Nidhi Sadanand provides helpful tips when joining a new company in a (very) senior role as Individual Contributor. Read everything Nidhi wrote under "Impact" section multiple times. Put reminders in your calendar to delve deeper and take notes when talking with your teammates to understand the business and organization dynamics better.
Writing is still an undervalued skill worth practicing in our industry. You can influence how the company works or what the company works on by becoming a better writer. "In every creative process, there's a moment when you have to grab the subject by the scruff of the neck and lift it up, like an animal carrying its young." -- Justin Mikolay shares a few tips to consider when you're communicating with others (or future self).
Short and insightful post by Evan Meagher. Knowing how to build momentum is a skill worth mastering. Easier to start with smaller projects and fewer people (but not easy, e.g. writing a blog post) and much harder to do when you need to lead multiple people. "A good way to generate early momentum in a project is to prioritize quick wins and explorations that tighten the feedback loop" -- the latter is a great framing when picking the work to start with. What can be done to understand the problem better and reduce the project's risk?
I'm a big fan of The Huberman Lab Podcast, and Juan Pablo Aranovich captures many insights that can be practical when designing your office space. What would you adopt to change your work environment at home? What about your office? Do you want to mark spaces for creative work? Maybe recommend them to move rooms when working on a different type of work?
I enjoyed Tim Reynolds's framing for how he leads as a Tech Lead for the team (focus on Time, Skills & Technology): "At the beginning of the project, I will direct my activities towards drafting a feasibility analysis report. This gives me a document where I can record answers to questions like the ones in the previous sections, and share the outcome of my research with the team and any stakeholders."
"When I notice that I’m all stressed out about something or driving myself to exhaustion, I remember that bike ride and try dialing back my effort by 50 percent. It’s been amazing how often everything gets done just as well and just as fast, with what feels like half the effort." -- Listen to Derek Sivers.
I always enjoy Joseph Jude's writing. This post goes well with last week's "Being visible" -- doing great work, in a great way, in public, will open doors for you. You don't need a lot of wins to make a big impact. You don't need a lot of wins to get lucky.
Using the "Even Over" approach when defining your strategy is powerful. It clearly puts tradeoffs, making it easier for the team to make decisions: "I'm willing to lose this to optimize that."
"I made a pact with myself — I don’t want to be led by fear. When I identify that I’m avoiding a decision due to fear, I stop to think of the worst case scenario, which for me is to be led by chance rather than creating my chances. I tap into that rebellious side we all have and push myself to get out of my comfort zone, because I know that on the other side I’ll be grateful for choosing authentically." -- Wonderful and brave writing by Miri Yehezkel, making a difficult decision to better align with her dreams and goals.
Sahil Bloom is a terrific thinker and writer I enjoy following on Twitter. I often take the first principle of "Draft Fast, Edit Slow" to an extreme - the easiest way to draft fast is to talk and record yourself. Then use a transcription tool (like Otter.ai) to get your first draft quickly in text. This is a trick I experimented with after reading Seth Godin's "Talker's Block" post.
Polina Pompliano got me thinking about leveraging stories to capture and share knowledge inside the company. The story can help retain facts, relationships, formulas, warnings, upside, or anything relevant to doing the necessary work. What is the narrative behind the change you'd like to make? How can you get people to connect to it emotionally? It's working well on kids at school, but it doesn't end there. Most of us learn best when we can connect to the narrative.
"A firebreak in daily life are pre-built areas that stop you from acting stupidly on autopilot and give you a shot to reboot the behaviors you want." -- I've shared this notion with you before, but I think it's worthy of rereading it at our new environment. Take 15 minutes every week to see which areas or behaviors you want to fix to readjust your body and mind.