Keith Schacht’s Weblog

Have you ever observed that you can live through the same event with someone but afterwards you’re reflecting and the two of you experienced something totally different? What you choose to focus on determines the experience that you have.

You have a lot of work you need to get done. You sit down to eat dinner and quickly eat your food, you aren’t even tasting it because you’re mind is thinking about what you need to get done.

Have you ever observed that you can live through the same event with someone but afterwards you’re reflecting and the two of you experienced something totally different? What you choose to focus on determines the experience that you have.

You have a lot of work you need to get done. You sit down to eat dinner and quickly eat your food, you aren’t even tasting it because you’re mind is thinking about what you need to get done.

You ride the bus with someone each day and after a year of doing so you realize you hardly know anything about them. All your small talk about the weather, the day’s errands, the bus driver, and you never thought to get to know the real person.

Most of what you do in life you’re doing on autopilot. This is okay, it has to be this way; your attention is so limited that you would be unable to get much done if you were in capable of automatizing complex behaviors. It’s this ability to automatize which allows you to accomplish ever-increasingly advanced things.

However, the consequence of this ability to rely on autopilot, is that we cease to be intentional about our application of our conscious focus. After automatizing doing something well, it’s easy to simply rely on that automatization and let our attention mind wander in the process.

Another example. A lot of people spend too much time over-optimizing things. Your confronted with a situation that has a lot of options and you spend way to much time applying your conscious focus to evaluating each and every alternative but the situation doesn’t warrant it. Frankly, you would have been satisfied with any one of the options and you should have picked the first one and spent your time doing something else.

The most limited resource you have isn’t time, it’s your attention. Be careful what you apply your attention to. Apply it to those situations that you really care about, that are worth your attention. Don’t bother to apply it to those that don’t.

Know which situations you should be intentional about and which situations you should simply act out of habit. The ability to act out of habit is an ability which should not be abused.

Pinterest is the best new social application I’ve seen in awhile. Exploring it has rekindled a lot of thinking about what it takes to get users to create online content. This is not an analysis of Pinterest in particular, but the mental framework I use to think about this design problem. (This is a re-post from my blog circa 2012).

The naive view of encouraging content production is to create really flexible creative controls so that your tool has a wide range of uses. The reality is that a more constrained container encourages production. Think about a coloring book versus a blank sheet of paper. Not only is the freedom of a blank piece of paper paralyzing, but the pre-drawn outline makes your final creative output better.

Pinterest is the best new social application I’ve seen in awhile. Exploring it has rekindled a lot of thinking about what it takes to get users to create online content. This is not an analysis of Pinterest in particular, but the mental framework I use to think about this design problem. (This is a re-post from my blog circa 2012).

1) The creative container

The naive view of encouraging content production is to create really flexible creative controls so that your tool has a wide range of uses. The reality is that a more constrained container encourages production. Think about a coloring book versus a blank sheet of paper. Not only is the freedom of a blank piece of paper paralyzing, but the pre-drawn outline makes your final creative output better.

Let me elaborate on those two separate principles, first on the constraints. Think GeoCities vs Blogger. GeoCities was an easy way to create websites. You clicked to insert a page and had a WYSIWYG editor that let your imagination run wild. Then blogging came along. What was so great about blogging was that you were given a template; this wasn’t for creating just any website, it assumed your site was a series of posts, each with a title and body, ordered by date down the page. This spurred an explosion of content creation because a post template is helpful creative suggestion, yet its still incredibly versatile in its uses. Then in 2007 Twitter came along. For many people, its even easier to fill 140 characters than it is to write a complete post. Constraints breed creativity.

The second principle of the container is that it serves as imagination scaffolding. The constraints of your container, if done well, make the final creation more awesome than if the person created it from scratch. Blogging software assumes all the sites will be a list of posts so they can design beautiful themes for you to choose from. Paste ten random 140 sentences into an email and your friends will think your drunk, but call them Tweets and put them on your Twitter profile page with a customized background and the pretty icons and they become pearls of wisdom. Character creators in video games are another great example of this. By allowing you to customize the hair, eyes, skin, and clothes of this character there are millions of unique combinations but everyones character ends up looking really professional. Give them scaffolding to help creations turn out better.

Its important to think a lot about the creative container youre offering to users. A friend who is an avid Twitter user once remarked, “That would make a great Tweet!” when someone said something funny. Twitter power users filtering the world for Tweetable moments. Your users are going to be spending a lot of time thinking about what they can fill your containers with.

2) Community feedback and validation

When presented with a new creative container there is a learning curve in figuring out how to produce great content within it. Its important that youve architected a good feedback loop so people can hear the opinions of others to improve, and to celebrate the great creations when one is crafted.

Blogging is an easy example to see with its comment thread beneath each post. Within video games where you have created a custom character, the feedback comes from your interactions with other players. When chatting with other people in the game or virtual world someones avatar is a conversation starter.

Wikipedia is a particularly interesting example. Their creative container is an encyclopedia article which turns out to be a great container for summarizing your knowledge on a subject youre an expert of. But what you may not realize is that the feedback loop is a critical part of encouraging Wikipedia editors to continue creating great content. On every article is a Talk tab at the top where you can see the editors getting feedback about what theyve written.

But its not enough to simply allow feedback, its also important to reduce friction in the feedback process and think about the constraints youre setting up within the feedback mechanism. Facebooks Like button lets you endorse someones post with a single click and Amazon reviews can be marked as helpful. Following someone on Twitter makes it clear youre interested in what this person has to say. All of these are easy and constrained. Even comments, which are relatively unconstrained: dont allow titles of the comment, usually have a max length to keep them short, links are often prohibited to keep the discussion focused on the original post. And most of the time comments are not multi-threaded—you arent supposed to reply to another commentor, youre there to give feedback to the original creator.

Your feedback process will drive the quality of your creations and the longevity of your creators. Figure out how to encourage it but to simultaneously keep it enjoyable and constructive.

I should write a full analysis of Pinterest, but they’ve done an amazing job with their creative containers and with their feedback loop.

Its been a few years since I’ve been in start-up mode: dissecting great products to learn, generating lists of ideas, and meeting lots of new people. In undergoing this process I’m reminded of my fundamental approach to developing a new product and how unusual it seems to be among other entrepreneurs. (This is actually not a new insight, I’m reposting this from a blog post a few years ago.)

When I have a new idea that I’m intrigued by that I want to bring into the world, the two most important first features I stay focused on are: (1) simplicity, and (2) community.

Its been a few years since I’ve been in start-up mode: dissecting great products to learn, generating lists of ideas, and meeting lots of new people. In undergoing this process I’m reminded of my fundamental approach to developing a new product and how unusual it seems to be among other entrepreneurs. (This is actually not a new insight, I’m reposting this from a blog post a few years ago.)

When I have a new idea that I’m intrigued by that I want to bring into the world, the two most important first features I stay focused on are: (1) simplicity, and (2) community.

Let me explain. 1) Simplicity. Too many people create too many features way too soon. The most important feature in the first version of your product is that its simple. In one sense this is the absence of features, but in a very real sense simple is a feature in and of itself. Simple is achieved by distilling your concept down to its essence, by including only those features which are absolute core to your idea. Achieving simple is a very selective cutting of features: you don’t necessarily leave the easy features and cut the hard ones, you leave the essential/core features and cut the peripheral ones. Why? Because the most important goal at this stage of product development is that when a potential customer sees your product, they get what it does. You want them to almost instantly recognize the problem and understand how this product can potentially solve it. This first version of the product is a conversation starter.

When you’re trying to teach kids what a mammal is, you don’t start with the egg-laying platypus as the example. Likewise, you want your first product centered firmly around a quintessential use case. Lots of features you’ll add down the road will be added to address edge cases, real-world scenarios, but they’re a distraction at this first phase where clear understanding is the first goal. Its not so important that the first version of your product actually solve the problem, it doesn’t have to be ready for someone to dive in and start inputting real data and using it on a daily basis, the purpose of the first version of your product is that you can show it to actual customers and they get it and get excited about it.

This leads directly into feature #2, Community. There are lots of different forms that community can take at this stage: a forum, a regular conference call, group sessions; but the essential is that you create a regular on-going interaction between an early group of customers that you get to eavesdrop on and participate in. Note that this is not a bunch of people talking only to you, you want a small group of real customers talking about your product among themselves, brainstorming ideas, hearing what each other think and disagreeing.

Your goal at this stage is to build an early version of your product that is distilled down to its essence and then get a group of vocal passionate real customers using it, and then, only then, do you start really building the product with them. You start listening and responding and iterating. This distilled essentialized first version of your product is situated at crossroads. There are a lot of subtly different but significant ways you can take this product, but you don’t want to add the small features that push it down one of these paths. You want its essentialized form to stand on its own feet, and then you want this early group of customers to push it in a particular direction.

What happens if you dont achieve this? What happens if you build a first version of the product and no one really gets excited about it? Well, this means one of a few things. Either: 1) this is the wrong group of test customers, 2) this is the right group of customers but youre wrong about their being a real underlying problem, 3) theyre not understanding how this particular solution solves their problem.

Youre allowed to try again with a slightly tweaked and modified version of a distilled product, but dont make the mistake of thinking my customers need more real working features and start building, building, building. Youll know that youre making this mistake if, as you build more, your group of engaged passionate beta customers gets smaller and smaller. Youll know youre doing things correctly when youre group of engaged passionate beta customers starts getting bigger and bigger, both because some of the initial people who werent quite clear on it start to really get it and get excited, and because those who are excited want to start showing it to their friends.

Some tips to increase your chance of achieving this:

• Keep your product ugly, don’t get slick graphics involved at this stage. You’ll actually get better, more honest feedback if your product looks and feels a little rough. Implicitly this communicates that its a work in progress and they’re helping to shape it. If you show them a really slick product and they don’t quite like it, they feel worse about criticizing it so they wont, or you’ll start to hear feedback like, “I can see how some people might like this” which is code for “I don’t like it, but a lot of effort went into this so I hope someone out there does!”
• If essential features are hard to program, use lots of screen shots, mock-ups, and fake data. Real customers generally have bad imaginations, so even though you tell them, “XYZ will happen when you click here,” and the customer says “oh yea, I get it” they’re either being nice and have no clue what you mean, or they’re imagining something but its very different than what you’re imagining. You don’t want an illusion of understanding. Create a mock-up with fake or static data, put the most weight on feedback to stuff they’ve actually seen and clicked on, not on stuff you hypothesized about with them.

I’ve noticed that over the course of a week that over-working and working smarter are both self-reinforcing. To put it another way: the less I work, the less work I have to do; the more I work, the more work I have to do.

I’ve found that during periods where I have a lot I need to get done, I work harder. I dive in right away, take less breaks, and put in more hours. Often this is necessary for a short period of time, but it can be dangerous. By over-working the first thing that gets cut is time for reflection. By cutting this thinking time I’m less likely to see those smarter ways to get things done. I don’t cut off tasks that drag, I miss an opportunity to delegate, I miss a clever solution that solves a problem. All of this ends up causing the work to take longer creating more total work for myself, which makes it more likely that I’ll over-work the next day beginning a vicious cycle.

I’ve noticed that over the course of a week that over-working and working smarter are both self-reinforcing. To put it another way: the less I work, the less work I have to do; the more I work, the more work I have to do.

I’ve found that during periods where I have a lot I need to get done, I work harder. I dive in right away, take less breaks, and put in more hours. Often this is necessary for a short period of time, but it can be dangerous. By over-working the first thing that gets cut is time for reflection. By cutting this thinking time I’m less likely to see those smarter ways to get things done. I don’t cut off tasks that drag, I miss an opportunity to delegate, I miss a clever solution that solves a problem. All of this ends up causing the work to take longer creating more total work for myself, which makes it more likely that I’ll over-work the next day beginning a vicious cycle.

The same pattern is true for working smarter. By taking a step back from my work I review whats on my list and figure out how to cut things, I delegate early to get a project in motion, and I reflect on hard problems to find shortcuts. All of this ends up reducing the overall amount of work, which gives me more time the next day to work smarter. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Have other people had this same experience? I try to notice when either cycle is happening to me so I can work to break or embrace it, but its not always easy to catch myself.

If you walk into a casino and on a whim bet your entire life savings and you win. Was it a good decision? No. Even though many would congratulate you on a job well done, it was a bad decision. Or the opposite example of simple expected value. You make a decision that has a 90% chance you’ll lose $5, but a 10% chance you’ll receive $1000. Each time you make the same decision, the expected value of that decision is $95.50, even the times you lose!

Any individual decisions can be badly thought through, and yet be successful, or exceedingly well thought through, but be unsuccessful, because the recognized possibility of failure in fact occurs. But over time, more thoughtful decision-making will lead to better overall results, and more thoughtful decision-making can be encouraged by evaluating decisions on how well they were made rather than on outcome.

If you walk into a casino and on a whim bet your entire life savings and you win. Was it a good decision? No. Even though many would congratulate you on a job well done, it was a bad decision. Or the opposite example of simple expected value. You make a decision that has a 90% chance you’ll lose $5, but a 10% chance you’ll receive $1000. Each time you make the same decision, the expected value of that decision is $95.50, even the times you lose!

Any individual decisions can be badly thought through, and yet be successful, or exceedingly well thought through, but be unsuccessful, because the recognized possibility of failure in fact occurs. But over time, more thoughtful decision-making will lead to better overall results, and more thoughtful decision-making can be encouraged by evaluating decisions on how well they were made rather than on outcome.

The above quote is from this section of a book, Be The House, that a friend sent me. I’ve been thinking this way for awhile, although I would not have said it quite so eloquently.

The swing for the fences success in Silicon Valley get a disproportionate amount of attention, but over the years I’ve been surprised at the number of very successful entrepreneurs I’ve met who quietly make a million or more in profit a year or have had a string of small to medium business that they’ve sold. This doesn’t mean, don’t think big, just be diligent, focus on facts, and tip the odds in your favor—be the house.