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Hi friends,

Greetings from Utrecht! I hope everyone's staying safe and enjoying the spring weather.

I've been thinking about a more structured way to share my book notes, and I think I'm going to take a page from Ryan Brown, who keeps a thread on Twitter for the games he's finished. Editing my book notes and uploading them takes a bit of work, and something like this could be the excuse I need to actually do it. If manage to successfully trick myself this way, you can expect regular updates on Twitter on my book reading accomplishments, and more book notes on the website and in the newsletter.

If I find I actually like this setup, I might do the same for the games I play and the movies/shows I watch. For instance, I just finished watching the first season of Invincible, which is a fantastic animated take on the superhero genre that doesn't shy away from the civilian casualties that are usually kept off camera in superhero fights or alien invasions. I've also started watching Fleabag with Michal, which so far seems to be a rougher, edgier take on Bridget Jones. It was one of Barack Obama's favorite shows in 2019, which is hilarious if you consider that in one of the first episodes, the main character is seen in bed masturbating to... a speech of Obama.

As for videogames, I'm still zipping around, bonking monsters in the head in Monster Hunter Rise, and I'm planning to jump into Spider-Man on PS5 next.

If you have any good recommendations for what to read/watch/play, definitely let me know, there's always room on my backlog!

Here's what I want to share with you this week:

Book notes - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: Eye-opening read in which Lencioni examines the five levels on which a team can fall apart, and explains how to establish the opposite: a team with high trust, that engages in constructive conflict, commits to decisions, holds each other accountable, and is focused on results. Honestly, this one explains every broken team I've ever been a part of.

The Best Bits

​Less is more: I thought this was a very insightful article into one of our mental biases. When presented with an issue, most people try to solve it by adding something, rather than subtracting something. Learning to work with subtractive solutions can greatly enhance your problem solving abilities.

Life advice from Kevin Kelly: Wired's Kevin Kelly turned 69 recently, and to celebrate he shared a list of 99 pieces of life advice. Kelly is a fascinating figure, and his advice is equally so. Check out the list he shared last year if you want even more.

​The first 1000: Every company profile looks at the ways a company managed to scale. But what about their very first customers? How did they managed to get those? This website shares case studies of well-known companies and the journey to their first 1000 customers.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn

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