Tag: lessons

Hacker News: Important Non-Obvious Business Lessons

~ cafebedouin

Here’s 30 years of experience for you:

1. Few business problems can’t be solved by more sales.

2. Cut expenses when the storm is approaching, not when you’re soaking wet.

3. You can’t eat assets or inventory. Don’t get emotional about what you own, only about your cash balances.

4. Banks are your friend only when you don’t need them. Corollary: One bank for borrowing, one for cash balance accounts.

5. 70 completed calls per week. Not emails, calls. You can do it, start now.

6. Don’t be an asshole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule

7. Hire and retain “T-shaped” people. In difficult times those employees execute across multiple domains.

8. Client, vendor or employee drama is quicksand. You assist with a stick or a rope, you don’t jump in with them.

9. Don’t romanticize work & try to avoid romance getting in the way of work.

10. You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. Prioritize good parenting over work. Good parenting = SOS: Self awareness, objectivity, selflessness.

11. Get a prenup. No, really, do get one.

12. Pay yourself according to a financial model that prioritizes healthy business cash balances, and not your personal desires.

-armc, “Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you’ve learned?” Hacker News. May 12, 2022.

I think my favorites from this list are 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11. Except I might reformulate them a bit.

  • Be willing to sell almost anything you own.
  • Banks are never your friend.
  • Don’t be or tolerate assholes.
  • As want to work with As. Bs hire Cs.
  • Avoid drama and learn how to help deescalate.
  • You’re only as happy as the least happiest person in your inner circle.
  • Your romantic relationships will be the source of most of your happiness and/or misery. Choose wisely.

Effective Data Visualization: Transform Information into Art

~ cafebedouin

“In this course, [Data illustrator Sonja Kuijpers] gives you the tools you need to transform data into captivating illustrations using colors, shapes, and images. Discover how to collect and analyze data sets, as well as how to transform them into a unique poster that tells a story. Are you ready to create your own data art?

–Effective Data Visualization: Transform Information into Art

I never heard of Domestika, an online learning platform, before. This course seems awesome. Bookmarking for later.

6 Reasons We Choose Badly in Love – The Book of Life

~ cafebedouin

“The fastest, easiest and most inadvertent technique for messing up one’s life remains that of getting into a serious relationship with the wrong person: with very little effort, and without any innate taste for catastrophe, one can end up – by middle age or earlier – contemplating wholesale financial ruin, loss of parental rights, social opprobrium, homelessness, nervous exhaustion and shattered esteem, to begin a lengthy list of harrowing side-effects.”

—”6 Reasons We Choose Badly in Love.” TheSchoolofLife.com.

True, but at the same time, I’m wondering what the Book of Life suggests we do. It’s one thing to know common mistakes. It’s another to go from where you are now to somewhere better. Going to go a little deeper here and see if there’s anything useful.

Out to Get You

~ cafebedouin

“There are four responses to Out to Get You.

You can Get Gone. Walk away. Breathe a sigh of relief.

You can Get Got. Give the thing everything it wants. Pay up, relax, enjoy the show.

You can Get Compact. Find a rule limiting what ‘everything it wants’ means in context. Then Get Got, relax and enjoy the show.

You can Get Ready. Do battle. Get what you want.”

— Zvi Mowshowitz. “Out to Get You.” thezvi.wordpress.com. September 23, 2017.

John Cleese on Monty Python and Political Correctness

~ cafebedouin

“What are you working on now?

I have a show I’m working on at the moment called Why There Is No Hope.

Sounds funny. 

It is funny. Some people immediately see the title as funny and other people go what?! There is no hope that we’ll ever live in a rational, kind, intelligent society. To start, most of us are run by our unconscious and, unfortunately, most of us have no interest in getting in touch with our unconscious. So if the majority of people are run by something they don’t know anything about, how can we have a rational society?

…Put aside intellectually smart, the trouble is that most people aren’t even emotionally smart. They can’t deal with reality. If they’re not doing well, they’ll blame someone else. That’s why I have no hope of our ever having a proper, well-organized, fair, intelligent, kind society. We have to let go of that idea. It is possible that in some small area you can improve things temporarily…But there’s no way to sustain it because people have no control over their egos and don’t understand — or don’t care — how their egos are distorting their thinking. Things always fall back into chaos. Which is why there is no hope.

There’s absolutely nothing that gives you any hope about the future of human society?

Nothing.

Nothing?

Nothing.

So why get up in the morning?

Just because you can’t create a sensible world doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the world you’re in. I think Bertrand Russell once said that the secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible. Once you realize that things are pretty hopeless, then you just have a laugh and you don’t waste time on things that you can’t change — and I don’t think you can change society. I’ve spent a lot of time in group therapy watching highly intelligent, well-intentioned people try to change and they couldn’t. If even they can’t change…”

—David Marchese. “In Conversation: John Cleese.” Vulture. September 12, 2017

Remember Cleese offering another bit of wisdom in another interview that has stuck with me, roughly paraphrased: You have a choice in life. You can try to control other people or you can control your own emotions. The second is easier.

The ‘Busy’ Trap

~ cafebedouin

“…but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.”

—Kreider, Tim. “The ‘Busy’ Trap.” The New York Times. June 30, 2012.

A Heart That Watches and Receives

~ cafebedouin

“Whatever you do, wherever you go, I want to encourage you to seek out an authentic experience. There’s far too much secondary living, virtual living, simulated living, going on these days. As we’ve been discussing, too often life comes to us mediated through earbuds and screens and viewfinders. I don’t mean to sound like a Luddite here—you are coming of age in a fascinating and truly revolutionary era of technological innovation that has nearly limitless possibilities. There’s no retreating now from the digital age. But don’t let the gadgets distract you from the true pulse of life. My advice to you is, whatever you do, seek out something gritty and challenging and raw. Experience real love and real pain in real places with real people, face to face, heart to heart. Your life will be happier and richer in direct proportion to its authenticity.”

–Sides, Hampton. “A Heart That Watches and Recieves.” Commencement Address. Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO. May 22, 2017.