Now
It’s been a whirlwind of the past few weeks. Moving across the country is no joke; especially amid a NY heat wave that left me profusely drenched before even getting into the office. SF’s 75 and sunny weather didn’t help with acclimatization.
I got in late Friday, grabbed my keys, and made it to my cozy one-bedroom in Clinton Hill.
Also decided it was a good idea to immediately go to Electic Zoo on Sunday. Fortunately missed the festival cancellation/next-day delay/storming of security.
Beyond that, NY is wonderfully hectic. Excited to find a rhythm.
Other
Reading
I’m not sure if my move to NY and the nearby Union Square park was the tipping point, but my friend recommended this book a while back and I recently finished it. It’s a story on Danny Meyers’ devise of his restaurants and later (Union Square) hospitality group. Highly recommend a read! Many of his approaches to hospitality resonate and apply aptly to any customer-facing role.
Danny Meyers also went to my high school 🙂.
Some highlights:
On Saint Louis:
During my adolescence, food continued to figure prominently in my social life. In the tenth grade I took cooking lessons in home economics, and as one of only two guys in the class I furthered more than just my culinary interests. That year I had transferred from the all-boys St. Louis Country Day School, where I had been a top student, to its coed archrival, John Burroughs School. Burroughs was an excellent and highly demanding independent school—presenting me for the first time with female distractions in the classrooms and hallways. My academic performance dipped dramatically. I was now fifteen years old, and what mattered to me most were girls; pickup games of street hockey; football on the lawn; tennis; and going to bed with my transistor radio tuned to KMOX and glued to my ear, as Jack Buck called that night’s St. Louis Cardinals game or Dan Kelly announced for the St. Louis Blues. Yet a constant theme in my life was always food: Imo’s pizza, Ted Drewes frozen custard, and Steak ’n’ Shake. Steak ’n’ Shake seemed to be where my friends and I all ended up every weekend night, throwing back shoestring fries, steak burgers with cheese, and shakes. Were those necessarily the best hamburgers to be found anywhere? It didn’t matter, because the nights at Steak ’n’ Shake with curbside service in our own cars were the best hamburger experiences I had ever known. (Decades later, my memories of Ted Drewes and Steak ’n’ Shake inspired me to create Shake Shack in New York’s Madison Square Park.)
The first place I drove after getting my license was to Ted Drewes. Jack Buck’s son (Joe Buck) was another Saint Louis parent whose daughter went to my middle school. Imos pizza was the only pizza we’d order, and it was somewhat sinful to talk down on it, even if you weren’t a fan of the thin crust or provel cheese. I probably had more burgers from Shake & Shake than any other fast food joint combined.
This hit home.
On work:
Being jazzed is a combination of feeling motivated, enthusiastic, confident, proud, and at peace with the choice to work on our team.
The feeling of ‘flow state’ persists across jobs and functions. I like the depiction and enjoy the feeling even more.
On Opportunities
It’s a tempting challenge that may look quite good from afar; but on closer scrutiny, many opportunities are far from good. I’m curious to see the view going up the mountain, and I’m curious to see it from on top of the mountain. One aspect of climbing I especially enjoy is the adventure and challenge of getting to know all the people with whom I’ll collaborate along the way. Each business journey attracts a new and different group of players—chef, general manager, cooks, waiters, hosts, reservationists, managers, bookkeepers.
Climb the right hill, and be wary of the hill you’re climbing.
At about this time, my assistant, Jenny Dirksen (now our director of community investment), shared a priceless expression her grandmother had taught her: One tuchas can’t dance at two weddings. It’s nice to be invited to a lot of parties. But as much as you may want to attend them all, it’s important to acknowledge that you can be in only one place at a time, and do one thing well. My own grandfather used to express similar wisdom: Doing two things like a half-wit never equals doing one thing like a whole wit.
New York has already established it’s ability to distract. It’s hard setting priorities, even if a priority is saying yes and getting a bit distracted.’ But the energy shifts across contexts is evident.
AI
I’m bullish on AI. Chat-GPT is starting to feel like a superpower for both writing and software (I don’t use it at all for hands-on keyboard writing, but it is great to run ideas off). It’s near real-time, and proper prompts deem proper results. It’s not for everything, but drastically improves certain activities (like rudimentary logic in a programming language).
I’m not sure what it means for the longer term. I saw a tweet that argued it’s no longer learning fundamental CS logic. I somewhat agree → outside of pure understanding, most simple blocks can be written and debugged efficiently through a prompt. There is long-term risk, with LLMs capable of building the majority of any junior dev in a fraction of the time.
I’ve also seen examples of awing Midjourney images and face melds, have been playing with Pi for journaling, and testing Eleven Labs Speech Synthesis (I CAN’T SPEAK HINDI).
Are you kidding me?!
There’s also been an insurgence of work in the health and ed-tech spaces, which I am particularly invested in. I want to relearn topics in a drastically more efficient manner than static schooling. Language is the largest rock that comes to mind (spanish, hindi), in a way that is AI-driven, and derived on conversation with an AI agent (that learns and iterates based on human interaction).
Left Brain / Right Brain
I’m getting back into a space of more creation, both on the writing (working to put out a few articles for friends and firms) and building front (apps, documentation, new team processes). While much of my time at work had previously fallen into ‘advising and consulting’, the new normal does rely more on outcomes and material progress.
It’s a different mode of thinking, and when switching between tasks it requires a new method of approach (and some alternative ‘brain’ work).
I also learned (I cannot confirm the certainty of this) that the height of our visual world affects our cognitive processing. High ceilings promote abstract thinking while low ceilings promote analytic work.
I worked out of the NY Public Library this past weekend and it reminded me.
