This Week I Learned #76

“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up”
— Charlie Munger

2019-11-11

  • A refresher on the Milgram shock experiment: The Yale University experiment had participants administer electric shocks to other participants (who were part of the experiment team but introduced as fellow student participants) on the order of the experiment administrator. Participants could hear the screams of pain each time they administered shocks but they did not see the people they were shocking. But they did hear pleas for them to stop. Administrators had scripted language that pressured the participants to continue delivering the shocks and 65% continued until the participant was pronounced dead. The shocks weren't actually happening, just some fine acting but the participant didn't know that. But this is example of how far people will go when something is made easier... it was easier to follow the orders of the administrator than to quit because they were made to feel like they were doing something wrong by quitting.

2019-11-12

  • A story on how Trader Joe's was created: The founder had sold his own home to expand Rexall stores but it was facing stiff competition from 7Eleven. On a visit to Jamaica, he noticed how great it was to have this vacation environment that people were excited by and he felt one of the reasons for that was that the whole experience was just presented to them and it didn't feel like work. He felt that other grocery and convenience chains had way too many options. So, he decided to make a store that had less options by selling less variations. Unlike competitor grocery stores that sold 25K SKUs on average, Trader Joe's only has 4K SKUs but at the time of the book it had double the sale of whole foods. Another example of making things easy for people by providing less choices.

2019-11-13

2019-11-14

  • PG's essay on: Do Things That Don't Scale. A refresher read that prompted a number of questions for me in regards to building OMDV and getting back to the mindset of doing the important things instead of getting riled up by everyone around me asking how I'm going to scale to millions. http://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html

    • How can I think about customer service? How can I think about doing more to delight my users? Even as I run a blog?

    • How can I make an individual customer happy? Make it worth their while and having them really become a 1000 true fan? Always ask "what level of personalized service can I provide that no other big company can?"

    • Focus in dominating your area. Stay in your niche. Don't spread out to cover everything just because people around you say to. Even if they "think" it won't add more time.

    • Don't think of ways to scale. That's a mistake. Jumping the gun. Just do the unscaleable until it becomes a bottleneck. For as long as you can, do it all manually until you need to automate something. bBtter to do that than automating something that no one cares about

2019-11-15

  • Completed the audiobook Titled: Stick With It by Sean D Young, PhD

    • The framework for 'sticking with things'... whether it be forming lasting habits, completing goals etc... follows one called SCIENCE

    • S: Stepladder - Make 1 week goals.. at max 1 month... and separate out dreams from goals.

    • C: Community - The 5 people rule. Surround yourself with those that can help but also motivate and inspire. Stay away from people who'll put you down.

    • I: Important - You aren't going to make changes for things that don't matter. So if you want to make a change make it important to you (i.e. use what motivates you like losing money if you love money, not suffering public humiliation, or getting a job because you need to make a living etc...)

    • E: Easy - Make the steps as easy as possible A form of environment construction.

    • N: Neurohacks - Setting 'cues'

    • C: Captivating - Rewards (carrot>stick)

    • E: Engrained - linking activities; repeating.

 
Daniel LeeOMD VenturesTWIL