Rachel Feintzeig: “So many of us are terrible at being terrible. As our children venture off to school, sports, dances and music lessons, we implore them: Just try something, keep practicing, you’re only a beginner. And yet, faced with evidence of our own mediocrity, we wilt in embarrassment, avoid the thing or quit altogether…What if we’re missing out? “It’s such a relief not to have to be good,” says Karen Rinaldi, a Manhattan-based publishing executive and confessed horrible surfer. After 20 years on the board, she is still bad, and she loves it. There is the thrill of being out on the water, the feeling that any wave she does catch is a bonus. But there is also the satisfaction of not having to be the expert, the freedom to seek help and rely on others in a way she never would at work or with her kids.”
Michael Mignano: “A SuperGoal is a high stakes, focusing goal for a team. It has a clear and urgent timeframe, an open-ended method of achievement, and a single measure of success that everyone can understand. While I’ve used a wide variety of goal types, such as OKRs, BHAGs, and stacked priorities, I have found SuperGoals to be my go-to framework in the most critical of moments. Few goal-setting frameworks deliver the singularity of SuperGoals — you only get one, it’s not aspirational, and it must be accomplished.”
Jason Fried: “Every six weeks, we define three or four projects we’re going to get done in product development. The max we’re willing to spend on any given feature is six weeks. We work in teams of two — one designer and one programmer — and that team has all the agency to build what they want to build in anywhere from one to six weeks. It’s like if you were to go to Vegas and gamble. You go to the ATM, you take $500 out, and if you’re disciplined, you go, “The most I’m willing to lose is 500 bucks. After that, I’m done.” But if you’re not disciplined, you go back to the ATM and get another 500 bucks out. That’s how most companies run. They keep going, they keep missing deadlines, they keep spending more money, they keep pouring more time into things. We’re the other way around. We take the money out and we go: that’s it. And that’s the advantage of these shorter time horizons: It forces us to be creative, to be economical, and to be thoughtful about what we’re doing and not just feel like there’s unlimited time and money to get to it eventually.”
Watching: Andor (Star Wars) on Amazon Prime. Very well made.
