#ship30for30

How I went from publishing once a year to once a week and finally built a daily posting habit

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes Writing has always been part of my professional life. I am not new to writing. Besides my blogging adventures, I worked at Automattic for the past 11 years. Automattic is a fully distributed company with a deeply ingrained love for transparency and a communication culture. Over these 11 years, I published more than 15,000 posts and comments on our internal…

This is the simplest and most effective framework to help Product Managers triage large numbers of ideas

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes The 2×2 Matrix, an unsung hero. Imagine a long list of ideas, limited time, and people. Consider two uncorrelated dimensions across which you can compare these ideas. Pick what makes more sense to you. I generally use Effort and Impact. Rate each idea on each dimension with only two options: high & low. You’ll find the exercise surprisingly quick and…

Is remote work hereditary? A short story of my distributed life

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes 1984 was the year that changed my life. My Dad started transcribing music in Braille. The library he worked for is in Zurich, but we couldn’t move to Switzerland despite his rare skillset. He had to read and write music both in Braille and print. The work was manual and only needed a small Braille typewriter. He started working from home. Transcriptions were…

A single, short book made my back pain disappear—a summary

I mentioned yesterday how I got rid of excruciating back pain by reading Healing Back Pain, The Mind-Body Connection by John E. Sarno, MD. Mine is just a minimal summary and in no way replaces reading the entire book. The key to removing the pain lies in understanding why it is there, and the path to that is short already, 200 pages only, so there are no shortcuts. Your mind is tricking…

I got rid of excruciating back pain by reading a short book that anyone experiencing it should read first

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes It was the morning of December 7th, 2019. As my flight from Mumbai lands in Munich, I feel a sharp pain in my back. I immediately mentally blame the lack of comfort on this Lufthansa aircraft and sigh at the idea of having to cope with back pain until I get home in Vienna. At that point, the pain is present but bearable; I carry my backpack with caution. The…