🌱 5-Bit Fridays: Why everything is becoming a game, pattern breaking startup ideas, Generalist Disease, strategy is scarcity, and more

#62

👋 Hey, I’m Jaryd and welcome to another edition of 5-Bit Fridays—your weekly roundup of 5 actionable insights, bringing you brief advice before the weekend on how to build and grow a product.

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Happy Friday, everyone! 👋

Big welcome to the 315 people who’ve joined us this week, including Eldad, Lee, Carl, and Luc! You’re now part of a 20,342 strong bunch of founders and product folks who love to make things.

Lots to cover today, so let’s just get right to it.

Hope you learn something new, and of course, enjoy :)

— Jaryd ✌️

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ICYMI this week 🗞️

• Biden signed TikTok bill forcing a sale by January 2025 or risking ban. However, word on the street is ByteDance has no plans to sell. (Take a look)

• Google hits a home run. Parent company Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings, posted late Thursday, smashed analysts’ expectations. The stock surged 12% ahead of today’s opening bell.

• Bad-ish news if you make over $151k per year. Why? Because taking effect in August, the FTC banned noncompete agreements. While that’s a good thing as it enables job hopping and better wages, existing non-competes may remain for senior employees (making ~$151k salary and in a "policy making position"). (Take a look)

• The Feds intended soft landing isn’t looking so promising. New GDP numbers out yesterday show a worrying combo of stubborn inflation + waning growth that dampens hopes for a potential interest rate cut. As Jamie Dimon says, 'Don't get lulled into a false sense of security'. (Take a look)

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Today’s 5-Bits ☔

1. Why everything is becoming a game

2. Time is emphasis: planning your calendar as a leader

3. Generalist Disease

4. Pattern breaking startup ideas

5. Strategy is scarcity

+ Quote, tools, chart, and rabbit holes of the week

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1️⃣ Why everything is becoming a game

This was hands down the most interesting and thought-provoking piece I read this week.

Gurwinder

has a tendency to do that, so I’d definitely give him a subscribe.

You don’t need me to tell you that pretty much every kind of app out there—social, dating, shopping, cabs, buying stocks, health, education, habits, etc—use game mechanics to some degree.

Think points, badges, levels, rewards, streaks, leaderboards. Basically anything that can quantify our behavior. Except, the numbers used to chart progress often miss so much of the the nuances of reality, that we often tie our life goals and even self-worth to arbitrary numbers.

In our first Bit, Gurwinder unpacks the dark side of gamification in our life.

Key quote

We chase numbers and icons because they’re always available, and the chase is often so immersive that it keeps us from seeing where it leads, which is often far away from what we actually want. This can lead to what the evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman calls “counterfeit fitness”: the constant, momentary “wins” that come with playing digital games give us a false sense of progression and accomplishment, a neurochemical high that feels like victory but is not, and which, if it becomes a habit, risks placating our ambitions to pursue true fulfilment.

It explains why so many young men have lost themselves in video games, and are no longer in employment or relationships. The false signals they’re getting from video game progress, combined with the sexual reward of online porn, are convincing their dopamine pathways that they’re winning in life, even as their minds and futures atrophy.

It’s easy to persuade people into tying their sense of progress to fake or trivial goals. Casinos keep their customers happily losing money by distracting them with minor side games they’re likely to win. The small victories convince them they’re winning overall even as they lose the only games that actually matter.

This strange quirk of human behavior can even cost lives. In South Korea, a young couple became so addicted to raising a virtual baby that they let their real baby starve to death. The parents prioritized what they could quantify — levelling up their virtual baby — over that which they couldn’t — the life of their real one.

— Gurwinder, via The Prism

Insight & Action 🛠️

Our brains are designed to solve problems. Evolutionarily, the brains that were able to solve problems better—like finding food, creating shelter, picking a mate—were the ones that survived.

Except, we now live in a world now where we don’t need to solve those problems really—it’s all done for us. Things are convenient and easy.

So, what do we do with all that problem-solving horsepower?

We direct it elsewhere. We find and set ourselves goals purely to have goals to pursue. As Gurwinder writes as he talks about John Kaczynski, “For Kaczynski, the result of reorienting our lives to chase artificial goals was that we became increasingly dependent on society to provide us with them. And without our own inherent sense of purpose, we’d inevitably be made to chase goals that were good for the industrial machine but bad for us.”

Kaczynski was a fucked up guy, but that point has merit.

These “artificial activities” generally don’t keep us happy because they are not aligned to what we truly want, rather, what others want us to do for them.

Sure, they can be fun. But as Gurwinder points out, what gamification promises in the short term via extrinsic goals (for scores/prizes) comes at the expense of long term intrinsic goals (for the love of it): “It has the power to seclude people from reality, and to rewrite their value systems so they prioritize the imaginary over the real, and the next moment over the rest of their lives.”

In product, we often say that we optimize what we measure. That is true in life too. We try to measure what we value, but end up valuing what we measure.

So, where does this lead us?

Companies that exploit our gameplaying compulsion will have an edge over those who don’t, so every company that wishes to compete must gamify in ever more addictive ways, even though in the long term this harms everyone. As such, gamification is not just a fad; it’s the fate of a digital capitalist society. Anything that can be turned into a game sooner or later will be.

-Gurwinder

And, what can you do about it?

1. Choose long-term goals over short-term ones.

2. Choose hard games over easy ones. Since the long-term value of games lies in their ability to hone skills and build character, easy games are usually a trap.

3. Choose positive-sum games over zero-sum or negative-sum ones. AKA, avoid games for status’ sake.

4. Choose games you enjoy, over games for a reward.

5. Choose immeasurable rewards over measurable ones. The best things can’t be quantified.

Read the full post by Gurwinder.

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2️⃣ Time is emphasis: planning your calendar as a leader

We’ve all battled with time management to some degree. And often that stems from a poorly managed calendar.

Molly Graham

has some super tactical advice for: start with a calendar skeleton. 👇

Key quote

As an executive, everything flows from how you spend your time. You set a meeting, everyone rearranges their schedule. Time is emphasis, and your calendar very directly affects what gets done in the company and how you spend the dollars of the people who work for you.

Because I like being validated by smart people, here’s an HBR study that shows how important it is for senior operators to have clear priorities and calendar systems. The study analyzed the calendars of 27 CEOs, coding 60,000 hours. The study found that having explicit priorities and structure for your calendar and evaluating how you spend your time are some of the most important things you can do to end up spending the majority of your time on your strategic priorities.

When I work with leaders on time management, we start by clarifying priorities and then set up what I call a calendar skeleton. The skeleton is a template of a typical week that lays out time blocks for the core meetings and activities that happen on a regular basis. It’s the foundation for a living, breathing Google calendar, and it’s a way to get thoughtful about how activities flow into one another. It also makes time to handle chaos and unforeseen events so they don’t wipe out important work.

— Molly Graham, via Lessons

Insight & Action 🛠️

To create a calendar skeleton, start with a blank slate (like this template) and drop in your most important recurring activities.

Here’s the example Molly gave of a product-centric leader:

I totally agree with leveraging the calendar as a way to protect and structure your time. My manager for example has thrown an hour-long Do Not Disturb on his calendar everyday, where everyone knows not to schedule meetings or send non-urgent Slacks.

Another peer of mine (who’s the CEO at one of our portfolio companies) uses his calendar to protect every inch of his time, noting when he’s walking his dog, will be replying to emails, and even doing his laundry.

One thing I’ve done which has worked well to also just create a good habit, is blocking time on my calendar every 2 weeks to research/review a competitor.

What’s one thing you want to do more of—or time you want to protect—that you could add to your calendar?

Read the full post by Molly

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3️⃣ Generalist Disease

Dan Hockenmaier

has had quite the career arc. He’s gone from consulting, to private equity, to startups.

And in his career journey, he’s comes to a conclusion: Many folks develop an incorrect mental model for how to build a successful career.

In short, they think generalization is the best approach.

Key quote

The hallmark symptom of people with Generalist Disease is optimizing for optionality. In order to open as many doors as possible in the future, they chase breadth (exposure to as many industries and functions as possible) and chase prestige (logos and titles that look good on resumes). 

The classic places to find breadth and prestige are fields like consulting, banking, and private equity. As tech has grown in prominence, the list now includes fields like product management and VC. Top MBA programs can be a good way to make sure Generalist Disease metastasizes. 

These jobs are very good at making you feel like you’re on the right path. Your parents are impressed, and you start to make more money. You may not be enjoying the work, but you can tell yourself a story about how you’re paying your dues to generate incredible options.

But after the 3rd or 4th impressive line on the resume, where are those really good options? They often fail to materialize, and people with Generalist Disease start to feel stuck. 

— Dan Hockenmaier, via

Dan Hock's Essays

Insight & Action 🛠️

Generalism is not the goal, rather, it’s just the means of goal-seeking to find what it is you really want to do. Simply, the more breadth you create early on, the larger your surface area is for finding exactly what you want to go deep on.

But that game of generalism can only be played for so longer. Ultimately you must do the opposite, and specialize to build real leverage.

To do so, you’ll need to be intentional about taking options off the table.

It is initially unsettling to take a job you’re not sure is right, or to put your head down and refine the craft rather than continuing to explore options. But it will certainly make you happier to work hard at something you love and are good at. And ultimately most people that do also seem to get more of the conventional success they wanted in the first place.

Read the full post by Dan

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4️⃣ Pattern breaking startup ideas

Legendary VC,

Mike Maples

, recently shared this observation:

1. Many of the most successful startups he’s seen never follow established best practices

2. Many startups he worked with did everything “right”, but got nowhere.

So, what signal suggests success?

Key quote

It struck me that outlier startups didn’t usually happen by following a recipe or best practices. Powerful forces acted like a gathering wave below the surface of a breakthrough startup idea—forces even more important for startup success than the initial idea itself. These forces could be understood and founders could use that understanding to improve their odds of surmounting the barriers to exceptionalism that startups seek. Suddenly, seemingly disconnected aspects of what I was seeing began to come together. 

The key forces that emerged were inflections, insights, and living in the future. The power of these three forces and a founding team’s ability to harness them to create a pattern-breaking idea provides the best explanation I’ve found for why some startups do so much better than the rest.

— Mike Maples, via

Pattern Breakers

Insight & Action 🛠️

• An Inflection is an external event that creates the potential for radical change in how people think, feel, and act. It could be societal, cultural, or technological. Every pattern-breaking and category-defining idea needs an inflection. 

• An Insight is a non-obvious truth about how some inflection/shift can be used to radically change behaviors or solve problems.

• As Mike says, “Most pattern-breaking insights come from Living in the Future and building what’s missing in the future rather than trying to think of a startup. Living in the future best tilts the odds in your favor for finding outlier startup ideas.”

And with these three forces, a pattern-breaking Idea is built to propose a radically different offering. Founders iterate by iterating their pattern-breaking ideas while staying grounded in their initial insight.

If you want to swing big, avoid thinking about surface level ideas (outputs). Focus on these vectors as the ideation machine (inputs), and see what comes out the other side.

Read the full post by Mike

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5️⃣ Strategy is scarcity

I thought I’d close out our main 5-Bits with a quick insight from a classic strategy book.

Key quote

The essential difficulty in creating strategy is not logical; it is choice itself. Strategy does not eliminate scarcity and its consequence—the necessity of choice. Strategy is scarcity’s child and to have a strategy, rather than vague aspirations, is to choose one path and eschew others. There is difficult psychological, political, and organizational work in saying ‘no’ to whole worlds of hopes, dreams, and aspirations

— Richard Rumelt, via Good Strategy Bad Strategy

Insight & Action 🛠️

In business and in life (as Dan Hock said above): It’s painful to choose. It’s difficult to make decisions that inevitably close doors, because optionality feels safe. But accepting the reality of trade-offs and choosing between them is the only way to move forward.

A strategy is not a true strategy if it doesn’t make clear what you’re not doing. Good strategy gives you a filter for saying “no”.

Companies, and us folks operating inside of them, are so much better at adding things than we are at taking things away. We’re better at setting goals and talking about what we’re going to do than we are at talking about what we’re not going to do. It's easier to add process than it is to ask why we're still doing that thing that worked great two years ago but mostly isn't relevant anymore. We’re better at adding meetings than we are at removing them. 

So, practice setting non-goals to help with focus and making your strategic priorities more clear.

Read the book by Richard

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Quote of the week 💡

“I learned not to worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it.”

― Steve Wozniak

Tools of the week 🛠️

Every week, I highlight 3 products I actually use. Today, I’m highlighting:

• Loom: I use Loom to replace unnecessary meetings and save everyone time. From screen recording bugs, to sharing ideas verbally/visually…Loom is the best tool to give important context without more 30 minute calls.

• Todoist: Just a great personal to-do-list app I use with both a personal and work space.

• Carry: If you’re a business owner / creator — use Carry to get your Solo401K and manage/grow your money.

👉 View all my recommendations.

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Chart of the week 📈

The US’s national debt is now over $34.6 trillion.

Wowza.

Despite that insane number, the government continues to run a deficit that is estimated to be ~ $2 trillion a year. On top of that, we’re paying over $1 trillion in annual interest.

In short, Uncle Sam is broke and only has two options — borrow more money or tax folks working in America more heavily. Neither sound fun…

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Byte on one of these posts 🧠

Standout reads from the week…

• What is the civil war in 'Civil War' about?, by

  Max Read

• No one buys books, by

  Elle Griffin

• How to live without your phone, by

  Sam Kriss

• The unspoken skill of finesse, by

  Wes Kao

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Whenever you are ready 🤝

Here are 2 ways I can help you:

1. Are you looking to grow your team? If so, I’ve invested in a company (Athyna) that can help you find incredible talent and build out your global team. Their product, service, and talent pool is just amazing. Just reply to this email if curious, or learn more here ↗

2. Are you looking to grow your product by reaching my audience of 20,000+ founders and product builders? If so, maybe we can partner up. You can reply to this email to get started, or learn more here ↗

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And that’s everything for this week’s edition, folks!

As always, thanks so much for reading and giving me the time of day. I really do appreciate it. Have a stellar weekend!

Until next time.
— Jaryd ✌️

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