The Art of The Impossible: "I don't want to fish forever and never catch a fish!"

Welcome to?The?Art?of?The?Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces?of?content which will both inspire?and?embolden you.

PODCAST

This week's podcast sees me talk to Deborah Liu about her personal and career journey from growing up in a small town where less than 1% of the community were Asian to how she overcame racism to become a VP at Facebook where she spent 12 years of her career. Listen here or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

After studying Civil Engineering at 美国杜克大学 Deb got her Master’s in Business at 美国斯坦福大学 and joined PayPal where she spent 6 years, working in different leadership roles including Director of Product management, focusing on Marketplaces which, at the time, made up around 70% of PayPal revenues. After that, she went to Facebook where she spent almost 12 years working in senior product leadership positions including founding Facebook Marketplace - an idea she had presented to Sheryl Sandberg years earlier.

We also talk about Deb’s new book?Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work?which is a great read for women who wish to climb the ranks like Deb did but also for men who want to understand the obstacles women face at work, how they can be better allies and to learn the stories of some incredible women that Deb features in the book.

There are lots of fantastic lessons in this episode on leadership, product management and overcoming the dreaded imposter syndrome.

Listen here or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

Enjoy!

QUOTE

“I just stay away from the problems that can't be fixed and pick the ones that can – I don't like unlimited failure. I don't want to fish forever and never catch a fish. I have to have some reinforcement. And so I pick some things that can be done and do them. I think that if you're reasonably obsessed with something, even if it's intermittent, and you have a long attention span, you keep working over the serious problems, that you’ll stumble into an answer. That’s half the secret of life.”

Charlie Munger, age 99

INTERVIEW

Wanda Harding Interviewed by Guy Kawasaki. A former NASA engineer and rocket scientist with over 20 years of experience in the aerospace field, Wanda worked on the International Space Station program and managed the Mars Science Laboratory mission launch. Today, she's inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers as an 8th Grade Physical Science Teacher at Young Middle School in Atlanta. With a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering from Hampton University and a Master's from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Wanda was the only woman of colour on her team during the Mars Curiosity rover mission. Listen here or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

READ

You and Your Research by Dr. Richard W. Hamming

"In order to get at you individually, I must talk in the first person. I have to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do first-class work.'' Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good work. You're not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do great things by chance. Well, that's a kind of dumb thing to say. I say, why shouldn't you set out to do something significant? You don't have to tell other people, but shouldn't you say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do something significant.''

At a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr. Richard W. Hamming, a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a retired Bell Labs scientist, gave a very interesting and stimulating talk, `You and Your Research' to an overflow audience of some 200 Bellcore staff members and visitors at the Morris Research and Engineering Center on March 7, 1986. This talk centered on Hamming's observations and research on the question `Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?' From his more than forty years of experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he made a number of direct observations, asked very pointed questions of scientists about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great scientists and great contributions, and completed introspection as well as studied theories of creativity. The talk is about what he has learned in terms of the properties of the individual scientists, their abilities, traits, working habits, attitudes, and philosophy.

A great read and one I have re-visited recently. Read the whole transcript here.

"In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't. They keep saying that it is a matter of luck. I've told you how easy it is; furthermore I've told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!"

FILM

The game you couldn’t put down, the story you couldn’t make up. Tetris is streaming today on Apple TV+.

Taron Egerton stars in a new Apple Original Film inspired by the true story of how one man risked his life to outsmart the KGB and turn Tetris into a worldwide sensation. The story might be exaggerated for TV consumption but the story of Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov and the rights to Tetris do provide great fodder. The film depicts the issues surrounding the licensing of the game and trying to get it licensed outside of the USSR, during the Cold War.

At that time, as I have learned from interviews with Nolan Bushnell, Al Alcorn etc, intellectual property rights did not exist as they do now, especially not in Communist USSR - individual inventions there or creations were owned by the state - theoretically to be shared among everyone.

This is a great story and should be a great watch - on Apple TV+.

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Thank you for reading?the?newsletter?and?for listening to?the?podcast?this week.?And?If you enjoy them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that others can be inspired too.

Thank you so much and have a lovely weekend.

Until next time...

Danielle