Great Work
One of the easiest ways to get more leverage is to take a goal you’re already trying to accomplish, and figure out a better way to accomplish the same thing. (For example: changing your experiment design to be more directly relevant to the high-level question; finding an 80/20 way of building a tool; just deciding not to do something entirely; etc.... See more
benkuhn • Impact, agency, and taste
A common trait of high-agency people is that they take accountability for achieving a goal , not just doing some work.
There’s a huge difference between the following two operating modes:
There’s a huge difference between the following two operating modes:
- My goal is to ship this project by the end of the month, so I’m going to get people started working on it ASAP.
- My goal is to ship this project by the end of the mon
benkuhn • Impact, agency, and taste
make success inevitable
I've not found an engineer who doesn't get excited by a good demo. And the goal is to always give yourself a good demo.
Mitchell Hashimoto • My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects
I don't try to enumerate all the big sub-projects at this stage. I just kind of get an idea of the rough shape the project will take and find one that I can build in isolation and also physically see some sort of real results
Mitchell Hashimoto • My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects
How to run major projects
1. Focus: carve out dedicated time each day to check statuses, contemplate priorities, broadcast updates etc.
2. Detailed Plan for Victory: a list of steps, as concrete as possible that end with the goal being achieved. add the requisite amount of “slop” to your plan. Check in frequently enough against the plan once it’s made
3. Fast OODA loop. (Observe, orient, decide, act i.e how you update your plans and behavior based on new information): mantain living doc with ranked list of biggest open questions. step back and reorient frequently
4. overcommunicate
5. have fun
people tend to be either slow movers or fast movers and that seems harder to change. Being a fast mover is a big thing; a somewhat trivial example is that I have almost never made money investing in founders who do not respond quickly to important emails.
Ben Kuhn • Be Impatient
Act from Instinct and Build to Learn
Many yearn for neat narratives, perfect prototypes, or bulletproof decks that placate stakeholders. But in this quest for tidy consensus, the work can stagnate, spinning its gears in the muck of groupthink and subtle fear. Forward progress is made when you trust the raw feeling that something is worth trying and ... See more
Many yearn for neat narratives, perfect prototypes, or bulletproof decks that placate stakeholders. But in this quest for tidy consensus, the work can stagnate, spinning its gears in the muck of groupthink and subtle fear. Forward progress is made when you trust the raw feeling that something is worth trying and ... See more
Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.
Ben Kuhn • Be Impatient
