accordingtopatrick

According to Patrick…

I’m opinionated. I know what I believe is important and the things that I measure myself against. So I compiled a list of those things…

This list is based on my experience over many years of internships, jobs, startups, working for and learning from some fantastic people, advising friends, and eventually starting a company. I in no way claim to be perfect or even good in any of these areas that I highlight in this list, but these are the things I believe that I should strive to be as good as I can be at.

There are 2 sections to this Beliefs and Foundational Attributes.

Beliefs

Speed is key

• Make decisions, when it comes to software and technology almost nothing is getting carved into stone, we can always change our minds later. Progress is better than standing still.
• Bias towards incremental thinking and building when possible. But when a big bet is called for, don’t be afraid of it.
• When it comes to engineering, ship code every day, especially on Fridays and days before holidays. If you are making progress when others are not then you have an inherent advantage. And what you do often improves, the more you deploy the better you get at it, and the less risky a deploy is.

Be who you are

• Tell people what they don’t want to hear. If someone only wants to hear what they want to hear then you should stop being around them.
• It’s ok to be opinionated as long as you are right more than you are wrong.
• “Strong opinions held loosely” is something I like to think about. Don’t be a stubborn idiot, you will be wrong. But It’s not a bad thing to have opinions.
• Do what makes you comfortable, don’t feel pressured to be what someone else wants you to be.

Do what you say you are going to do

• Your word is your contract. Nothing else matters if you aren’t doing what you say you are going to do.
• As a leader or influential person at a company or team, every time you don’t do something you say you will do it adds up disproportionately more than the things you do. If you do 10 things you say you will do and forget 1 thing, those 10 things won’t matter, the only thing people will remember is the 1 thing you didn’t do.

Seek and communicate clarity

• Break things down. Simple things get done. If it’s not simple, break it down further until it’s simple. Communicate things that make sense logically.
• This is especially true as a leader. The more clear you can be about what you expect and what you believe the higher likelihood the people you are leading will execute with your vision in mind.
• When something is important you need to say it more than once, and in many cases way more than once. In a team or company setting, people will hear you say things multiple times, that’s ok keep saying it.
• When you are telling someone something, always make very conservative assumptions on them knowing something or not. Always better to clearly lay out something even if they might already know it.

Prioritize ruthlessly

• Time is the most valuable resource, you can’t get more of it, once you use it it’s gone forever. Spend it wirelessly. I try to always keep this in mind.
• Ask yourself all the time “am i doing the most impactful thing i could be doing?”. Build up a personal habit of always questioning yourself.
• I’d say this not only applies to what you are doing but also the “Why”. Avoid anything because of vanity. Lot’s of important work is not flashy or worthy of social media. Some things are purely enjoyable to you and also can look good externally, we are all human, but keep it in check.
• The balance to this is not to thrash, if you start something finish it.

Value and support people

• As an extreme introvert this is an interesting one, I’d almost always choose to go about doing something hard by myself, it’s just how my mind works. But as I get older I realize more and more how much more rewarding it is to do something difficult and go on a journey with someone else to do it with.
• Being kind and doing the right thing almost never costs very much to you.

The small things add up

• Also put “the way to succeed is to do the boring things extremely well” (tweet source)
• Things like being on time, showing up first at the office, staying later than other people, listening when people are talking, not getting on your computer during meetings. None of these things require advanced education, significant intelligence, or extraordinary effort; they are just things you can do.
• Effortless, elegant performances are simply the result of a large volume of consistent, effortful, gritty practice.
• Small things become big things. To successfully do something big (like start a company or launch a large project) you have to do all of the small things well.
• People don’t always notice all of the small things you are doing, but when they add up people do notice when you are consistently doing everything to the best of your abilities.

Operate with intellectual honesty

• Don’t lie to yourself. The smarter you are the more likely you are to do this and in a bad way, probably do it well. Call yourself on your own bullshit 10x more than you call other people on their bullshit.
• “It’s the coverup, not the crime that really gets you in trouble”
• Don’t try and trick people into agreeing with you. If you are correct or the idea is good, then no coercion is needed. If coercion is needed then you should stop what you are doing.

Use your time when not working

• Processing things yourself is very important. Alone time is when you do that.
• Alone time should be a big part of this. Even the most extroverted people will benefit (maybe disproportionately from introverts since introverts already make time for alone time) from alone time. I’ve found that many extroverted people tend to avoid alone time to the detriment of their physical and mental health. Alone time is like sleep, you can go without it but you will be running at a disadvantage to what you could be at.
• Spend your energy and time outside of work on things that bring you joy, don’t over prioritize things that other people want you to do. Time is a scarce resource, if you waste it on making other people happy then you waste it and sacrifice your happiness.
• When financials allow, spend your hard earned money, very few people (and especially not me) like to work their asses off just to squirrel away the money. If you are like that, more power to you. Spend the money you make from being good at what you do on things you enjoy.
• Take time to watch TV, movies, or read books that you enjoy. Eat good food. Drink good wine. Play video games. Sleep. Travel. Just do it, don’t let work stop you.

Attitude Reflects Leadership

• It is something I heard first in the movie, “Remember the Titans” and it is one of those things I have seen play out to be true over and over again. I just have not been able to disprove it, I have only seen evidence and experienced this being true.
• A leader’s attitude will be reflected in the people they lead. This is obviously not a math equation but you will see it play out in small and large ways within a group of people led by someone.
• The more independent certain individuals are the less you may notice it, but with a large enough group you will 100% pick up on trends. I have found this to be significantly more impactful when it comes to negative attitudes.
• When I see an individual or especially a group of individuals on a team or in an organization exhibiting troubling behaviors the first place i look is to the leader. And in almost all cases you can then find the source or at least an input as to the symptom you are seeing displayed through the behavior.
• This works in the inverse as well, when you see a team or individual displaying good habits and behaviors then you can usually find similar trends being exhibited by the leader.
• I’ve learned this the hard way, it’s not always a good thing when your team reflects exactly what you are doing and saying, sometimes you want them to act differently and to do that you have to represent that different behavior or attitude.

No Ego

• I’ve frequently found that my favorite people to work with operate in their daily activities with little or no ego. I’ve been able to boil this down to enjoying the freedom from ego getting in the way of decision-making both within a group, as a leader, and just in a person’s general things they think are priority. It’s rarely valuable to let ego weigh what you decide to do, not do, or how you do things.
• Especially when it comes to business activities and specifically building a product for people to use, the ego is a very personal thing. It does not align with the one thing that does matter when you are building products… the people you are making it for.

Foundational Attributes

Health & Fitness

• Physical health is the foundation that everything else is built on top of.
• Fitness is different for everyone. Everyone is differently capable.
• There’s something about training yourself to endure hard workouts that translates amazingly well to doing hard things and sticking to it at work. You know you can push yourself past where you are comfortable and even past where you even think you can go. You train your brain to not allow itself to say “I can’t do this”.
• Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable.

Organization

• Spaces where you do work (digital and physical) are one of the main factors or inputs into the output of what you do. Those things being neat and clean cause the output of what you are doing to be higher quality. If the place where you do your craft and get your work done is messy then the work and products you produce will be messy.
• For me, this also goes for “Life” as much as it does for physical space. If your personal life is a messy nightmare of complicated plans, dropped responsibilities, mix ups, and general fuck ups then that will probably reflect and then end up affecting your work life.

Self awareness

• Self awareness is one of the most important qualities I look for in people. More important than being super intelligent.
• Self awareness, or lack thereof, is the difference between mediocrity and significant success. You can’t improve if you aren’t aware of the areas where you should be better or should be making changes.
• A large part of self awareness is having a read on what others see you as or see in you. Listening and accepting feedback is a critical part here.

Discipline

• The ability to say no to things that might sound fun or cool but are not the most important and impactful thing you could be doing right now (see below) is a must have if you expect to be successful.
• Creating habits and rituals is important for you to achieve goals but they are also the most effective way to communicate directly and indirectly to other people what you value and believe is a priority.
• I try to treat willpower (a part of discipline) as a skill/muscle that you can train by pushing yourself. As funny as it sounds, for me something like knowing there’s a cookie in the kitchen and deciding not to eat it trains me to know that I can make the decision to not do something even if I really really want to and there is no immediate negative consequence.

Consistency

• “Consistency beats intensity”
• Consistency is a hard one to talk about and coach, it’s a sense and a part of self awareness to me.
• Being level headed with your mood is a big part of consistency.
• Showing up with drastic changes to your life, wardrobe, physical appearance are distractions to the people around you. If you don’t distract them and are consistent with what you show up as every day then people will trust you more and work better with you.
• If you need to make changes, do it incrementally and be consistent with the change.
• Good tweet from @jason on this topic.

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Thanks for reading over my manifesto. If you have any questions, feedback, or just want to say hello please send me a note at patrick@pdsullivan.com 🤙

-Patrick