No More
“Yo, why did you not attend the event?” “I didn’t see the point, and had more important things to do.” “But it was mandatory!” “So what’s going to happen now?” “Well, I got this little notebook here with a list of names, see? What I’m going to
“So what do you think, Zef?” Ok, so this is embarrassing. Even though being present in a meeting and paying undivided attention is one of my virtues, I failed this time. I let myself get distracted by (admittedly hilarious) Slack messages from a colleague. While I shouldn’t have, I
I sometimes lie awake at night mentally preparing for a critical meeting. I’m a slow thinker, so when surprising things happen, there’s a risk that I effectively blank out. My coping mechanism is scenario planning. When I say A, how will others respond? If they respond with B,
Internal note: Until the announcement of the business pivot during the next all hands meeting, this document is to be considered confidential. Test chat transcript follows, copied verbatim. Frank: Hello there 👋 Let’s get to know each other a little bit. My name is Frank, and I’m a professional
Tell me about one of your most strongly held beliefs. I will crush it. Set fire to it. And then laugh at the moon, all evil-like. Sorry, I let myself go there for a second. I’m good now. So. I started a fun little project. Working title: Zef’s
During the second world war, soldiers would land on tiny islands of Melanesia in the south-western pacific ocean. They would airdrop cargo, and trade with the indigenous people that had never been exposed to any type of technology before. Then after some years, after the war ended, soldiers and their
Essentials
If feedback is a gift, why does it keep punching us in the face? “Your test coverage didn’t grow as much as we asked, you should care about quality more.” “You should be be better prepared for our meeting.” “You should care enough about this company to pick up
After wrapping up my last meeting of the day, I walk back into the open space. Somewhat disoriented I’m trying to recall at which desk I dropped my bag at the beginning of the day. As I sit down, I glance over on the large external monitor to my
World Peace
Let’s play a little game. I’ll call these games The Empathy Games. It’s like The Hunger Games, except it’s pretty much unrelated. I think. Rather than everybody but one dying in the end (or two, I suppose — I watched the first movie but didn’t care
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I don’t really care about winning; I’m not at all competitive. This also means that you cannot really motivate me by setting specific goals (with the one exception of doing Jack Shit, obviously). I’m a “journey man” — I mostly care about the journey, not the destination. However,
In 1962, president John F. Kennedy visited NASA for the first time. As he toured around, he met a janitor carrying a broom in the hallway. “What are you doing here, son?” the president asked. The janitor stood still, broom in hand, and dreamily glanced up towards the sky. “I’
“Thanks for coming to me with this. Here’s what we’re going to do.” I stop and feel my pockets. Nothing. “Ok, in this day and age, who still carries a wallet? Anybody got any coins on them?” Everybody starts feeling their pants and skirts. Frank finds some loose
Naively you may have thought: “I’m sure that Zef got a lot of pushback on his openness about his ambition to do Jack Shit, so probably this week he’ll walk some of that back.” Hah! No. I’m going to double down on it. I’m going to
My ultimate goal is to have to do Jack Shit. Don’t worry, “Jack Shit” is a technical term. It’s named after a person in late 17th century England, who was famous in the productivity community for his shockingly empty calendar. So, please don’t be upset about me
“Good morning! How are you doin’?” He keeps asking me that. Why? For many weeks now I’ve smiled and nodded, and been saying all is fine. I’m not sure that’s the correct answer. Does he know that something’s off? I mean, it’s not been the
Magic happens on mountains. There is a long, although not consistently documented history of this fact. A notable early example is from 1446 BC (disclaimer: this is a surprisingly-specific AI-generated estimate): Moses spent some quality time up mountain Sinai, and came down with the 10 commandments. Since then, a slew
I couldn’t fall asleep last night. I had an epiphany. I grabbed my phone, opened SilverBullet and quickly jotted down a formula. “I need to remember this in the morning,” I thought. Little did I know that the morning was still far out. Plenty of time to start applying
There’s a rare gem buried in most companies’ secondary benefits: the training budget. Every year we’re allowed to spend a certain amount on “personal development.” Traditionally the intention of these budgets is to send you off on some training course, or attend a conference. However, it’s 2023.
“We have this amazing idea. We’re going to apply the model of Tinder to... the jobs market! Tinder for Jobs, it’s a slam dunk!” It’s 2018, and I’m being pitched a new job. The product pitch is clear: we’re going to revolutionize the job market
“Oh, you’re doing OKRs? Sweet. Ah, a feature lists masquerading as key results. Classic mistake. It’s where we were in my previous place two years ago. I know how to fix this, allow me to fast forward you two years. You’re welcome.” In the new place, I
Yesterday I accepted a job offer. I’ll start in a few weeks, and I’m very excited about it. I’ll share more specifics when I can, but not today. The search is over. I’m happy and relieved. As I’m still processing this, let me dump an
