Easter is upon us, and humanity has always enjoyed a good salvation story—so here is one: Once upon a time, there was a prosperous little financial services company. Suddenly it stumbled on an unforeseeable patch of rough ground: cost increased, revenue declined, profitability dropped, and it seemed as if the end was near. But shortly before it hit rock bottom, salvation for the little company arrived in the form of AI and automation: No longer do expensive human employees toil with tedious spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and customer service calls—AI agents are here to deal with all the boring, monotonous work! As a result, our little company’s numbers are back up, investors are gleeful, and everyone is going to have a field day at the little company’s big IPO. Needless to say, they all lived happily ever after…

The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West by Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska. One can read Alex Karp’s new book, “The Technological Republic,” in many different ways. Is it a call-to-arms? A critique of inefficient corporate cultures? A historical review of the concept of “the nation?” An attempt to rewind the clock of American higher education to before the 1960s counter-cultural revolution? Or is it just a bunch of self-praise by the billionaire co-founder of Palantir Technologies?

Sometimes navigating life’s complexities can feel a bit like wandering through an unfamiliar landscape in the dark. You know—vaguely—where you’d like to end up, that is, you have goals you want to achieve and aspirations you’re striving for. But if they’re ambitious enough, it’s not clear exactly what path you need to take to get there. You also have—at least intuitively—a general sense of direction; you have moral and ethical values, behaviors, and attitudes you consider right or wrong, which give you guidance on an abstract level. But for me, neither goals nor values are specific and actionable enough to help me make better decisions every day. Yet life constantly challenges us with immediate choices, big and small, that need to be made: Turn right? Turn left? Go uphill? Go downhill? Each small action (or lack thereof) can have a profound impact down the road on us and the people we care about. But as uncomfortable as it can be to take decisive action, we need to choose thoughtfully and with intention—or else, others will make choices for us that may not always be in our best interests.

The diversity of progress After 25 days and 24 nights, this is my last evening in India. But with each passing day, with each person I’ve met, with each place I’ve visited, and with each piece of information I’ve absorbed, it seems that my mental image of this fascinating country has become less and less coherent. If you asked me today what my most beautiful or memorable or scary or strange experience was, I’d be hard pressed to come up with an answer; nor could I put labels like “archaic,” “modern,” “anachronistic,” or “progressive” on many of the things I’ve seen. Maybe the range of experiences, the sharpness of the contrasts, the vastness of the country itself, its many quirks and contradictions, all the tastes, the sounds, the smells, the colors, … it is just too much for my narrow little mind to process. Maybe the fact that so many things here are changing, progressing, evolving all the time makes it impossible to pin down any one idea about this country with any degree of certainty.

The power of devotion On this bright, clear morning, I’m sitting on the banks of the Ganga River in Varanasi (Benares), one of humanity’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. But Varanasi is not only famous for its historical significance (“Benares was already ancient city when the Buddha walked its streets,” to paraphrase Salman Rushdie), it is also one of the holiest places for devout Hindus. Thousands of temples, shrines, and ashrams are scattered throughout this mesmerizing jumble of sandstone, concrete, and marble, but the most enigmatic of its many sacred sites is located right next to me: the public cremation grounds on the riverbank. Being cremated here, on the stone steps that lead down to the water, is said to guarantee the soul of the deceased the immediate attainment of moksha, liberation from the cycle of birth and death. And while I tried hard not to intrude on any such proceedings, it’s almost impossible to evade them. As you approach the river, the labyrinthine alleys become narrower and narrower, compressing a motley crowd of pilgrims, tourists, and mourners into a single sweating, weeping, praying mass. Struggling not to get crushed, alas, makes maintaining a respectful distance a completely hopeless endeavor.

The elusiveness of conceptions The train car I’m in is supposed to be the most comfortable way to travel by rail in India: The Anubhuti Class coach on an Intercity Express. Needless to say that we’re running behind schedule; furthermore the air conditioning has given out, my seat back won’t go up, and there’s a shady looking guard at the end of the carriage, fondling a submachine gun. Maybe I’m more irritated by these things than others after having been spoiled by the paragon of railroad travel, Japan Rail, last year. Maybe a lack of sleep is making me more irritable than usual, as I’ve been woken countless times every night by the crackling sound of fireworks, Punjabi disco music, and people singing and dancing right outside my window. As it turns out, it’s wedding season in India, and the ceremonies are not confined to weekends or indoors. A wedding here can take place any day of the week, as long as the date is deemed auspicious by the family guru, and pretty much anywhere, from a formal wedding hall to a makeshift tent on a public sidewalk.

The widening of perspective As I write this, I’m sitting on a bus that’s rumbling across Uttar Pradesh, a federal state in northern India. My seat, the tiny fold-out table on which I’m resting my notebook, the floor, the window, the plastic curtains, … everything is covered in grime. Wherever I turn, it all looks filthy, worn, spent. And that’s pretty much how I feel right now—and presumably how my fellow passengers must feel as well. The forty or so young, dark-haired men on this trip weren’t exactly brimming with joy to begin with, and the fact that we’re already more than two hours late doesn’t help to lift anyone’s spirits. It goes without saying that I’m the only white person on board, and that I haven’t heard a word of English spoken since I checked out of my third-rate B&B this morning—except for the countless unsolicited invitations to hop in some stranger’s tuktuk, get my shoes shined or my hair cut.

During my first visit to Tokyo, on a business trip in 2016, I took a long walk in the lavish park that surrounds Meiji Shrine. It was a glorious Sunday morning and the inevitable crowds had not yet intruded on this island of calm at the center of the bustling metropolis. I was enveloped by the tranquility of the place when suddenly, maybe two hundred meters ahead, I spotted a gardener who swept the wide footpath using something like a grotesquely oversized broom. That tool must have been immensely heavy, with its long bamboo handle and the dense bristles of thick straw. Nevertheless, the groundskeeper’s elegant, swinging motions had an almost effortless quality to them. At a closer look, they reminded me more of a dancer moving to an inaudible tune, a painter skillfully applying a brush, or even a Samurai knight wielding their Katana sword. There was nothing “menial” about the labor of that gardener—quite the contrary, even a small crowd had already gathered to watch his performance in awe.

If you’re a fellow IT-savvy millennial, I’m sure you also fondly remember the disk defragmenter utility that used to come with, like, Windows 98. Source: The Bleeping Computer Long before cheap solid state disks became ubiquitous, it was a common performance issue that, over time, the data on your hard disk became scattered all over the place. When you wanted to access a certain file, the magnetic heads of the disk would then have to (mechanically!) move around like crazy, tremendously slowing down the reading process. Defragmenting counteracted that by re-ordering the bits and pieces of information on the disk, so that data which was frequently accessed together also was physically stored next to each other. During the defragmentation process itself, your computer was pretty much unusable—and it sounded like it was munching on pebbles. However, the hassle was well worth it, given how much smoother the whole system ran afterwards.

Have you ever wondered where your thoughts actually come from? Sounds like a weird question, I know. But bear with me. Take a moment and try to think of nothing at all. Just empty your mind. And hang in there for a second. Go on. Do it right now. I’ll wait. That was a bit awkward, wasn’t it? Because, if you actually tried, you’ll have noticed something interesting and at the same time slightly disturbing: When your mind is not actively doing anything—solving a math problem, say, or remembering a specific place or event—it will, all on its own, come up with something—anything—to think of. But “you”, the alleged owner of that mind, didn’t command it to think of that thing at this time, did you? Turns out, “you” are not quite as much in charge of which thoughts come up or don’t come up as you might have hoped. In my case, for example, I’ve just now been thinking of lunch, politics, running shoes, work, lunch (again), this blog post, the book on Afghanistan I’m currently reading, about whether or not to travel to India later this year, an unpleasant exchange I’ve had with a colleague the other day, and, once again, lunch. All within maybe a minute or so. If you’ve ever tried to meditate, this would be a very familiar experience. But even if not, this simple realization begs an interesting and quite fundamental moral question: If you’re not the sole author of your thoughts, who is? Where do they come from? And are “you” morally (and ultimately legally) responsible for them?

During my recent travels, I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at statues of the Buddha. Doing so, I found myself marveling at the parallels between the physical characteristics of those depictions and the moral and ethical ideas that underpin his teachings. The kindness in the eyes, the relaxed posture that radiates with grace and dignity, the faint smile signaling deep calmness. But I also couldn’t help consider what it is that sets Buddhist philosophy apart from other religious or spiritual doctrines.

Every time a disruptive technology becomes available, humanity goes through essentially the same cycle: At first, exaggerated fear and sulking rejection on the one side clash with overflowing enthusiasm on the other. As the technology matures and its capabilities and limitations become more distinct, eventually a synthesis—often grounded in rules and regulations about where and how it can be most beneficially applied—emerges. Thus, what once seemed new, outlandish, and groundbreaking turns into a commodity, and often one that helps to shape the next level of innovation. The question about generative AI today is obvious: “Will this time be different?”

As a kid, I’ve enjoyed stories in which inanimate objects suddenly came to life, either through magic or with the help of science. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example. Or that old Jewish myth of the Golem: A figure, formed of clay, is brought to life by a Rabbi in order to liberate the holy man of his most tedious chores. No more cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, or carrying water. More time instead for leisure, study, and prayer. But, as with Frankenstein’s monster, that endeavor doesn’t end well for either of them: The Golem eventually turns against its creator in a fury of destructive violence—before finally being shut down.

Marc Andreessen’s recent article “Why AI Will Save the World” is—sadly—an example of how polarized society and public discourse have become, particularly on such high-stakes topics as the opportunities and risks posed by the proliferation of AI. While I largely applaud (and mostly agree with) his optimism about the tremendous potential of AI to improve virtually every aspect of human life and flourishing, some of his arguments against AI regulation are not only absurd, but threaten to unnecessarily poison this important debate.

Tracking the search engine market feels almost mesmerizing these days—a bit like staring into a lava lamp and wondering what’s going on in there. After Google having dominated the field practically forever, with Microsoft’s Bing struggling to even register as a contestant, competition apparently surged and almost immediately plummeted again. At first, it seemed as if Google had overlooked the potential disruption of the traditional, stateless search interface by conversational and interactive experiences that ChatGPT and others offer. Nevertheless, now that OpenAI, Microsoft’s “new” Bing, and newcomers such as you.com have attracted a lot of eyeballs, Google is expected to rush its Bard product to the market in an urgent attempt to catch up. But despite the broader question wether this launch frenzy will lead to an “AI arms race” with unforeseeable consequences, a more heterogenous search market has many upsides: At the end of the day, consumers are likely to get better search experiences of this, regardless which tool they prefer to use. And advertisers will have a real choice about which platforms they want to appear on—without forfeiting the lion’s share of web traffic if they’re not comfortable with Google Ads.

I’ve recently been traveling through Japan, covering all the way from Nagasaki on Kyushu island in the south up to Sapporo in the north. Three weeks. 2500km. By train. Needless to say, Japanese trains are awesome: They’re fast, they’re clean, they’re cheap (at least for tourists), and they will take you pretty much anywhere. But by far the most remarkable thing about them is: They’re on time. All the time. Without exception. Planning to take the 9:00am Nozomi Superexpess from Shin-Osaka to Tokyo? You can bet that people will line up on the platform by 8:50 (in neat, orderly queues, of course, inside the freshly painted markers on the floor). That the train will be there by 8:53. That hundreds of passengers will have stepped off, and you, together with a few hundred others, will have boarded by 8:58. And that the Shinkansen will quietly pull out of the station at 9:00am on the spot. Not one second earlier. Not one second later.

Language is arguably humanity’s most consequential invention. Unlike any other species, Homo Sapiens has developed a means by which complicated, abstract plans can be efficiently and effectively transmitted from one mind to the next. Thus, our prehistoric ancestors, in contrast to their natural rivals, could successfully coordinate, say, a large-scale hunt, an attack on a foreign tribe, or even how they wanted to arrange life in increasingly complex social communities. Language also enabled the accumulation of knowledge over time: Ideas and discoveries could be handed down from one generation to the next. Verbally at first, later also in writing, allowing for the vast, collective wisdom to which we have access today to emerge. But I’m afraid that the exceptional role that language plays for us humans has caused a great deal of confusion—not only about how our own minds work, but also about the nature of intelligence in general.

The advent of ChatGPT and the subsequent release of GPT-4 have brought a wave of publicity to the field of generative AI. Many observers marvel at the levels of “creativity” that the technology has attained seemingly overnight and it’s tempting to get lost in pondering its implications on the future of, say, education, white-collar work, healthcare, or any other sector of the economy that suddenly looks ripe for disruption. However, we should not lose sight of the very real challenges posed by an adjacent category of artificial intelligence, namely the one that’s already deeply entrenched in our lives: The “merely” predictive algorithms that filter our inboxes, match us up with romantic partners, curate our news feeds, and slect the content we will watch or listen to next.

If you’re reading this, the mounting news of apparent breakthroughs in generative AI have surely not passed you by: Tools that can compose music, write code, paint pictures, and genuinely seem to be smart enough to pass various state exams have become publicly (and mostly freely) available in a surprisingly short timespan. This wave of commoditization has also shed the light of public discourse onto debates about AI safety which had, until now, been confined to relatively small, mostly academic circles. A TIME magazine cover story referred to big tech’s sudden rush to bring these technologies to the market as an “AI arms race”. Valid concerns about security, safety, privacy, and ethics, the authors warn, might quickly be thrown overboard in the interest of growth in shareholder value.

Almost three years ago, Covid-19 began to manifest itself as a global, historical turning point. Since then, its far-reaching consequences have been analyzed and written about in much detail. Despite an abundance of insightful pandemic stories on an institutional as well individual level, I feel compelled to provide one more personal anecdote. Not because I’m looking for praise for the few hours of weekly voluntary work I that I’m doing since then. But because the fact that an egocentric person like myself would suddenly feel an unshakable urge to give something back to society at precisely this moment in history highlights a fascinating, and often overlooked, aspect of human nature: Our innate desire to help others, even if that goes against our own selfish interests.

Meditating comes with an interesting side effect: When you’re sitting still and observing your own thoughts, you slowly start to appreciate how weird and quirky your mind actually is. That can be scary at times—for instance, you realize how little control “you” ultimately have over what’s going on in there. But it can also be highly instructive. One interesting thing I’ve come to notice, during as well as outside of formal meditation sessions, is how much the degree to which I feel “fidgety” varies from day to day and even from one situation to the next. There are times when it’s relatively easy to focus my attention at will, when there’s a slow undercurrent of calmness, rarely disturbed by intruding thoughts. But then, sometimes, the exact opposite is true: I’m feeling restless and unsteady, as if my mind is being yanked around between a thousand different things, all competing for limited cognitive resources. Engaging deeply with any one of those, however, becomes quite impossible. Instead, I’m caught in an endless loop of unproductive task switching. Running in high gear, but not going anywhere. Constantly distracting myself, and then distracting myself from the previous distraction.

I’m a big fan of making things as simple as possible, but not simpler. As many of those witty quotes, this one is also frequently attributed to Albert Einstein, even though it’s unlikely he said it in quite those words. Nevertheless, he was surely on board with the meaning: Every idea, every concept, every argument can in principle be reduced to an essence, but one that’s often padded with a lot of fluff. For the sake of clarity, you should therefore strive to strip away as much of that packaging as possible. But the catch is: This essence itself is ultimately irreducable. Try to make that even simpler and the idea loses its meaning and its value. Hence, the key question becomes: What’s the essence?

I have referred to my meditation practice a few times now, but I realize that I never actually explained what I even mean by that. So, what is it that I do when I say I meditate? Why do I do it in the first place? And is it really worth the hassle? First, let me clarify what meditation, to me, is certainly not: It’s not “sitting around and thinking hard about a problem”—even though the term is frequently used in that sense in everyday language. But it’s also not “emptying one’s mind” or “trying not to think”. It’s also distinct from formal prayer in the Christian, Muslim, or Judaic sense. And it’s quite definitely not mind-wandering or daydreaming. Don’t get me wrong, all of these activities have their merits, and there’s a time and place for them—they’re just not what’y meant with meditation. Meditation instead is actually a very broad term that includes countless different techniques aimed at training, at better understanding, or even at changing the human mind.

Product management is likely to be the most cross-functional discipline of them all. Conceptually, we’re trying to align desirability ("What does the market need?"), feasibility ("What kind of solution can we realistically build?"), and viability ("How do we make this a profitable business?"). That part of the job alone necessitates broad knowledge across a variety of fields, as well as a reasonable amount of depth in each of them. But that’s only one side of the coin.

One thing that never fails to astounds me is how far the boundaries of possible human experiences extend. The label “beyond good and evil” is certainly overused these days, but lets try to take the idea seriously for a moment: What do experiences look like that are so totally incomprehensible that you can’t even begin to speak about them, let alone chart them on a mental map. Think of the comfort zone model for example:

More than a year ago, I published this blog post about my daily routine. Since then I’ve received a lot of feedback, ranging from curiosity to mild encouragement to raised eyebrows. In essence though, the comments most people brought up boil down to three things: “This kind of lifestyle seems dull / repetitive / strenuous / masochistic. How do you find any joy in that?” “Isn’t it all just a fluke? Can you really keep these things up over the long-term?” “I see the point in what you’re doing, but I could never muster the motivation / willpower / determination to get started.” So, today I want to clear up some confusion around these concerns. What seems to be in question is on the one hand how to create the momentum that’s necessary to establish positive lifestyle changes in the first place, and on the other hand, how that momentum can be sustained over the long-haul by turning things that we know we ought to do into things we want to do. As we shall see, these topics are tightly interconnected. But let’s try to tackle them one at a time.

John Cutler recently published a nice piece “In Defense of Frameworks (and Process)”. And some defense is indeed in order, as the very idea of structured, well-documented, repeatable processes has suffered quite a few attacks over the previous decades: They’re too heavy, they stifle creativity, they diminish an organization’s ability to respond quickly to change, they’re not agile. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater: To “learn, collaborate, and lighten cognitive load”, as Cutler puts it, are great reasons to install frameworks and processes in the first place, as are increased transparency, predictability, and involvement. So, can one gain at least some of the benefits without incurring all of the detriment?

When I talk about strategy, particularly product strategy, and particularly to engineers, I like to start with a picture that looks like this: My goal here is to draw their attention away from what usually comes to mind about planning and prioritizing: Which features are on the roadmap and which aren’t? Where’s that issue ranked on the backlog? Will this enhancement request make it into the next sprint? And so on, and so forth. Questions like these do of course matter. But when we’re focussing too much on tactics (and think that we’re “being agile” by doing so), we’re in danger of forgetting the big picture. Consequently, our products will start resembling a hodgepodge of bells and whistles, with seemingly arbitrary features attached here and there but lacking a coherent narrative. Customers und users will be confused, and thus have a hard time trusting that we’re on the same page as them. Our teams will miss clarity and direction and will, rightfully, complain that they’re unable to make any long-term decisions. So, we need something that can help us tackle more forward looking questions: Why are we actually doing this? What are we trying to achieve here? How will we know if we’re on track towards our objectives?

At an all-hands meeting earlier this week, I ran a little experiment: I polled the assembled engineers to find out how many of them felt that they had a solid grasp on the workings of our business model. Guess what? Not a lot of hands went up. But if I had turned around and asked the sales teams how familiar they felt with the architecture of our software products, I’d probably gotten a similar result. Same thing for sure had I questioned the marketers about their understanding of our contracts, the support team about our revenue and cost structure, or the CEO about our cloud deployment model.

“We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?” The Doctor Yes, I plucked that quote from a cheesy Doctor Who episode. Nevertheless, I think there’s a lot of truth to unpack here. So indulge me, if you will. I’ve been fascinated with stories for all my life. Some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around being read to, and later reading myself, books about epic battles, about murder and deceit, about the lives and deaths of heroes and villains both real and fictional. And, for a short amount of time, I’ve even had a semi-professional interest in what makes a good story. But fun and innocent as it may seem, the reading, writing, or telling of stories actually is a lot more than a mere diversion for the bored mind.

At first it struck me as an exaggeration when James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, wrote the following in one of his recent newsletters: “Most big, deeply satisfying accomplishments in life take at least five years to achieve. This can include building a business, cultivating a loving relationship, writing a book, getting in the best shape of your life, raising a family, and more.” Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Atomic Habits by James Clear. The more I think about it though, the more two things stand out about his point: First, how well it actually corresponds with my personal experience. And second, that it’s quite at odds with how we commonly think “success” works. But regardless if we’re talking about five years, as Clear does, or the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell identified in Outliers, the point is that perseverance always trumps intensity: Deliberate, goal-directed effort, applied consistently over a long stretch of time, and ideally with a feedback loop built in, is bound to yield lasting effects. But here’s the catch: While traveling along such path, the individual steps we take often look insignificant. Progress is thus hard to discern and the perceived lack thereof can easily discourage us from keeping at it.

In biology, there’s a concept called homeostasis: Living systems seem to effortlessly balance differences between internal and external conditions in order to remain within their existential boundaries. The human body for example maintains an almost constant core temperature through sophisticated heating and cooling processes, and thus manages to keep us alive and flourishing in a wide range of environments. Social systems on the other hand don’t come with such built-in regulatory mechanism. Tensions between individual employees, different teams, or entire companies and their shareholders, partners, and customers, rarely resolve on their own. Much rather, deliberate effort has to be invested so that the forces at play don’t pull an organization apart. And that, in my view, is one of the key elements of leadership, regardless whether that’s formal or informal, and independent of the hierarchical level at which it occurs.

The act of thinking is probably the most interesting human behavior, but one we usually pay very little attention to. But bear with me, and… think about it for just a second: What’s actually going on in your head when you think about anything? Or, when you try to think about nothing at all? And is that even possible? It’s likely that you’ll find that what we call thinking mostly consists of a strange, one-sided dialog: A semi-structured conversation between you and… Yourself? Not that this on its own isn’t weird enough already, sometimes that dialog is even obviously superfluous but still almost always present. For example, on my run this morning, I encountered a tiny bird fluttering around next to me. The thought “That’s an interesting little creature!” suddenly popped into my mind and thus became part of my inner monologue. But this statement itself didn’t add anything valuable to my experience; I had already seen the bird; I had become aware of its presence and its behavior. The thought that followed thus was just an encore, an addition to my ongoing stream of running commentary, which didn’t guide any action but merely… clarified? or tried to explain? or helped to solidify? my present experience.

Conflicts, especially within organizations full of smart and well-intentioned people, often turn out not to be rooted in substantial differences at all. Much more often, minor misunderstandings are what actually wreaks havoc on our ability to collaborate. Yet, the consequences can range from a diffuse sense of constant irritation to an unnecessary proliferation of endless clarification meetings. I therefore believe that precise communication is an organizational superpower, just as much as a lack thereof can quickly poison a company’s otherwise healthy culture.

The human mind has an interesting weak spot: It is able to ask questions to which it knows that no satisfactory answer can exist. No other form consciousness (of which we know of) shows this behavior—or is even remotely capable of doing so. A cat doesn’t ponder what the meaning of life is. No octopus contemplates the value of its existence. Chimpanzees don’t question their higher purpose. For animals, despite many of them undoubtedly being conscious in ways not dissimilar to ours, a state of mere being is enough. Existence for its own sake, however, does not nearly satisfy homo sapiens sapiens. We strive to know. But at the same time we are also aware that this longing for an answer, particularly to the fundamental question of meaning, is futile. Albert Camus put it best when he termed this predicament the encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe. 1

If you’ve got about 20 minutes to spare, I’d invite you to listen to the following performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 28 (Op. 101) by the great Igor Levit: What caught my attention about this piece—apart form the beauty of the music itself—are the peculiar titles Beethoven chose for each of the four movements. Normally, these are intended to clarify the composer’s intentions for the benefit of the performer. In this case though, they’re surprisingly detailed, albeit vague and slightly contradictory, all at the same time. Furthermore, they read almost like inspirational quotes plucked from Instagram:

These days, I find it hard not to think about concepts such as chance and luck. About all the good things in life we take for granted. About how we often act on the assumption that we rightfully deserve our privilege, even though most of it came to us out of sheer serendipitous coincidence. But also about the other side of that coin, namely the haunting feelings of guilt and remorse evoked by a sudden exposure to others’ suffering vis-a-vis our own happy, content existence.

There’s this famous story about Christopher Wren, the legendary architect who rebuilt St. Paul’s Cathedral after the great fire of London in 1666: One day, while inspecting the ongoing construction, Wren came across three bricklayers who must have triggered his curiosity. He struck up a conversation, asking each of them in turn who they were and what they were doing. The first one answered: “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working here to feed my family.” The second one said: “I’m a builder. I’m building a strong and stable wall.” But the third one had a much more creative response: “I’m doing God’s work here! I’m constructing a cathedral in honor of the Almighty!”

Of a Happy Life by Seneca. At various points in his writing, Seneca uses fictional debates as a way to illustrate and then counteract objections to his views. In one particularly intriguing dialogue in “De Vita Beata” ("Of a Happy Life"), he and his virtual alter ego argue back and forth wether pleasure or virtue form the basis of a fulfilled, happy existence. Of course, the issue at stake here could hardly be of any greater significance: How does one live a good life? What’s the meaning of it all? What’s the point?

Frankly, I didn’t have the best of weeks this week. I found myself questioning my self-worth based on perceptions of having fallen short of certain achievements. It’s pointless to judge yourself solely by outcomes of course, particularly those that aren’t entirely under your own control–as the Stoics would put it. But to understand that basic principle is one thing, while applying it in everyday life is quite something different. So, I ended up in a detrimental spiral of negative thoughts and emotions which unsurprisingly resulted in bad sleep, a foul mood, a shortness of temper, and an unwarranted harshness towards others that, of course, only added fuel to the fire.

Getting people–others or ourselves–to do something that’s not obviously pleasurable is immensely tricky. Never mind if you want to start an exercise routine, eat healthier, or motivate someone to get their Covid-19 shot, the underlying challenge is always the same: In the short-term, it’s easier, less painful, or more convenient to simply avoid doing the “right” thing. So what can we do, in spite of that bias towards immediate gratification, to overcome the mind’s inbred inertia?

“Where’s the fun in that?”, many people asked after I had published my daily routine. Often, the question seemed borne not purely out of curiosity or interest, but rather inspired by pity, or even concern about my wellbeing. Doesn’t so much rigidity and discipline grind one down? Am I renouncing all of life’s pleasures? Doesn’t all work and no play make Jack a dull boy? How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Let me preface the following by saying: I’m neither an ascetic nor a masochist. But the more closely you examine the inner workings of your mind, the more you realize that pleasure is a complex, multi-faceted issue. Even the simplest taxonomies psychologists use to quantify the texture of our moment-to-moment experience require at least two dimensions: valence (pleasant to unpleasant) and arousal (calm to thrilled).

It’s 4:15am when my alarm goes off. I get out of bed immediately, without snoozing. Before I know what’s happening, I’m already in my running gear, and with a sip of water I’m out of the door no later than 4:25am. I run for 60 to 120 minutes, covering between ten and twenty kilometers. When I get back, it’s time for breakfast: Usually, oatmeal and a banana to refill the carbs I’ve burnt, together with a big glass of water to rehydrate. Some stretching exercises, as well as a hot shower, come right afterwards.

I consider myself reasonably fit. I know I can run a mile in seven minutes, or a kilometer in four and a half. On even ground. In cool climate. When I’m feeling fresh and relaxed. But upwards on a 75% incline? On a rocky hillside? In 40°C or more? With lungs full of smoke, the roar of a wildfire in my ears, and under threat of a sudden and violent death?

That tiny moment between sleep and wakefulness is a fascinating thing: Your mind hasn't quite caught up with reality yet, but it already tries to make sense of what's going on. When something feels even a little bit off during those split seconds, that can be a frightening experience: The light comes in from the wrong direction. The air is too humid. The touch of the bedspread seems unfamiliar. What the hell is going on? And then it hits: This isn’t where I usually wake up. This is Seoul. This is Cape Town. This is Manhattan. This is Hong Kong. This is an anonymous hotel room at the other end of the world, and I’m just passing through here. Suddenly, that what caused anxiety a moment ago turns into an awe-inspiring realization: I’m right here, right now, in this strange place, and I have the opportunity to explore it and everything it has to offer. How great is that?

Our mind is under ceaseless attack. Constantly, our senses assault it with a gazillion bits of information about the outside world, and the mind itself produces its own fair share of deductions, inferences, and projections on top of that–things we commonly refer to as thoughts. There’s just no way any system anywhere could process all that data in real time, so over eons of evolution, human minds have developed rigorous methods to separate what is considered useful from all the other crap. Only, it turns out, that distinction isn’t always in line with our very own best interest.

Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer. My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Néel. I’m not sure why, but over the last few weeks I rediscovered a passion for adventure literature. Re-reading Heinrich Harrer’s “Seven Years in Tibet” led me down the rabbit-hole towards lesser known, but no less epic, tales such as Alexandra David-Néel’s “Journey to Lhasa”. Right now, I’m halfway through “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage”, which details the horrors of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and just when their ship finally gets crushed and the crew is forced to flee into the freezing wilderness of Antarctica, the central heating in my house breaks down.

Crises such as the current pandemic force leaders to make tough decisions. Governments were—and in many cases still are—faced with practical and moral questions like “To what extent can we stifle social interactions to limit the spread of the disease, but at the same time protect businesses from going bankrupt?”, “Where’s the break-even point beyond which the suffering caused by a recession surpasses the number of lives threatened by the pandemic itself?”, and “Is the number of lives saved or lost the right measurement to use at all?”

“How long will this take?” is a tricky question. Most of us are terrible at estimating which is why organizations often make decisions based on either wildly inflated guesses, or wishful but unrealistic thinking. Furthermore, estimating itself takes time and binds resources that we could invest in actually doing the work instead. Intuitive Prediction by Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky. Advocates of the #noEstimates movement argue that it is in fact possible to get the benefits of estimating without having to pay the (full) price, and they get a lot of traction these days. An interesting real-world example that shows how #noEstimates can work comes from a team at Adidas runtastic which dropped estimations while still being in tune with a company-wide OKR system.

I once was given advice by a senior product manager that toppled one of the fundamental assumptions I had held about the PM role. What he said was: “Don’t go down with your products.” I had intuitively thought of the PM as the proverbial captain who is supposed to go down with his ship (at least as far as popular opinion is concerned) but what my colleague suggested sounded more like an invitation to opportunistically hop from one product to the next, jumping ship whenever things started to look dire.

The other day I had a wonderful conversation with a friend and fellow software enthusiast about fairness when it comes to the remuneration of knowledge workers. Both of us have been through various posts in different technology companies, increasingly concerning ourselves with management and leadership as our careers progressed. Our conversation honed in on the following question: Is the way people are payed in our industry today fair? Note that I’m not referring only to software developers here—data scientists, UI experts, DevOps heroes, product managers, and all the others who contribute to successful projects are included as well.

It’s a particularly unnerving aspect of the human condition that we’re longing the most for the things we don’t—or can’t—have at the moment. As of this writing, I’m sitting comfortably in a warm house, wearing decent clothes, am well fed and somewhat relaxed. Still I get the feeling that I’d enjoy nothing more than being outside in the blistering cold of this foggy December morning, pushing my body to physical exhaustion by running for an hour or two, only to arrive at where I started. What’s wrong with me?

I once worked for a manager who would send his employees home by 5:30pm every day. This was at a time and in an environment where looking productive by working at all hours was not only prized and honored, but to some degree even expected by upper management. His argument for limiting the amount of time people should spend in the office was rooted in a different mindset though: He rightfully insisted that nobody produces outstanding results while being exhausted and overworked. It’s often more beneficial to let go of a pressing issue for the moment and coming back to it after a good night’s sleep, a relaxing walk, or a workout.

Good Strategy / Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Recently I read Richard Rumelt's business classic Good Strategy / Bad Strategy which, beside clarifying what strategy actually is and why any organization would benefit from having one, offers many insightful stories and anecdotes on economics. One I found particularly amusing was about Andrew Carnegie, who was arguably the most successful business man of his day, being ranked the richest American for several years at the beginning of the 20th century.

I attended a great concert in Vienna this Friday night. Afterwards, on the way back to the apartment of the friends I was staying with, we passed a cafe where we had drinks a couple of times on previous occasions. Much to my surprise, the cafe was closed. I asked my friends what had happened - surely a location like this with thousands of concert goers passing by every night must be a gold mine? The tale my friends told was not only sad, but provided insight into an often overlooked tendency in human decision making: Our unwillingness to accept proposals we perceive as unfair, even if refusal comes at a personal cost to us.

Abraham Lincoln has been quoted saying: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." As it turns out, he probably never said that at all. But I still think we can learn something from that advice, despite its uncertain origins. Preparation In its most literal sense, the expression reminds us that time and energy spent in preparation tends to pay off by allowing us to do the actual work more efficiently. In the physical world - as in the tree chopping example - this may seem blatantly obvious, but it turns out that applying that thought to software development isn't quite as simple.

How does anybody actually decide what they do? Life is an endless parade of choices: In every moment  we prioritize and decide: Do we get up or stay in bed? Do we read the paper or go for a walk? Do we exercise or watch TV? Each of those tiny choices may seem inconsequential on their own, but taken together they end up defining our entire life.

It's been over a month now since I joined Cockpit365, a startup where more or less everything is in flux: The product, the organizational structure, the market, the ecosystem, … So I didn't know what to expect - except to expect the unexpected. In fact, I wasn't sure if I would even survive the first month, given both the personal, professional, and economic dynamics at play. But here we are: One month in, and hopefully many more to come. I've learned a lot this month, and in this post I'd like to summarize some of the more surprising aspects of my "startup life".

When it comes to engagement, motivation, and ultimately outcome of meetings, I find there's two extremely unsatisfying ends of a spectrum. One end — let's call it Dress to Impress — is the type of meeting where everyone tries to show off to somebody else. I saw that happen when a new manager is in the room to whom everybody wants to demonstrate how great they are, or just whenever too much ego is involved on anyone's part. That type of meeting is characterized by lengthily monologues, or pitches, followed by an awkward silence, followed by another persons monologue. You can easily spot that type of meeting by a lack of conversation: It's just a room full of people talking at each other, not with one another.

People say that life is short, but that’s not true. Life isn’t short, it’s long. In fact, it’s the longest thing we ever experience first hand. We only perceive life as short because we don’t make the best use of the time we have. It has become all too easy nowadays to waste away an entire lifetime with distractions like TV or social media. All the while we subconsciously hope that some day, by some miracle, a more satisfying future will roll around in which we will be… happy.

First things first: This blog exists mostly for myself. It exists because I was looking for means that would coerce me to write more — and better. See, nowadays we use written communication as much as never before, but I'd argue that at the same time the quality of our writing is in deterioration. At least, for me it is. I noticed that when I was younger, I enjoyed writing a lot more, and I remember being relatively good at it, but years of typing e-mails, text messages, and other one-liners somehow seemed to have damaged that ability.