Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
when we first started @readwise, all i did for the first summer was write personalized cold emails to anyone who'd expressed pain around their Kindle highlights online
it was grueling, rejection-laden work, but in July 2017 we celebrated our first "best day ever":
the inimitable @craigmod onboarded, experienced value, and then tweeted about @read... See more
Things that don’t scale for Readwise growth
Wanna know how they get birds to stop chirping on movie sets?
My house plants became healthier and died less often once I stopped tracking their watering, stopped trying to use moisture meters or other tools, and learned to pick up on their vibes instead.
Many such cases.
The importance of feel over measurement
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?”
In using standards, it is important to ask for precedents. “Have you ever done this before?” and “Have you ever made an exception?” should be part of your everyday vocabulary.
Stuart Diamond • Getting More
Negotiation and Getting Your Way
Think like a judge when negotiating—look for precedents and exceptions
So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels... See more
Ceridwen Dovey • Can Reading Make You Happier? | the New Yorker
The healing power of reading—The New Yorker
I remember after GPT-3 came out, I was with my tech-obsessed friends and we were like, hey, let’s read the GPT-3 research paper together. That provoked so many interesting ideas for me. And then when I went back to my parents’ house during the holidays — this was December 2020 — I started thinking about the diaries again. And I actually tweeted abo
... See moreMichelle Huang • "AI for wonder": An interview with Michelle Huang, artist
When you get not just one but two hornet wasps
Act as a Film Critic
Contributed by: @devisasari
I want you to act as a film critic. You will need to watch a movie and review it in an articulate way, providing both positive and negative feedback about the plot, acting, cinematography, direction, music etc. My first suggestion request is "I need help reviewing the sci-fi movie 'The Matrix' fr... See more