Learn:  70-20-10 Rule, Noobs, Experiments

Read: 3 mins

Greetings from Florianópolis, 

This is my last week here, then heading to Rio. June is winter in Brazil, so hoping for snow on the beach (not really, it’s warm here…but I do love that song.)

Here are 3 goodies for your 3 day weekend.

🎲 Google’s 70-20-10 Rule

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy was the first General Manager for Google Maps back in 2003. 

She built Google’s biz across 100+ countries in Latin America and Asia Pacific. 

During those early days, they used the 70-20-10 rule to prioritize focus:

• 70% core business (Search)
• 20% adjacent to core (Maps, Video)
• 10% moonshots (Google Glass, self-driving cars)

Some of those small side projects turned out okay...

But not only is this a smart philosophy for business focus, Sukhinder recommends using 70-20-10 across life and career too. In her epic book Choose Possibility she explains this process as “pipelining in parallel.”

Check out Sukhinder's “Talks at Google” here.

🆕 Noobs

Legendary founder/investor Paul Graham has a great line in his essay called Being a Noob:

“I realized something encouraging about being a noob: the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally.”

For example, going to a new country (local noob), but overall learning more along the way (globally). 

Graham explains, “Though it feels unpleasant, and people will sometimes ridicule you for it, the more you feel like a noob, the better.”

Perhaps we "pipeline in parallel" this noob learning into our 10% or 20% time.

You know, show off a little side b̶o̶o̶b̶ noob.

🤔 Experiments

"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Much love, 

Mitchell aka “Life Experimenter”