Some interesting ideas from The Tim Ferriss Show’s interview with Matt Mullenweg

  1. Open source was the most important idea he was exposed to in his lifetime.
  2. Open source is a bill of rights for software. The four freedoms of GPL:
    1. You can use it for any purpose.
    2. You can deconstruct the software to understand how it works.
    3. You can modify it.
    4. You can distribute your modifications.
  3. The (famous) 5 minute installation of Wordpress. It was not famous, but became so. It did something totally different to the big players in the market.
  4. Philosophy and political science help you to think about systems and incentives.
  5. How do you self-enable people?
  6. If you do X today, what does that result in tomorrow, a year from now, ten years from now?
  7. The dog chasing the car Metaphor. What does the dog do if it catches the car?
  8. Plan for success. What is the natural conclusion of your idea if it’s really successful?
  9. Gives the Wordpress community a nudge to go in directions they would not go by themselves.
  10. Uses Dvorak as an alternative keyboard.
  11. Automattic does not send email. They use P2. Threads help follow a conversation. How does a new employee follow ten years of email?
  12. Keep information public. Trust people.
  13. Slack is “consumer grade” - it doesn’t suck like most enterprise software.
  14. Rig the game so you can win. Eg. Doing one push-up a day.

Unschedule more of your life. Create space. Read a lot more to give yourself creative inspiration or the ideas for the next big thing.

  1. The hardest thing is spending time on the most important things in life.
  2. Bike shedding - Spending a lot of time on discussions on relatively unimportant but simple issues, while neglecting the more important but complex issues.
  3. Playing Saxophone taught him how to breathe, how to be on stage in front of people, how to listen and respond, how to co-compose on the fly, how to learn new things and how to practice deliberately.
  4. If you only practise the things you are good at you’ll never get better at the things you are not good at.
  5. Business Judo: what can we do that google can’t do?
  6. Advice to his twenty year-old-self: Slow down to go further. Build foundations. Build things that last long term.
  7. Take time for yourself, meditate, focuss on the present moment.

Everyone is interesting! If you’re bored, the problem is with you not the other person. It’s all about figuring out what someone is into or what they are passionate about.