At dinner the other day my Chinese dad brought up whether English had a term for the Chinese word 鲜. In fact, there is: umami. But it’s not a word common for English learners, and I think even native speakers may not use the word frequently or have encountered it at all, unless they have an interest in cooking.
The word itself, as you may be able to tell, is loaned from Japanese, which leads me to speculate that it wasn’t a concept that anglophones thought much of until more recent times.
But does that mean the taste didn’t exist? Presumably those taste buds were there the whole time. And yet, before I knew of the word umami I would kinda just round to the nearest concept, approximately “saltiness” or “savoriness”, and my understanding is that others do the same.
But that’s less than ideal.
Fish are very umami and salty, but a food doesn't have to be both
This morning I read Creation happens in silence, a short and sweet blog post about how the vital moments of the creative process happens in silence, and often in isolation.
Procrastinators like me often don’t realize the importance of this space and may not understand why it’s so hard to get started. The reason why we need this tranquility to begin the process is because the first steps are messy and weak. You see, procrastinators are perfectionists who see this grand perfect vision, and the first draft never lives up that expectation. 1
But you can’t get started without making a first, ugly move, and so you just get stuck.
So if you know me, you know I love self-help books and I collect too many and don’t read enough of them (as they’re overfilled with anecdotes and only a few actual points). Also I keep finding new ones I’m interested in.
Well, ChatGPT solves this problem. You can ask it for a summary of a book that you don’t have any access to, and it will miraculously generate the contents for you. And that’s with as much detail, in whatever format. For example:
Which astounds me, because while I enjoy the occasional AI portrait or landscape, I wouldn’t trust the code my interns wrote much less a black box AI system.
Despite the flaws, probably safer than an AI-built bridge
I started my career as an engineer at Facebook before leaving to build a startup. Transitioning from a well-defined engineering individual contributor role to a nebulous startup leadership role meant a lot of falling on my face and a lot of lessons learned.
Here are 3 tips to keep in mind if you’re starting on this journey and want to fail less than I did.
1. Focus on What Matters by Zooming Out
In every context, it’s important to not get stuck on unimportant details.
When building an early stage startup your time is one of the few resources you can spend, so you better be spending it wisely.
