Optimism Shapes Reality

When candidates ask what keeps me up at night, my answer is the fear that we lose the high-alpha execution of a startup and slow to the pace of a big company. 

A dearth of optimism will slowly kill any product, team, or mission. Execution will slow to a halt, and even the most minor tasks takes weeks to do. Our optimism and resolve have immense influence in what we accomplish, both at a micro task-by-task level, and when summed up, what we can do over a lifetime.

A version of this that we all have seen is the student completing assignments right before the deadline. Almost everyone I know completes homework right before the deadline, even when they really enjoy the homework. The existence of the deadline warps their distribution to finish it right before the deadline most of the time (sometimes right after)... See more

One way to put this is that people are really good at metaphorical limbo. No matter where we set the bar, we're great at being just under it. I'll call this the Limbo Effect.