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I Traveled for a Month with Just a Carry On (Here's How You Can Too)
I just spent a month traveling around Italy with just a carry on bag, no checked luggage. In this article, I'll tell you how my wife and I both packed light for such a long trip. A month is a long time. But if I can pack for
Strategy Should Hurt
“A strategy should hurt.” The trade-offs—where you invest time and resources and where you don’t—should be painful and disappointing, either internally or to your customers. There’s no such thing as a strong strategy that prioritizes everything at once. —Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building
Focus Over Compromise
[Good strategies] emphasize focus over compromise. They focus on one aspect of the situation, not trying to be all things to all people. —Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt A good strategy is single-minded. The whole point of a strategy is to focus your time and money so that
Products for Normies, Products for Sickos
Some products are made to have a perfect balance of features. They are "good enough" for "most people." A milquetoast Wirecutter pick. Those are products for "normies." But some products are made for the extremes, the edges. Those are products for sickos. (As a
Opinionated Is Good
In a user interview years ago, a customer said he found his Tortuga backpack to be too "opinionated." I got a little obsessed with that idea. A product should be opinionated. A designer—and by extension, his products—should have a point of view. Opinions are good. You
Simple is Sticky
The product that's the easiest to understand wins.
Making the Bug the Feature
Learn how Third Culture Bakery turned a bug of gluten-free pastries into a feature.
Navigating Ambiguity
To get promoted, have to be able to make better decisions despite more uncertainty.
The Best Jobs Page I've Ever Seen
The Stripe jobs page [https://stripe.com/jobs] is the best jobs page. Writing the page required a clarity of purpose that's driven the fintech startup's success in raising $1.6B [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stripe/company_financials], attracting talent [https://twitter.com/patio11], and
Working From Home During a Pandemic
This post was originally an email sent to the Tortuga newsletter [https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=h4CLJm&g=fPVq6J] and has been edited to fit this format. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today’s newsletter is for everyone working from home during the pandemic. If you’re providing an essential service