Focus

“It's not really about productivity, it's not about time management. It's really just about, look, at any given day, we're lucky if we can have one great moment where we have our peak attention and we use it well. The notion with the highlight is imagine it's the end of the day if someone asks you, 'What was the highlight of your day,' what would you say? That's the anchor of everything.”

Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital) · Jake Knapp + John Zeratsky

“Things can sometimes be a mess outside of that, and you still feel really good about your days. You still feel really good about the way you're spending your energy.”

Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital) · Jake Knapp + John Zeratsky

“The tendency when you're in the chasm is, 'I just need more customers. I should take any customer I could find,' because we need revenue. It's like taking a match and running it back and forth under a log. It's not going to light the log.”

Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market · Geoffrey Moore

“So how do you start a fire? Well, you start it by putting a little kindling, little crumpled up paper, and you hold the match in one place until the fire starts.”

Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market · Geoffrey Moore

“I went to Alibaba and I bought myself one of these flip phones from China like we used to have in the 1990s with no apps, no internet connection. And then I got myself a word processor off of eBay so that I could just sit down and write. And even when I stopped using all the technology... I kept getting distracted because the problem is not our technology. The problem is our inability to deal with discomfort.”

Strategies for becoming less distracted and improving focus | Nir Eyal (author of Indistractable and Hooked) · Nir Eyal

“Always identify what is that internal trigger, what is that itch that you are looking to escape when you get distracted, because that is the source of 90% of our distractions.”

Strategies for becoming less distracted and improving focus | Nir Eyal (author of Indistractable and Hooked) · Nir Eyal

“Time management is pain management. The reason we get distracted is not because of what's happening outside of us but what's happening inside of us.”

Strategies for becoming less distracted and improving focus | Nir Eyal (author of Indistractable and Hooked) · Nir Eyal

“It's also very important to know what you're not building. And this one is not only in big companies, I would say even in startups, it's extremely important to know what you're not building because you could very easily get swayed by customer X telling you to do this, customer Y telling you to do that. And a product that tries to be all things to all people usually doesn't end up going anywhere.”

Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco) · Shweta Shriva

“If you decrease the surface area then with the same amount of force you can apply more pressure. This is a basic equation for physics, but it's also true of communications. If you decrease the surface area and don't try to appeal to everybody with everything, and you're targeting exactly whom you're talking to and sharpening your message to a point, then with the same amount of effort you're able to make more of an impact.”

Navigating comms and PR | Lulu Cheng Meservey (Substack, Activision Blizzard) · Lulu Cheng Meservey