Work For Your Lunch

This was originally published in my free weekly newsletter, How It Actually Works.

So in the middle of apartment shopping we decided to do the cliché San Francisco thing and bike across the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s not a particularly long route (< 10 miles) but it is uphill for most of the way there, including a very steep portion right before the bridge.

I’d already done it twice with friends and family and was happy to never do it again, but my SO really wanted to go so we compromised and decided to go.

The whole time I’m huffing and puffing, it’s a pain in the ass, it’s cold, etc.

But as I’m riding I realize I’m getting hungry. And that’s good, since I rarely experience physical hunger.

So when I do, I know the next meal is going to be awesome. (And it was. We got burgers.)

Everything in life tastes better when you’re worked for it.

Made a bunch of money? Feels better when it’s earned.

In a great relationship? You feel closer when you’ve struggled together.

In a rewarding job? Feels better when you’re working towards a lofty goal.

There’s even research that says the best way to get the most performance out of employees is to get them the hardest problems possible, and the tools they need to fix them.

To be clear, this does not mean go looking for difficulty. Or that pain is implicitly good. Suffering can be just suffering and nothing else.

But when suffering is on the path to some greater goal, embrace it. Use it as a reminder that meaning is found in the pursuit of things greater than our individual selves.

So work for your lunch. It’ll taste better that way.

The Links

How to Make Friends (As an Adult) (tweets)

“How many canceled drinks and dinners and coffees does it take before you're no longer friends with someone? And I don't mean "no longer friends" as your revocation of someone's friendship card. I mean it as a statement of fact.”

It’s really hard to make friends as an adult. The random occasions to naturally do things together that appear in school never come up. So when you’re given the chance to invest in a relationship, you have to show up.

4-Page Internal Mark Zuckerberg Memo from 2015 on why FB Should Invest in Virtual Reality (article)

“The strategic goal is is clearest. We are vulnerable on mobile to Google and Apple because they make mobile platforms. We would like a stronger strategic position in the next wave of computing. We can achieve this only by building both a major platform as well as key apps.”

Mormon missionaries can now call and text home on a regular basis (article)

One of the best and worst parts of my 2-year Mormon mission was that I could only call my family on Christmas and Mother’s day. Otherwise it was email once a week.

At first this was beyond horrible. Moving to Mexico & working 80 hours a week talking to strangers in the street about a religion I wasn’t totally sold on in a language I couldn’t yet speak was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And being totally cutoff from family made it that much worse.

That said: being forced to adapt to my environment very likely propelled me way deeper into the local culture than I otherwise would have gone.

And even though I no longer practice Mormonism, the cultural experience of living with poor people and adjusting as much as possible to their culture, and their language, and their general way of life was one of the richest experiences of my life.

It’s totally possible that this is false choice, and that you can have both regular family conversations and cultural integration. And this isn’t meant as a critique of the Mormon church’s decision.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if their missionaries came back a little less invested in the culture of wherever they served their mission.

A series of tweets quoting a man and his wife (tweets)

“me: I love you

wife: how much

me: why this obsession with quantification

wife: what gets measured gets managed”

A long series going back 3 years of quotes from Visa and his wife in conversation. Fantastic thread.

Visa is awesome (follow him here) and regularly puts out other solid content.

This was originally published in my weekly newsletter, How It Actually Works.