Evidence receipt / recommendation
Published · transcript-backedRecommends Radical Focus. Recommends The Wisdom of Insecurity.
14 Aug 2025 Lenny's Podcast The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay
“Radical Focus, by Christina Wodtke, is obviously, I cite it a lot in my book, I think it's the best book about OKRs. I love her style of writing. I love the way she tells stories. I love the focus on focus, this idea that again, the way you do it is less important than the result of the way of doing it. I just find that so inspiring, always. The other book, this is a bit of a curveball, is by Alan Watts, the Buddhist philosopher. It's called The Wisdom of Insecurity. And a lot of the way I talk about control, and giving up control, comes from that book. It also has a concept. It opens with a concept called the law of reverse effort, which is that sometimes, the harder you try, the worse you make things. When it comes to setting goals, doing OKRs, doing strategy, I think about this a lot, that there is a tendency sometimes to put effort towards the overcomplication of things, which in turn makes those things less effective, what they're ultimately intended to achieve. So, highly recommend that book. It helped me a lot through some dark times, mentally. There's an idea in the book. He talks about how trying to keep yourself perpetually safe in an imagined future is effectively killing yourself to the present. And ooh, that hit hard. That hit me really, really, really hard. So, highly recommend that book. If the things we've talked about today make you even a fraction of, as anxious and fearful as they make me when I navigate them in my work, then I highly recommend The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Matt LeMay
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- recommendation
- Recorded
- 14 Aug 2025
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…Question one. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? Radical Focus, by Christina Wodtke, is obviously, I cite it a lot in my book, I think it's the best book about OKRs. I love her style of writing. I love the way she tells stories. I love the focus on focus, this idea that again, the way you do it is less important than the result of the way of doing it. I just find that so inspiring, always. The other book, this is a bit of a curveball, is by Alan Watts, the Buddhist philosopher. It's called The Wisdom of Insecurity. And a lot of the way I talk about control, and giving up control, comes from that book. It also has a concept. It opens with a concept called the law of reverse effort, which is that sometimes, the harder you try, the worse you make things. When it comes to setting goals, doing OKRs, doing strategy, I think about this a lot, that there is a tendency sometimes to put effort towards the overcomplication of things, which in turn makes those things less effective, what they're ultimately intended to achieve. So, highly recommend that book. It helped me a lot through some dark times, mentally. There's an idea in the book. He talks about how trying to keep yourself perpetually safe in an imagined future is effectively killing yourself to the present. And ooh, that hit hard. That hit me really, really, really hard. So, highly recommend that book. If the things we've talked about today make you even a fraction of, as anxious and fearful as they make me when I navigate them in my work, then I highly recommend The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts. I was going to ask what the title is, because that sounds really powerful. Amazing, amazing pick. Second question, do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?…
Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.
Named in this claim