#18: I Hate Maybes in Life

#dating #mental-health #competence #wholehearted-living #product-strategy

May 12, 2023

👋 Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Pursuit. In a world where we are drowning in information but starving for wisdom, I spend over 10 hours each week learning about living a fulfilling life, productivity, and building great products. I feel grateful to bring the highlights of my findings to you, saving you time in your search for wisdom. So go ahead, give it a try, and subscribe now if you haven’t already.

This week’s discovery:

🤵‍♂️ The Three Things Women Look For In A Mate - #dating
🆙 How to Use Pain and Effort to Get Out of a Dopamine Trough - #mental-health
👸🏼 The Uniquely Female Competition for Status - #competence
🫶🏼 Things You Love vs Expectations for What You Should Love - #wholehearted-living
💡 How to Come Up with an Effective Product Vision - #product-strategy
⭐ A product I’m trying and music tracks…

🤵‍♂️ The Three Things Women Look For In A Mate

Women look for three things in a potential partner: resources, intellect, and kindness. While it may sound shallow, having resources such as a good job and financial stability is attractive to women because it suggests that you can provide for a family. Demonstrating your intelligence through good decision-making and a good sense of humour is also important, as it suggests that you are capable of contributing to a successful partnership. And, of course, kindness is crucial in any relationship since no one likes a wealthy and smart jerk.

🎧 5-min

🆙 How to Use Pain and Effort to Get Out of a Dopamine Trough

When you engage in behaviours or substances that cause a sharp increase in dopamine levels, you will inevitably experience a trough in dopamine afterwards. This can lead to feelings of depression and lack of motivation. But here's the secret: waiting it out is the best strategy. The dopamine circuitry takes time to replenish, and trying to recreate the peak experience will only lead to diminished peaks and more intense experiences to try and recapture the feeling you once had. Instead, leverage the pain and effort associated with the trough to get out of it more quickly and return to a higher baseline dopamine level. This is where effortful or even painful activities come in. They may feel difficult and frustrating at first, but engaging in them will steepen and deepen the trough, making your return to normal dopamine levels faster and more robust. Consider physical efforts such as weight training, running, and having a cold shower.

🎧 9-min

👸🏼 The Uniquely Female Competition for Status

If you're a woman looking to compete for status, it's important to keep in mind that the most effective tactics are often safe, subtle, and solitary. Looking at evolution, women had to prioritize survival in order to take care of their offspring and grandchildren, unlike men who could take risks and still leave behind many offspring. Engaging in dangerous tactics was not worth the risk of injury or death, especially considering that many women had to take care of offspring without the help of a male. Instead, women focused on developing nonverbal gestures and subtle tactics, such as derogatory voice intonation or socially excluding someone, to get rid of competitors. While these tactics may seem petty, they effectively reduce competitors' reputations and have been honed over many years. So, if you want to succeed in the uniquely female competition for status, remember that subtlety and safety are key.

🎧 4-min

🫶🏼 Things You Love vs Expectations for What You Should Love

We do so many things out of obligation instead of joy, pursue acts as a means to an end rather than for pleasure in the process, spend time with people to avoid loneliness rather than actually being nourished by their presence. I hate maybe’s in life. It's a hell yes, or it’s a no. To be clear, this is not to say that everything has to be an incredible, extravagant, insane experience. Or that every interaction should leave you feeling mind-blown. It’s not about exhilaration or intensity. Wholehearted living can be taking a walk in a quiet forest, allowing the lush greenness to reflect serenity in your mind. Joy can be spending time alone listening to BANKS on repeat while steaming dumplings for dinner. Never dilute the things you love with the expectations for what you should love.

📖 5-min

💡 How to Come Up with an Effective Product Vision

Most product teams struggle to craft a product vision because they focus on incremental wins and small improvements that don’t excite leadership or warrant new resources. In order to drive real empowerment and alignment with your product vision, focus on creating a product vision narrative instead of a product vision statement. A product vision narrative is a 1-2 page written narrative that outlines your product vision in detail. A great product vision narrative starts by painting an aspirational problem in detail, explains a detailed and opinionated solution, and closes with a user-centric resolution. Consider these four components when you put together your product vision narrative:

Aspirational - attempting to achieve a bold goal
Detailed - outlines distinct solution elements that are needed
Opinionated - clearly outlines a very specific point of view on how to solve the challenge
User-centric - the vision heavily focuses on the benefits to your end user

📖 11-min

⭐ A product I’m trying and music tracks…

Lazy: Last week, I had a personal onboarding session to join the beta users of Lazy. This app promises to capture ideas at the speed of thought. I am using it for my work notes, and so far, I'm impressed with how quickly I can capture notes and connect them to people and projects.

🎧 You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, and Organic Electronic here: