Andrew Skotzko

Have You Gotten Too Comfortable?

I’ve come to believe all creative work is a constant struggle between hope and fear. Hope that what I’m making will add value to the world. Hope that it will be accepted by the market. Hope that it will be interesting or resonate in a meaningful way. Fear that it won’t. Fear that everyone will laugh at me. Fear that people will call me names and think I’m an idiot for having made something so laughably dumb.

There’s a lot of fear. Especially when I let the noise in or get sucked into the trap of comparing myself to others.

But none of these fears outshines the biggest fear I have. Top billing is reserved for a fear that whispers to me in my quiet moments, the moments when I’m otherwise unencumbered and have some space to think: my fear of getting too comfortable. My fear that I’ll stop growing, which is the day a creative starts dying. The mere suggestion of such a stall scares me. But I remain hopeful.

Hope – Fear = Momentum

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Nice to Meet You, Again

It’s an incredible moment when you meet the real person inside someone you’ve casually known for years.

Tonight I was at a dinner at USC with a large group of people I’ve known since my time there. Most of us have met before, had some meetings, maybe even been out socially in that sort-of-colleagues-but-also-sort-of-friends way that was so common in my life before I got that I have to bring who I really am to everything I do.

At dinner, I re-connected with a college peer I’ve known for about six years. I wouldn’t say we were ever friends, but we knew each other and had worked together. After dinner, we walked together across campus and had the first real conversation we’ve ever had. It was exciting—I made a new friend, a real friend—we had independently experienced similar struggles and were discussing our journeys since leaving college. When we parted, I felt like I had just met an entirely different person. We hugged, and without even thinking I said “nice to meet you” to a guy I’ve known for six years. But in a sense, I had just met the real him for the first time.

Conversations are powerful.

Conversations are powerful because moments are powerful. Moments are where we take risk. Moments are when we expose ourselves in hopes that another will respond. Moments are when we push pause on our mental treadmills and appreciate something in the past that we were too busy experiencing to grasp the significance of. Moments are where we suddenly stop reaching, trying, stretching for something external and just…are.

Conversations may well be the most important tool we have for uncovering these moments. Conversations are often when those moments happen, or synthesize, come together, and coalesce into a cogent whole that has meaning and power.

Deep conversations like the one I had tonight are when I get to experience my favorite moment.

Whether it’s out of frustration, desperation, or exhaustion, eventually there is a moment where we all just get tired and say “Fuck it.” To the career path that cultivates money at the expense of meaning. To doing what we’re supposed to do instead of what we want to do. To playing the small game we’ve been told to play instead of the big game our heart yearns for.

This moment is precious. It’s exciting. Because the moment you stop trying to speak with somebody else’s voice is the moment you hear the first whispers of your own. And those whispers mark the beginning of the path that leads to what each of us is really seeking: ourself.

It’s the moment when someone begins to come into their own. The moment when untapped potential becomes reality-on-the-way, when hope becomes action, when things long dreamed of become memories soon to be cherished.

How you arrive at this moment doesn’t matter, but I believe we all must arrive there eventually if we’re to live the life we’re capable of.

There is nothing I want more than to help everyone I come in contact with to be closer to living at their potential, to experience these moments and the ripple effects in their life. That unleashing of potential in people and ideas is what I live for.

And there is an effective vehicle to get there: real conversations. I’m going to try to have more of them from here on out.

So I hope I have occasion to say “nice to meet you” to someone I’ve already met, again, very soon.

I wish the same for you.

Charlie and The Zealot

Have you met The Zealot lately?

He’s the bombastic preacher who blasts all other forms of worship.

He’s the chess player who is entirely reliant on memorized gambits to win or confound his opponent, and is upset when it’s not enough.

He’s the middle manager who insists that This is How It Must Be Done. Why? Because this is how it must be done.

What do these zealots share? Circular logic. A vague malaise. A low sense of their ability to create or adapt to new ways of doing things. An inability to improvise, because they have not grasped the deeper principles of their chosen framework and integrated those principles into an overall seamless flow in decision making.

On the other hand, there’s Charlie.

Charlie Munger is a billionaire and philanthropist who is the cofounder of Berkshire Hathaway. Charlie is famous for giving speeches, and being able to think very deeply about a wide range of problems.

Here’s the difference between Charlie and The Zealot: dependence.

Charlie knows that every framework has a point of view that can be useful.

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Buddha on the Court: the Art of the Inner Game (Part 1)

On Friday, November 10th, 2006, Lawrence Jackson was running out of time. The All-American defensive end for the USC Trojans had yet to register a sack in his junior season. Coming into the season, Jackson had his sights on a national title, a Bednarik award, and possibly a first-round pick in the coming NFL draft.

But so far? Eight games in. Zero sacks.

Jackson obsessed over it. It was all he thought about. As Jackson saw it at the time, even if he was playing well overall, without sacks, he was invisible.

But by midnight on Saturday the 11th, Jackson was the star of USC’s victory over Oregon—a nationally televised, primetime game with major implications on bowl bids. He accumulated three sacks, ten tackles, and one tackle for a loss—a landmark game by any standard.

So what changed in a mere 36 hours?

His approach to the game.

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Beginner’s Mind, On Demand

Two months ago, I was scared. Scared I wouldn’t be able to keep up the course I was on. Scared my progress would grind to a stop. Scared I wouldn’t be able to deliver on the commitments that I’d made. Scared that I couldn’t cut it on the new level I was playing at.

See, about five months before that, I’d decided to go full time into product and software engineering with very little background in it. It was an incredible opportunity: join one of the best software product teams in the world and learn from, and with, the best. My answer was yes, almost without thinking, when I got the chance.

That was the end of last April. True or not, I believed that to rapidly get to a level where I could really contribute, I’d have to make an almost Faustian bargain: I would have to drop everything else in my life to learn what I needed to in such a short period of time. Social life, hobbies, most everything that I did for fun, gone. Note: there was no explicit deadline looming, but I always feel the clock ticking in my head. One of the curses of my brain. But to me, this deal was a no-brainer.

Pulling it off damn near broke me.

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Why People Suck at Generating Ideas

Because they’re always asking the wrong question: “How?”

“How can we get there first?”

“How can I have more sex?”

“How can we beat Google?”

“How can I get his attention?”

“How can we get more press?”

“How can we increase our profits?”

“How can I lose 20 pounds?”

“How can we do this cheaper?”

“How can we get more users?”

“How” is the wrong question when trying to generate ideas.

Why?

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Eat Me If You Wish

“One day, the Buddhist saint Milarepa left his cave to gather firewood, and when he returned he found that his cave had been taken over by demons. There were demons everywhere! His first thought upon seeing them was, ‘I have got to get rid of them!’ He lunges toward them, chasing after them, trying forcefully to get them out of his cave. But the demons are completely unfazed. In fact, the more he chases them, the more comfortable and settled-in they seem to be. Realizing that his efforts to run them out have failed miserably, Milarepa opts for a new approach and decides to teach them the dharma.

“If chasing them out won’t work, then maybe hearing the teachings will change their minds and get them to go. So he takes his seat and begins… After a while he looks around and realizes all the demons are still there…At this point Milarepa lets out a deep breath of surrender, knowing now that these demons will not be manipulated into leaving and that maybe he has something to learn from them. He looks deeply into the eyes of each demon and bows, saying, ‘It looks like we’re going to be here together. I open myself to whatever you have to teach me.’

“In that moment all the demons but one disappear. One huge and especially fierce demon, with flaring nostrils and dripping fangs, is still there. So Milarepa lets go even further. Stepping over to the largest demon, he offers himself completely, holding nothing back. ‘Eat me if you wish.’ He places his head in the demon’s mouth, and at that moment the largest demon bows low and dissolves into space.”

Why Do It, Then?

I came across as someone who was driven to succeed. Many told me so. I thought that as well until I loved myself. Then, one day, I woke up to a spotlight shining on that belief, except the truth was a slight twist: I was driven to not fail.

Kamal wrote that in a powerful vignette he just published. And it punched me right in the face. In a good way.

I realized that a lot of my motivation, historically, has been not to fail. Everything was wrapped up in my ego. A lot still is.

I wondered, could something take its place? Could something else be as powerful a motivator? After all, fearing failure has given me a lot of mileage. Could there be an equally powerful, sustainable, and bottomless motivation that is more positive?

I thought about that and racked my brain for hours. Held on to hope there was something else I could tap into. Then, as I was drifting off into a delicious nap, it whacked me.

It’s so simple. It’s just like being ten years old on a bike again, exploring the vastness of my neighborhood for the first time and feeling absolute wonderment at the most mundane things, just because they were there.

So if not to not fail, why do it, then?

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Mercenaries

Yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about someone who hurt me badly a few months ago. I hadn’t thought of this person in at least a month, and then BAM, I’m in it.

I know where this train of thought leads. It is not a happy place. My defenses tell me to ignore the memory. I listen. I try. I fail.

The memory comes roaring back, stronger than before. This repeats. It’s not as simple as just “ignoring” negative thoughts. How come?

Energy is the currency of my psyche. My attention is the bank distributing it. And my thoughts are gluttonous mercenaries whose martial art is judo. They feed on any energy routed to them by my attention, swelling up and working for or against me in direct proportion to how much they receive.

They are insatiable. It doesn’t matter whether they are useful or not.

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I Surrender

All of a sudden I was stretching farther and deeper than I ever had. For the first time, in that moment, it was easy. Something had changed and I’d crossed a threshold I wasn’t previously aware of.

On June 30th, I woke up early and did yoga. It was cold and dark in my apartment. I was half asleep, feeling creaky. Soon enough, I came upon the one “basic” yoga pose that still challenges me every time: triangle pose.

Every time I get to triangle pose, I literally feel pushed up against an internal wall of resistance and it’s like my own body is blocking me. There’s this persistent tension in my hips and upper chest/back that I get locked into and can’t seem to get relief from. I always try to push harder, to stretch farther, to go deeper into the pose. But it never works.

When I finally broke through that wall, it wasn’t by doing anything in particular. In fact, it was by not doing something that I progressed. Rather than trying like I always do, I just stopped. I surrendered. I heard this impulse say, LET GO. It kept repeating until I did. And then, for a few molasses seconds, everything was better and nothing existed but a detached fascination.

It made me think that we are all working so hard to maintain this illusion of control. It’s part of our culture, the American religion. But it’s a lie we’re all telling ourselves and representing to each other with fake smiles and overconfident assurances. The only thing we can control is what we do in this moment. Our actions, and with more practice, our thoughts and feelings. I can’t control the world or force things to go my way. I can’t control who is going to launch what product or when, when someone I care about is going to be gone, or if the pretty girl is suddenly going to stop being interested in me and not want me anymore. It’s largely out of my hands. All I can do is focus on this moment and give everything I’ve got, right now, trusting that outcomes will work out in the end.

I think back to that cold, early morning moment a lot. And now every day has become triangle pose.