Joshua

He/him | Product @Talkspace & Lasting (acquired) | JavaScript hobbyist

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@petergyang The main use case for me is figuring out how random SaaS tools work. Hop into a new tool for the first time. Also creating documentation from pages.

[Tanner Gesek @Tanner_Gesek]

A few things I've learned in 2023:

1) Sobriety (aka emotional consistency + no substances) is the bedrock of any kind of flourishing life (for me).

2) It's never too late to begin a new dream, adopt a new version of yourself, heal an old version of yourself, or build something new.

3) Consistency is often the make-or-break attribute for life (across relationships, professional life, creative endeavors). “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” - Gustave Flaubert

4) Serendipitous luck is often a disguise for quiet generosity of others, and gratitude is the only appropriate response to lucky breaks (not ego).

5) People are actually pretty cool and thoughtful online, and it's worth writing (tweets, essays, whatever) to create a signal for likeminded others to find you.

6) Creation is actually a solitary thing that requires spiritual virtues different than you might expect: courage, self-possession, persistence-without-reward-(yet), self-generated energy, etc.

7) Sometimes a conversation is worth 5 books on a subject, especially for the navigation/discovery phase of sifting who's thoughts matter on a subject + what context is important to situate knowledge within.

8) It's always worth asking the dumb questions. The real kind of learning (that actually sticks) happens when cause/effect relationships are clarified, and lack of clarity is the best opportunity to ask the right question (even if dumb) to clarify those relationships.

9) The best use of a journal is revisiting it periodically, to track how your inspirations and frustrations have taken shape over the subsequent time (and check-in with yourself on aspirations, too).

10) Deep, long-lasting, soul-nurturing friendship is one of the premier gifts of life.

11) Learning while building > hyper-planning a concept into oblivion w/ no market feedback (obvious but felt reiterated in a new way this year launching WAGMI Advisory + https://t.co/rHSBySo1XT + couple other things).

12) Learn from who resonates with your intuitive core, that spidey-sense that notices when someone's saying true things that matter. Support the truth-tellers, the courageous ones, the ones saying things with stakes.

13) Excepting deep trauma, loneliness and boredom are the dual motivators of more addiction, isolation, and chaos than any others combined. “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal

14) Projection is a more frequent phenomenon than you'd expect: & often your guesses about others' motivations/thoughts are simply your imagination filtered through your insecurities.

15) Pressing through early stages of new friendship can be awkward and embarrassing, but the question is whether you sense possibility of legitimate relational depth there -- if so, keep enduring the awkwardness / embarrassment, since that comes with the territory but evaporates once familiarity supersedes newness.

16) Music isn't sonic wallpaper, it's magic noise that can transform yourself and others. (h/t @tedgioia's latest book).

17) It's worth keeping tabs on a couple professional fields besides your own (excepting the meta-field of tech, which influences everyone's fields), to learn from how others are thinking about common problems + collect valuable tools + hear new perspectives regularly.

18) The humanities in universities are basically dead, whereas the humanities outside universities have never been more relevant or interesting or valuable.

19) It's an easy self-trick at the start of something new to want to treat yourself as more than a beginner. But if you're new to exercise (for example), treat the fundamentals as a checklist, not a nice-to-have list. Don't skip the basics in the quest to *feel* advanced (rather than legitimately becoming advanced).

20) The world can be a more forgiving, generous, and malleable place than you'd think. Try things, with a sense of pronoia (rather than paranoia), and keep trying things -- beyond slowing the passage of time, it enlivens the time you've got with more satisfaction and adventure than the alternative.

[Joshua @joshcpm]

I went with friends and family 😜

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@Sittercity ChatGPT

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@WillManidis Has Palantir been doing this for a while?

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@random_walker Isn’t this fundamentally an alignment problem? Those prompts would need to be made possible by the LLM giving more recent prompts priority. That doesn’t sound unsolvable.

Example: having a second LLM that checks whether the prompt aligns with the user’s best interests.

[Joshua @joshcpm]

Why is the “for you” feed now only Elon tweets? 🤔 😂

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@JeremyABrowning Seems like watermarking is another proposed solution to the problem.

https://t.co/dwyez4DkM8

[Joshua @joshcpm]

You either die a B2C product or live long enough to see yourself become a B2B product.

[Joshua @joshcpm]

We built an app for parents :) https://t.co/XjFHBhgjtt

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@SyHoekstra 😂

[Joshua @joshcpm]

Product insight from evolutionary biology: As soon as we set out to solve a problem, we create a new problem that we have to solve.

All design is trade offs.

https://t.co/rOjQbluXz3

[Natalie Fratto @NatalieFratto]

The gap.

@iraglass

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@petergyang I’m thinking a lot about #3 these days. How do I make it so easy for my team to talk to customers that they’re doing it daily/weekly?

What are the tools or processes?

[Joshua @joshcpm]

I LOVE this

[Peter Yang @petergyang]

3/ My step by step guide to community-led product development, starting with a rant on why not enough big companies do it:
https://t.co/SFUU1nVBwT

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@morganhousel This is exactly what I needed to read today

[Joshua @joshcpm]

This book is amazing!!! Can’t put it down. Thanks for sharing your story @Julie_rodgers

https://t.co/fLcOG3P9YM

[Joshua @joshcpm]

@gem_ray I feel so known 😂

[Joshua @joshcpm]

The person holding your team together is also the person holding it back.