A Few Good (Lateral) Thoughts #12
Quick little thoughts at the end of the week
Not a lot to catch up on this week since we just re-started out lateral journey. So instead of that, let me share a couple of interesting things I saw this week.
People love hero narratives even if they’re often blatantly false. Twitter has been working on an edit button for a while now
Business Wars - a great podcast overall, but the Airbnb vs. NYC episodes are simply outta this world.
Welcome to the 12th Friday Special:
Since Lateral Thinking just came back into the fold, I have a ton of pent up ideas that are just waiting to see the light of day. Just to remind everyone, the point of lateral thinking is to get uncomfortable. I agree with some ideas I share here, but not with all of them.
What I’d ask is that if you want to debate a topic with me, happy to get into it via email or on social media, but make sure you debate it from a logical or alternative thinking perspective, not from a personal angle. A personal debate (“I believe X is true because of something that happened to me”) usually ends up leaving everyone hurt.
Success is extremely relative
The reason a lot of high-achievers are always frustrated is that they hold themselves to higher standards than they hold others. You see a company raise hundreds of millions of dollars and you suddenly feel subpar if you didn’t crack that milestone.
But ask yourself - is fundraising your main KPI? Is that what you’re gunning for? If so, then go ahead and get better at it. Change your approach even.
However, most people want their companies to be self sustainable. They want to enjoy working on their business and don’t really buy the bullshit “hustle ‘till you die” story.
If that’s you, why are you comparing yourself with companies that are playing a totally different game? Some of them are doing worse than you are - imagine working at this company.
You don’t have confidence, you build confidence. And you keep building it your whole life.
Think of it as a LEGO piece. Some are more complicated than others. Sometimes, you realize you’ve been working on it the wrong way and you need to either start over or remove things before building up again.
And even when you’re done building, you can still add to it. It’s an everlasting tug of war. As long as you make sure you don’t get obsessed with it (or yourself), all of this will build actual confidence, not ego.
Don’t think for a second that having confidence means ignoring your faults. The most confident people I know are extremely self-aware and hyper critical of themselves (might sound arrogant, but I include myself in this category).
The catch is to carry your faults with pride. They made you who you are today.
Follow people who are cautious with predictions
A while back, I was reading an amazing explanation on why over-the-top salesmen often become “gurus” in various industries, despite not building much apart their own personal brand.
It’s because most real experts are moderates. They know enough to realize there’s no “magic formula for fixing your business/abs/relationships”. Self-proclaimed gurus either don’t know that or just throw that knowledge out the window.
They make definite statements. And we all know only a Sith deals in absolutes. The catch is, people forget failures, we have a goldfish memory.
Almost a decade ago, gurus were proclaiming AR and VR glasses will be in every home. A few years ago, wannabe social media networks were building products that paid users and were supposed to replace Facebook and Twitter. Clubhouse was destined to be the next big thing. At least half a dozen overhyped “decentralized” social media platforms went out in smoke.
What all these places had in common was that they had gurus proclaiming with absolute certainty that “X is the future” - funny enough, this is extremely precise and vague at the same time, which I’m now realizing is a brilliant strategy.
Saying “Bitcoin is the future” is great. You’re saying nothing while also making sure that you reap the rewards if something positive happens. For example, people who said “Bitcoin will be the way we pay for coffee” got the short end of the stick.
So make sure to call people out on their bullshit. Remember missed predictions, not just the correct ones, because as much as we like to glorify failures, most people will make sure to only remind you of their success.
That’s it for today! See you on Monday.
Reminder: Lateral Thinking is now bi-weekly, lateral thinking exercise on Monday and (apparently) a rant on a few topics on Friday.