Hey, Pritesh here.Ā
Welcome to those who joined us recently in this journey of discovering new ideas & inspirations. You are in good company and itās going to be a lot of fun ahead.
Today, weāve reached post #112. Hereās a quick glance of what do we cover today:
š Anti-retention patterns
š” 50 ideas from David Perell
š Degree of alignment
š Culture of listening
3ļøā£ Three kind of leverages
And much moreā¦
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And with that, letās dive in.
1. Anti-Retention Patterns
Martin Gontovnikas talks of anti-retention patterns in his blog titled āUncovering anti-retention patternsā. In simple terms, you can think of these as experiences or events in user journey that negatively impact their probability of retaining. Below chart from the essay gives a good glimpse of how to identify these.
One can also use data to find factors that have negative correlation for retention of the user. One critical learning from studying these patterns is that many times these are caused by secondary or non-core features that get exposed or tried too early in the user journey. Keeping your product UX focused to core experience that leads to aha moments can be a good solution to avoid that pitfall.Ā
Below snippet from the essay expands it more.
2. 50 ideas from David Perell
I follow David Perell for three reasons:
He writes about a diverse set of topics. His range of interests is crazy.Ā
His writing is simple - in the choice of words as well as style of writing. Its inviting for a wider audience.Ā
He has a gift of simplifying complex ideas and presenting them in a memorable way.Ā
He is another Morgan Housel minus some storytelling.Ā
His ā50 Ideas that changed my lifeā is a good curation of key ideas he has written about in the last couple of years. Below are my five picks from the list.Ā
13. Look for Things That Donāt Make Sense: The world always makes sense. But it can be confusing. When it is, your model of the world is wrong. So, things that donāt make sense are a learning opportunity. Big opportunities wonāt make sense until itās too late to profit from them.
20. Bike-Shed Effect: A group of people working on a project will fight over the most trivial ideas. Theyāll ignore whatās complicated. Theyāll focus too much on easy-to-understand ideas at the expense of important, but hard to talk about ideas. For example, instead of approving plans for a complicated spaceship, the team would argue over the color of the astronautās uniforms.
29. Occamās Razor: If there are multiple explanations for why something happened and they are equally persuasive, assume the simplest one is true. In the search for truth, remove unnecessary assumptions. Trust the lowest-complexity answer.
39. The Paradox of Consensus: Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect was found guilty by every judge, they were deemed innocent. Too much agreement implied a systemic error in the judicial process. Unanimous agreement sometimes leads to bad decisions.
46. Via Negativa: When we have a problem, our natural instinct is to add a new habit or purchase a fix. But sometimes, you can improve your life by taking things away. For example, the foods you avoid are more important than the foods you eat.
3. Degree of Alignment
Iāve read some of Will Larsonās essays and found him to be a very structured thinker & problem solver. While a lot of his writing is for the āengineersā, his framework & inputs are useful in a much wider context. His book āAn Elegant Puzzleā is a great collection of tactical and strategic advice for managers and people leaders.Ā
Hereās a brief snippet from the chapter around āidentifying your controls''. It's targeted towards finding a management style that prevents you from micromanaging your team. He defines it as a process to identify where to engage and where to hang back while working with your team.Ā
Controls are mechanisms that you use to align with other leaders you work with. Some of the most common controls are vision, strategies, organization design, headcount, transfer, roadmaps and performance reviews.Ā
For whatever control you pick, the second step is to agree on the degree of alignment for each one. Some of the level Iāve found useful are:
I'll do it. Stuff that you'll personally be responsible for doing.
Preview. I would like to be involved early and often.
Review. I would like to weigh in before it gets published or fully rolled out. But weāre fully aligned on the topic.
Notes. Projects you'd like to follow but don't have much to add to. Often used for wide reaching initiatives.
No surprises. The work that we're currently aligned on but requires updates to keep your mental model in tact. I want to be able to stay on top of this.
Let me know. Weāre well aligned on this. If something comes up that I can help with, but otherwise I am totally confident it'll go well and so we donāt need to talk about this much.
It's a very novel way of looking at alignment and gives a structured approach to make it work in any context.
4. Culture of Listening
Kim Scottās essay on āCreating a culture of listeningā starts with establishing what she calls - GSD (Get Stuff Done) wheel. Hereās what the GSD wheel entails:
The first step is to listen more and talk less. She describes two different style of listening cultures:
Quiet listening - staying silent to give people room to talk
Loud listening - saying things intended to get a reaction out of them
She has used Steve Jobs, John Ive & Time Scott as the stars of her narrative. This is helpful in setting context and highlighting the difference between the two styles.
Finally, she talks about how to create and sustain this culture of listening. Worth a read for those who are looking to become better at listening.Ā
5. Three Kinds of Leverage
Jason Cohenās recent blog on āthe three kinds of leverageā shares an interesting perspective on our usual understanding of performance improvement levers. He states loudly -Ā Ā
Leveraging strengths is the only way to do great work. (Not āfixing weaknesses.ā)
Better yet, leveraging differentiated strengths means you beat the competition.
Best is when that differentiation is durable over time.
He breaks down his recommendation into easy to digest ideas. One idea that stood out for me:
This is why typically the best answer to āwhat tool/language/framework/process should I use to do ______?ā is āthe one you already know1.ā Thatās the one that best leverages your timeāyour most limited resource.
6. Light reads & watch
Some interesting posts & essays that are well worth reading.
How to create a masterpiece - by Tomas Pueyo.Ā
Mathematically, you have three levers to create a masterpiece: 1) Increase your average: Get better. 2) Increase your variance: Try different things. 3) Increase your sample size: Try more times, churn more quantity. Out of these three, the third lever is by far the best, because itās the only one that acts on all three levers.
The absurd logistics of concert tours - a short documentary covering a brief peek into what is mostly hidden around the great concert tours. If you liked this one, you will like this video about Formula 1 logistics as well.
Explicit vs. Implicit Strategy - by John Cutler
It doesn't matter what the strategy is. What matters are the goals we commit to, our budgets, our forecasts, our promise, and our commitments. We will be held accountable for these things, and they will set the constraints of how we work.
7. Everything else
Some random goodness from the internet:
The restaurant of mistaken orders - such a thoughtful idea. See this for some fun moments captured there (via Storythings)
100 amazing photos without any photoshop touch (hopefully). Nature is super colorful, I must say.
Lost & found - World's largest collection of rustic Automata. This videoās description reads - āFor over ten years Blair has single-handedly owned, operated and ceaselessly expanded the Lost Gypsy Gallery, his wonderland of homegrown wizardry and a playground for kids and adults alike. Using only recycled materials, Blair takes DIY to artistic extremes. His creations are ingenious, interactive, and often hilariously impractical. They take many shapes and forms and share an uncanny ability to amaze, entertain and inspire.ā I am confident you wonāt need more reasons to check it out.
Itās all in the name, as Hari Sadans and Krishna Kunjs transform into Caesarās Towers and Beverly Hills. This story is written in the context of Mumbai, but I can see the trend highly pervasive in other metros & tier 1 cities in India as well.Ā
Before we sign off, a couple of housekeeping stuff.
The title of todayās post is from David Perellās post.
If youāre new to this space, do say a quick hi in comments or writing to me.
That's all for this week, folks!Ā Ā
I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.
If you enjoyed this post, show your love by ā¤ļøāing it or leaving a comment or sharing it with a couple of your friends.
Thanks for the curation! Enjoyed learning about the anti-retention perspective. It tracks well with what I have heard from others minus the term. Rahul Vohra from Superhuman talks at length about their onboarding experience and how their goal is not to overwhelm the user at any stage but to incrementally inteodice complexity so as to trigger flow. Microsoft Excel is probably a good example as well. Try doing vlookups and using maceos too early and you may be put off.
And all of this sits well with behavioral science theory on habit-building. That it is not just important to make benefits obvious but also reduce barriers
Monday morningās are made so interestingly engaging by Pritesh. Commendable job done of educating us.
So much hard work and consistency.
God bless and keep up the amazing work