Asking Questions (1/10/21)
Hey Friends,
Welcome back to Sunday School, a weekly newsletter to give you a boost in consuming interesting content.
I’ve noticed a pattern in some of the content I’ve found most useful to my life: they suggest questions to ask yourself.
Not in a boring, obligatory way that you find at the end of a chapter of a self-help book, but in a meaningful way to help you get to the bottom of what you’re thinking. They’re almost always questions aimed at helping you discover: why.
At the end of today’s topics you’ll see “The Question,” and this is my big takeaway from each topic, inverted into question form. Hopefully, you can think about each question as it relates to your life and find something to act upon.
Let’s get going!
Being Realistic
I think the month of January comes with an extra dose of optimism, almost no matter what’s gone on the year before. There’s something about a new year and how it inclines your mindset toward positivity and optimism, even if it’s temporary.
This year we really need it after the events of 2020.
And I love optimism, it’s core to my identity. I’m naturally optimistic about things that lie ahead no matter the circumstance and I want the people I spend my time with to be that way too.
But where do we find the balance between optimism and reality?
Positivity is important, but maintaining a realistic mindset about something is equally as important if you’re going to cross the finish line.
In his 2018 letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos says something creative and profound about managing expectations and knowing how hard things are going to be as you set out to achieve something.
"A close friend recently decided to learn to do a perfect free-standing handstand. No leaning against a wall. Not for just a few seconds. Instagram good. She decided to start her journey by taking a handstand workshop at her yoga studio. She then practiced for a while but wasn’t getting the results she wanted. So, she hired a handstand coach. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but evidently this is an actual thing that exists. In the very first lesson, the coach gave her some wonderful advice. “Most people,” he said, “think that if they work hard, they should be able to master a handstand in about two weeks. The reality is that it takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you’re just going to end up quitting.” Unrealistic beliefs on scope – often hidden and undiscussed – kill high standards. To achieve high standards yourself or as part of a team, you need to form and proactively communicate realistic beliefs about how hard something is going to be – something this coach understood well."
In the last week, you may have set goals for the year. It’s also likely that you’ll be one of the ~92% of people who give up on their New Year resolutions.
I think most people who give up on their resolutions don’t have a commitment issue, they have an expectations issue. Sure, when expectations are misaligned the apparent reason for failure is lack of commitment, but the root cause is the real culprit.
Let’s say I want to run a 5k in 22:00 minutes by June. If I have no prior knowledge of what it takes to run a 5k at that pace or where my starting point is, my commitment level might take a serious hit when I go out for my first run and finish at 28:06. “How am I going to do that a whole 6 minutes faster!? That’s it for me!”
The reason goals need to be realistic is because grappling with a surprise realization that it’s much harder than originally anticipated is too much to handle. Human willpower is strong, but when it comes to goals, most of the time we’re quick to accept any excuse or roadblock.
I’ll always be the first to promote optimism -- there’s no place for negativity in anything. But with these things in mind, I’ll also be promoting a healthy dose of realism alongside optimism to help find the perfect balance and a better chance at achieving goals.
THE QUESTION
Which resolutions/goals do I need to learn more about to be sure I’m giving myself the best chance at achieving them?
The Hot New eCommerce website…Facebook?
Link: Everybody Hates Facebook - Packy McCormick
Facebook is the OG social media platform. They built off the success of a similar platform in Myspace, but were still the first to rocket to mainstream heights and have joined Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon at the top of the list of the world’s big tech companies.
These days, Facebook has a reputation for being an awful platform among users under 30. In the early days, Facebook turned to young users as early adopters of the platform to get things running. But just like any business, things change over time, new competitors arrive and the act of remaining popular becomes a new business venture in and of itself.
Because Facebook has lost the interest of the youngest users in the market, you might expect a negative future outlook, but Packy McCormick presents an optimistic future for Zuck and the team.
Take a look at these outrageous, mind-blowing, almost impossible numbers from Facebook’s active user count. You can see they’re still growing and you can see that 42% of the people in the entire world use Facebook products every month (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger). Consider that only ~59% of the world has access to the internet and it’s even more impressive.
It’s what’s going on behind the scenes at Facebook that’s most interesting. Facebook is backward integrating into an eCommerce platform.
Amazon is an online store where you can go to buy anything you want. Facebook is going to be an online store that you’re already inside of where you can buy anything you want.
You can see from the above chart that Facebook owns the most important digital real estate on the internet in advertising, and they’re working on rolling out updates to Facebook pages to make them more like storefronts.
Soon, small businesses will be able to advertise, host, and sell products all on one platform. A platform that 42% of the world uses every month.
On top of this, consider these little-thought-of facts about Facebook and you may see them in a different light:
Facebook has almost no marginal costs. They don’t have to pay for user acquisition, and advertisers are self-serving, so they don’t need an army of salespeople to work with them. This allows them to pay top-dollar for the best developers in the game.
The difference between advertising with Google and advertising with Facebook: Google can show me different variations of a product that I want or that I’ve been searching for. Facebook can show me products that I didn’t even know I was interested in in the first place because it knows my interests. This makes advertising wildly successful, but also creates many of the problems we’re seeing with all-knowing social networks.
With Oculus, Facebook is taking a chance on VR/AR in hopes that they’ll be to virtual reality what Apple and Google are to mobile today.
THE QUESTION
How does Facebook stack up against other giant tech companies as an investment opportunity?
Quote of the Week
“Some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood.” - Michael Batnick
That’s all this week, thanks for attending!
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See you next week,
-Ryan Mulholland