Dickie's Digest - Solitude, Leadership, Remote Work, and Breadcrumbs
Hey there - happy Sunday my friends.
Just a few quick things from me this week:
This is the last week to join Ship 30 for 30’s January cohort. We have 71 people signed up to write every day for 30 days. Writing online changed my life in 2020. If you are thinking about getting started, this is the community for you. If you want in, hit reply and let me know - I’m hooking Digest readers up with 50% off.
I put together a list of my top 12 tweet threads and my top 10 tweets.
I shared two threads: one on the operating system for the 21st-century internet entrepreneur and another on my friend Craig’s unbeatable copywriting framework.
And one question from you: I’m putting together the list of the best things I read and listened to in 2020. Hit reply and let me know what was your favorite.
That’s it from me! In this week’s Digest:
🎧 Invest Like the Best with Sam Hinkie [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
🎧 Tim Urban on the Creator Lab Podcast [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
Have an epic week!
Dickie
👑 Solitude and Leadership [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
I thought about making this the only link in this week’s Digest. Why? Because it is one of the most profound lectures I’ve ever read. Given to the West Point plebe class in 2009, the lecture explores the foundation of leadership.
On the surface, solitude and leadership seem to be contradictory things. But solitude is the essence of leadership. Because leaders reach their position by doing things differently and seeing the world through a unique lens. And the only way to develop that lens is to learn to think. And to learn to think, you have to spend time in solitude.
The lecture begins with a critique of the modern bureaucracy:
So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.”
This pipeline creates the exact type of person made to thrive in modern bureaucracy: commonplace, ordinary, able to accomplish given goals but not set them, able to get things done but not ask if they’re worth doing.
This doesn’t build leaders. It builds the bureaucratic managers who are deft maneuverers but mediocre thinkers. Leaders must think for themselves and act on their convictions.
So how does one learn to think for themselves? By learning to focus. To concentrate. To remove the endless stream of tweets, voices, messages, and distractions propped up to prevent you from doing just that. It means writing. Exploring your opinions. Asking deeper questions. And as Emerson puts it so well:
“He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.”
Introspection, concentration, deep reading, and intimate conversation are the best ways to learn to think. For me, I’ve found that writing every day helps. But I struggle with distraction and multitasking as much as anyone else. But this essay shines a bright light on just how important it is to break those habits. Otherwise, you end up in the rat race with those hoop jumpers who never learned to think for themselves.
Read more: Solitude and Leadership
If you gave this a read, reply to this email. I would love to know what you thought about it.
💼 We’re Never Going Back (to the Office)
One question that may dominate everyone reading this’ 2021: will your employer require your back into an office for a single day?
It’s certainly top of mind for me. First, because it will personally affect me and the decisions I make in just about every area of my life. But second, because what happens likely happens to most others. And whether or not employers require most 20-somethings back into the office or not has incredible implications for the global economy.
In his most recent newsletter, Packy McCormick argues that employers will never be able to require workers back in the office again.
Why? Well, one could argue that working from home has objective benefits that most workers do not want to give back up. No commute, hyper-mobility, more time with family and friends, less time clicking around a screen pretending to work, etc.
So the companies that require in-office work will limit their access to top talent.
"The best employees have more options now than ever before, and they’re not going to work for companies that make them shave, get dressed, hop into a car or a crowded subway, and sit at a desk in an office five days a week with their headphones on trying to avoid distractions and get work done... Remote Co can attract A players from anywhere in the world, including Local Co’s hometown. Local Co is left with the B and C players in its hometown."
This creates a global liquid talent pool of workers, completely upending the modern work infrastructure. It changes everything from HR to benefits to business travel to commercial real estate. And it will take years to play out, not just a few months.
"On average, companies in major cities spend $1-2k per month to keep their employees at a desk in an office because that’s just what companies did. Imagine what they could do with $20k per person per year, a blank slate, and a desire to organize themselves around what they want to achieve... Buy Pelotons for every team member to bond over morning rides instead of water cooler gossip."
And this was the best point from the essay:
Remote’s ecosystem is underdeveloped. We’ve had to shoehorn pre-Remote solutions to fit a new paradigm, and the impending wave of new tools hasn’t yet arrived.
We are in the first inning of remote work tools. COVID forced us into this situation, and nothing broke! Imagine what the smartest engineers can cook up in the next few years that truly revolutionize the experience. The essay explores a few of those tools as well.
If this question is top of mind for you as it is for me, I highly recommend this read.
Read more: We’re Never Going Back
So what do you think? Are we ever going back? Hit reply and let me know.
🎧This Week in Podcasts
If you love the Digest and its weekly podcast recommendations, consider checking out the Digest Podcast Compendium. It’s a curation of my favorite podcast episodes ever recorded, tagged, and summarized with three key takeaways. Supporters get three new podcasts and summaries every week plus an invitation to a private Slack group to chat about the best episodes.
Three fire episodes this week, each of which I highly recommend.
Made You Think with Eric Jorgenson [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
I really enjoyed this conversation with Almanack of Naval author Eric Jorgenson. Nat, Neil, and Eric talk about the future of education (which fascinates me) and how to actually apply leverage in your life. This show is the most underrated podcast out there. I highly recommend checking out their older episodes on a bunch of different books.
Invest Like the Best with Sam Hinkie [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
This is the second time I’ve heard Sam Hinkie on Invest Like the Best and the second time I was blown away. Sam and Patrick chat about two things: the importance of writing (especially creating digital breadcrumbs) and the importance of forming strong, highly vetted relationships. Two things I’m focused heavily on at the moment.
Tim Urban on the Creator Lab Podcast [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
The Creator Lab podcast with my friend Bilal Zaidi is absolutely on fire. This week he had Tim Urban, author of one of my favorite blogs Wait but Why. This episode took a deep dive into Tim’s creative process. He describes it as “taking his understanding of something from a 2 to a 6 and writing about it.” If his understanding of Elon Musk and Neuralink is a 6/10, please show me who is a 10/10.
If you listen to any of these, hit reply and let me know what you think.
😎 Cool Things Corner
I’m coming into this holiday season looking to make a few “quality of life” upgrade purchases. Here are a few things I’ve picked up that have been game-changers:
🧠 Idea Corner
Thanks for reading!
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