I had one of my most productive days ever at work last week.

I showed up to the office at 7am, two hours before most people arrive.

I only had one meeting, for an hour, around the time when I needed a lunch break.

And the rest of the day, I ignored Slack, our chat tool at work.

Day-to-day, it's hard to comprehend how much the small distractions—checking email, checking Slack, chatting with a colleague, having a quick meeting—have an effect on our overall productivity.

We get used to the daily distractions, and the amount of work we can finish in a day, and consider it normal.

But then you have one day of concentration, and remember just how detrimental distractions are.

Reading Turning Pro this week, this quote hit home:

"Resistance hates two qualities above all others: concentration and depth. Why? Because when we work with focus and we work deep, we succeed.

Resistance wants to keep us shallow and unfocused. So it makes the superficial and the vain intoxicating.

Have you checked your e-mail in the last half hour? When you sit down to do your work, do you leave your web connection on?"

I hope you manage to find some concentration and depth this week.

Have a great week!

Graham

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Links

📚 Book: Turning Pro - Steven Pressfield- I read this follow-up to The War of Artin one sitting Saturday morning. My favourite part is his walkthrough of his early days as a truck driver, and how bleak the early days of his writing really were. In terms of inspiration, I still prefer The War of Art.

🔧 App I'm Using:HeavySet - I started using this iOS-only workout app this week for my return to the gym after a long hiatus. It took a little bit of time to set up, but once I'd set up my initial workouts, it made my time at the gym a breeze, making it easy to log my weights, set numbers, and automatically tracking my rest periods. Bottom line: I no longer have to think when I'm at the gym. I'll be paying for the full version.

📖 Twitter - The Twitter/Elon saga continued this week, with many predicting the demise of Twitter on Thursday, when Elon gave employees an ultimatum—either commit to the new, much harder-working culture at Twitter, and return to the office, or quit with 3 months severance. Needless to say, many quit.

There are a few concerns with this kind of pressure, including:

• Workers on a visa who have little control over where they work (or much worse consequences for quitting)
• People at Twitter who moved away after Twitter announced they would be remote forever, and can't return to the office
• General concerns about long working hours/violations of labour agreements/etc.

However, there are some alternative takes as well, which I understand:

First of all, there's a track record of success that can't be ignored:

Paul Graham

@paulg

It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.

November 16th 2022

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The sports analogy is one I know well too; if you want to find high performers, put everyone through a difficult test and see who remains:

Dickie Bush 🚢

@dickiebush

If you played competitive sports at a high level, you see what Elon is doing.
When a coach inherits a poor culture, the first thing they do is a series of grueling workouts.
A good chunk of the team will quit, which is the goal.
Then you rebuild with the best performers.

November 18th 2022

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Twitter hasn't gone down yet, and we'll see what the next few weeks/months/years bring, but...

Jesse Pujji

@jspujji

In only 2 weeks, @elonmusk has managed to:
+ cut costs 75%
+ ensure his team is fully aligned/bought in to his way of working
+ leverage the media to get billions of free impression
(Chefs kiss)
Has anyone gotten a turnaround going that fast before?!

November 18th 2022

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Photo of the Week

Winter has (sadly) returned to Montreal. Now if we could just skip straight to ski/outdoor rink season, that would be great...