Mohammad Shaker's Blog, page 5

Week 34: A Bias for Action

I’ve come upon a post by Tim Ferriss. He mentioned a blog containing a list of 140 questions worth answering.

And since I love questions, I just sat and answered them. Here are the first couple of them.

What are you thinking about these days?Having and raising kids.Life at startup VS scaleups VS big companies.Short term pain (lower salary when starting something new) VS long term gain (freedom of a profitable successful startup.)Working on something I enjoy VS something that’s of benefit to winder audience VS both.Extended off-time to think.What happens to your consciousness when you walk into a teleporter?Stays the same.What’s the most embarrassing cold email you’ve sent?Nothing in mind lately. Which is a worrying sign (not being out of one’s comfort zone is worrying.)I’ve sent many sales/intro/customer-support emails/whatsapp/linkedin messages in my startup days but I don’t think they can qualify as embarrassing.Does time exist?It just did.What do you hate?Outsmarting customers. In pre-PMF product companies, it’s always good to ship something in 2 weeks, test with real users and let them tell you what’s wrong/right than waiting for a full cycle of 1-2 month of conducting research, designing and iterating 5 different versions, and shipping 1 at the end. Nothing beats a user experience delivered in a user hand on a real device with a prod app. This is always turned out to be true VS trying to outsmart the users – trying to design the perfect feature. I’ve seen it failing again and again with startups. Know when to get into action – I love people with a bias for action . And I absolutely detest the approach of “we should iterate on this for another week.” I don’t buy “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” And again, especially for products pre-PMF. Until a startup reaches PMF, stop trying to be smart. Get your PMF and do whatever you want. Everything changes then.

More to follow in part 2.

One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors Von Mises. This suits this blog.

Week 33: RIP Ken Block

Ken Block passed away last year, 2023, and I was shocked. I know he’s young.

I first knew him playing video games in my teenage years: Dirt by codemaster and other rally games.

I recently listened to his interview with Tim Ferriss. This brought back some memories.

First, it’s not the interview you think it’s going to be if you only knew Ken as a racing driver. That’s all I knew about him before listening to the interview.

It’s titled: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend. And that’s enough of a tease. He’s a racing driver who learned racing in his 30s, a previous architect, and a business owner.

Do listen to it. A recommended podcast on business, courage and becoming a driver in the 30s. It’s sad to lose him. He’s best at what he does. Look at this and decide someone at his peak.

I can learn a lot from him across the board: business, thinking, courage, having a skin in the game, attitude, selling what you love doing, doing what you love and getting paid for it.

RIP Ken.

Week 32: Working at Intersections

Something I keep usingBooks app on iPhone. It’s good.Books app on iPad. It’s OK.Goodreader app on iPad. I hate it. I use it for pdf books/documents. The UX is terrible. Though, it’s the sunk cost (I paid for it) maybe that I keep using. If anyone has a really good pdf reader on iPad where I can mark highlights easily, I would love to hear about it.Use of my Garmin watch (I have the Fenix 7) to track all my activities. It’s good and has a long battery life (around 2 weeks.) I use none of the non-health features (no notifications, or spotify) I don’t have to think about it compared to Apple watch where I have to charge it every day.What did I love when I was a kid? I should do more of.Lego (the Syrian version.)Drawing.Visual Basic programming language.PC games in an MS-DOS like this Prince of Persia:Something I love doing?

I should aim to be at the top 20% on two things that I love + highly valuable + rare. Working at the intersections of domains. Being the bridge. Take design + tech. This is very rare to be in 1 person. And I try my best to be at that. Take design + tech + AI, this is even more rare. An I’m trying my best to be that in SpatialX.

How can I make my better?Early sleep, early rise. It feels like cheating. Was successful in the last 3 months (apart from Ramadan.)I have 1 meal a day. And it’s a struggle to eat late in the day and have a comfortable sleep. Eating this meal early in the day is another struggle for me. But I’m pushing to get this meal earlier by 7pm more often. My sleep definitely improved. Best buy of the week

A Syrian Madlouka from Levant. If you know, you know.

1 thing that is making me happy?

Starting something new.

1 thing that is making me angry?

What’s happening in Palestine.

Week 31: Be the weakest person in the room.

Here we go again.

Something I’m learning

Getting more clear in my thinking and my writing. On slack, my aim is that any person reading any message I write, should have 0 questions of what I meant. If it’s a group of people, it should be very clear what the topic of the message is, what the goal/outcome is, what my rational is, and what the next steps are. The structure of:

The WhatThe WhyThe How

seems to be the cleanest. Books that helped me before and I’m trying to reread again are:

Revising Prose, KeithSeveral Short Sentences about Writing, Verlyn KlinkenborgOn Writing Well, William ZinsserThe Pyramid Principle, MintoSomething that changed my mind:

Longevity.

The more I read about health and the story of Peter Attia in his book Outlive around heart diseases, the more I think I should take exercise seriously. Heart problems are not a joke. And in my family it goes deep. I should act accordingly.

A recommended read on longevity.

Something I’m thinking of

“Be the weakest person in the room.” This served me long way in my career. Whenever you don’t feel like growing, go somewhere else where you do. We’re the average of 5 people we surround ourselves with. These should be carefully selected.

Something that’s making me really happy

My sister is now an official doctor in the US. Congrats Nuha!

Something I’m enjoying

Writing. It settles the chaos in my mind. It force me to think in rational logical steps when I want. And in complete different dimensions if I wanted to. It tells me what I’m thinking. Why I’m thinking what I’m thinking. And how to think about what I’m thinking.

Week 30: Produce > Consume

Something I’m thinking of

Output > Input. Produce > Consume.

The idea is to make sure that I’m generating more that I’m consuming. Simplest is generating and producing work that one is proud of and can share with others IS BIGGER than reading what others share. This is the absolute case of social media where we consume what others have produced.

examples: get work done IS BIGGER reading. This can be the other way around if reading is in the shape of producing [ideas].

Other examples that can be both ways are: (think > read), (read > think).

What am I learning or interested in learning?

Learning how to learn. Meta learning. More on this later.

1 scary thing to try this month

Trying something new every week. Even if it’s taking a new way home (on foot, of course.) This counts. Starting small makes the bigger easier to tackle.

Something that changed my mind

Working outside for a day (or half). Change of environment lead to change of ways of thinking.

Best of what I read

“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.”

Calvin Coolidge

Week 29: Reframing the Week

Here we go again. Here’s what’s been in my mind recently.

1 thing that is making me happy?

Feeling that I’m doing something of value.

I sometimes feel that I’m not using all of what I’ve learnt and that drains me. If we are talking about where I come from, the Middle East, specifically, Syria, I do feel that I’m not doing enough at all there or with what I’ve learned and worked on. I want to change that. I’m doing it.

What’s one thing I cant stop talking about?

I love talking about design and things with unparalleled craftsmanship (quality naturally flows and follows.) I love talking about ways to be antifragile in my health (Peter Attia, Nassim Taleb), Minimum Effective Dose (MED), and about F1 cars circa 2006 on Renault’s mass dampers:

(credit: Motorsport)

In 2006, I was a fan of Renault and Fernando Alonso (still am.) It was my first full season that I watched. And I was so amazed by the F1 tech used. Like Renault’s Mass Damper.

What am I learning right now?

For around a year now, I’ve been mainly focusing on:

Politics, Books.Philosophy, Books.Economics, Books. Financial Freedom and not being a dog. Being a wolf.Design, Doing it myself currently.Selling what I create as an artisan. I’m not yet an artisan.1 new question I’m asking myself

If I’m to spend only 4 hours working this week. What would I work on? I’m trying to ask this at the beginning of each week to force myself to think about what is absolutely important. It reframe the whole week.

Salam, peace

Week 28: Forcing Oneself to Make Money

10 years ago I’ve read what Jason Fried (from 37Signals/Basecamp) wrote:

[…] I encourage entrepreneurs to bootstrap instead of taking outside money. On day one, a bootstrapped company sets out to make money. They have no choice, really. On day one a funded company sets out to spend money. They hire, they buy, they invest, they spend. Making money isn’t important yet. They practice spending, not making.

Jason Fried

Jason Fried and DHH, changed how I think about business and engineering since. And they are the reason I bootstrapped almeta and Alphazed. And they still do. And they are the reasons I love working in startups, building tech and teams from scratch. And that’s why I recently joined/founded yet another startup, deep-tech, deep-science, SpatialX.

Jason and DHH are contrarians. No BS, no faff, no BS mgmt. The jest of their thinking is simple: You should own your destiny and your destiny should be based on your own work. You work for your own destiny, not for someone else’s.

This, what Skin in the Game, is. Ala Nassim Taleb.

(Jason’s ideas on making money while you sleep and forcing myself to make money are recommended reads. And their books are short, simple and to the point. I’ve just reread them for a 3rd time.)

Salam, peace.

Week 28: Forcing Myself to Make Money

On the ideas of: making money while I sleep and forcing myself to make money.

Both of these two blogs are recommended reads. The authors, Jason Fried and DHH, changed how I think about business and engineering 10 years ago. And they still do. I’ve just reread their books for a 3rd time. They are contrarians. No BS, no faff, no BS mgmt.

And they are the reason I bootstrapped almeta and Alphazed before. I’ve read what Jason Fried wrote 10 years ago:

This is one of the reasons I encourage entrepreneurs to bootstrap instead of taking outside money. On day one, a bootstrapped company sets out to make money. They have no choice, really. On day one a funded company sets out to spend money. They hire, they buy, they invest, they spend. Making money isn’t important yet. They practice spending, not making.

Jason Fried

Each word is gold. You own your destiny. And your destiny is based on your work. You work for your own destiny, not for someone else’s.

This is what Skin in the Game is, ala Nassim Taleb.

Salam, peace.

Week 27: Skills that Don’t Age

Here we go again. Here’s what’s been in my mind recently.

Something I’m thinking of

How to create a set of skills that:

don’t age,and have limited to no competition,are valuable,and are rare

Like the Japanese Artisan work on pottery. This always has an audience. And buyers.

The same thinking goes for coding. We engineers do code. But with the rise of ChatGPT, this is becoming less and less valuable. It’s no longer how fast you code or how you produce. It’s how to use the tools. Or better, how to create them.

Best of what I watched

Alonso VS Hamilton in Canada 2023

Something I keep using

My Vivobarefoot shoes.

Our foot shape looks like this:

But if I look at most shoes in the market, are pointed at top, trying to lock the foot. Compare left and right.

Not my legs.

Given that I have a knee problem, I do my best to try everything I can to get my knee healthy again. I’ve bought a pair of Vivobarefoot (have 0 affiliation with them) 2 years ago and they are simply the best shoes I’ve ever had (along with the Nike Free Run with wide fit.)

They don’t affect my knee per say, but they do make the heel stronger. They take the shape of the foot. I do feel like a duck wearing them – and that’s fine. They are minimal shoes – meaning 0 cushioning. A bit pricy. But definitely worth the try.

Something that changed my mind

Hands-on and hands-off style of management. Will write about this later.

1 thing I’m remembering.

Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back

Piet Hein

Salam, peace.

Week 26: People I Love

A picture I took for the top of Alcazar, القصر in Arabic, from the Islamic period in Seville, Spain. Notice the Islamic turned Christian art.

My day in Ramadan

Ramadan Mubarak everyone! Ramadan started on Monday and it’s the best month of the year for me.

8:30: Wake up. Later than usual. 17:30: Wrap up work.18:00: Break the fast with a small portion. That is a couple of dates, full glass of [warm] water, yoghurt/cottage cheese with olive oil and walnut. I take supplements after that: Omega 3 pill, D3 supplements, Glucosamine (for the knee)19:00: Go for a run or Gym for an hour.21:30: Eat my main portion.11:00: Pray Taraweeh and read the Quran.12:00: Have Suhoor with couple of fruits + yoghurt.12:30: Sleep.

Something I’m remembering from the past

I can’t ever repay my mother and my father.

Something I succeeded at recently

Playing to an engineer strengths not to his/her weaknesses.

Who do I wish to be friends with?Nassim Taleb, NNTDavid Hansson, DHHAndrew HubermanTim FerrissA real Arab literate. Still searching.

What I’m reading?

All books. All digitally for now. Following a rating scale without a 6:

Guns, Germs and Steel. Rating so far: 8. Though, I’ve heard terrible rating on this from Dominic Sandbrook from “The Rest is History” podcast.A Human Action, Mises. Rating so far: 8Dao of Capital, Mark Spitznagel. Rating so far: 9The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu. Rating so far: 6

Say thanks for 1 person.

People who I built my first startup Almeta and later Alphazed with. Thanks all. You’re absolute champs.

People I love

People who make me laugh when I’m crying.

Salam, peace.