I was spurred to read Principles by Sebastian's recent post about internal documents (the Valve one was also pretty amazing). Here are my very rough notes from them--- maybe enough to spark an idea or two from someone who's read it already, or act as a preview to someone who hasn't. I've left personal stuff in just to show an example of what sort of questions are raised through reading.

I didn't really read the management part too carefully or take good notes on it, so this is all from the personal principles section.

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** Bad opinions can be very costly, so be cautious making them.

** Consensus is often wrong.

** Have smartest people challenge your opinions to make them better / learn their thinking.

** Most failure is from not seeing reality for what it is. Makes sense.

** Truth leads to more rapid success.. be honest about strengths and weaknesses (take personal inventory)

Important universal principle: Have to push limits and receive pain to progress. Pain + Reflection = progress. Pretty good at this.

Face harsh realities. Okay at this.

Be good, don't look good. Okay at this.

Make decisions based on 2,3,4th order consequences. Good at this, could be better. Really great heuristic to keep in mind when making decisions.

Hold yourself accountable. Very good at this.

PROCESS:

1. Have clear goals.

2. Identify and don't tolerate problems.

3. DIAGNOSE those problems.

4. Design plans that explicitly lay out tasks that will get you around your problems and on to your goals. (NEED MOST WORK HERE)

5. Execute

BIG CHANGE to my process-- do these discretely. Don't worry about higher or lower on the ladder. Makes sense.

Figure out which of these I'm good at, which I'm bad at, and compensate.

** Doing hard things to become successful is a lot easier in the long run than being unsuccessful.

1) Questions

How well do you know what you want most out of life? Pretty well.

Most important goals? SETT, Baby Momma, Change the world

Good at setting goals? 8/10

Confidence in that? High

Why should you be confident? Confident because I've spent lot of time making goals and stating them publicly.

2) An impediment to identifying problems is not wanting to face harsh realities. For example... with SETT some bloggers won't want to switch because we don't support themes yet. Important to be able to see the scale of problems. 

** Finding problems is finding puzzles that, when solved, will get me closer to my goals. In that way, problems are valuable. Ignoring them doesn't make them go away.

Questions

- How good are you at perceiving problems? Okay
- How confident? Not at all... could be anywhere from 3-8 or so.

Be very precise when identifying problems. What is causing them? The more precise, the easier it is to solve them.

Tolerating problems:

Important not to tolerate problems.

How much do I tolerate problems? Varies... usually not at all, but sometimes more, especially when it involves someone else.

How confident? Very

Why? Because I have a history of saying that certain things are unacceptable, and then following through.

Current problems:

1. I don't meet girls anymore. I also don't really care.

2. SETT's audience is limited to exclude people I'd really like for it to include.

3. Distraction sometimes

4. Spend too much time deciding what to eat for dinner and not diligent about making sure I have a stocked fridge.

5. Too many SETT bugs

6. Not good at vulnerability

3) Diagnosing Problems

Solving anything other than the root cause is totally inefficient, because you'll have to deal with it again.

Root causes are generally adjectives about me... proximate causes are verbs. For that reason, it's very important to look at oneself objectively. If you can't do that, you can't see the problem.

Questions
- How wiling are you to touch the nerve? Varies, really. I'd say in some case very bad, in some cases decent. Definitely not a strength, although there are times I've done a good job.
- Are you willing to get at root causes? Yes.
- Are you good at seeing patterns and finding the root cause? Not sure, really.

I think that I might have a decent aptitude for this, but that I rush through/skip the process so  don't benefit from it.

4) Designing the plan

Most forward motion comes from moving past obstacles. Solutions should change how I do things to make sure the problems don't recur. There are many paths to success, so just find one. Create a story linking past/present/future that describes how the problem came about and how it will be fixed. Tasks come from this, but the story is just as important.

BIG mistake not planning. I make that mistake all the time.

Questions:

- How well can you visualize? Very well

- How confident? Very

- Why? Because for some important things I come up with improbable specific plans and follow through with them.

5) Doing Tasks

Questions:
- How good are you at pushing through? Very. 9/10
- Very confident
- Because it's all I do.

When the process is working, things at the goal end change infrequently, and task end change more frequently.

"What is true?" "What should be done about it?"

What's the biggest weakness I have? Maybe lack of planning?

Worst step? Not really sure... actually think I'm pretty good at doing all of them BUT I skip 3 and 4 all the time. Probably wish I was better at touching the nerve.

MANAGEMENT

What do you want? What is true? What should I do about it?

No right to hold a critical opinion without speaking up about it
Don't say anything about a person you wouldn't say to them directly

The point of being radically honest isn't the first level consequences... it's the 2nd, 3rd, etc

Love mistakes and learn from them. Find weaknesses and address them. Don't be afraid of either.