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

Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »

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.

Continue reading »