: to create an additional copy of that key you incurred a production cost. That didn’t happen with iomando, since the cost for production and distribution of additional units was virtually zero.
They could not be updated: once a key was produced, you could not change nor upgrade their capabilities. A mobile based system like iomando could be updated at anytime to add new functionalities, improve the experience or leverage any new technology.
They were static: once you gave away a key, you were granting a 24/7 permission to a place and the administrator lost control over its property. Instead, when you granted a permission with iomando, you did it from a web based tool where you controlled the access parameters, that could be changed at any given moment, in real time.

Redefining Access

The combination of these three features gave us the ability to manage the private property in a flexible way. The old paradigm was constrained by the static nature of keys and remotes. That meant it was not possible (or at least much more difficult) to grant access to a private property to other people for small periods of time, while you were not actually using it.

New trends were emerging in this direction. The so called shared economy was getting traction in a context of crisis, where technology enabled people to put their assets to work in a smart way.

The timing could not be better: Spain was still digesting the consequences of a big financial crisis that lead an unnecessary overspending. People just bought cars, houses and a lot of fancy stuff. But when the party was over, they realized they didn’t even need all of that. Even worse, they couldn’t pay for it. So the logic thing to do was to put those assets to work to get at least some money out of them. It turned out that our technology could make that happen.

The combination of these three features inevitably led to the change of a fundamental assumption: the access to private property was no longer tied to static ownership, instead with iomando we could now grant discrete permissions to anybody. A mobile app controlled from the cloud was now your key, so we could safely unlock an asset, just for small periods of time, when it was not being used by its owner.

Both the opportunity in the sharing economy in combination with the nature of our technology, inevitably led us towards the parking industry. More precisely, private communal parkings inside buildings¹, where each owner had a spot, but the property of the entire parking didn’t belong to anybody in particular.

Exploiting Underused Assets

Due to the mobility of cars and people during the day, parking spots spent most of the time empty, unused. But the curious thing was that those empty spots were located in the most precious zones of the city, where parking was the most difficult.

Paradoxically, high value parking assets coexisted alongside huge demand, precisely located in the right place, but unmatched because these assets could not be accessed by third parties.

We realized that iomando could unlock and set free this hidden supply of empty spaces in key areas of the city. The nature of our technology could allow owners to give time-constrained permissions to potential users in order to use their unused spaces for limited amounts of time.

Owners of an empty parking spot could monetize their asset by the hour with micro rents in a way it wasn’t possible before.

The service could potentially become an alternative to traditional parking at a fraction of the price, because the operational cost of running the service was dramatically low. All the assets belonged to the owners, so we could add capacity to the marketplace without (us) actually buying parking spots. On top of that, owners could offer lower prices because their micro economies allowed to turn almost all revenue into net profit.

With iomando it was possible to surface this hidden supply of empty spaces. On one hand, the owner could monetize their asset while he was not using it. On the other, we could create a marketplace of high value parking spots in the most critical areas of the city at a fraction of the price.

So, the game was on — we thought.

Our pitch went something like this…

We detected a problem:

…finding a parking spot in some areas of the city was hard and expensive.

Then we saw an opportunity:

…there were a lot of empty spaces in those areas, but they could not be accessed because of the static nature of access control systems.

And here’s our solution:

…we could use our technology to surface this supply of empty spaces by creating a flexible access system that could securely grant permissions on demand.

Made sense, huh?

The Roll Out

Over these assumptions we set out to build a park-sharing platform: a service powered by our technology that enabled people to rent their parkings spaces for discrete periods of time. From our mobile app, the renter would select a parking nearby, introduce the time frame, and access and pay with the touch of a button.

In addition, almost as a courtesy service, we’d also provide an access system from the smartphone to the owners. That wasn’t a strategic decision, it was simply something we thought it was cool and didn’t cost us anything because the access system had to be installed anyway, so why not?

There were still a lot of raw edges and minor technological details such as what happened when a user didn’t leave the space on time? How to guide the user indoors to find the right spot?

Despite our biggest challenge was not a technical problem: we just discovered what a two sided market place meant.

The kind of platform we were shooting for would naturally attract demand in the first place. They were the ones looking for parking and the sign up friction was non existing.

But amassing enough supply of parking spots from the get-go was critical to keep demand engaged. This was the hard part.

In order to keep the ball rolling, the initial supply of spaces had to be, at least, at par with the demand.

At that point it was obvious that the supply side of the market didn’t exist and it couldn’t grow organically, therefore, it had to be artificially created. From that point signing up a critical mass of communities became our main goal.

But in our attempts to persuade spot owners to enroll, we faced several problems that kept the process really slow.

Security: despite old systems were not secure at all and bad security practices were common among the owners, they were deeply concerned about the security involved in letting someone into the private property.
I don’t want to be first: the fear of being first at something is usually a problem when you push a new idea into the market. But in this case it was a deeper problem because there was value compromised — as seen in point one.
Communal spaces: that was by far the most difficult to solve. In a communal space there’s no clear decision maker and the default answer in front of a risky decision was always no.

The Workaround

In order to convince owners and argue against these reasonable points we designed a strategy that worked in two stages.

We realized what we really needed were parking spots in the more critical areas of the city. It was obvious that we weren’t going to get them right off the bat, so we designed a two-step approach, in where first we offered the mobile door opener service for free, and then a premium feature that could turn the space into a park-sharing platform.

This way we could easily capture the most valuable communities without going through the hassle of selling the park-sharing model upfront. During this process we would set up all the communities² with necessary hardware to activate the park-sharing business, but with the “excuse” of the door opener system.

Deploying all these “seeds” around the city was great, but ultimately we wanted the communities to put their empty spots in the marketplace, so we could make some money out of them.

But we faced brutal rejection because owners were not sold to the idea of letting someone in.

In other words, the plan was working, but the conversion to the second stage was way lower than we expected, almost non-existing, and we were running out of money.

The Pivot

The takeaway of more than a hundred meetings with building managers and parking administrators was clear: they were far more interested in the system to open doors, than the possibility to share their spots while they were away.

It was astonishing for us, it brought us back to earth. We realized that we were trying to solve a problem no one had.

Yes, there was a market opportunity. Yes, there was something inefficient that could be optimized. Yes, any city could benefit from such service.

But (and that’s a big but) we were not solving their problem. They didn’t even knew that was a problem to begin with.

Their spots were always empty “but that’s how it is, right? It has always been this way. Why change it?”, that’s the kind of skepticism we were surrounded by.

Of course they understood the idea. Of course they understood the upside. But our enthusiasm was not enough to bend the power of “it has always been this way and we’ve been fine so far”.

We convinced ourselves of a problem that nobody had. The journey had become all about solving inefficiencies in our heads, not listening to real customers. We were obsessed on those inefficiencies because that was the problem we wanted to see, that was our problem.

Failure

Dealing with failure (even more the first time) is a topic for another post, but there’s a bright side to the story.

Despite we were wrong about our first assumption, our customers showed us the right path. They were clearly interested in a system to manage accesses and permissions in real time, a software based service to replace their keys and remotes.

We were so focused on our idea that we didn’t realize it until they told us the hundredth time. The real problem our service solved was right there, waiting for us to pick it up.

At that point, we shifted our business strategy and iomando became what it is today, an access control system based on mobile technologies, which in plain English means opening doors and stuff with your phone.

In Europe, particularly in crowded cities like Barcelona, people live in buildings, not houses. More often than not, the lower floor is a communal parking space for the neighbors of that building. Each neighbor owns a spot, but the whole parking is a communal space. This leads to an interesting conjecture because all of the owners of a spot are owners of the parking, but no one owns it entirely.↩
The basic hardware requirements to enable the the park-sharing business was the same as the mobile door opener, an “always connected” electronic attached to the door. Of course, in order to set up an “enhanced” park-sharing platform it was necessary to install sensors in each spot and more sophisticated equipment, but to kickstart the platform, the door opener was all we needed.↩

iomando — Prologue

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

iomando is a mobile product that provides cloud-managed keyless access solutions for mobile devices. Which in plain English means opening doors and stuff with your phone. The service enables its users to easily access and manage their spaces using a smartphone — instead of keys or remote controls. Thus providing a better experience and defining a whole new category when it comes to interact with accesses.

I co-founded the company back in 2011 and led the product team until 2015. By the end of 2017, iomando was acquired by Citibox — a Spanish startup that helps you receive goods when you are away.

This is the very first article of the iomando series, a recollection of posts where I explain the story behind the company from a product perspective.

How It All Started

It was spring of 2011 in Barcelona and my last semester of college. That year I was also working part-time as a Product Manager at Tech Data and about to turn twenty-four.

Before diving into the story it is necessary to appropriately frame it within the context of the current time. By the end of 2011 mobile was already getting noticeable traction, but it was not ubiquitous — at least in Spain.

Mobile was already perceived as a potential enabler for new businesses and opportunities, but its preliminary applications were still fragile and inconsistent. It was a no-brainer that something huge was about to happen in the space, but back then, it lacked shape and the how was still far from clear.

Just for technological reference, the iPhone 4S was the first mainstream device that supported Bluetooth 4.0, a key component of the yet to be called, Internet of Things (IoT). Nowadays it seems BLE has been around forever, but this iPhone was first introduced in October 2011.

Everybody seemed to envision a bright future for the IoT and what would be possible was a hot topic in the media. Sadly, still few understood how to build sustainable businesses models out of mobile technologies and a lot of companies were struggling to find ways to fit mobile in their current business strategy.

This is important because nowadays most of this stuff has been already figured out. Back in 2011, it was not. It is fairly easy to connect these dots looking backwards, but some of the markets as we know them, were partially locked because of technology constraints, and the IoT was definitely one of them.

The Catalyst

I still could not articulate how, but at some point in time it was clear to me that certain trends were about to merge and the mobile industry would lead the way.

I’m sure back then this clarity looked more like a draft than an ordered list, but these are the main bullets that articulated the reasoning behind my hunch:

Always connected: we were just starting to grasp the endless implications of having a permanently connected device with us all the time.
Personal device: those devices brought with them something truly new, the sense of ownership. Smartphones came with you all the time and were moving the technology closer to us. The idea of my device was something we had not seen during the PC era.
Interaction between physical and digital: the combination of the two firsts points defined the frontier between the physical world and personal digital experiences. In a way, our biological capabilities could be enhanced by these devices.
Feature inheritance: mobile technologies were matching some features from single function devices. In most cases, they were even doing a better job than their former replacements, thanks to the software capabilities.
Ephemeralization: I’ve always admired Fuller’s work and I’m 100% sold to the idea doing more with less as a byproduct of technological advancement. Mobile seemed to me the highest exponent of this trend.
Mobile digital hub: the idea of digital hub Steve Jobs introduced back in Macworld 2001, seemed to be moving away from computers and forming around mobile.

The Starting Point

Despite the fact all the data pointed directly towards a whole new set of experiences powered by mobile technologies, the truth is that I did not even know where to start. The facts were there and they provided a solid foundation to build upon, but the link between what was happening and what could be done was still blurry.

Because of that, I started to explore: I bought myself an Arduino board and tinkered with it every night after work. I build some crappy applications mostly for fun.

I distinctly remember a cool hack that buzzed an alarm when the temperature of the house raised above a certain threshold, kind of a reminder to turn on the air conditioner. Unfortunately I was never able to hook it up with the thermostat in order to work full circle. I tried hard, though.

Among all the useless stuff I built, there was a tiny electronic board featuring a Wi-Fi module and a relay that could be triggered through TCP/IP from a local network. With this device and a local network, you could control anything you wanted: from the alarm, the garage door, to the irrigation system. It was some kind of rudimentary home automation system, but it was a cool idea at the time.

Enter Mobile Technologies

I was really excited with the early prototypes, I did not have a clue where that was going, but neither I asked nor wondered. I knew I was having a lot of fun and this kept me going.

But then something incredible happened.

I just realized that mobile was the missing key to unlock the next step of my tiny project and quickly realized the full potential of the idea.

Now I see it as a perfect, clean and direct causation. Certainly back then it was not much of a revelation, but more of an iterative process. But inevitably, those paths had to converge at some point, and they certainly did.

On one end, you had the PC, that was limiting the “switching experience” because in order to interact with something you must go to the PC, turn it on, run the program, log in, find the device and pull the trigger. The process was not natural, it created a bunch of artificial steps in order to make that happen.

It was great as an experiment, but definitely not great for something you actually want to use everyday.

On the other end, you had the electronic device¹ you installed next to “the thing” you wanted to gain control over. It had to be connected to a Wi-Fi network in order to “talk” with the PC. That was a problem because you were always depending on the availability of the network, which was not ubiquitous.

The hack was constrained by design. It was constrained because it had anchors on both sides, it did not belong in there. It felt incomplete and out of place, as if we already had the recipe but not yet the ingredients.

It turned out mobile was the key to solve both.

First, a GSM module stacked in the main board solved the location constraint. Because of the GSM the device was not depending on any Wi-Fi or external connection. You could just plug it anywhere and it was already working.

Then I built a dead simple web-based mobile app, so the other end could be mobile, too. That solved the mobility side of the equation.

Also thanks to the sense ownership and the always connected nature of mobile, the experience of triggering the switch was, still far from being a product, but fast and delightful.

At the end of the day, I ended up with some kind of autonomous switch that could enable or control anything from a mobile device, without the need of any of configuration on the other side: plug&play.

Co-Founder

At that point, by the end of 2011, I had no idea what could potentially be done with that invention. I guessed it might had some commercial applications, sure, but still I couldn’t foresee a clear use for it. It was something like “I have build this thing that could be potentially great, but I’m not sure what the next steps should be”.

I showed it to many friends and colleagues. Everyone thought it was cool, but no one knew what to make of it. It wasn’t until one of my closest friends at college — and who later would become co-founder of the company, started to get really interested in the device and starting working together.

We never talked about starting a business, though. We simply enjoyed discussing and trying to figure out the potential applications. Looking back, I have to admit that without him I wouldn’t have had the courage start any of this.

We spend endless afternoons in his garage tinkering with the device. We considered several applications for it, but we weren’t experts in any particular field, just two recent engineering grads. It was hard to seek problems without a deep understanding of the underlying industries, we weren’t insiders.

Solving a Problem

Over time I have come to realize that meaningful products are all about identifying real problems. So when it comes to build a great product you have to really understand the problem first, and only then, deliver the best experience in order to solve it.

This way you are not constrained when it comes to identifying the problem, because you start with a clean slate and you are not biased by what could be done with the thing you have already build.

iomando was (unintentionally) designed the other way around. We build something cool and then we had to look for a problem that could be addressed with that piece of technology. Definitely not the way it should be, but we were lucky enough to find a space where our technology was able to grow despite our ingenuity. That’s not the playbook for the best products to reach the market, because your ability to choose a problem is constrained by the frontiers your product has already defined.

Back then though, we weren’t thinking in terms of solving a real problem we just focused on let’s see what we can do with this. We just wanted to give utility and meaning to the device we just created.

We weren’t looking for real problems or user needs because we didn’t know that was an important part of building a great product or company. We were blinded by the functionality, by the short term, and ultimately, we only wanted to put that thing in the hands of people.

At this point there’s no clear moment (at least that I can remember) where we said “hey, we’re going to use this thing to open doors!“. It was not a personal itch nor our life’s calling, but the low hanging fruit of the technology, that seemed to make a lot of sense.

Again, there’s no magic or “aha” moment here, just this process of discovery that led to ask ourselves: “wouldn’t it be great if we build a business out of it?”, and that’s exactly what we did.

Enter iomando technologies

At the very end of 2011, we were both in a situation of unstable equilibrium: with secure jobs, but extremely excited about the prospect of starting a company. The problem though, is we had never started such thing before, and we were scared as hell.

We were scared about the idea of leaving the job, but we also knew that if we didn’t devote ourselves to the project, it would eventually fade away. So in an attempt to perpetuate the flow we were in, we decided to formalize the paperwork and create the society iomando technologies sl.

We still didn’t know exactly how the business model based on that technology would work. We had a solution to open doors with a mobile phone, but we also thought that only open doors felt incomplete. We were convinced that it was not possible to monetize and build a sustainable business out of a system to just open doors. We thought that we weren’t tapping the big opportunity that could be build on top of a mobile service to open doors on demand, but we still hadn’t a clear vision for that.

Looking back we had the stupid assumption that a mobile service to open doors was a weak foundation to build upon. Despite no one was building something similar and it could potentially solve a real problem, we dismissed the idea because we felt we ought to build something bigger, with greater impact (whatever that meant). And the truth is that we ended up building something that nobody wanted.

Early 2012 we shifted our focus and started exploring other business models around the technology that we thought were more attractive. We flirted with park sharing because we were convinced that we could surface a hidden supply of empty spots within communal spaces.

Back then it was the actual Arduino board.↩