THE LEAFLET
December 05 2024
when you don’t know where to start, when you know there’s more to do, escaping jargon
WHEN YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START
…with your new gig, project, or venture, ask yourself these three questions, in order:
1 year in, what would wild success look like?
Given that, how should you start? What can/should you do now to start down the road to that wild, 1-year success?
What’s required of you on the first day with your new team to achieve the wild success you described above?
-ben
Read the rest here.
WHEN YOU KNOW THERE’S MORE TO DO BUT YOU’RE NOT SURE WHAT
…ask yourself: If we weren’t us, but instead just a generically competent org that did something else and that generic org had to drop everything and hit the same goal we have on a short timeline … if they had to do that, what would they do? Look at the list of things they would do, and then carry that list into your context.
More likely than not:
You’ll notice that you’ve done a lot of the things on the list (woohoo!).
There will be other things on that list, things the generic org would need to do to get up to speed, that you will have missed that you’ll have to do.
Of those missed items, you can then prioritize — which ones are key for your team in this moment?
(Eric’s recent advice to cosplay is an inside-out version of this: in cosplay, you’re deliberately adopting a specific perspective with particular expertise. Here, you’re pausing/erasing your own specific expertise to mine for new things to do)
-ben
Read the rest here.
TO ESCAPE JARGON, ELI5
Jargon isn’t all bad. Within your team or sector, it can be faster and signify belonging. It’s a gas pedal and a badge. Those are useful functions.
Outside of your team or sector, jargon can have the exact opposite effects: it slows down communication and excludes or deters people. They don’t get what you’re talking about and maybe as a result of that, they don’t want to be a part of it.
One way to check your jargon is to “explain (it to me) like I’m five.” Not fifth grade; not 500-level college coursework. Five years old. Kindergarten. Sometimes this leads to absurd results. More often, you find a core idea in something close to its simplest form. Often this simple core idea is way more compelling to your external audiences than your in-house jargon.
You can run this exercise for your team’s mission, for a job description, for a shift in year-end strategy, or for the language of a fundraising pitch. Summarize the thing so that your daughter/nephew/little cousin gets it the first time you explain.
For a bunch of examples of this exercise, check out the ELI5 Reddit sub.
-eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
Mathematician John von Neumann on technology:
You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.
Novelist Benjamin Labatut in The MANIAC:
Lost faith is worse than no faith at all, because it leaves behind a gaping hole, much like the hollow that the Spirit left when it abandoned this accursed world. But by their very nature, those god-shaped voids demand to be filled with something as precious as that which was lost.
Perfume entrepreneur and writer Sasha Chapin on meditation, feedback, and avoidance:
The background tendency for pretty much every person, awakened or no, is to shrink from growth and avoid harsh feedback. Awakening just gives you more mental plasticity, and more fun avoidance tricks. This is why I think it’s actually kind of dangerous to do long-term serious meditation without some sort of skin in the game of life—like a career or cause or relationship that requires ongoing change.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric