Agree with the holiday idea. Some time away will give everyone a little time to step back and reflect. Maybe let some of your anxiety seep into other parts of the organization.
I keep these two comments bookmarked and will even share them with members of my team from time to time when I think maybe we're starting to push too hard, just so we don't lost perspective:
This is why I don't work very hard. Not entirely kidding. What'll make or break the company isn't me grinding away churning out incremental features and fixing tiny bugs. What'll make the difference is whether someone spots the game-changing opportunity, whether it's a product innovation, a business model or a particular partnership. To spot that kind of thing you have to give yourself some space and not have your head down all the time.
Probably because consistently busting your ass in the civilian realm is a deep mistake. In a combat mindframe, it's utterly necessary in order to prevent the deaths of people you care about. But in a civilian frame, that level of effort is sometimes rewarded with promotion, but even more often is rewarded with more work and a stubborn refusal to even grant increases in pay, since every farmer loves a hard-working mule, but not if the mule demands more from them. That would just cut into profits from the farm.
If you work like three men, then promoting you means replacing you with three people, or trying to find the rare bird who works like you do. The practical result is that they keep you in your place, and promote a lazy schmoozer over you, one who will drink the Koolaid by the gallon, and has the wits to push the papers around, no more.
Ray Ozzie here. Regarding "minitruth" - you've got to maintain a bit of a sense of humor when things get stressful.
It was such a long time ago, but one thing that clearly differentiates our efforts in those days vs. what's been reported in the news in the past few days is the issue of transparency.
The day we shipped the "differential workfactor" implementation in Notes, I keynoted the RSA Conference and gave a speech laying out what we did and why. Charlie Kaufman, a great cryptographer who worked for me, also distributed a paper he wrote with the technical details. You can find my speech and his paper buried in here if you're interested. (search for "lotus.notes")
Back to the present - it pains me to see such a lack of transparency in how our elected officials are running our government. Of course, the common man knows it's common sense that there's an inherent need for secrecy in conducting small scale covert operations. We do get it.
However, it's also common sense that it's inevitable that any complex large-scale long-term operation will ultimately come to light. And so it's just common sense that any such broad-based operations that might be perceived as impacting our constitutional rights should be the subject of broad public debate. No, not when they're being prototyped or tested or used in small scale settings - but definitely somewhere on the path from "tactical use" to "broad strategic dependence".
These are not small issues, nor need they be at all partisan. Wyden, Paul, and others are trying. Theses issues are fundamental to defining the relationship between us citizens and our government in the decades ahead.
In particular, in this world where "SaaS" and "software eats everything" and "cloud computing" and "big data" are inevitable and already pervasive, it pains me to see how 3rd Party Doctrine may now already be being leveraged to effectively gut the intent of U.S. citizens' Fourth Amendment rights. Don't we need a common-sense refresh to the wording of our laws and potentially our constitution as it pertains to how we now rely upon 3rd parties? It makes zero sense in a "services age" where granting third parties limited rights to our private information is so basic and fundamental to how we think, work, conduct and enjoy life.
For example, did you really intend to yield your 4th amendment rights when you granted a 3rd party access to your files as a part of Mac Software Update, Windows Update, Virus Scanners, etc., or when you started using a service-tethered smartphone?
Anyway, unlike 'web tracking' issues which seem to be broadly ignored because of our love for ad-supported services, I hope we all (especially the young readers of reddit, hackernews, etc) wake up to the fact that these privacy and transparency issues are REAL, and that they truly will impact you and the country you live in, and that even if you don't consider yourself an activist you really should get informed and form an opinion. Again, this is a non-partisan issue, and let's all work to ensure that it stays this way.
Two great organizations where you can learn are EPIC and EFF. (Disclosure: I am on the board of EPIC.) Take it in, and think. Your contributions are needed and would of course be quite welcome.
I don’t have a reference available but the concept of ‘Mission Command’ used by the UK Army amongst others contains the best and most succinct description I’ve seen of how to delegate a task to a subordinate. And is perfectly suited to many civilian situations as well. From memory, and paraphrasing, it boils down to
State what you, as the leader, are trying to achieve, and why ('the big picture')
State what you want the subordinate to achieve
Define the resources available to the subordinate, and any constraints
Say how you want progress / issues to be reported
You don’t define how the subordinate should carry out the task – if they are competent and you trust them, they should be able to figure this out themselves.
[Edit] - the military distinction between command and control is also relevant to the civilian distinction between leadership and management. Paraphrasing slightly: Command is getting people to do something. Control is stopping them from doing something else.
Check out [1] and scroll down to Table A-7 (it's an Excel file). It's the real earnings data (in 2018 dollars), by gender, from 1960 to 2018 (though it's kind of spotty before 1967). What sticks out:
* For men (looking at Total Workers), real earnings are currently around 10% higher than they were in the 70s (moving from low-$40K's to recently just past mid-$40K's, with some peaks and valleys along the way). Doesn't sound like much, but...
* For women, earnings have roughly doubled in that timespan
* The number of men in the workforce has increased by almost 50%
* The number of women in the workforce has increased by almost 100%
From a certain perspective, it's kind of amazing that real earnings haven't gone down significantly.
In the last 20 years, median earnings, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), are up. Unemployment is at its lowest, and that's at the broadest definition of "unemployment" (U6) [2].
As for poverty, check out [3] from the US Census Bureau and scroll down to Table 6 (it’s an Excel file). It’s the percentage of people in America that are below 125% of the poverty line (I.e. near poor to absolutely poor) between 1959 and 2018. That percentage has gone down from 31% to 16%.
The median number of years to recoup the cost of a Bachelors degree in America, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years. [4]
First and foremost, what you are describing is metacognition - thinking about the way you think. Hopefully that will aid you in your search for things!
Secondly, here are some of my favorite influential material:
- Guy Kawasaki, Make Meaning. Aimed for startups, but equally applicable in life. My takeaway: Have the proper motivations for doing things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQs6IpJQWXc
- “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”― Rumi
As a solo founder, I found startup school invaluable. It really helped keep me honest with myself to discuss what I had done and what I will do at the weekly office hours.
I would recommend Startup School to any startup but if you're a solo founder then I think you will find the weekly office hours especially valuable.
2. Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16745042
3. Ask HN: How to self-learn electronics? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16775744
4. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072
5. Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21581361
6. Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18588727
7. Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20264911
8. Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22786853
9. Machine Learning 101 slidedeck: 2 years of headbanging, so you don't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919115
10. Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23151144
11. Questions to ask a company during a job interview - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20916749
12. Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22299180
13. Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23092657
14. Systems Design for Advanced Beginners - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23904000
15. Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22400375
16. Teach Yourself Computer Science - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23588896
17. Basic Social Skills Guide (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21585235
18. How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238135
19. Tricks to start working despite not feeling like it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105229
20. Machine Learning Crash Course - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493489
21. Most favorited Hacker News posts of all time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24351073
22. Gears - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22310813
23. The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20985875
24. A guide to difficult conversations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490573
25. How to stop procrastinating by using the Fogg Behavior Model - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120275
26. Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21324768
27. Linux Productivity Tools (2019) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229241
28. Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21712194
29. Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel for developers? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12702651
30. Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805624
31. Build Your Own React - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21536789
32. Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18104814
33. Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170881
34. The missing semester of CS education - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226380
35. Medium-hard SQL interview questions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23053981
36. The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163251
37. My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184
38. Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22235279
39. Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13660086
40. Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14486657
41. Ask HN: Where can I find high-end stock images for a website? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602538
42. Ask HN: What overlooked class of tools should a self-taught programmer look into - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19900955
43. Advanced Data Structures (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044876
44. Immersive Linear Algebra (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19264048
45. Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12713056
46. Tools for Better Thinking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23339830
47. Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21900498
48. Startup idea checklist - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20254057
49. Ask HN: Favorite teachers on YouTube? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17999659
50. Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23276456