An Interview with Atlassian Co-Founder and Co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes
Writing publicly leads to remarkable, extraordinary serendipity.
For yet another example, forge ahead, dear reader.
This very publication, White Noise, led me to connect with David Perell. David is a good podcaster, a better writer, and the best, most genuine super-connector that I have ever “met” (thanks COVID).
As he often does, David connected me with an incredible person: none other than Tech Optimist and self-described Trophy Husband, Sriram Krishnan. Sriram was in search of both editor and researcher for The Observer Effect, his online publication that “studies interesting people and institutions and tries to understand how they work.”
We chatted, got along well, and began to collaborate.
The rest, as they say, is history. Without further ado, the The Observer Effect’s fourth interview:
I strongly recommend reading it in full. However, if you don’t click the image or link above, I exhort you with this:
Write early, write often, and write publicly. It may well change the trajectory of your life.
If you’re tiptoeing around the edges of a project, passion, or possibility, make like Nike and just do it.
As is said, we either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.
Will your want into existence via a hefty dose of effort, output, and action. Perception influences reality and reality perception in a never-ending cycle of psychological reflexivity. To bastardize Descartes, it is not so much cogito, ergo sum—I think therefore I am—as facio, ergo ero—I do therefore I will be. Incremental action often leads to exponential results.
As Neil Stephenson once wrote, “The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.”
To skim, sail, or slide, however, you must be in the game itself. You must fight and toil and trouble and struggle just like Theodore Roosevelt's man in the arena. Regrets taste far more bitter and linger that much longer than mistakes or missed opportunities ever do.
Excelsior.