Thinking About Procrastination and Espresso Machines
Damn it all really is just a reframing problem isn't it
Mmm hello friends —
Every day it seems I turn more and more into a San Francisco man. This week was no different as we welcome in a new important member to the household… I’m pleased to introduce you to miss breville. This may be the proverbial nail in my trite san franciscan coffin — prefaced by my re-investment in rock climbing, my past vc life, and now having a substack.
But ahem, if you are in the cole valley please drop by my home at any time and let me make you a little espresso drinkity. Nothing would delight me more than to wail on the milk frother 4 u <3
Let’s get down to it.
A few things on my mind:
Strategy is just procrastination with confidence.
Truth and love
Despite all this content, what am I actually encoding??
Strategy is just procrastination with confidence
Number one has been on my mind for a minute as a sub-set of a broader reflection I’ve been having about growing up, impulsivity, and people who are really, really good at what they do.
I had this meme of a man managing me once I went full-time at the venture firm I previously worked for. He was mercurial, demanding, trusting, and incisive — and I look back upon his mentorship with a lot of fondness. You never really knew which *name redacted* you were going to get each day. On a Wednesday morning check-in, it was mostly like a “let’s dive in” all about the grind mood, but on a Thursday afternoon it was likely more of a “bene, bene” Italian energy and waving at you with one massive Dutch-statured man hand kind of vibe.
Along with his charming eccentricities, he had a tendency to punt decisions or communications between high-stakes folks like investors or other partners at the firm. It used to drive me nuts how he put off very do-able conversations particularly when they were of a weighty nature or could make us look unresponsive to relationships that mattered to the firm.
In hindsight, I see how very calculated those moves were.
Oftentimes the delay in hitting reply to our investors or partners meant we could come back with more answers to questions or context (which we were frankly posing to have) that we did not have at the moment. For decisions about how the firm would operate and communications to the other partners, so much of my workflow was paused so he could to follow back-channel communications so that we could better stoke people’s egos and expectations before going about a broader conversation. The relationship often took priority over effectiveness, and that made the effort he produced ultra-effective because everyone ~felt~ highly considered.1
I think about that a lot more now, especially in a 9-5 era where the amount of energy I can expend on a big effort is more limited than in college days when I had pretty complete autonomy over schedule. Whether it’s in dating work projects or passion projects, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. As I’ve learned (poorly) to surf and get a bit better at rock climbing, that lesson shows up there in the embodied world too. If you’ve ever watched rock climbing you’ll see how a brawny novice dude can launch themselves up to finish a problem with pure brute force. No finesse no elegance, just a lot of forearm strength and sheer will to not look like a dope. Then, a shorter or more delicately built climber will get on the same problem and complete it with more footwork, balance, and careful precision — all on the same damn rocks. You can brute force many things, but likely the novice just burned through all their energy for the next 30 minutes; experts can do the same thing, but better, largely as a byproduct of their physical strength (grown by time and practice) and strategy (grown by thoughtfulness and patient observation).
This surfaces for me as I think about how to re-orient my time as a volunteer or as I dip my toe back into dating. What is actually the most effective as opposed to what’s the easiest to complete?
This thought feels like. a big meaty, interconnected one that I struggle to effectively express. Beyond just individual lives, this theme moves in systems too, and it’s on my mind especially as San Francisco recovers from a time of economic fallout, negative PR, and a looming shift towards more moderate politics. Having a clean, effective strategy is easier when starting afresh but in practice, we’re often adjusting strategies for our life that require a pause, death, or re-orientation of an existing approach/strategy and that disrupts routine and existing relationships. Messy!
I think I’ll talk about truth and love or my banger year™️ or what content am I actually encoding in the next entry. What do you want to hear??
Okay, love you, miss you <3
And some people say women are too emotional for business, pah!