Disagree and Commit, Words of Wisdom from Jeff Bezos - TDBS 19 April 2017

Key Takeaways

welcome back everyone it is April eighteenth 2079 19th started up already doesn't matter nonetheless day 78 of the Daniel Burke show thank you all so much for tuning in whether it's on YouTube or the other audio form of this show originally started out at a podcast but now we're sort of merging it into 22 different platforms youtube and and audio and I'm having a great time it's amazing if you're if you're ever thinking about trying out your own podcast or youtube series give it a go it's highly rewarding I've got hardly any views or listens but just the sheer act of creating something is incredibly fun to me so what do I get up to today well I started out the morning I did some riding I answered a few questions on Quora as usual and then I studied some Python using the learning the python the hard way book and that was that was basically it and then I started me and my brother every Wednesday my littlest brother Sam who's still in high school I we get together and we learn he can't he works with me on a Wednesday so I teach him some skills what did we learn today we are learning computer science from Harvard is a course called cs50 which is free online and we've been studying that last couple of weeks and every every week we just build upon a little bit of knowledge every every time we get together and he had the option when it cuz and his high school on Wednesdays has the option of going to work with some sort of business or some sort of employer to get some skills from there or or some other outlet and I put my hand up when mum was looking for somewhere to send him and said hey why doesn't he send the day with me on Wednesdays and we have phenomenal time together I get to bond with my little brother he's I'm eight years older than him but yet I learned so much from him and we both get to learn some incredible skills so we're practicing computer sides together at the moment and which is great because i'm learning programming and he's in the programming is not really taught at his school but i think it's a valuable able to learn nonetheless and it's not so much programming that I'm trying to teach him I'm trying to learn myself as well as teach him or help him to learn is the art of problem solving and I feel that is very underrated as a skill and problem solving you may think oh yeah I problem solve all the time but for me I've had trouble in the past looking at something breaking it down into different stages and thinking about what is the best way to solve this and that's I think learning how to program has has taught me a lot about that working doing fitness and nutrition sure it has some problem-solving capabilities but learning at a program when you see something you're like I wonder how to do this and then breaking it down step by step I think it's a really beneficial skill to they complement each other so programming and problem solving go hand in hand and then after that I went and donated blood as you can probably see here on my arm it's a little bit sore but every what is it three months or so I can donate whole blood and every month or so I can donate plasma I'm o-negative blood plant which means I can donate to two babies or two victims of car accidents where they don't know what the blood type is that they need so essentially my blood type is the universal donor and while I start well to be honest i started when i was working at apple and they had this thing called blood donation leaf whereas you would get paid to go and donate blood and I'm like yeah I've been meaning to give back to the community for a long time and I'm going to get paid to do it so I have no excuses but that's that's literally what got me started if I if there was no incentive to go do it I probably would have gone to do it and so I'm grateful to have that incentive to begin with that at least got me started and now I've settled up now that I've left Apple I wanted to keep giving back because the Red Cross in Australia have a great system where if your blood gets used with the patient they will text you saying hey your blood was used today and then won't obviously they'll give any patient details would just say thanks for your donation it was used today and even though I know it would get used anyway just having that reminder sort of makes me like realize hey what up this simple act of me going giving five minutes of my time which is literally all it took once the needle is in it takes five minutes to give old blood every three months I can save three lives and if that's the only way I give back to the community well that's better than doing nothing so that's my way of giving back at the moment well one of my main ways other ways are answering questions and things like that but giving blood if you've never tried it before why not because from all the times I've given it nothing nothing's bad nothing bad has happened if you're afraid of needles well maybe it's not for you but if you don't mind them saves in life so what what what else was like doing today I recently finished reading Jeff Bezos who's a CEO and founder of Amazon did you ever heard of him he's led her to to customers and shareholders no no employees shareholders Bloods a public letter so I can access it and I'm a customer members on so I guess I think it's just a letter to the company to the employees to the shareholders and there was some very valuable insights in there and he starts a letter off by saying he works in a building called day one and when they changed doings he renamed the building he moved to day one as well well he started off working in a building called day one moved over to a building called day one on purpose reason being is because he starts with letter often saying every day is day one and Amazon and I love that thing he said that day two at big companies is stasis followed by a relevance followed by excruciatingly painful decline and I totally agree I mean look look how big amazon is accompanied company is over the past two decades 1997 is when the first letter then he he sent out to shareholders was and i'll get to that in a second but a company that big how easy could they fall behind right a big companies a historically move slow but Jeff Bezos isn't about that the way he runs amazon is he wants to he wants he gives the power to his employees to make high quality high velocity decisions and I wrote down some points here from the letter like that that really I know resonated with me because Amazon is a company that I look up to and I I'm into tech so all of the big tech companies I look up to Apple face will Google Amazon all those I look up to Tesla Tesla SpaceX anything Elon Musk is revolved in actually love those but in terms of decision making Bezos right if you end up making a decision by saying you've worn me down and so I'm going to side with you that is a terrible way of making decisions so essentially if someone has continually battled with you and eventually your decision is yeah okay you've tried a mouth like you've worn me down I'll all agree that is a terrible like in his mind that's a terrible way of making decisions and I agree to that's like if you're in a relationship or you constantly wearing your partner down and eventually they just side with you because they're sick of having you nag them all the time and so as I said he doesn't want he wants to get rid of the you've worn me down process he said if there's conflict escalated quickly take it higher quickly don't let it don't let it unknown marinates for a lack of a better word marinate for a long time and get worse over time and just eventually become okay you've worn me down so you win this one he's what was it effectively says something I disagree but commit so for example he had a hit the Amazon video team or the Amazon media team I camera the exact name came to him and pitched a show idea and he disagreed for it for a long time but he's like okay I need to trust my team they've done so many good things even though I disagree I need to just have some action and we can sit here all day and argue and so he wrote back I disagree but commit to it and that's he's saying I disagree but commit I want to start using that because you're never going to agree with everything in life especially with close relationships with unclose relationships will be work personal family etc etc and oftentimes those those disagreements I've had them in the past they can just stay around for a ridiculously long time and what comes with them nothing right you end up bickering with each other and the one who has the most stamina in the end the one who can argue their point the longest ends up winning that's a terrible scenario so make decisions even if you disagree but still commit because that way you keep the ball rolling forward and you can do that in your own life even if you sort of I know maybe either know something may look good now to do now will it look good in the future right and if that's another point that it brings up and if you fight external trends you're probably fighting the future use them as your tail winds so what is he doing he talks about this in terms of machine learning and artificial intelligence in Amazon so instead of fighting those trends and and trying to use something different time has gone off but that's all right we'll wrap this up instead of fighting the external trends that are happening so there are a lot of people that sort of go oh yeah machine learning artificial intelligence isn't the way the future but in a lot of cases it is if you look at the big companies of the world they're they're all going they're all backing it so sure it may not be the be-all and end-all in the next 20 years but after that it's going to it's just going to keep growing extensively exponentially sorry so rather than fighting them use them as your tail wind and that's what I'm trying to do right now I'm getting involved in learning and I'm not saying I'm right but this is just what I'm this is my best intuition I'm using my best judgment over what I've read what I've learned what I've heard from some of the world's smartest people in my opinion smartest and successful that if I want to unknown be involved in this world I need to be learning programming I need to be learning machine learning I need to be learning artificial intelligence because that's where technology is going that's the world world is going in one way or another and i'm using the big trends I'm not going against them I could easily go against them and say no that's not it and focus on some other skill but I'm following these trends because I know every time I do every time I learned something new I feel like it's I'm going in the right direction because an article come out the next day and I'd be like are this this this is happening in the world of deep learning machine learning like well I'm actually involved in this world now and what's one more one more point I can finish off oh yeah included a letter from 1997 which was the first letter he sent to shareholders and in that letter it said that it was still dey wanted amazon despite their massive profits and massive increase in turnover over the past few years over the past 12 months sorry and that message has remained true throughout the entire life of Amazon it's still only a young company and it had amazing growth and I look up to like Jeff because he's the founder and here's the CEOs stayed effing start like it's his his whole life is invested in that and I think there's something something's fundamental that to learn from that learn from the Great's that's that's that's what I've been trying to do over the past 18 months in my whole life really is that learn from people who you look up to and mimic what they're doing and so if I just follow his decision-making principles well maybe some of my decisions will shape my life in a direction similar to his of course it's not going to be exactly the same but that's the beauty of life right everything is different and actually I'm going to going to finish on one more so make decisions with seventy percent of the information you think you need when you wait for ninety percent it's too late and how many times I've done this so many times in the past when before I started trying to make my podcast before I started making YouTube videos I would wait until the perfect time well there's never going to be a perfect time right so but this is everything that Jeff talks about is is comes down to this road there's never a perfect time so just act fast and not necessarily fail fast make high-quality decisions and make them at a high velocity right so but always always plan for the long term so what I like to think about is in the long term have a massive amount of patience so if you go to go like be as patient as possible workout it to 67 years to get there but in the short term act really quick and that's how I'm trying to try to do now I'd sort of every day I don't have really a tent on my calendar I get up in the morning and I choose on a right on white board what I want to do for that day and I have my massive goal in my mind what are the best steps i can take towards that and that's i know that to me is working for me at the moment I think but who knows it's all an adventure it's all an experiment right so what's my challenge daily challenge let's think of one so if you have a current disagreement or let's just say you have a current disagreement or you have one in the next save 24-48 hours with someone how can you disagree but commit to something so by parts of disagreement leave it in the leave it in the past and just move on how can you disagree with someone but come in and if you have a choice like say it's your partner I've read this so many times from some smart people and relationships you have a choice of being right or nice just be nice right being right all that st. write a lot being right all the time isn't necessary I mean sure it's great it's a great boost to the ego but for me I'd rather be nice so try out being nice instead of right ones but thank you all so much for listening I hope you're having an amazing day whatever you're doing tell someone you love them and i'll catch you tomorrow it's day 79 catch you later