How It Actually Works 147

Below is the weekly edition of my weekly newsletter How It Actually Works. It's published here for sharing and the archives.


Every week I publish the best, most timeless material you'll find anywhere on the web – books, articles, podcasts, research, videos, Twitter threads. These are the things you'll read and remember for years.

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Hi friends & happy new year!

I hope you were able to enjoy some time off & recharge for next year, and begin thinking about the next decade. There’s so much opportunity and amazing things happening in the world today - it’s a wonderful time to be alive.

Last week I published my 2020 year in review, where I talk about the celebrations from 2020, my goals for next year, and some open questions about the newsletter & my work here.

I also had my most viral tweet ever. Thankfully the vast majority of responses were positive, or at least agreed with the sentiment:

Regardless of what happens with Covid & vaccine distribution I’ll be optimistically charging forward on the things I can control in 2021.

Trevor

The Best in Sponsorships

Prismaticco Matches CEO & Executives with CEO & Executive coaches(sponsor)

I was literally thinking about this topic last month when I heard from a friend who was raving about their executive coach. "Where does one… find a coach?" I've tried other platforms through Lambda but they weren't very good and the experience was disjointed."

Prismaticco is a matchmaker between you and your own executive coach. What I like about this is the coaches don't work for them - the coaches have their own practices, clients, etc., so you're not getting some employee that Prismaticco hired and trained, you're getting someone who does this for a living. The founder Nina ran a leadership offsite I was in last year, and her network is what enables this to happen.

If you want to uplevel yourself, getting a coach is the way to do it. I recommend you check Prismaticco out.

The best in dark articles to make you happy to be alive

Depressing but interesting read about life as a paraplegic (article)

66,000 words from a guy in his early 30s who was paralyzed from the chest down during motorcycle trip in Mexico. It’s shockingly honest and brutal - I won’t quote any of it here. He kills himself at the end.

Okay so why TF is the Optimism 2020 guy linking to this?

Because at the beginning of a new year, and as we look forward to the rest of this decade, it’s worth remembering how special and worthwhile our lives are. If you’re reading this there are likely literally billions of people on this planet who would trade places with you in a moment - even for the most mundane and basic of lives.

This isn’t a guilt trip - this is an invitation to live!

As I did my 2021 and 10-year planning the question that drove the entire exercise was What makes me feel alive? Whatever that is - how can we make that a regular part of our lived experience?

Reading that post is like taking a mental ice bath - it’s shocks you into remembering how good you have it, and hopefully makes you feel alive from nothing more than paying attention to your present moment.

Watching 278 state executions (article)

Profile of the woman who was in charge of press relations in Texas for a decade. Part of the job was she was required to watch every state execution.

The Best in Inspiration

The 2018 LessWrong Book set (books)

These just arrived over the weekend and I already finished the first of the 5 books (book notes forthcoming!) I’ve been a LessWrong casual lurker for a long time and always found it hard to know where exactly to go to fully experience the LessWrong ideas and community.

These books answer that question almost perfectly. They take the most popular posts from LW - as voted on by a small trusted community of LW contributors and readers - and put them into book form.

I feel like reading these I’m getting 90% of what the rationality community is about, and it’s much easier to pay attention when it’s in a book and I can’t click all the reference links to other pages.

Highly recommended.

Ben Kuhn’s favorite essays of life advice (article)

Check it out for excerpts, here’s the full list. I think I’ve linked to almost all of these at some point:

Technology to come in the 2020s (article)

Eli Dourado’s post on what to look forward to and hope for in this decade. You could make a career out of any paragraph on this list - life extension, space, energy - oh my!

The only hurdle I anticipate is the same one we’re experiencing with vaccine distributions.

Thermal Photos of Iceland (article)

I love these photos of Iceland - and I’m not even a huge fan of the outdoors

The Best in Government

The US Digital Services playbook (article)

The US Digital Service a group of technologists working across the federal

government to transform critical services for Americans. They’re usually from the private sector and do a “tour of duty” in the USDS.

The playbook is a list of 13 “plays” that help create better online services. Some examples are “1. Understand what people need”, “6 Assign one leader and hold that person accountable”, and “13. Default to open”.

What’s striking about the list is how much overlap it has with startups and private companies, and also how startups and private companies also so often fail to execute these plays.

I hope to see more emphasis on the USDS during the new administration - there’s nothing more infuriating than being unable to get reliable service from a monopoly provider.

More info on the USDS from their press sheet here.

Their 6 values are honestly better than most startups because they make actual tradeoffs. #3 is my personal favorite, feels particularly apt for government service, and yet still applies to private companies.

  1. Hire and empower great people.
  2. Find the truth. Tell the truth.
  3. Optimize for results, not optics.
  4. Go where the work is.
  5. Create momentum.
  6. Design with users, not for them.

The Best in Expected Value bets

How to choose a portfolio of projects (article)

Seth Godin article that’s a 101 on how to choose projects based on expected value (EV). The error many make is equating “low chance of success” with “risky” - definitely not the case, especially if you have a basket of bets.

We’re seeing a lack of EV thinking in vaccine distribution right now, which is why this is top of mind for me.

Mark Zuckerberg & Kevin Systrom emails about the Instagram acquisition (PDF)

Fun inside look at the acquisition conversation - my favorite parts:

  • Mark is very clear to Kevin in where he stands, what he needs information wise, asking Kevin to clarify, etc.
  • The emails going from long & strategic to short & casual is interesting. It happens almost immediately after they meet in person - who knows how much of an impact that really had but I’m 100% confident it helped
  • Mark has/had an extremely clear vision of how he saw Instagram fitting into Facebook

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