My First Interview 🥶

Friends,

This week, some good news and some bad news.

When Nikilesh reached out to interview me, my immediate reaction was no — who would want to listen to me?

But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to talk about myself for 30 mins…

Joking aside, he said it was for early stage medical students wanting to get into digital health. I talked a lot about the podcast building process and how to get in touch with impressive people.

When he asked for the best piece of advice I’ve received from my interviews, I gave Dr Umang Patel’s tip—

In other news, we applied for a small grant for ExplainThisPaper. Due to some miscommunication, I had 24 hours to write and rehearse a pitch.

I actually found the time challenge a blessing. Instead of using up two weeks of time procrastinating — I worked pretty efficiently and got it all done in 4/5 hours.

We’re also building an all-star advisory board for ExplainThisPaper. We seriously want this to be Netflix for medical papers.

I’ve been pretty oversubscribed for the past few months. Sometimes, that involves choosing who you want to disappoint (there’s no option to keep everyone happy).

It’s not even a time thing. I have lots of time to watch YouTube (and write this newsletter). It’s a bandwidth problem. I think I have 4–6 hours of decent energy/productivity/bandwith a day.

That led to me being the person I hate most on a project — constantly unreliable and late.

In summary, instead of communicating that I was oversubscribed — I kept on underdelivering and doing just enough, hoping they would adjust their expectations accordingly. They didn’t. I pissed said people off and didn’t deliver what I’d promised.

Lesson learned: Communicate early on that you can’t deliver. Don’t just leave things until they deteriorate.

Warmest wishes,

Musty