Building Is Strong but Basement Weak
No. Don’t judge from the title that I am going to talk about the legendary Tamil comedy.
A bit of long prelude. Readers following my writings in the past one year would have noticed a theme in my activities. I consider sleep as a foundation for my health and mental well being. As I am obsessed with food and workout this year, I have been thinking a lot about sleep optimisation and improvement. As a gadget fanatic, I am always optimistic about tech. I started to invest in sleep tech. I bought an Oura ring to track my sleep pattern. It has been outstanding in giving feedback. I made sure I sleep in an absolute dark and cold room. I even floated for 45 mins in an Epsom salt-filled water tank to improve my resting heart rate. I often lament that since I live in India, I don’t get a chance to try a temperature-controlled bed or a weighted blanket. Whenever someone travels from the U.S to India, I snuck in some order. Recently I ordered a blue light blocking glass to my brother’s Berkeley address, who is travelling to India in a few weeks.
All of this was set in motion by a book I heard in my company’s book club: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. I was so impressed by the book that I went and bought a hard copy for future re-read. It was on my list for the best books for 2019.
Note, I said, it “was” on my list. Last week, Alexey Guzey wrote a scathing criticism about this book. It was tough to read. Because Alexey is right and also the author Matthew Walker is also correct. For a moment, I felt like my investment and efforts in sleep were futile. That building is strong, but basement weak feeling.
Alexey argued that Matt makes many inaccurate claims about sleep. Matt claims that humans should get at least 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep and people who sleep less than 6 hours are at the risk of getting cancer. But Alexey debunks that claim and goes on to establish many other inaccuracies in Matt’s book.
Take away for me is simple. 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep is vital for me because it makes me feel excellent and refreshed. The book may be scientifically inaccurate, but, I may sound cheesy, the heart is in the right place. It highlighted the importance of sleep. I had not thought about it in a serious way. This book focused on the necessity to pay attention and prioritise it.
Another critical lesson was reinforced: Barbell strategy on sleep. Yes, the book Why We Sleep is crucial. But I now place it in one extreme of the barbell. The other end is now for people like Alexey and sleep coaches like Martin Reed. The truth is somewhere in between. It is going to be a lifetime effort to tune and discover what works for me and what is really accurate.
The same thing happened a few months ago on a different key concept: Growth Mindset. My then role model and hero, Carol Dweck, was very critically examined by this article. I still believe in the Growth Mindset but I don’t worship Carol Dweck in the pedestal. The same is going to happen for sleep and Matthew Walker.
Comment By Ashutosh 3 Weeks Ago · 0 Likes
I am about to pick up Why We Sleep next to fix my sleep problem, so reading that the book has been criticized and that you believe some of those criticisms is a good “caution: wet floor” sign for me: I will tread carefully. I too am a̶ h̶u̶g̶e̶ f̶a̶n̶ an aggressive gifter of Carol Dweck’s Mindset, as it has helped me much in my life. Finding out that it has been criticized too doesn’t make me stop believing in the growth mindset, but only reminds me that in most cases, things aren’t binary, the truth is somewhere in between. I don’t think I’ll read the criticisms of Mindset, I’m happy in continuing to believe that the growth mindset exists and really works (ignorance is bliss).
I liked reading about your barbell strategy. I found you through your review of Andrew Wilkinson’s book on goodreads. Pleased to have met you by pure chance on the internet, vanakkam! 🙏
Barbell Strategy - Bill Campbell Edition
I was listening to a podcast by Tim Ferriss. Tim interviewed the a16z founder, Ben Horowitz. Ben is on a podcast tour to promote his newly published book. The book is about culture and why entrepreneurs should think about and work on it in their companies. It sounded like a good book. I will add it my queue and warm there. I don’t think I have an appetite for business-related non-fiction right now. Unless until someone recommends it really hard, I will not move it up the queue.
Ben speaks highly of Bill Campbell. Bill was a legendary coach and mentor in Silicon Valley. There is a new book about Bill Campbell written by Google’s ex-CEO Eric Schmidt, that is also in my queue.
I reminded of an instance that Ben Horowitz wrote during the death of Bill Campbell. Bill was Ben’s mentor and coach. Ben was narrating an incident from his. His 20+ yo son identified himself as a sexually non-binary person. Ben’s son was planning to inject himself with a lot of hormones for a sex change. Ben was clearly sad and he took solace in narrating this to Bill. Bill didn’t offer any advice or tip to manage this. But he listened actively to Ben, had tears in his eye and gave a big hug. Then he uttered the word, it is very tough to be in his situation.
I don’t know with Bill Campbell offered any advice or tips. It didn’t matter to me. But that moment of actively listening to someone, empathising their position and feeling for them genuinely is a rare skill. I really appreciated Bill Campbell’s ability for listening beyond the words and looking through someone’s heart directly.
But the barbell strategy lens reminded me of another instance too.
To set more context about Bill Campbell, everyone says he has been a legend in Silicon Valley. He was the CEO of Intuit. He was a close friend of Steve Jobs. He mentored people like Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and a ton. He doesn’t take money or stake in any company to do his coaching. But everyone regards him highly.
I also read the book by Nick Bilton called Hatching Twitter. It is the founding story of Twitter. You get to know a lot about Ev Williams, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and a bunch of others. The book is like a tabloidy, gossipy one. But it is interesting. Nick Bilton is an opinionated guy. Nick has strong words against Jack and genuinely empathetic towards Ev. Frankly, my respect for Ev Williams went really high after reading this book.
Ev was also mentored by Bill Campbell. But Nick writes that Bill spoke to Ev really well and meant good to him. But behind Ev’s back, Bill really bitched about him to the board and felt he was incapable. I know that these stories are like Chinese whispers. There may be only an iota of truth. But still, that is extremely important.
When Ben Horowitz is portraying Bill as a hero and singing praises about him, we need to understand the point of view from Ev Williams too. If we are looking to get a whole picture of Bill Campbell. Ev’s comment could be in the other extreme. Ben’s comment should be kept in the other extreme. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, for someone who is interested in Bill Campbell.
Magic Moment of Cinema
“Have you ever been awestruck by a scene or a dialogue?”
I am talking about a memorable scene in a gripping movie or a TV show.
“But have you ever seen the same kind of reaction from your kid or another generation for the same scene?”
It happened to me yesterday. The 2011 free movie, Rise of the Planet of Apes, is one of my all-time favourite movies. One day I was showing a random scene from that movie on YouTube to my son, and he was glued to it. So we watched the whole film together.
RoPoA is a great pop-sci-fi movie. A gene therapy lab does some experiment which turns chimpanzees and other apes into much more intelligent beings. Apes group together and revolt against humans for their freedom.
The movie is splendid in realistic graphics. It is not like Jungle Book or Lion King kind of movie where the animals sing. There is a crucial scene, where Caesar, the protagonist ape, utters the word “No”. It is a fantastic moment in the movie. When you hear an ape spelling out a word, it is really awesome.
I still remember watching this movie in Bangalore. The theatre (Urvashi Theatre) was in a suburb and it was quite a crowd. It was a 500+ seat theatre. The crowd roared in this scene. We were all taken by surprise in that cinematic moment.
It was exactly the same reaction from my 7-yo son. I was so delighted to see the expression in him. It was like running down my memory lane.
On Coaching and Mentoring - Shopify
It has always puzzled me. How do people like CEOs or other leaders make progress? Yes, they can read books, papers, listen to TED talks or YouTube. This may help them to be aware of a different view about the world or opinions about certain topics. But to make a behaviour change in taking a decision at work, a book alone might not be helpful. Because books are a terrible medium to hold attention to and make a change in one specific area. The context of the reader, experience and other invisible factors are not known to a book writer.
I have huge respect for the company, Shopify. They are truly a giant in the e-commerce space. They enable millions of people to sell and ship things online. In many ways, a true competitor for Amazon who can swallow and scoop up any businesses.
How did this happen? Tobi Lutke, a German interested in web-design, had built this huge Shopify empire in a decade and a half.
I don’t remember which podcast, but I heard that Shopify spent tons of resources in its early days on executive coaching and mentoring. When they were 150 employees, they used to hire more than 70 coaches or something like that.
I recently got a chance to ask Tobi about it in a Twitter AMA. His response was simply candid and useful.
Tobi was a CTO before he became a CEO. He took the help of an executive coach to make this transition. His team and company also had coaches to help them. They, in fact, have permanent coaches in Shopify to help their personal development. Tobi highly recommends coaching for anyone to have a higher return in improvement in any area.
Another example from Twitter is Tiago Forte. Tiago gets coached on fitness, publishing, bookkeeping, finances and so on.
Let us say that I wanted to improve in fitness. I can read blogs, books, listen to podcasts, do experiments on myself. I might get returns, as I will be iterating and improving my mindset. I might save tons of money. But I would have spent a lot of time on this. The tips might work or not, based on my context. My body, my habits and my location.
If I invest in a nutrition coach and a strengthening coach, I cut down the time taken for the effects. A coach’s advantage is that she has seen a lot of people similar to me. So it becomes like a pattern matching approach to start with and improve based on my feedback. Sure, good coaches cost money, but they save time. Going beyond such simple statements, a good coach will 10x your performance in whatever area you want to focus on.
Benefits of Bingewatching
Many of you following me know that I love Netflix and other streaming providers. Some of you may also know that I always look for a way to learn things in a non-conventional manner. I publish a weekly newsletter exploring the same theme.
In other words, I want to use the media like TV series or YouTube videos to change my world view on any topic and learn a thing or two. I know that books are a great medium to get into the skin of another person. You can know their environment, their politics, their inner underpinnings by reading a good novel. The only downside with a book is it is expensive.
No. I am not talking in the monetary sense. A good book costs less than a nice meal. It is costly in terms of the attention and the quality of focus it seeks from you. I still love reading fiction books and enjoy them. But binge-watching a nicely made TV series is as good as reading a book.
If you take any good TV show, it has at least 6 to 10 episodes in a season. If the show is really great, there is a high possibility of having more than 2 or 3 seasons. If 30 mins is an average episode time, you generally spend 600 mins or 700 mins (10+ hours) in immersing yourself in the show.
Like in a good novel, you get to know about the environment and settings better. You can know the side characters better, which brings more meaning to the plot. Basically, your senses get immersed for those 10 hours with the characters and the writers of the show. In my opinion that alone is very important.
Paul Graham has argued it very nicely in one of his essays:
Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you’ve lost the source of. It works, but you don’t know why.
If you are someone guilt-tripped by your friends on not reading books, fear not. Watching good TV shows and bingeing on them is good. You get all the benefit of reading fiction, like empathy, with TV as well.