Sunday Snapshots (14th June, 2020)
A West Wing Memoir, Marc Andreessen's productivity system, Post-coronavirus world of retail, "All the news that's fit to print", and The Last Hangover
Hey everyone,
Greetings from Evanston!
This issue of the newsletter comes to you from the brain of a very tired writer. After a final week of assignments, I am excited to be almost done with college.
If you want to get me a graduation present, consider sharing Snapshots by forwarding this email to your smartest friends, sharing on LinkedIn or Twitter with a short note, or sharing within your existing community or company Slacks.
Over the next few weeks, I have a whole slew of collaborations and reflective pieces coming your way. I’m excited to share what I’ve been working on!
But first, this week in Snapshots, I want to talk about:
A memoir from Obama’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff
Marc Andreessen’s productivity system
What the post-coronavirus world of retail looks like
Some unpolished thoughts on “all the news that’s fit to print”
And more!
Book of the week
The fact that political biographies are my favorite genre of books is no secret to any long time Snapshots reader. But political memoirs, while adjacent to my interests, have never quite received the love on my bookshelves that they should deserve. Another neglected area is books written by women. Over the next few months, I aim to fix both. To kick things off on both campaigns this week, I read Alyssa Mastromonaco’s Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? about her time in the Obama White House. Alyssa was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for the 44th President of the US. It’s a classic West Wing memoir shaped by the unique experiences that every administration faces.
Here are my favorite excerpts from the book:
Why Alyssa wrote the book:
I also wanted to write this book because I didn’t see anything like it out there. When I was trying, kind of desperately, to get a job in politics, and then when I got one, all my mentors were men. Most political memoirs are written by men—because most of the people who work in politics are men—and they’re usually preoccupied with legacy: reliving the glory days, dispensing tidbits of “insider” drama, and making the writer look like he has single-handedly triumphed over adversity and evil Democrats. (Or evil Republicans—trying to make yourself look good is a nonpartisan issue.) I understand wanting to leave a legacy, but I’ve always tried to focus on the work first, usually knowing—except in dark moments—that my glory will come in time.
On the importance of shadow powers:
I was once on a list of Washington’s most powerful, least famous people. A lot of jobs in politics are basically about getting shit done, and I have had a few of them. They’re not as sexy as being an actual politician, but most people—including me, for example, hi—don’t have the constitution to be an actual politician. The jobs are still very important, and cool, and kind of unbelievable, as the number of state dinner bloopers I recap in this book will demonstrate.
On the idea of “the good old days”:
I don’t want to be too nostalgic, especially because the present day has a lot of benefits—women’s rights, Google Maps—but I think the idea that times were simpler “back in the day” is true in a lot of ways. Whatever anyone tells you about how technology and social media have made us disconnected from reality is probably right, but I think you can boil all these kinds of arguments down to the fact that people are no longer chill. They are goal-oriented. They are aware of all the things they could or believe they should have. They are aware of all the things that could go wrong. This awareness makes a lot of things—dating, finding a job, dating a person you meet at your job, planning a trip for the president of the United States—much harder.
On self-awareness:
Being self-aware means knowing when you’re about to act bad—and then not acting bad.
Don’t end run yourself (a concept I first encountered in Chris Wipple’s Gatekeepers):
I attribute a lot of my success to never losing sight of the fact that I worked for Barack Obama. I was not Barack Obama; I am never going to be Barack Obama. In DC, you can get some level of power from the person you work for, but the minute you forget power comes and goes with elections, that’s it. You may think you are hot shit for working at the White House, but there is always hotter shit around the corner. You are staff, a helpfully lowly term.
It’s a quick and fun read and imparts important life lessons and tips along the way. Nothing to dislike there! Check it out.
Long read of the week
Marc Andreessen on The Observer Effect by Sriram Krishnan
Sharing an interview instead of an academic paper or shareholder letter feels wrong when it comes to the long read section, but this Marc Andreessen interview with Sriram Krishnan was probably the best thing I’ve read this week. For the uninitiated, Andreessen is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser and co-founded Netscape of the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit fame. Today, Marc is the general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Andreessen has recently been shy about giving interviews and has pulled back from Twitter (a platform whose usage he pioneered). His only recent public communication was his essay titled It’s Time to Build that he wrote in mid-April about the lack of innovation in housing, education, and healthcare in the US against the backdrop of peak COVID-19 in New York.
In this interview, Andreessen talks about the essay, his productivity systems, and his reading habits.
My favorite bits:
On the importance of keeping a calendar:
The big thing is basically *everything* is on the calendar. Sleep is on the calendar, going to bed is in there and so is free time. Free time is critical because that's the release valve. You can work full tilt for a long time as long as you know you have actual time for yourself coming up. I find if you don't schedule enough free time, you get resentful of your own calendar. When I was younger, I didn't really have the concept of turning off. But there comes a time, a little bit with age, when your body rebels. And obviously, if you have a family, that’s not great with a system where you're just always working.
On his reading habits:
I have a whole bunch of books that I haven’t finished which I really should just toss. Patrick Collison talks about this too. The problem of having to finish every book is you’re not only spending time on books you shouldn’t be but it also causes you to stall out on reading in general. If I can't start the next book until I finish this one, but I don't want to read this one, I might as well go watch TV. Before you know it, you’ve stopped reading for a month and you're asking “what have I done?!” I think that's part of it. This moral hectoring of ‘don't do that’ which can only be so successful. The other technique is to read a dozen books at a time.
On seeking alternative opinions:
This is like a big kind of self development. So, generally speaking, most of the people you're around most of the time hate being told that they're wrong, right? They absolutely hate it. It's really an interesting question as to why that's the case. The best explanation I'm able to come up with is: people treat their ideas like they're their children. I have an idea the same way that I have a child and if you call my idea stupid, it's like calling my child stupid. And then the conversation just stops.I've really been trying hard to do is to spend less time actually arguing with anybody. Because people really don't want to change their mind. And so I'm trying to just literally never argue with people.
It’s a great read and well worth your time. Go check it out now!
Business move of the week
Zara Owner to Close 1,200 Stores as It Outlines Post-Coronavirus Future
Crises don’t create problems. They simply reveal them. They also create an opportunity for business to move towards solutions.
That’s exactly what happened this week when Zara and Starbucks both announced that they will be closing a significant percentage of their retail stores and move the volume online. We’ve talked about different parts of the changing retail environment on this newsletter before, but conditions facilitated by COVID-19 have given companies the PR cover to shut down parts of their business that they didn’t intent on keeping anyways.
I see a bifurcation of the retail experience. Big name streets (the Magnificent Mile in Chicago is one that’s an example close to me) will move from being sales-driven to being focused on brand building. In this specific Magnificent Mile example, it’s already happened. Nike has remodeled most of its store towards a Nike Lab. Starbucks opened a Reserve location. High-margin products like Apple’s electronics and luxury brands like Rolex will be safe in these turbulent times. While their sales may dip, their long-term brand value is unlikely to take a hit. You may have noticed a “micro warehouse” on the top left hand corner of the street – what exactly is that?
Some retail stores that host undifferentiated brands (think Zara, Banana Republic) will be turned into micro-warehouses for the urban customer. These warehouses will store small caches of the most popular items (SKUs) to be shipped and delivered within hours (maybe even minutes) of the order coming in.
So, brand building on big name streets and efficient fulfillment everywhere else will be the name of the game for most retailers.
Note: This is the start of an upcoming piece about the trends in retail that COVID-19 has accelerated. If you’re interested in reading drafts of this article or are interested in collaborating on it if you have domain expertise, just reply to this email or send me a DM on Twitter (@sidharthajha). I would love to hear from you!
Random corner of the week
The New York Times’s slogan is “All the news that’s fit to print.” In late May, the paper decided to print the names of a few of the 100,000 people that had died due to COVID-19. Obviously, the page was not long enough for it.
While a sobering page (and one that had its intended effect on many), I couldn’t help but notice how this idea of “all the news that’s fit to print” was at the core of the issues faced by the media industry today – the NYT couldn’t even fit the names of all the people that died, how could they possibly cover everything that’s going on?
As the internet has grown up from being a harmless toddler to a troublesome teenager, one of the main casualties have been traditional news media outlets. On the internet, you don’t need to “fit” anything. It’s built around endless feeds – search feed, newsfeed, timeline, etc. These have resulted in a schism of what’s called “news.”
We still have traditional journalists, but local news and niche writers have equal sway with the public – or at least their respective demographics. They are not constrained by the journalists telling them that their news “doesn’t fit.” Both metaphorically and literally. Writers don’t need external distribution anymore – they can be control their own destiny. This schism comes against a backdrop of decreasing trust in the traditional institutions.
The journey for truth in this fragmented world is difficult. As we navigate it, it is important to be kind and generous in our interpretation of others’ motives.
Note: As you could tell, this section came to an abrupt end. I wrote and re-wrote the next few paragraphs multiple times over the last few days but I felt unsure about which direction to take it next. Just a reminder that even after more than a year of writing, things can still be extremely difficult to parse through. I’m glad that these moments still happen – they keep me humble and are an indication that I still have a long way to go in terms of forming my worldview around important topics.
Movie of the week
A Portugese mash-up of The Hangover and The Last Supper, The Last Hangover is one of those rare funny-yet-smart movies. The set-up is simple:
The apostles search for a missing Jesus as they piece together what happened after the previous night's hard partying at the Last Supper.
With subtle and non-subtle references to both inspirations, it kept me smiling and laughing through the entire 44 minutes of its run time.
The Last Hangover is now streaming on Netflix.
That wraps up this week’s newsletter. If you want to discuss any of the ideas mentioned above or have any books/papers/links you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of Sunday Snapshots, please reach out to me by replying to this email or sending me a direct message on Twitter at @sidharthajha.
Until next Sunday,
Sid