200 Words – Page 3

A collection of shiny objects

I have a problem. I collect trivia like raccoons collect shiny objects.

I store this collection in a notebook called “Random facts and learnings”.

It’s inspired by Steven Johnson’s Spark File:

I’ve been maintaining a single document where I keep all my hunches: ideas for articles, speeches, software features, startups, ways of framing a chapter I know I’m going to write, even whole books. I now keep it as a Google document so I can update it from wherever I happen to be. There’s no organizing principle to it, no taxonomy–just a chronological list of semi-random ideas that I’ve managed to capture before I forgot them. I call it the spark file.

Sometimes you start a new thing, and after awhile, you stop that new thing. A fad diet, a new friend, a Kindle book.

Sometimes you start a new thing, and you keep doing it. In fact, you find it hard to stop.

That’s the story of “Random facts and learnings”. It’s my spark file for trivia. When I read a statistic, a study, or an acronym, and think to myself, “I’d like to remember this, but probably won’t”, into the spark file it goes. My shiny collection is now ~40 pages.

Here are 5 items that I hope will catch your eye. I’ll attempt to curate and share more each month.

1. Mountain dew was originally slang for moonshine

2. Cryptophasia is the tendency for twins to communicate in their own private language. Like so.

3. Getting married causes a 2-year increase in happiness. Once a married couple has children, happiness steadily declines until the children leave the house, then marriage happiness begins to increase again

4. We have a functional and complex neural network or ‘brain’ in the gut, called the enteric brain, and fear is mediated by this brain. The # of neurons in our gut is equivalent to that of a cat’s!

5. Where does “raining cats and dogs” come from? One interpretation: in the old days, when it rained really hard, they’d find dead dogs and cats in the storm waters

Do you collect trivia, too? I’d love to hear from you. Thanks as always.

George Orwell rewriting Ecclesiastes

It takes some effort to get through, but Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is one of the best essays from one of the best nonfiction writers.

Here, Orwell translates a passage of what he considers good English (Ecclesiastes 9:11)…

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all.

…into “modern English of the worst sort”:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

I’m a recovering addict of using words like “leverage” and “substitutability” and “pivot”. Ironic, that it takes MORE effort to use SIMPLER words.

July Books: The Power of Habit, Beta China

This month was RSS/bookmark catch-up, so I only finished 2 books. Here’s my Evernote which shows my non-book readings.

The Power of Habit Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg [Amazon]

One of my 2013 favorites. Here’s a 1-page cheatsheet.

Researchers have learned that cues can be almost anything, from a visual trigger such as a candy bar or a television commercial to a certain place, a time of day, an emotion, a sequence of thoughts, or the company of particular people. Routines can be incredibly complex or fantastically simple (some habits, such as those related to emotions, are measured in milliseconds). Rewards can range from food or drugs that cause physical sensations, to emotional payoffs, such as the feelings of pride that accompany praise or self-congratulation.

Beta China by Hamish McKenzie [Amazon]

I consistently enjoy Hamish’s PandoDaily posts: strong research, crisp syntax, and a clear point-of-view. Here’s a great example. This “special report” – unfortunately – misses his usual mark, but given the tough subject matter (for example, it’s an opaque business environment, and entrepreneurs speak limited English), and the low price ($1.99), I’d rate it a “buy”.

Until recently, their [big tech cos like Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Sina] preference was to raid the best talent from startups, copy the most successful products, and move on. They already controlled most of the distribution channels and could quickly push their own versions of products out to their existing user bases, which number in the hundreds of millions.

Here are previous months.

What have you read and loved? Please share! Thanks folks.

The secrets of Reed Hastings and Netflix culture

Recent share price swings aside, Netflix is among the most innovative companies of the last 2 decades.

They’re also incredibly transparent, to our benefit.

I first read this presentation 4 years ago. I remember thinking, “holy shit”, and immediately forwarding to the shopkick team.

I’ve re-read it 3 or 4 times. Still not enough.

It’s now part of 1-Read-A-Day.

Here are my takeaways

I bias towards the unusual (since we all know the old yarns of “A players attract other A players”, “employees are your #1 asset”, blah yada etc)

1. A company’s REAL values are shown by who’s rewarded, who’s promoted, and who’s fired (slide 6)

2. “Adequate performance gets a generous severance package” (slide 22, reminds me a little of Zappos’ $1K to quit) [http://blogs.hbr.org/taylor/2008/05/why_zappos_pays_new_employees.html]

3. The Keeper Test: “Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving, for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?” (slide 25)

4. “Brilliant jerks” are avoided – hurts effective teamwork (slide 35)

5. Growth –> More complexity –> More processes –> Less talent –> Long-term irrelevance (slide 52)

6. Netflix’s solution to above? Increase talent density to offset rising complexity. Do this by hiring only “high performance people” and giving them more freedom (slide 54)

7. Example: no vacation policy; take what you want (now a startup-world standard) (slide 69)

8. Departments are “highly aligned” (agree on goals), and “loosely coupled” (freedom in implementation) (slide 93)

9. Pay top of market, because Netflix only wants top people – top of market is re-defined with each hire, each performance review (slide 96)

10. Comp is salary-focused. Employees can choose to trade salary for stock options (109)

11. Everyone gets $10K in benefits, from receptionist to CEO (slide 109) – this was published in 2009

12. All options are fully vested – employees stay for the right reasons

13. For promotion, new job must be “big enough”, and you must be a superstar in your current role

That’s it, folks!

Publishing 3.0: James Altucher and what we can learn from his self-publishing success

James Altucher I read How to Self-Publish a Bestseller: Publishing 3.0 and LOVED it. So much so, that I took notes, and am sharing with y’all.

I admire James for letting it all hang out. He does this day after day. It’s what made him a successful blogger, author, and entrepreneur.

Here are my notes in note-form (that is to say, disorganized and unedited)

The distinction today is not between traditional and self-publishing, it’s between professional and unprofessional publishing

Benefits of professional self-publishing (ie, do it yourself, and do it well):
1. More money – you own rights, can do special packages, higher royalty
2. Control over design
3. Faster process – up to a year
4. Control over content (say what you want)
5. Avoid “bad things in life”

Here’s how you do it

1. BUILD A PLATFORM
MUSTS: significant Twitter, Facebook, and blog following

2. HOW TO BUILD IT
“if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead”
“sincere voices will always rise to the top”

3. WRITE
Write 500-2000 words every day
High quality foreword – Dick Costolo (Twitter) wrote his

4. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT
you can do it the easy way – Amazon Createspace
OR, you can put out best possible product, follow “Publishing 3.0”. this is more expensive and requires more effort

Publishing 1.0 – traditional publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster
Publishing 2.0 – self-publishing like Amazon CreateSpace (15mm books published last year, vs 300K 10 years ago…not a typo)
Publishing 3.0 – “self-publish better, more successfully, better edited, better designed, better marketed, and make more money than if you go any other route”; much of the best publishing talent (editors, designers, marketers) do lots of freelance

5. EDITING
hired 2 copy editors
hired Command Z Editing for content/structure editing. worked with Nils Parker who previously edited Tucker Max, Naval Ravikant, Ryan Holliday; together they did 15 rewrites

6. DESIGN
Erin Tyler Design – found a great cover designer, managed interior design process

7. AUDIOBOOK
a. helps credibility for your print and ebook
b. for his topic (self-help-ish), people love listening while driving to work
Tucker Max recommended John Marshall Media – James improvised quite a bit, made a fresh product
reading highlights writing that isn’t working, rewrote 20% of the book after the experience

8. TITLE
chose a bunch that he liked, ran FB ad campaigns, “Choose Yourself!” was clearly #1 based on click-thrus

9. MARKETING
used Ryan Holliday’s Brasscheck
scheduled 60 podcasts, radio interviews, speaking engagements, guest blog posts
Reddit AMA – 3K comments, 1mm views
Ryan’s co created slideshare preso – 300K views
First ever bitcoin-only pre-release
Video trailer scripted and edited by Simplifilm
“the offer” – if you proved that you bought and read it, James would refund your money

10. FOREIGN RIGHTS
2 Seas Agency – In June, the first month the book was out, Marleen Seegers from 2 Seas sold rights to: Brazil (USD 2500), China (USD 4300), Korea (USD 5000)

11. OTHER MERCHANDISE
I also made a poster that is designed like the cover of the book when you look from afar but when you get close to it you see clearly all 67,000 words of the book

12. THE NUMBERS
Here are my advances on my first mainstream-published five books in order: $5,000, $7500, $30,000, $100,000, and $30,000

In the first week “Choose Yourself!” was out I got onto the WSJ Bestsellers List with about 10,000 copies sold

Altogether in the first month I sold 44,294 copies between my paperback, audio, ebook, and even hardcover versions

at $4.99 per copy, with ~60% royalties (averaged), he cleared 6-figures in the first month, not including foreign rights and special offers. not bad! :)