#91: Are you doing more or extra?

Obsidian and Anki have a baby

Onement V by Barnett Newman (1905-1970)

When I first joined Holistics, I was tasked with finding the product-market fit for a new product.

My job was fairly simple: interview early adopters to understand why they chose the product, or what made them churn.

As a new joiner (who desperately wanted to pass probation with flying colors), I wanted to impress my CEO and my Product lead.

So, I tried to fill my schedule with as many interviews as I can. There were days I literally sat in the meeting room from 9 to 5. I even went so far as to schedule some calls at night because our customers are in the US (we're in Vietnam)

It felt fantastic! (I felt like) I was contributing a lot to the success of a multi-billion dollar product. And I kept doing that for weeks.

After my first insight sharing with the team, with all the anticipation that my leaders would be astonished by what I did, I was taken aback when the first thing my CEO did was (with a poker face) ask me to share the raw notes I took during the interviews.

Then, he asked me to stop interviewing.

"But I was collecting great supporting insight that proves our market fit!" - I gasped.

"You did. But the "supporting insight" was only new for the first week. From the second week, some people started saying the same thing, and you must have noticed it. On the third week onward, you were doing meaningless work because you knew what responses you would be getting."

—

Still at Holistics, but 2 years later.

I and my team had built an amazing (yet complicated) feature that we believed would help attract more potential customers.

The project was a success, I was ready to move on. Until I paused. I felt something was missing. Oh. Yes. The Sales team. How would they sell this feature to the customer if it was so complicated?

So when I was working full-time on a newer project, I stayed a bit later every day to prepare a slide to "educate" the Sales team on this new feature.

I conducted live training and followed up to make sure each team member knew not only the functionality but the underlying mechanism.

It paid off beautifully.

Previously, I (PM), was flooded with questions from the Sales team about how some features worked. There were even emergencies when I was ping-ed at midnight to join a call cuz my Sales reps couldn't answer a question from a big prospect.

With this new initiative, my Sales reps were more than capable to demo and answer almost every question of the prospects. I reduced my time to support them from 1-2 hours a day to maybe a few minutes - and this is also how much I saved for them. No more midnight emergencies.

—

Some people would mistake being more contributive as taking more of the same work. It might add some value in the beginning. But it doesn't add new skills, and it doesn't make a breakthrough to the project/team/company. That was me in the first story.

Some people also mistake being more contributive as doing without being asked by the manager. I did, in both stories. But my doings only paid off in the second story.

I would call "extra" work something that requires us to think beyond the current scope of the project and our knowledge border.

Sometimes, it requires more research or new skills to complete. It might also not be valuable in the short term when compared to taking more of the same work. But it always pays off in the long run. If not to the project, then to you.

Should have added “value to you” as well

—

Working on your weekends or on holidays is doing more. There's no glory in that. But improving the current team's workflow so that you're not a bottleneck is doing extra.

Taking over your colleagues' tasks so the whole team can meet deadlines is doing more. Conducting training for them so next time they are faster is doing extra.

Trying to reduce sleep time so we can write more blogs is doing more. Spending the weekends on a course to write better and attract more audience to your site is doing extra.

Are you doing more, or doing extra?

Weekly discovery: When Obsidian and Anki have a baby 👶

If you've ever tried learning a new language, you must have known Anki.

The problem with Anki is that its design is too simplistic it feels underdeveloped. Also, making the cards is dauntingly time-consuming.

What if...

There's something like a note-taking app, but designed for spaced repetition learning, with a beautiful interface? So now you can use your notes as your learning materials without having to recreate them all over again?

Introduce: Mochi.app

I downloaded this beautiful app immediately when I saw that it can link cards (or "notes") in Mochi like Obsidian. It also has a tag system, diagram mode, built-in dictionaries, anddddd offline (meaning: it's ⚡️ fast)

This app does what it promises. If you're an Anki user, you'd love it on the first try. If you're not, welcome to the digital-flash-card learning world!

Around the Internet

1. YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft | LINK

I realized that I tend to choose Youtube videos over movies in my free time recently. Probably cuz my chunk of free time is too small for a whole movie to fit in (goodbye Netflix series :-<)

So I was hysterical to come across someone asking for a recommended Youtube channel on mastering a skill/craft on Hackernews. And the answers were 🔥!

2. Bing AI (Microsoft's) threatened its user | LINK

I feel like I have watched a similar Black Mirror episode but couldn't recall the name.

3. Did I just see that Twitter is removing SMS-based 2-factor authentication from FREE USERS??? | LINK

Stewart Rogers @TheRealSJR

The difference a simple addition could make... @Twitter @TwitterSupport is no doubt striking unwitting fear in the hearts of many today Adding "but don't worry, you'll still be able to use 2FA with an authentication app" to this message and the help page would fix that 🤦

I made an app!

To prevent my Python skill from dusting up (sugarcoated version for: in order to flex with devs I know how to code), I made a little app during my free time.

What does it do?

This app will clean up the Downloads folder (or any folder of your choice) by putting files of the same extension into the same folder, every day.

This way, my Downloads folder is clean and I can easily find newly downloaded files, while I can also find old ones just in case.

I know, I know, there are apps out there that can already do this. ChatGPT can also code it within minutes (yep, I tested it. The result was so great it made me question all the effort put into this app).

But hey, one cannot deny the joy of building right?

My code is still messy and probably the logic is not optimized (in case you want to probe), so I'm open to all feedback and suggestions!

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Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. If anything in this newsletter has provoked your thoughts, I‘d love to hear them - it’s the best reward for my writing journey.

As always, I wish you a relaxing Sunday and a productive week ahead.

Yours,
Tuan Mon

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Many One Percents newsletter is my weekly curation of Internet gems, mostly about technology, productivity and product management. If you want to support me, you can either subscribe to this newsletter, or donate via these channels: Momo | Paypal | Vietcombank