yash ramchandani

7 followers · 5 following · 961 views

on the atlas — 14

highlights — 26

A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are.
How To Be Successful
Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes
How To Be Successful
But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.
How To Be Successful
It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever.
How To Be Successful
It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly. You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high.
How To Be Successful
. Adaptation to zeitgebers may be improved by introducing nap schedules to reduce sleep pressure, and through that increasing clock susceptibility to light.
Sleep homeostasis and the circadian clock: Do the circadian pacemaker and the sleep homeostat influence each other’s functioning? - PMC
The data suggest that the circadian clock is less susceptible to light when sleep pressure is high.
Sleep homeostasis and the circadian clock: Do the circadian pacemaker and the sleep homeostat influence each other’s functioning? - PMC
Now, I have created a semi-automated “Advisor Interactions Tracker,” managed by our executive assistants, that includes updates from various team members that are engaging with our advisors.
How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups | First Round Review
At about month four at Levels, I took the deep work one step further and took my first “think week,” which was originally inspired by Bill Gates. Every Levels team member, no matter level or function, is encouraged to take a week without meetings or deliverables, but instead to spend the time doing deeper work. During this think week, I was able to draft some memos to clarify my thinking, read a few of our advisor's books (and even write this article). The think week enabled me to create documents that accelerated the impact possible through this role.
How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups | First Round Review
As Kevin Weiss, Chief of Staff at Reforge, advised: “The weeks when I’d carve out multiple hours to reflect on the industry and business, I’d be able to contribute in more strategic ways — but if you don’t really block that time it’s easy to experience death by 1,000 cuts. Lots of things can funnel to you as a chief of staff, so proactively making time to think about the highest leverage places to focus is critical.”
How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups | First Round Review
I also sent Casey daily end-of-day Looms — this replaced the “hallway chats” or “quick brain dumps” and included ideas or actions that were top of mind, areas to align on, or any blockers. It also enabled us to share screens and provide additional visual context. One of the best parts of this process was the ability to absorb each other’s async videos at 1.5 or 2X speed, pause to comment or take notes, or listen again to understand something more deeply. Casey would comment on my Loom with any feedback or suggestions and would often send her own short Loom with any lengthier feedback or though…
How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups | First Round Review
Instead of sitting on countless Zoom meetings, we used async videos for “job shadowing.” Casey would record hours of passive async Loom videos of her conducting her work, like prepping for podcasts, responding to emails, writing content, or processing direct messages. By watching these at high speed, I was able to learn her workflows, note opportunities for systemization or efficiency, and see how she thinks and writes. These were crucial resources for me to refer back to again and again as I continued to take on more responsibilities.
How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups | First Round Review
14.5. Respond To Negative News, Quickly Otherwise, it will just spread. Unless you are certain it’s a small news outlet and won’t get any pickup.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
14.4. Respond to Journalists If you don’t respond, they will just write the worst versions of their story. Respond, record it, and publish it if you have to later.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
Otherwise, the mental cost of carrying that in my head is not worth the benefits I can achieve for tweeting it a few hours later. After tweeting, I move on to something else.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
Announce when ready, and move on to the next item.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
This just creates unnecessary delays that pushes all future work streams further down, the efficiency lost far outweighs the minor optimizations in “better pick up” of the news. Delays in what we do are extremely expensive. Holding off a PR just holds that in people's heads for a longer period of time, unnecessarily.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
Don’t do big PR on the first day of launch. Something always goes wrong. Give the system/product a week or so to settle in and stabilize first before we do big PR.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
I don’t do meet-and-greets, get-to-know-you, discovery meetings, etc. I am not a hub and not good at maintaining many relationships. I prefer meetings with specific purposes. Some may say this is too “materialistic,” but it is efficient. It may offend some people. But my goal is not to be friends with everyone, it is to get shit done.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
Don’t do the old style “here is what I will tell you, tell you, and what I just told you.” Just do the “tell you” part. Don’t start with “here is the agenda…” Go straight into the meeting. Don’t do “can you guys hear me? Can you see my screen?” Test your equipment beforehand, and go straight into the meeting.
CZ’s Principles | Binance Blog
I want that kid to blow me out of the water.
Dad Life - Not Boring by Packy McCormick
Even now, just a year in, I have an idea of what he’ll be like as a kid and even kind of as a grownup, which is wild.
Dad Life - Not Boring by Packy McCormick
I see so much of Puja in Dev, and love watching her be his mom more than anything.
Dad Life - Not Boring by Packy McCormick
I feel very soft when I think about how much they did versus how much I do
Dad Life - Not Boring by Packy McCormick
You can expand the source of influences in time as well as space, by reading history. When I read history I do it not just to learn what happened, but to try to get inside the heads of people who lived in the past. How did things look to them? This is hard to do, but worth the effort for the same reason it's worth travelling far to triangulate a point.
How to Think for Yourself
But schools generally ignore independent-mindedness, except to the extent they try to suppress it.
How to Think for Yourself