#68: On manufacturing motivations & other intriguing takeways so far from The Messy Middle
'When you have no customers, no audience and nobody knows or cares to know about what you’re making, the greatest motivators have to be manufactured.' - Scott Belsky
Hello friends,
Welcome to my #68th post and hello, new readers! Today’s writing is a light one but has a different kick to it—it’s about this book, The Messy Middle’ by Scott Belsky. If reflections about product, design and startups fill you with energy and excitement, you might like this.
The Messy Middle so far
A career in product is anything but straightforward. There are many ways to go about it. Alongside that, there’s also a few ways to screw it up. Because it is such a new thing–relative to other, more traditional career paths– it’s easy to go around in circles, get overwhelmed (or underwhelmed!) with the available resources and support needed to build a fruitful career in it.
In an effort to strengthen mine, I’ve been reading quite a few books from people that seemed to have mastered this. Scott Belsky, an American Entrepreneur, Cofounder of Behance and Chief Strategy Officer at Adobe, is one of those people.
His second book, ‘The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture’, is filled with value after value, each page is bookmark-worthy. Personally, I prefer books that are essay-driven. You can open any page and can still catch up and get substance out of it. It’s aligned more closely to how I think, possibly. It’s also probably the reason why I love Hackers and Painters so much.
Reading The Messy Middle feels a lot like a combination of a really hearty (and lengthy) business talk over dinner and someone’s work diary. It is personal but pragmatic, practical and insightful (without the usual self-aggrandizing anecdotes typically common with books like this), it’s high-level but also unafraid to get a little tactical at times. If you are interested in learning more about startups (minus the vibe of a typical tech bro), this is one of the best books you can ever pick up, in my opinion.
I am not yet done with the book. It is not the kind of reading you do in a rush. Part of making the most out of it is to contemplate on the lessons as you go. And like what I said, there’s a lot of lessons here that could benefit anyone from seasoned Individual Contributors to budding startup founders. This is the type of book I wish existed back when I was in college, and the initial years after.
I’m sure you’ll understand why. Here’s a few notable ideas/takeaways I’ve picked up on it so far:
In times of stagnancy and drought, learning how to manufacture motivation is a key skill for survival.
Experimentation not just leads to a lot of learnings but it also creates momentum. It’s part of building your own creative endurance and stamina— just two of the ingredients needed for this journey. ‘The faster you move and the more mistakes you make, the better your chance of learning and gaining the momentum you need to soar above competitors. Moving fast means conducting lots of experiments—many of which will fail—and making quick turns that are liable to leave you and your team dizzy.’
When you’re starting out, tolerating uncertainty can be impossible. In fact, it can be a burden. This is a common with any creative endeavor. From page 34: ‘Strive to continually process it rather than let it cripple you, to accept the burden without surrendering your attention.’
Storytelling is not just an incredibly useful skill but it also has the power to make or break a team and product, especially in the early stages. It is a force to be reckon, a guide, a human connector, a relationship builder. Every builder must take storytelling seriously… as if the fate of their product (and team!) depends on it.
Energy is currency. It’s an underrated, under-talked about resource when you are just starting out. It is a side effect to purpose and it is a trait that can and should be developed by every creative person. From page 45: ‘Your team needs energy transfusions, especially in the middle miles when circumstances feel dire and there is no end in sight.’ It is the fuel that will help get everyone through the hard times. Be an energy-giver, especially when there’s a desperation for it.
At the end of the day—and excuse the profanity, this is actually a chapter title—you can’t go wrong if you just ‘Do Your Fucking Job.’ There’s no sugarcoating this part. It will get hard, it’s bound to be. It’s not always a bad thing. Creative journeys are never linear, as with most things that are worth pursuing. If you truly believe something is worth having, worth fighting for, show up everyday, even when it’s hard—especially when it’s hard. (This bit reminds me of this other book, ‘Design is a job’ by Mike Montiero, also a fantastic read if you are into the business and realities of Design and Creative jobs)
Startups are volatile and so are careers in it, in a lot of ways. Knowing your competitive advantage as a person and as a team is not enough. You also need to know how to use it and have it as a driver to your success, however you want to define it. Never ever outsource what could be you or your product’s competitive advantage.
When building teams, hire the right people and be flexible with structures.
Speaking of hiring, don’t overlook obsession as a signal. Obsessive people tend to be the most self-motivated and creative people in general. It’s a sign of one’s dedication to learning. There’s a lot of blockers to pursuing a craft. Especially with design, if you are not serious about it, it shows. Lack of interest outside the bare minimum/requirement is fatal. Obsession is, perhaps, what separates a good enough designer to more of a 10x1 one. From page 104: “Initiative comes from obsession. The more infatuated you are with something, the more likely you are to know (or want to find out) more about it.”
Don’t get complacent with anything, especially with your product. Innovation doesn’t thrive in comfort.
Seek and prioritize meaningful work, above all. “Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during workday, the single most important thing is making progress in meaning work. The more frequently people experience the sense of progress, the likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run. Whether they are trying to solve a major scientific mystery or simply produce a high-quality product or service, everyday progress—even a small win—can make all the difference in how they feel and perform.” - Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile
Embrace competition but don’t follow blindly. Have a good strategy for how you’ll think about this. Don’t just imitate. Study what works for you and always be a step ahead of others through research and development. Foster culture of endless experimentation to keep all of this sustainable. But never forget that you are your greatest competitor. ‘If you have conviction in your own ideas and approach, then you should be the most competitive with yourself. Your last personal best—your most productive week, your most efficient sprint, your best-executed event— is what you need to beat. Competing with your past is the purest and surest way to make faster progress without compromising your vision. The greatest successes are the aggregate of persistent optimizations of personal bests.’
GOOD STUFF SO FAR. GOOD STUFF, SCOTT. GOOD STUFF.
There’s a certain charm to Scott’s writing that is hard to find elsewhere for this category (business x creativity x technology x design). He is unafraid to keep it real (with startup stories) but seems to have no problem challenging his own beliefs, as flawed as they are sometimes.
After finishing his other book, ‘Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality’, I knew I’d read his next one. Honestly, ff you read a lot of business books, his ideas really aren’t terribly unique and mind-blowing. That’s the irony.
He just writes in a way that makes it more accessible, actionable & compelling. It’s hard to not stop and allow yourself to think about what you just read. While most are flat and uninspiring, this one is the complete opposite.
In case you are wondering, that is a very good thing to say about a book and the author. Especially one I have yet to finish.
Manufacturing my own motivations
I know I talk a lot about the pursuit of creative careers and why—for a certain type of person—it’s mostly a worthwhile and advantageous endeavor. It’s almost romantic to hear that every time. Frankly, I don’t mean it to be.
In the best of times, it really sounds as good as I often tell it to be—if not more. I think this is evident in my last post:
But just like the point of the book above, there’s always a lot more to the creative journey than what’s constantly being told. Despite what it may look like on the outside, a lot of the work is invisible, unsexy, laborious, thankless and challenging. Ask any designer, architect, chef, writer or even software engineers, at least those that consider what they do to be creative.
Much like Scott, I struggle to make sense of any of it, most of the time, especially when I am going through a period of dulls and failures. It’s painful and awkward to write about. It is too tempting to just forget about it, sweep it under the rug and drown out the memories (of failing) with superficial small wins. That’s the easy thing to do and is probably what a lot of people are doing.
What I’ve come to realize is that if I do that, it will be a missed opportunity. I’ll learn nothing, on top of what I’ve already failed to do. This, to me, sounds like the real tragedy.
When things get tough, there are lessons to be learned. It won’t stop until we finally learn them. It’ll be waste if we don’t do anything with that learning. At the very least, document them, write about them (privately) so you’re aware it happened and why it happened. Mistakes are a reminder that something is wrong, either internally or externally. They’re a wakeup call to change.
The other thing that is more painful than mistakes is stagnancy—when nobody cares about what you do, why you do it and who you’re it for. To say that it will be hard to show up everyday when this happens is an understatement. It will be impossible to, especially in the absence of any other rewards system (financial, moral, emotional etc).
This is perhaps the true test: Can you do what you think you want to do if no one is looking, cheering, reading or even acknowledging your work and efforts?
If the answer is a hell yes, then I think you are extremely lucky. I can bet that not many people can say that.
Personally, I write because I’m a writer and I will always be a writer, no matter what comes out of all of this. I’m not quite sure if this is my way of manufacturing motivation but it seems to be working. I’m on my 68th essay, juggling both a full-time job, a toddler and a home life.
I’ve never been more tired but ironically, I’ve never been more committed to my writing practice than I am now. If this isn’t true—for lack of a better word—passion2, I don’t know what is.
Thank you for reading,
Nikki
Best things I’ve ever read and listened to this week:
Clear Horizons | A Dialogue with Shane Parrish, The James Altucher Show
Wanted: Knowledge workers in the American Heartland, USATODAY.COM
Someone who can: 1.) perform at the highest level in most, if not all, of the disciplines under that field, 2.) be a lot more productive relative to their peers in the organization, 3.) highly knowledgeable but is also the hungriest with learning more 4.) create a body of meaningful work as a direct result. This is in parallel to the 10x engineer in the software development world. http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html - take all of this with a grain of salt.
Don’t like using this word