Week 49: either/or, the way we work and blend
Another intense week with lots of things going on in my life.
Hey there!
I had an intense week—lots of work and quite a few meetings. Most of them were good to very good and some quite intense.
Either / Or or black and white vs. colorful
Making decisions is one of my “favorite” topics, and I find it super exciting and, at times, exhausting. Many humans tend to have a desire for binary decisions, and in some situations, this makes absolute sense and helps create clarity and speed. My personal experience is that some topics do not need a binary decision, and the solution gets better if some flexibility is allowed. Some thoughts and examples:
What’s the decision?
Some decisions can be binary. And that’s great: coffee or tea? Pizza or pasta? Meeting with this person now? Hire this person now? Marry my partner? Do we want children? Invest in this company? Push the publish button? Sometimes decisions seem to boil down to binary moments where you can make a binary decision. But most often, it is not black and white but rather colorful. And even the most binary decisions are colorful when you put them on a long timeline.
What’s the timeframe?
If I look at things on a larger timeframe, I always see that binary decisions in the context of the grander scheme are not as binary as they might seem. All the examples above have long-term consequences, but they also leave a lot of room to fill them with life and make even more decisions and adjust while you go.
Some more on “Remote First”
As you might know: APX is remote first. We are discussing within the team what this means and about remote-first vs. remote only or remote primarily. Today we did a 90-minute session to discuss how we want to put our remote-first approach into action in the first quarter of next year: each team will define how much personal meeting time they will require and how they want to organize themselves. Our only “physical requirement” so far is participation in our all-team two or three-day offsite on the company level. Some teams might want to meet more often in the physical world, and in general, anyone who wants can work from our office.
In addition to the physical presence questions, we also discussed how we want to use meetings and tools to get things done. We are constantly looking to improve how we spend our working time, and we will try some new formats:
synchronous vs. asynchronous meetings
identification of different meeting types and best practices how they can be prepared and documented
building in learning loops including identification, documentation, and sharing of best and worst practices
personal attitude and principles towards working together synchronously and asynchronously
Continuous improvement of our tech stack. I could write several newsletters about this topic. And most likely will. One teaser thought here: You usually use state-of-the-art tools in their newest version when you set up a company. Then you build your processes and habits how the organization works with them. So far, so good. And then something happens: The tools evolve, and their evolution is faster than your inclusion of their new features into how you use them to get things done. After 3.5 years of APX, we are not using all our Tech Stack opportunities. And I don’t think we are alone with this. Nevertheless, we recognize that there is opportunity in process evolution.
What is my job?
I have had some discussions with colleagues and founders about how to have a multidimensional life, be focused, and at the same time not one-dimensional. One of the questions we discuss is: Should you do one thing? Or can you do multiple things simultaneously? I think this is connected to the “either/or” and “as well as” question above. I have a clear answer for myself: My primary job is APX’s managing director. And I have some other roles as well. (You can see them on my LinkedIn profile). It needs some planning to have the right amount of time for each role, and there is also a “time allocation hierarchy” in my roles. This allows me and my “stakeholders” to have clarity and reliability. I do not see a need to have another hierarchy in my roles. So I do not use “importance” as a prioritization. They are all important, and I rarely get into a situation where it is impossible to prioritize due to too many simultaneously essential topics.
APX gets the by far most significant share of my time. I generally allocate time to the roles to prioritize. I have a clear idea of how much time I need to give for most roles: Hours per day for APX, hours per month for my board roles. Some months (especially end of quarters), the board roles need a bit more time than in the other two months of the quarters. But as this is not a surprise, it is plannable.
I also allocate time to my private life. Sometimes I like to plan this as well, and sometimes I love to go with the flow on weekends, evenings, or holidays.
In general, I am a big fan of having a good life, but I am not sure if the concept of work-life balance is right for me. I instead think the most sustainable way is to continuously work on a blend of all different roles over periods. There are multiple thoughts behind this: I do not see a conflict that needs to be balanced between work and life, and in addition, I think there are more than these two dimensions to a good life. In addition to this, I find the timeframes very important: I don’t think it is a good idea to balance your life on a daily level or a “life” level. A daily level is too short. And a too long timeframe is too unpredictable. Imagine you plan to work super hard for 20 years to stop working then. You might die in between (ok, that’s quite radical, but other things might happen as well) or - if you work on something you love - stopping it might not be something desirable.
What I watched and read:
I enjoyed (and am still enjoying) the state of the European tech and the article about it on Sifted.
I cannot wait to travel again. And I am very interested in Africa. Watching Indigo Traveler go to Lagos is a super exciting glimpse:
Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin covered van Halens Jump in their Hanukkah sessions:
Two articles in German about APX portfolio companies
Business Punk über Resilienz mit einem Artikel darüber, wie man einen kühlen Kopf in sonderbaren Zeiten bewahrt und wie heyvie dabei helfen kann.
Und Insider über Julia und Sophie, die mit ihrem Startup Beatvest helfen, sehr schnell zu lernen, wie man Geld anlegt.
I am still irritated by this selection of pictures. Sorry for sharing if this triggers you. ;-)
I hope you take something meaningful from this week’s newsletter. Have a great week!
Best
Joerg