Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:46:59 · Lenny Rachitsky, Amol Avasare
[01:46:59] S0: Oh, we covered a lot of ground. Okay, here we go. I've got five questions for you. First question, what are two or three books you recommend most to other people? [01:47:09] S1: It probably ties to a lot of what I just talked about. I think a lot about meditation and my emotional state. What I spend most of my time thinking and reading and researching and working on outside of work. So my recommendations very related to that. The first is a book called Joy of Living by a Buddhist monk. His name's Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. It's just really about how you can start to think about your life experience in a different way and have tactics of what to do to kind of change just how you think about things. This is one where I've recommended to people. Yeah, I've recommended to a lot of people and they've really, really enjoyed it. I think another one is Awareness by Anthony de Mello, which is a kind of similar thing but from a different angle. Those two I consistently recommend to people. And then the third one is more relevant to product in many ways is Thinking In Bets by Annie Duke. I think just being able to break down a situation when someone's like, "I don't know, it'll get done in time. Okay. Can you put a number to that? What percentage or likelihood is it?" Those types of things, I think, are just so tactically helpful in product. [01:48:20] S0: Favorite recent movie or TV show?
01:48:20 · Lenny Rachitsky, Amol Avasare
[01:48:20] S0: Favorite recent movie or TV show? [01:48:22] S1: I think movie is probably Marty Supreme. It's one of the only ones I watched recently. I thought it was great. I thought it was just insane. Absolutely insane movie. It was ridiculous, but I loved it. TV show, I have not watched TV in a while. I think it's probably the Olympics would be the one, if that counts. [01:48:38] S0: Is there a product that you love just like, I don't know, when you discovered recently or just one you have in your life that's like, "Oh, this is very cool. People might want to know about it"? [01:48:45] S1: Yeah. So this is a funny one. I was in Japan last week and I was sleeping in this hotel and I just really loved the pillow that I had in this hotel. It was very random. I just at times had neck and upper trap pain and sometimes I've been frustrated with my pillow because I sometimes sleep facing up, sometimes sideways and the height's not quite right. And I was just like, "This pillow is just great." And basically this pillow is full of beads. And so you can naturally shift the height of the pillow while you're sleeping even unconsciously without thinking. And so I looked at the tag. I was like, "What is this?" I ordered it to [inaudible 01:49:26] Amazon Japan, and I bought it back with me on the plane. And so I have the name here. It's called the Maruhachi Shinsui Maruhatchi Pro pillow, and you can only get it in Japan, but they're shipped to the US, no affiliation. And I think that has changed my life in the last week.
01:48:45 · Amol Avasare, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:48:45] S1: Yeah. So this is a funny one. I was in Japan last week and I was sleeping in this hotel and I just really loved the pillow that I had in this hotel. It was very random. I just at times had neck and upper trap pain and sometimes I've been frustrated with my pillow because I sometimes sleep facing up, sometimes sideways and the height's not quite right. And I was just like, "This pillow is just great." And basically this pillow is full of beads. And so you can naturally shift the height of the pillow while you're sleeping even unconsciously without thinking. And so I looked at the tag. I was like, "What is this?" I ordered it to [inaudible 01:49:26] Amazon Japan, and I bought it back with me on the plane. And so I have the name here. It's called the Maruhachi Shinsui Maruhatchi Pro pillow, and you can only get it in Japan, but they're shipped to the US, no affiliation. And I think that has changed my life in the last week. [01:49:42] S0: That is an awesome pick. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?
01:49:42 · Lenny Rachitsky, Amol Avasare
[01:49:42] S0: That is an awesome pick. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:49:48] S1: Main one I'd say is just she'll be right. This is a very common Aussie saying. It's like she will be right. She'll be right. It's a common Aussie saying when we're faced with a tough or difficult situation, you're kind of dismissing the severity of it in a way by saying like, "Eh, it'll be fine." And I think that that's just such a good metaphor. It's such a good tactic in many, many cases. And then I think the other one is just sometimes in life, you just have to go for it. And that is something that this guy, Eros Resmini, who is the CMO of Discord, who is a very close advisor to me as a founder, he would push me on this and that was something that he would often say is just like, "Just go for it." And I think that it's a very helpful thing of you can sit there thinking, "Should I do this, should I not?" And sometimes in life, you just have to go for it. [01:50:34] S0: I love the combo of those two. Just sometimes just go for it and she'll be right. So good. Okay. Final question. Okay. So I'm curious, used to be into martial arts, that didn't go great. Do you have a new hobby that you find yourself loving? Do you make time for hobbies?
01:50:34 · Lenny Rachitsky, Amol Avasare
[01:50:34] S0: I love the combo of those two. Just sometimes just go for it and she'll be right. So good. Okay. Final question. Okay. So I'm curious, used to be into martial arts, that didn't go great. Do you have a new hobby that you find yourself loving? Do you make time for hobbies? [01:50:51] S1: I think I'm just quite tight on time for hobbies. I would say I think it's largely just work and have my body function and then take care of the most important relationships around me. I think maybe the one hobby I'd say is just I'm really into sports and I've gotten more into sports at football in particular. [01:51:11] S0: Like watching. [01:51:12] S1: Watching. Certainly not playing. My wife's from Michigan and she took me to a game at the Big House and it just changed my life. From then on, I was like, I'm a Wolverines fan and big Wolverines fan, big 49ers fan. I just love football. So that's probably the one that comes to mind. [01:51:29] S0: Amol, this was incredible on so many levels. I'm so thankful that you made time for this considering how much you got going on. Where can folks find you a line, say they want to apply for a job maybe on your team, or can they find that? And how can listeners be useful to you?
01:51:29 · Lenny Rachitsky, Amol Avasare
[01:51:29] S0: Amol, this was incredible on so many levels. I'm so thankful that you made time for this considering how much you got going on. Where can folks find you a line, say they want to apply for a job maybe on your team, or can they find that? And how can listeners be useful to you? [01:51:42] S1: You can find me on my LinkedIn. It's just Amol Avasare. I'm boring. That's it. You can look online to apply on our jobs page as it rolls across growth engineering, growth product, growth design. We are looking for great people on the growth team. So please come and join us. And I think being helpful to me is just two things, trying our products, giving us feedback, giving us harsh feedback in particular on what [inaudible 01:52:07] you better. And then please send great people our way. We are looking for the best of the best to join the team, and we would love to hear from anyone you know of as well who could be a fit for one of our roles. [01:52:20] S0: Dream job for so many people. Amol, thank you so much for being here. [01:52:23] S1: Thanks, Lenny. Bye everyone. [01:52:26] S0: Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.