Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.

In this email:

• T-shaped people

• The importance of standards

• Quote

T-Shaped People

We all have strengths, but in order to be a really valuable and skilled person/ worker/ contributor to society/ human being, we should aim to be T-shaped. The T-shaped model describes how we should aim to be effective and ‘pretty good’ in a wide range of topics, while having a deep and impressive expertise in one subject. Both a jack of all trades and a specialist at the same time. In the workplace, this will enable you to help with a wide variety of projects and be useful to many people, while also being a beacon of information to others when they get stuck doing something in your area of expertise.

For example; lets take a hockey player. It is very important to be well rounded. At a minimum, you need to be a solid skater, good passer, have hockey-IQ, have nifty hands, have an accurate and hard shot, be physical, and have great cardio. But if you really wanted to take it to the next level, you should also be the best at one area. For example, all of the skills listed above, but instead of just having a good shot, you have the best shot in the league and can pick corners from anywhere. Suddenly, you go from being a valuable role player to being a star - just by improving one area of expertise.

Credits to the Valve New Employee Handbook

The Importance of Standardization

Standardization is one of the most important and fundamental aspects of our modern society, and one of the best ways to increase efficiency and productivity of any venture. Whether it is a mega-corporation or your own personal life. A lack of standards causes unnecessary confusion, mix-ups, and requires lots of stock to meet all the different measurements. Standardizing parts or processes can (and will) improve consistency, improve output, increase accountability, and overall help you understand the task at an extremely fundamental level, allowing you to diagnose any problem.

For example, the most famous example is probably a MacDonalds burger. No matter the location, country, time of day, day of the week, season, weather… Every Big Mac is going to be the exact same. And that’s why you go there! You know exactly what you are going to get! Other examples include: every stop sign and traffic light in your province being the same. Every pill in a bottle of medicine. All keyboards on every laptop are the same. The standard railroad width is 1435mm, all trains designed to the standard are able to ride any track. All charging cables are now moving to being USB-C, allowing you only need one charger since it works with your speaker, laptop, phone and tablet. Every iPhone is put together the exact same way, all across the world.

Do you have any standards set up in your personal life?

Quote I Want To Share (and a picture to go with it)

Try to avoid the media and have original thoughts. Thinking critically feels like it is more important than ever.

Thanks for reading!

Lucas