In case you missed my last post, here it is again:
Now let’s end the week on a high note. A lot of people liked the idea of the weekend edition having an exercise attached to it, so here we go:
A man is discovered dead and it appears to be a suicide. When the police arrives, they find him with a gun in one hand and a cassette player in the other. The police officers press “play” on the cassette player and the tape starts: “I have nothing else to live for, I can’t go on.”, followed by a gunshot.
After they listen to the tape, they realize this is a homicide and not a suicide.
What gave it away?
An answer, as usual, at the end.
I hope your week is being kind to you. I found myself in a bit of an anxious state these past weeks due to information overload, so I’m trying to take the time to focus on the things that matter to me. Here’s what came to mind:
Most of us grow up with unrealistic expectations thrown on us. Survivor bias will make us say “yeah, but it got me where I am now”, but there’s a lot more to it.
Obviously, most parents want what’s good for their children, but having the opportunity to get a “fresh start” puts some parents into overdrive. Remember that your children aren’t an extension of you, they’re their own person. You might end up doing more harm than good, according to studies.
For people who’ve gone (or are going) through this - remember that it’s ok to set your own expectations towards yourself. The unhappiest people I know are living their life based on someone else’s expectations, not their own.
Read books on uncommon topics. The general consensus is that we get bombarded with information from a thousand different sources. It’s an overload and we end up freezing up because of it.
There’s a fascinating counter-argument to this - although we do definitely have access to more information than ever before, we’re actually less knowledgable because we’re getting fed the same information over and over again. It’s information repetition.
We’re more adamant in our beliefs, which makes us less likely to accept any information that comes from outside our circle of trust.
Yes, it’s the classic confirmation bias tale, but applied at a different scale. We live in a world where a lot of people simply refuse information, although it’s still the most valuable currency (I’m writing this from Miami so I’m expecting cryptobros to knock down my door any second now).
Ask people if you can help (with genuine intent and action behind it). Hear me out. For those of you who don’t know, the most common thing you’ll hear a VC say is “how can I help?” - the thought that initially gave birth to this question was genuine, but it has now become a great way to seem nice and amiable. In reality, 9/10 VCs have basically hung up the metaphorical phone before you’ve had a chance to reply.
Despite how tainted the execution has gotten, the thought is still there. I personally used to call bullshit on this empty question, but I recently met someone at a conference here and after a couple of minutes, they asked this. I laughed it off and tried to change the subject.
But they kept pushing. “Listen, I’m not just saying this, I genuinely want to help you, what’s one thing that I can do to make today feel like a win?”. I eventually caved in, asked for something generic like a client intro and they did it on the spot.
But it’s not about the actual help - it’s about finding common ground (and actually making someone’s day better). Trust me, you’ll like yourself a lot more by the end of this.
Answer: the man couldn’t rewind the tape if he was dead.
Shout out to my 90s (and earlier) gang if you got this one right. I didn’t. As an extra explanation for all you youngsters out there - once you recorded something on a cassette player, you needed to roll back the tape in order for it to play. And you needed to be alive for that.