Tom Schmidt

The best questions are organizing principles, magnets, ways of seeing.

You should attempt things that are difficult enough to guarantee some early embarrassment, but important enough that long-term regret is unlikely.

Trying something difficult will usually make you look foolish or inexperienced. That’s fine. That's the cost of learning.

But if it's important to you, then you'll work through the early failures and —... See more

optimistic realism, intellectual generosity, and conversational authority.

"Learning Pyramid." At its base lies rote memorization. Above that comes comprehension, followed by application, analysis, synthesis, and ultimately, creative generation or innovation

“I can't tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don't matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it. When something does go wrong, it doesn't cost you or your customer an... See more

“Don’t let what you can’t do get in the way of what you can do”

When I’m stuck on a problem and need their help, I take the time to write a good description of my dilemma, before reaching out to them. I summarize the context, the problem, my options, and my thoughts on each. I make it as succinct as possible so as not to waste their time.

Before sending it, I try to predict what they’ll say. Then I go back and... See more