The Insight of Juggling 🤹🏻♂️
Hey everyone,
This week, I was listening to Seth Godin's appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show, and Godin mentioned something towards the end that I’ve been thinking about since.
Ferriss had prompted Godin to explain how he teaches people to juggle. Godin explained that people think that juggling is about catching, but that people who start trying to catch multiple balls right away usually get discouraged and quit. When Godin teaches people, the first 40 minutes are spent on throwing. Why? “When you get really good at throwing,” Godin says, “the catching takes care of itself.”
The conversation took place in the context of discussing Godin’s new book, which is about shipping creative work. The juggling story is a metaphor for focusing on process instead of outcome. As Godin says, “it’s all about the process and not the outcome, because you don’t get good at the outcome for a long time.”
As someone who tends to have a lot of outcome-based goals and can get discouraged by lack of progress, I found this metaphor very insightful. I’m doing my best to shift my focus to the things that I can control (input, consistency, etc) and to not get hung up on results.
When you get good at throwing, the catching takes care of itself.
Pete’s Picks ✅
What I’m Reading: I pivoted at the beginning week and set down Path to Power in favor of Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories. From a UNC professor, it’s a collection of semi-autobiographical tales from medical residency. I finished today and enjoyed it.
What I’m Watching: Of all the hot technology trends of the past few years, (crypto, AI, etc) I’m most excited about self-driving cars. I don’t particularly like driving and look forward to the day when most people won’t own cars. To that end, I enjoyed this video in which Kyle Vogt (Cruise CTO) and Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) comment on a sped-up 75 minute autonomous drive through SF. I’m blown away by how far the technology has already come—it feels we’re right on the cusp of a consumer-facing product.
What I’m Listening To: The past few nights, I’ve been listening to the Sleep With Me podcast to help me get a bit drowsy. It’s a weird podcast (the host essentially tells these meandering stories and frequently gets distracted) but it works.
Tweet of the Week 🐦
Cheers,
Peter