Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
Don’t let those termites find the sun
Even if you don’t work in corporate, it helps to understand how people advance to the top
/// 100 QUESTIONS /// to gain clarity via Alex Morris:
Why are we doing this?
Ask that of yourself and the team with regularity.
What’s the simplest explanation?
What reaction should all the creative achieve?
What’s your most controversial opinion?
What little frictions exist that might bleed out the work if allowed to compound?
Are you solving a
How to sharpen your ideas
“You do realize that I’m management now, right? I’m not service anymore, John, so I don’t go around shooting people in the head,” Sofia notes. She’s essentially a tech platform executive now, trying to avoid getting pulled into social media battles.
“Look, I made a deal when I agreed to run this hotel, and that deal said I had to follow the rules of... See more
“Look, I made a deal when I agreed to run this hotel, and that deal said I had to follow the rules of... See more
The John Wick Universe is Cancel Culture — Remains of the Day
John Wick and Cancel Culture
Media mogul. Suppose you were really wealthy, or otherwise you maybe inherited your dream sort of media studio or production house. What would it be? A film studio? Record label? Magazine? If you were guaranteed of succeeding, what kind of media mogul would you be? Followup: what sort of movies, or books, or artists, etc would you be looking to make, showcase? (I have a lot of followup questions about what the whole operation would look and feel like.)
Bank Heist. What role would you play in a “bank heist”? Feel free to modify the heist so that it’s not a bank, maybe you’re retrieving a stolen diamond from an evil dictator and returning it to a museum or something. Safecracker? Getaway driver? Hacker? Mastermind? Brute? Conman? Fixer? Inside man? Wild card?
Theme park. You’ve been given a plot of land in a surprisingly accessible location and all the resources you need to build “some kind of theme park”. What would it be like? It doesn’t have to have rides, it can be literally any kind of festival or event you dream up.
Golden ticket. What would be the most incredible thing that could happen to your project/business/operation? Why? How could we make that more likely? What are some intermediate steps we could define?”
This is an example of what’s called a “divergence test” (as opposed to a test like the Raven’s, which asks you to sort through a list of possibilities and converge on the right answer). It requires you to use your imagination and take your mind in as many different directions as possible. With a divergence test, obviously there isn’t a single right
... See moreMalcolm Gladwell • Outliers
Some people are stronger at converging than diverging
An Asian American creator opens up about the struggle of self love and her silly song for aapi heritage month
Sources:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/12/mic...
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/13/chi...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...
https://www.quantamagazine.org/physic...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.02155
https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/15...
https://openai.com/blog/instruction-f...
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165
... See moreColdFusion • It’s Time to Pay Attention to A.I. (ChatGPT and Beyond)
The untold story of what fuels Michael Jordan's legendary fire
espn.com
"We had field days in elementary school where in May you'd go out and have a 100-yard dash," he says. "Even then, Mike, he hated losing. Some of the memories I have on activity buses going to football, basketball, baseball games. There was many times we'd have a game of cards on the activity bus. And we'd get to the school we were playing, and Mike hadn't been winning the last few hands? He wouldn't let anybody get off the bus."