#19: Not Disappointing Myself

#emotions #love #fear #decisions #health #product-management

May 19, 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:

🚫 Not Disappointing Myself - #emotions
🧑🏼‍🍼 Love is the Truth - #love #fear
♟️ The Importance of Positioning in Decision Making - #decisions
🧊 How to Induce Positive Stress - #health
📈 The Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon in Product Management - #product-management
⭐ A quote and music tracks…

🚫 Not Disappointing Myself

ME: Listen. Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.
Learning to listen to yourself takes a long time. I used to think that I always had to justify everything to myself—that I needed to be completely rational. Then I slowly started to realize that my emotional reaction to any situation was often way more accurate than any of my thoughts. And it’s kind of annoying, because often my feelings are telling me things I don’t really want to hear. So it’s easy to ignore them and freeze them out.

📖 3-min

🧑🏼‍🍼 Love is the Truth

If you want to build psychological resilience, you need to understand the driving forces behind your actions. There are two primary forces in the world: love and fear. Your actions are either motivated by a place of love or a place of fear. To build resilience, you need to move towards a place of love. This means acting out of truth and values instead of fear and the mind. When you're in a place of love, you're more in flow with life and can move through challenges with more wisdom, compassion, and creativity. To determine if you're moving from a place of love or fear, ask yourself what kind of experiences you want to have in life. What would you love to create and experience through that creation?

🎧 3-min

♟️ The Importance of Positioning in Decision Making

If you want to make better decisions in your life you can learn from the game of chess. Don't just focus on anticipating the next move or series of moves, as most people do. Instead, embrace the concept of positional chess, where you position yourself to handle whatever comes your way, whether it's a bad move or a great one. This means putting in the work to prepare yourself for opportunities and being ready to pounce on them when they arise. Remember, the harder you work, the luckier you become. So don't just burn your bridges, keep them intact because you never know when you may need to cross them. This is all about creating optionality in your life, and it's the best way to live.

🎧 4-min

🧊 How to Induce Positive Stress

If you're looking to promote stress resilience and improve your body's response to stressors, then you need to pay attention to positive physiological stress. Instead of focusing solely on toxic stress, try incorporating short-term bursts of positive stress into your routine. This can include activities like high-intensity interval training, cold shower or even the Wim Hof breath method. By embracing positive stress, you can activate your nervous system and increase your stress resilience, leading to less rumination, depression, and anxiety. Plus, positive stress can even lengthen your telomeres, which is a measure of how fast you're aging. So next time you're feeling stressed, try a burst of positive stress and see how it affects your body and mind.

🎧 5-min

📈 The Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon in Product Management

I loved this interview of Lenny with Casey Winters. Casey is one of my favourite thought leaders in Growth. He led growth at companies such as Pinterest, Grubhub, and Eventbrite.

If you're a product manager, you've probably heard of the zero interest rate phenomenon. It's where PMs get so focused on doing things the "right" way and following frameworks that they forget to use their own brains. Instead of taking risks and shipping, they spend all their time researching and analyzing. But here's the thing: the fastest way to learn is often to just ship and see what happens. Don't be afraid to take risks and try new things. And remember, frameworks are just tools in your toolkit - use them when they're relevant, but don't rely on them too heavily. At the end of the day, your job is to add value to your customers and your business. So don't get too caught up in the process. Use your brain, be creative, and trust your instincts.

🎧 6-min