by Max | Aug 28, 2023 | Relationships
Relationships are really hard.
I have the hardest time with saying what’s on my mind. What’s bothering me about a person.
That behavior they do that has been going on for so long that it’s part of their codebase. How do I speak up about it and address it? How do you tell them to change?
Maybe it’ll embarass them, or make them feel insecure.
That’s the little behavior – what about the big point of view they hold on that massive topic? Or that they don’t care enough about something that’s really important to you?
How do you tell them that? How do you talk to them about it?
This stuff gives me a ton of anxiety, and I bottle it up and fall silent or behave weirdly. And that’s no good because people, your partner, your family, your friends – they can tell when you’re not yourself.
Talk to them.
Sure, that’s the best advice. But damn is it difficult to do. And it’s scary. Because what if they refuse to change. Or refuse to even acknowledge their behavior or how it makes you feel.
You’ll feel like a crazy person. But I’m sure there are things you do that drive them crazy. Or outlooks on life and other topics you hold that don’t gel with theirs. So it’s even? Everyone is their own brand of crazy? It’s compromise? It’s the acceptance and even the embrace of people’s peccadillos that help relationships forge onward.
But how do you know when something is a dealbreaker in a friendship or partnership? I find this impossible to know. Is it a feeling? Or something that other close relationships can help you see through their eyes? Or a therapist perhaps?
I do know that talking to the person, however uncomfortable and scary, is the way to go. The people you want in your life will hear you, respond lovingly and try to work towards a solution. And if you’re scared to talk to them because you think they won’t change, then it’s on you to decide how important the topic is to you. This is when it becomes difficult and perhaps is the reason you fear talking to them in the first place. You know they won’t change. Talking has confirmed it and now it’s back on you to decide how to proceed.
But you gotta do it. The only way out is through. Whether that’s with them or without them, the only way to get there is by talking to them.
Relationships are hard. Talk to them.
by Max | Aug 25, 2023 | Sales, Work
Good things come to those who follow up.
Following up is a super power. Bugging people to stay at the top of their inbox is the only way to move the needle forward.
I’ve produced a lot of value for technology companies over the years simply by following up 3 or 4 times on stuff.
Weirdly, I was very protective over this ‘secret’. I kind of thought it was my edge. People knew you needed to follow up, but many don’t do it a 3rd or 4th time. I became very nervous that this was the only value I provided to any organization I’ve ever been a part of. And naturally, I fear AI replacing me.
And it has! Thank god. Email automation has been around for years. Following up is a time-consuming pain in the ass but it’s incredibly necessary to get anything done. The fact that it’s automated helps me focus on higher value stuff and realize I have a lot to add!
“Good things come to those who wait, but the only ones getting anything done are the ones who follow up”. I wrote this quote. Not Abraham Lincoln.
Here’s a 3 email recipe you can use for followups:
1st Email/Message
Hi person, this is who I am, what I want, and why I’m emailing you.
(I’ll probably write more posts on how to do this most effectively).
2nd Email/Message
Hi person, just wanted to follow up on this and see if we can chat. Let me know if you have some time to connect in the next couple of weeks.
(Or whatever your goal is – more on these goals a bit later).
3rd Email/Message
Hi Person, are you getting these messages? Just wanted to check to make sure they’re not hitting your spam folder.
This last message is key. Most people actually respond to it. What you’re intimating is that – ‘this message must’ve gone to spam because otherwise you would’ve responded to me’. It also gives the person an escape route to say “ah yes this was in my spam folder” whether it was or it wasn’t.
And there you have it. This can be changed, modified, adapated, and can get more sophisticated with other tools, platforms, workflows, sequences, etc. And all of this can be automated. I wish every email client had that automation built into it but unfortunately it’s usually only available with at least moderately expensive SaaS tools.
Follow up!
by Max | Aug 24, 2023 | Life, Productivity
One of the most difficult things about life, especially as its complexity grows, is prioritizing and figuring out what is important in the moment.
Think about that task list and how to assess what’s the most important thing to work on of the thousand other things on the To Do list. Fucking difficult. There’s the Eisenhow Matrix which has been used to illustrate the difference between important, urgent, not important, and not urgent. But it’s just a mental model.
I find this to be especially difficult in balancing the To Do List of your personal life with that of work. Figuring out how to prioritize mental health, relationships, physical health, and the demands of others on your time, are really complicated and it doesn’t seem to stop. Every day this skill gets tested from the moment we awake.
With children this skill seems to become honed even further. The working parent of young children likely has very little time for frivolity. It might even be an interesting exercise to pretend you’re a parent. A lot of productivity advice would tell you to look at your To Do List each day and determine what the most impactful thing to get done that day would be.
In today’s world of instant communication, there are so many more relationships that people maintain than they did 100 years ago. Between texting, email, and social, you can quickly get lost in the unimportant, and worse, fall onto someone else’s timetable. Don’t look at your phone first thing in the morning!
Email, texts, calls are all people inserting themselves onto your To Do List. A successful friend of mine would always say to people who are putting stuff on his To Do List, “Am I on your timetable?”
I absolutely love that. It’s a constant effort to stay on your own time table, figure out what’s important, and prioritize it ruthlessly.
Good luck.
by Max | Aug 23, 2023 | Health, Mindset
Today I wanted to do some pull ups. A good ol’ fashion’ pull day.
I am in a new town and don’t have a pull up bar, so I googled “workout park near me”. Calestehnics-parks.com was the first result and showed me a park that was nearby. Seems like a great tool actually.
But when I bicycled over to the park, it was a children’s playground. I can make due on a playground but the bar was really low and not at all what I was hoping for. I wanted one of those dedicated workout parks. Blast!
But I did the best workout I could do, and felt good about myself.
I think that this practice of trying to adapt and accomplish the mission, even if it’s janky and not how you pictured it, is an extremely good practice.
I suspect people with children are forced into this practice. I think all good entrepreneurs have mastered this. Sometimes it feels like the entire state of Israel is one janky attempt at getting things done however possible.
Letting a hiccup derail your plan is easy to do and probably what our brains default to. It’s a pretty “Fixed Mindset” trait. Very tempting to give up, saying “I would’ve done it, if the setup had been right”. Perfect is the enemy of the good, and all that jazz.
Life is messy, there will always be hiccups. Nothing will go according to plan.
I did the best I could, and feel happy and proud that I did.
by Max | Aug 22, 2023 | Health, Mindset
Another late arrival to the blinking cursor! Work got in the way, and then lunch. Writing now after lunch, which means I’m in a lactose-derived brain fog.
I’m pretty sure I’m both allergic to dairy and lactose intolerant. Why do I keep eating dairy? It’s just so damn good.
My first coffee of the day is black, and I usually have a good intermittent fast cookin’ until lunch time. But at lunch, if there’s dairy involved, my afternoon coffee is replete with half-and-half cream.
I ought to get away from using the cream in that coffee, and switch to oat milk or just stick with black.
But I had cheese on my eggs for lunch.
And I used butter to cook those eggs.
This brings up for me a concept that my partner told me about, that I think she heard from some influencer on instagram – Don’t Slash All Your Tires. If you puncture a tire when driving down the road, you don’t then take out a knife and slash each one of your tires.
I like this concept and it’s so apt to describe addiction or self-reinforcing behavior or whatever more accurate psychoanalytical term there is out there.
Just because I used butter to cook the eggs, doesn’t mean I need to put cheese on the eggs. Just because I put cheese on the eggs, doesn’t mean I need to then put cream in my coffee.
But I broke the dairy seal! I cracked the threshold and now I’m on dairy. I now know that, objectively, this is just an excuse to justify behavior that I only want to partially be accountable for. It’s addiction talking. I used to do the same thing if I smoked some weed, or had a drink, or puffed a cigarette. The seal is broken, I might as well let it all loose and get totally fucked up beyond recognition.
Long story short, I failed today with dairy. I slashed all my tires.
But maybe tomorrow I’ll avoid the cream at least and drive away with one full tire. That would be an excellent little victory.
