Don’t waste time talking about what you plan to think about; instead, work through it immediately.

Intellectual laziness can easily sneak up on you. If you are sitting there talking about problems you plan to solve later, there’s a good chance you are being inefficient. Similarly, in GTD, you don’t put off tasks that only take a couple minutes. In ... See more

On the importance of keeping a calendar:

The big thing is basically *everything* is on the calendar. Sleep is on the calendar, going to bed is in there and so is free time. Free time is critical because that's the release valve. You can work full tilt for a long time as long as you know you have actual time for yourself coming up. I find if you don

... See more

One of the most important principles in Silicon Valley is that "you make what you measure." It means that if you pick some number to focus on, it will tend to improve, but that you have to choose the right number, because only the one you choose will improve; another that seems conceptually adjacent might not. For example, if you're a university pr... See more

As the former CEO of both Data Domain and ServiceNow, two successful tech companies in recent years, I am often confronted with questions: what did you guys do? What is the secret sauce? How did you do it? We never thought of ourselves as that different. We certainly didn’t think we had stumbled on a silver bullet. Did we just get incredibly lucky ... See more

Only decades ago, the average person had one source of information, if any — the local newspaper. It’d take an hour, tops, out of their day. 1 hour out of 16 waking hours, or 6%. The rest of the day was spent making, creating value, conversing with others — 94%. Desires were simple — work for food and housing and a way to get around, find love, rai... See more

Focus on one big thing

I used to make long to-do lists and feel guilty about not completing them.

Now, I structure my to-do list as follows:

One big thing

Less important thing

Less important thing

If I finish my one big thing, then my day is a success. To find it, I use this matrix:

The Eisenhower matrix

This matrix does have one flaw. From my experience... See more

An analogy we use at KV is that building a company is like laying cement. Early on the cement is liquid and malleable – you can stir it around with your hands. As time passes, the cement hardens. Once it solidifies, adjustments require a jackhammer. And jackhammering leads to cracks and lots of noise.

As a result, we prefer to get involved as early ... See more

I’m thinking about how malleable the world is, and how easy it is to forget that. The world has, many times throughout history, reconfigured itself around strong visions.

Our desires, motivations and behaviors are constantly being shaped by incentives and systems we aren’t even aware of. So much genius and money has gone into a metaphor that assume... See more

Loneliness isn’t just making us unhappy, it’s silently killing us: Social isolation is as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. If the situation is so critical, why aren’t we doing more to fix it? Because we’ve been collectively ashamed to talk about loneliness . Our silence has incubated one of the most insidious crises our society has to face. ... See more