On building of All Trades

I am aware that I shouldn’t judge how people try to escape the 9-to-5 grind. I am aware that a job’s purpose is money, not emotional enrichment. I know!

What I am instead arguing for is something more expansive. The thing you should work hard at is everything . Finding ways to imbue each moment with meaning and purpose and effort is the only path... See more

Evan Armstrong • Devote Yourself to the Cause of Your Life

Stop trading time for money, start trading value for money.

100 Simple Truths

I didn’t even announce the opening of the store until we opened—I declined the few press requests I received and didn’t really talk about it publicly. I can’t totally explain it, but I felt (feel?) protective of this little store like it was a person. It had to actually become something before I could say what it was. I wanted to let it cultivate... See more

Alison Roman • I Opened A Grocery Store

Everyone wants to be picked, but no one wants to organize the collective ‘we’.

It’s the ‘we’ that creates a school of thought, a movement, a network, a culture.

Curate, connect, organize and lead.

Generalists are hiding in plain sight. Their identity is tied to connecting the dots for others instead of themselves. oAT exists so that they’re seen for the impact they make, even when others might not yet see or understand.

in my role as a more traditional COO (which I also thoroughly enjoyed) I was touching on a large number of parts within Buffer. It also created a certain level of pressure, one that Joel described very well in this post. I felt the urge to try and “keep everything together” and within an arm’s reach so everything would go according to plan.

With... See more

How We're Working Without Managers at Buffer

The COO role shifts when you’re building a networked instead of a structured organization

“Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”

Evan Armstrong • Want to Build? Technical Excellence Won’t Be Enough.

Steve Jobs

Job titles are just the most visible ladder of them all. It’s interesting that pompous executive job titles were invented during the Victorian era. This is when we started the trend of calling a cleaner a hygiene technician. A bin man became a waste management and disposal technician. Later on, a call-center worker became a communications... See more

Anne-Laure Le Cunff • The tyranny of job titles: from vanity growth to personal growth

Generalists have shirked the the notion of a true job title to fit their work and have followed the thread of providing value and making an impact. No wonder there’s a group of talented professionals hiding in plain sight given how constricting the traditional job titles have become in affirming our professional worth.

You can’t be a hoarder of power within an organization. Once you get to a point where you feel like something is ready for lots of scale, get comfortable with letting it go so you can move on to the next building challenge.

23 Tactical Company Building Lessons, Learned From Scaling Stripe & Notion

Founders that step away grow their startup; find a team to trust and then share the power to increase your scaling velocity.

The actual measures of productivity that might be useful range quite a bit:

I did enough to not get fired.

I did enough to get promoted.

I did enough to get hired by a better firm.

I solved a problem for a customer who was frustrated.

I changed the system and now my peers are far more productive.

I invented something that creates new possibilities and