Author: gary

There was a period in the mid-20th century when the future of nuclear power was bright. Nuclear power plants were to fuel the next phase of economic growth. The best and brightest studied nuclear engineering and innovation accelerated. It was the Atomic Age.

And then, fear snuck in. Fear over bombs, fallout, and toxic waste. Warranted or not, it snuffed out the enthusiasm. Over the next few decades, new projects stopped being proposed and students moved on to other fields. Predictably, nuclear power hasn’t made much progress since the 80’s.

Project selection has a compounding effect. The more you work on something, the more insights related insights you can generate, and the more you can innovate. 

By giving up on nuclear, we stopped making progress in that domain. By outsourcing manufacturing, we’ve ceded the future of manufacturing tech to other countries. 

This applies at the personal level, too. I’ve spent 15 years digging deep into financial markets and software engineering. I probably won’t be discovering a new nuclear reactor design.

I wonder what kind of future we’ll be able to create when a growing percentage of people only learn about social and ethereal reality. Ignoring the physical is a luxury.

Simple. We know it when we see it. But how to create it? To me, it’s all about the experience of effortlessness.

Does the object get in my way? Do I have to guess about how to use it, or what it’s for, or what it means? Then it’s not simple.

An object may be beautiful, have few parts, and be completely symmetric.

A perfectly round chrome sphere satisfies these. But it’s not necessarily simple. What am I supposed to do with this thing?

On the other hand, consider a door with no handle. The door can be old, the paint can be peeling, and yet I don’t have to think. I naturally push on it and move on.

You’ve heard this before: design is about how it works, not just how it looks. If your design makes something more effortless to use, then it’s getting simpler. Otherwise, you may be complicating things.

You can tell a lot about someone through their intent. How do they spend their time? What do they talk about? What path are they on? Strong intent can carve a tunnel from the present moment to a better future.

This isn’t restricted to humans. Every type of organization behaves with intent, including entire nations. A change in the intent of a nation indicates a change in the priorities of its people. Can you spot a change in the intent around us?

America seems to be striving towards something different than it did 50+ years ago. The pace of physical improvement has slowed to a trickle. Some groups speak of equalization replacing advancement. Other groups see reaching outer space as a panacea. Sometimes it feels like we’re out of new ideas.

I wonder where we’re headed.

Fame was never an outcome that interested me. Years ago, I made a list of the things I wanted and the tradeoffs I was willing to make to get there. Health, freedom, and money meant the most to me. Fame and status were at the bottom of the list (or so I claimed).

Over time, however, I’ve noticed an uptick in my Twitter activity. A lot of it is because I genuinely enjoy using Twitter; it hosts interesting content created by interesting people. But some of my activity must be a drive for fame, an inherent urge for status.

I say to myself that I don’t want to be in the news. I don’t even want to have 100k followers. But I have to wonder… am I fooling myself? If I obtain fame, will I modify my story and relish the situation?

Companies innovate through bundling and unbundling. Coined by Jim Barksdale, the concept is simple. Companies create a bundle when they combine a set of previously separate products or features. The iPhone bundled a web browser with a music player. Conversely, unbundling breaks a product up and delivers a superior single piece. iTunes unbundled the album by selling individual songs. From the consumer perspective, it’s about what features are combined or separated horizontally. 

Something analogous happens vertically. A single company can deliver a product from start to finish. Think of a corn grower, who plants, grows, and harvests their crop. Alternatively, a product’s supply chain can be broken up into an ecosystem of specialized firms. Think of all the companies involved in creating a new toaster.

Companies make leaps by bundling and unbundling. Similar dynamics carry innovation through supply chain integration and fragmentation.

Ten years ago, a slick new chat app called Slack was announced. It was exactly what my startup needed at the time — a chat tool that didn’t suck. 

Fast forward to today. Slack has essentially the same features. You send messages. You search channels. You communicate with your team. But not everything is like it used to be.

Sometimes, notifications don’t work. Other times, I’ll get stale indicators of unread messages. Occasionally, messages disappear when I use Slack on my phone.

What happened? It doesn’t do anything differently, but now it works like shit.

Building a software company and scaling it is… hard. It’s a struggle to keep your product working like it used to, especially if it gets bloated with complex features.

Make something scalable that solves a big problem. It should be simple, but it won’t be easy.

Water flows downhill. We all know this, and we all (implicitly) understand the idea. Water is flexible and subject to the forces of gravity. Terrain has high points and low points. Water follows the path of least resistance to reach its destination.

Water isn’t the only thing that behaves in this way. I think people behave in an identical fashion. Once the destination is determined and “terrain” is clearly visible, the path of least resistance becomes obvious. Unlike water, though, humans have to define the final resting point as precisely as possible. If you don’t define it, it may define you: you will find yourself moving towards a destination you didn’t expect, and may not want.

You will flow along a path of least resistance. The key question is where do you want to end up? If multiple paths seem equally appealing, you may have not defined the destination with enough clarity.

There’s this feeling that I call stuckness. It can strike any time I’m trying to get something done. I’ll find myself in a slog. Sometimes, I don’t know how to proceed. Other times, I know what I need to do, but I have a hard time actually doing it. That’s stuckness. I can try to force myself through it, but that doesn’t address the root of the issue (and it’s not very fun).

Stuckness is an unpleasant feeling, but I think all feelings are signs that can be useful. Stuckness is a frustrating sign, but it can be particularly helpful. If I’m feeling stuck, there’s always a reason why. If I diagnose the reason, I can solve that problem. Poof. Stuckness is gone. 

Just knowing that I can notice, diagnose, and solve my stuckness is a bit of a superpower.

He’s a cockapoo puppy, and he’s no fool. You see, when I command him to “Come!”, he doesn’t always listen.

Biggy prefers to be inspired. When he sees me holding his multicolored bag of treats, we can expect enthusiastic compliance to most any command. He can picture his future self chewing on a delicious morsel.

Without the bag of treats, it’s hard to see the point. Why “come” when he can just “stay”?

Consider that this applies to humans, as well. Without a vision, we’re lost. If we can’t connect the dots between our present self and an exciting future, it’s hard to expect much out of man or his best friend.