Modest Operations | Newsletter Volume 2

Hopefully everyone had a nice relaxing Thanksgiving holiday with friends and family. My pants are fitting a bit tighter this week, but my bank account is still mostly in tact after successfully avoiding most of the Black Friday madness. I'll count that as a win.

Work-wise, I've got some interesting projects in the works and have been having a bunch of fulfilling conversations since launching a few weeks ago.

For those curious about what Modest Operations is exactly, I recently wrote a post on LinkedIn HERE, which I'll likely be reposting on Medium here in the next few days.

Have a great week.

This Week's Links A list of things I've been reading & thinking about.* “I know of no more scalable way to engage a large audience than the written word. Given that, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the things that have helped me in my journey to writing more.” - Writing Is Thinking (Andrew Bosworth for Boz.com) * “Every adult I know — or at least the ones who are depressed — continually suffers from something like sticker shock (that is, when you go shopping for something for the first time and are shocked to find it costs way, way more than you thought). Only it’s with effort. It’s Effort Shock. We have a vague idea in our head of the 'price' of certain accomplishments, how difficult it should be to get a degree, or succeed at a job, or stay in shape, or raise a kid, or build a house. And that vague idea is almost always catastrophically wrong. Accomplishing worthwhile things isn’t just a little harder than people think; it’s 10 or 20 times harder.” - A willingness to be bad (Austin Kleon for AustinKleon.com) * “If you hate him, it’s likely because he represents what you’ve always resented about the world — that someone so utterly thoughtless and lacking evident empathy could still thrive, and worse, become wildly famous. If you like him, it’s likely because there’s something inspiring about all that success” - Even When He Loses, Logan Paul Wins (Scaachi Koul for Buzzfeed News) * “...It’s no surprise then, given the challenge, that clients tend to rely on org charts to make sense of their organizations. But org charts don’t communicate purpose. And org charts should be strategic, but strategy is nowhere to be found on an org chart. Moreover, org charts don’t tell teams how to work together. As org charts have proliferated as the de facto tool for organizational design, they’ve also had the unintended effect of training managers to think first in reporting lines or headcount and not purpose and strategies. Over the last year, we’ve struck upon a better solution. We call it The Organizational Charter.” - How We Describe an Organization (NOBL.io) * For the last few years, I've participated in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. This year, I challenged myself to read 25 books, and if I continue my current pace, it looks like I'll hit my goal by the end of the year (but just barely). I'm usually much more of a non-fiction reader, but have recently been enjoying Nick Bilton's American Kingpin about the story of the Silk Road.