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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Effort shock is detail shock is reality shock. Many things that seem like they’d be really cool to have done turn out to require way more effort, patiently wrangling more way detail than you realized was involved, than you’re willing to invest.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1289586376887824384 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      What is the most detail-oriented activity you enjoy? Where there’s a huge number of details to get right and you just have to patiently work through all of them, and you either genuinely enjoy it or it feels like a soul-crushing grind?
      Show this thread
      5 replies 7 retweets 74 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      Ref 1: Effort shockhttps://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-ruined-modern-world.html …

      3 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      Ref 2: Detail shock/reality shock http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail …

      2 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      So one of the reasons I'm thinking about this is that work at abstract levels, like management and leadership, suffers from a lack of natural detail. A manager can't be a detail-oriented to the same degree as a mechanic because social reality has a lot less natural detail

      3 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      I think the way great managers and leaders become great is by creating a world of detail for themselves that is comparable to the natural detail environment that accompanies individual contributor work. Those who fail to do this fail at their jobs.

      1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      The thing is, the "domain" of leaders/managers is other people, and people are not things. If you bring "thing" like detail orientation to people, you'll come across as creepy/stalkery. You don't want to obsess over people the way you might over a car engine.

      2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      Some aspects do carry over. Attentive listening, empathy, individualization, are "detail orientation" in relationship mode, but it's fundamentally limited by the fact that the other person is a PERSON with boundaries beyond which they reserve details for themselves.

      2 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      If the point is not clear: if you don't like the way a rug looks, you can adjust it so it is exactly right on the floor. If you don't like the way someone's hair looks, you can't go around adjusting it.

      1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      So with people-work, while the principle of "reality has a surprising level of detail" holds, that detail is not yours to work with generally speaking.

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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      But otoh, doing good mindful work and investing satisfying effort requires *some* domain of demanding detail to work with. This is why so many managers get tempted into bullshit work -- it creates the faux-detail the mind demands out of process bureaucracy stuff.

      12:10 PM - 1 Aug 2020
      • 18 Likes
      • Murky Consequences, Or Not Soy KH Rahul Ramchandani Daniel jackson visa is working on his ebook rachel Gladstone Kerry
      2 replies 0 retweets 18 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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          But *good* managers and leaders otoh, find a way to be usefully and deeply detail oriented without either being creepy about personal boundaries OR getting sucked into bullshit work.

          1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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          Technology and finance are functional domains where it is possible to craft a "managerial detail" domain that fits this prescription. It is possible to be very detail oriented in both functions without working at the hands-on "object level"

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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          This is one reason why I tend to trust tech and finance leaders more. There's a there there to what they do if they're good at it. By contrast, sales leaders for eg. are typically creepy if they're good. They're usually turn people into things in order to produce a detail domain.

          2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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          Okay this is clearly a newsletter or blog post...

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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          Micromanagement is also a symptom of this syndrome. Which needs a name. Something like "The no-there-there problem of people work: the lack of default potential for a satisfying universe of detail in people work and how people cope with it"

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted The Art of Gig

          Went down this bunnytrail via the @artofgig post I just wrote on leverage... there's a leverage vs. detail tradeoff in work that can kill you.https://twitter.com/artofgig/status/1288943229887365120?s=20 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          The Art of Gig @artofgig
          New public post. Leverage Curves vs. Career Paths. https://artofgig.substack.com/p/leverage-curves-vs-career-paths …
          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 1
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          Hmm... I think there's a fundamental tradeoff between leverage (in the effort multiplier sense rather than debt sense) and detail orientation. Leverage spreads the same amount of detail over more area, creating fragility.

          2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        9. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. Ḟreyjạ‏ @utotranslucence Aug 1
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          Replying to @vgr

          This is a little bit why people management as a job is weird. Like, if you’re incredible as a parent, then you have a different kind of relationship with reality—one about love and connection, not about detail.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Ḟreyjạ‏ @utotranslucence Aug 1
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          Replying to @utotranslucence @vgr

          Seems like detail is a substitute for ‘control levers into the world’ and when your relationships with people let you actually love/care about them then that love/care/trust is the lever; you don’t need the detail.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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