A retired NASA engineer who had worked on the Space Shuttle program for 25 years was hired by SpaceX at age 62. He described the first week as the most disorienting experience of his professional life. At NASA, a design change required 3 meetings, 2 committees, a review board, and 6 to 18 months of documentation. At SpaceX, his new supervisor said "if it works, build it. If it doesn't, change it by Friday." He sat at his desk after the first day and called his wife. He told her he felt like a man who had been swimming with ankle weights for 25 years and someone just cut them off. He could move. He could decide. He could build something in the morning and test it in the afternoon. The constraint that he had accepted as the nature of aerospace engineering turned out to be the nature of bureaucracy. Within 6 months he had contributed to more design iterations than he had completed in his last 5 years at NASA. Not because he was working harder. Because the time between having an idea and testing the idea collapsed from months to hours. The same brain. The same knowledge. A different operating system. He described a specific moment where he proposed a modification to a Raptor engine component. At NASA, the proposal would have entered a queue. At SpaceX, the modification was machined by the end of the day and tested by the following morning. He watched his idea become a physical object in 18 hours. At NASA, 18 hours would not have been enough to schedule the first meeting to discuss whether to schedule a meeting. He told an interviewer: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way." The difference between SpaceX and NASA is not talent. NASA has extraordinary talent. The difference is the time between a thought and a test. SpaceX compresses it. NASA elongates it. The same engineer produces 10x more at SpaceX than at NASA because the bottleneck was never the engineer. It was the meetings about the meetings about the work.

True

Nobody has taught me more about positivity and engagement than @garyvee. And I still think about this clip all the time. Even makes me a little teary-eyed. Because it's so true: YOU'RE SOMEBODY NOW! ❤️

There is a process that I have used, and still use, to reignite life... Create two timelines—6 months and 12 months—and list up to five things you dream of having (including, but not limited to, material wants: house, car, clothing, etc.), being (be a great cook, be fluent in Chinese, etc.), and doing (visiting Thailand, tracing your roots overseas, racing ostriches, etc.) in that order. If you have difficulty identifying what you want in some categories, as most will, consider what you hate or fear in each and write down the opposite. Do not limit yourself, and do not concern yourself with how these things will be accomplished. For now, it’s unimportant. This is an exercise in reversing repression. Be sure not to judge or fool yourself. If you really want a Ferrari, don’t put down solving world hunger out of guilt. For some, the dream will be fame, for others fortune or prestige. All people have their vices and insecurities. If something will improve your feeling of self-worth, put it down. Drawing a blank? In that case, consider these questions: 1) What would you do, day to day, if you had $100 million in the bank? 2) What would make you most excited to wake up in the morning to another day? Don’t rush—think about it for a few minutes. If still blocked, fill in the five “doing” spots with the following: — one place to visit — one thing to do before you die (a memory of a lifetime) — one thing to do daily — one thing to do weekly — one thing you’ve always wanted to learn What does “being” entail doing? Convert each “being” into a “doing” to make it actionable. Identify an action that would characterize this state of being or a task that would mean you had achieved it. People find it easier to brainstorm “being” first, but this column is just a temporary holding spot for “doing” actions. Here are a few examples: 1) Great cook —> make Christmas dinner without help 2) Fluent in Chinese —> have a five-minute conversation with a Chinese co-worker Determine three steps for each of the dreams in just the 6-month timeline and take the first step now. Define three steps for each dream that will get you closer to its actualization. Set actions—simple, well-defined actions—for now, tomorrow (complete before 11 A.M.) and the day after (again completed before 11 A.M.). Once you have three steps for each of the four goals, complete the three actions in the “now” column. Do it now. Each should be simple enough to do in five minutes or less. If not, rachet it down. If it’s the middle of the night and you can’t call someone, do something else now, such as send an e-mail, and set the call for first thing tomorrow. If the next stage is some form of research, get in touch with someone who knows the answer instead of spending too much time in books or online, which can turn into paralysis by analysis. The best first step, the one I recommend, is finding someone who’s done it and ask for advice on how to do the same.

Best money I've ever spent as a CEO... an internal AI transformation hire. He doesn't care about title. He just wants to ship. And he goes across your entire org, sales, revenue, hr, apps, tech and kills stupid manual processes. Such an underrated unlock I have since hired 2 more.

I wasted my entire life because nobody told me this as a kid

I gave this talk to my team a few years ago and I find myself constantly referencing it - feels like it might be valuable for founders building their own company, and those that try to better understand our mindset and culture inside of Shopify

6000 Years of World History in 1 Picture

I have a single friend in his late 30s right now. Mega-millionaire. Doing whatever he wants. He's happy! He always asks me "where are you going next" and I always respond "nowhere, I just want to be home with my kid." And he looks at me like I'm CRAZY. He tries to empathize, but can't. I used to be him. There's nothing wrong with being him. I'm happy for him. But kids rebalance your life to realizing that nothing matters more than them. Like nothing even comes close to mattering. Everything else becomes noise. And I didn't get it either. So I don't expect other people without kids to get it either. And that's fine. I'm not judging you. Even when I decided to have kids, I didn't (couldn't!) know what to expect. I wasn't particularly excited, honestly. But holy shit does that change once they come. I look at my life in bewilderment almost every week thinking how my 20s self would've hated this, and yet this is the best my life has ever been. My kid is sleeping right now and I'm just counting down the minutes for her to wake up so we can hang out. That's all I want.

3 days later and nothing has burned except a fire within our hearts