Biweeklycast

By Biweeklycast

Friendly discussions about life, business, engineering, and learning between Dima Malenko and Slava Rudnytskyi.

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FAQs about Biweeklycast:

How many episodes does Biweeklycast have?

The podcast currently has 354 episodes available.

Biweeklycast episodes:

December 31, 202450: More precise
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima and Slava follow up on the conversation they started in episode 47 and Dima tries to articulate more precisely what he means by people not being specific enough and gives example of common pitfalls of obscure communication.
Theme corner: Dima's year of next

Example 1: "System X is broken"

Clear call to action is very helpful

High context and low context situations and personalities

Example 2: "Uber for X"

Metaphors can be useful, but must not be the only means of describing an idea

Effectiveness of metaphors depends a lot on pre-existing context

Example 3: "System will to be reliable"

Context is important for everything!
...more
56min
December 24, 202449: Season of strategy
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima and Slava dive into wonderful season of strategic sessions and try to deduce why everyone does them in December and how to make working on strategy a time well spent.
Theme corner: Slava's fall of nucleus
Slava's another podcast: Starsphere Talks (in Ukrainian)

What is a "strategic session"? And why everyone tries to have them in November and December?

Difference between strategizing and yearly planning

What to consultants or external facilitators bring to strategic sessions?

Leadership and collaboration for strategy development

Work on strategy: a point in time or a process

What's "strategic" in your work?
...more
56min
November 14, 202448: Founder Mode
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima and Slava discuss "Founder Mode", an essay by Paul Graham about differences between more founders and hired managers in tech companies.
Founder Mode

Format of an essay

What is special about founders?

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: ‘I Never Called it Founder Mode’

"An argument can be perfectly biased in two different ways."
Perils of delegation: where to dive deep and where to step away

Is "manager mode" about driving towards short-term objectives and "founder mode" about executing on a long-term vision?

"Care about what you do."
...more
48min
October 28, 202447: Can you be more specific?
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima shares his longing for the necessary details and the right level of abstraction, while Slava tries to persuade him that all the details aren't always necessary and everything can be fine anyway.
Dima's knowing-doing gap in working on the theme

Is lack of specificity really a problem and when?

Level of details is what matters, but are all the details always necessary?

Understanding of the details shows even an high level of abstraction

Details vs trust
...more
1h 2min
October 07, 202446: Creative Procrastination
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
From the discussion it is not entirely clear if Dima and Slava talk about procrastination that gets in the way of them accomplishing creative endeavours or all the creative they find to postpone working on hard and important things.
Dima did a bit of research on "Lord of the Rings" and J. R. R. Tolkien and he came to appreciate the amount of effort and rigor that went into creation of that fantasy universe

Dima also read "Some Desperate Glory" by Emily Tesh, the novel that won the Hugo Award in 2024, and found it a better story, but also not beyond reproach

Slava's fall of nucleus

Cognitive distortions that lead to procrastination and passive and active procrastinators

Writing is (un?)surprisingly challenging for everyone

Is procrastination are result of our mismatched expectations?

How does one recognize they are procrastinating?

Common theme for how procrastination creeps in: big ambiguous task is replaced with a small and easy win

Self-help and social methods for getting oneself out of the procrastination trap

Reassertion using positive feedback on your prior work

Create a crystallization point to start working on a big daunting tasks
...more
52min
September 13, 202445: Starter Villain
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima and Slava play literary critics and discuss "Starter Villain" – a book by John Scalzi.
Biweekly 32: We Are Bob

All Biweekly bookclub episodes on the site and on YouTube

Other books by John Scalzi
Lock In series: Lock In and Head On

Fuzzy Nation

The Kaiju Preservation Society

Other books Dima and Slava enjoyed
Permutation City by Greg Egan

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
...more
48min
September 02, 202444: Having Fun
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima and Slava discuss different facets of having fun, discover the golden pentagon of productive state of mind, and nearly form a consultancy to preach that around the world.
Theme's corner: times flies

Is "leisure" the same as "rest"?

Is having fun while working on something important to achieve great results?

Slava: "Having fun is overrated." Internet: Having Fun Won’t Make You Happy

Create space for having fun however you do that

Here's why you should make a habit of having more fun

How to Have Fun: 19 Ways to Enjoy Yourself & Think Positive

Can you put having fun on the calendar?

Some things only happen when you plan for them

Axes of the "golden" pentagon of productivity
Having fun – being bored

Tensed – relaxed

Focused – distracted

Stressed – not stressed

Pleasant – unpleasant

Balance is always(?) the key

How important is "disconnecting" to being able to "have fun"?
...more
53min
August 20, 2024 43: EdTech Club
Slava shares his latest idea and initiative to create a space for EdTech companies to talk and work together on socially important projects. Dima, naturally, gets to ask questions to test the thinking.
...more
1h
August 08, 202442: How Minds Change
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima and Slava have read "How Minds Change" by David McRaney and discuss how relatively diverse set of stories come (or do not come) together to give a practical framework for influencing others.
Follow-up: do not sabotage your future self!

A book or a collection of stories?

Deep canvassing method appears to have connections to best practices in business communication

We do not experience reality directly – our constructs reality for us

Assimilation and accommodation of new infromation

Peer pressure and our tribal ancestry

Are face-to-face communities stronger than purely online communities?

Is arguing an integral part of human nature?

Psychology research and the not uncommon fakery of communication

Problem with popular science: more popular than science

Honest persuasion is a two-way street: both minds are likely to be influenced
...more
57min
July 25, 202441: Distractions
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube.
Dima and Slava talk about distractions, different ways to categorize them, and discuss how to prevent any kind of distraction from derailing an otherwise productive day.
Follow-up on Brazilian education system: Feynman was not wrong

Theme corner: Dima's year of next

Dima's classification of distractions
True distractions

Digressions

Diversions

Slava's classification of task
Apples

Broccoli

Eggs

Office distractions vs. home distractions

Ideas for distraction-less note taking?

Focus modes on iPhone are great

Dealing with numerous chat messages

Challenges and mysteries can be particularly offensive digressions

Reframing unsuccessful projects as learning exercises

Project distractions and role distractions
...more
1h 4min

FAQs about Biweeklycast:

How many episodes does Biweeklycast have?

The podcast currently has 354 episodes available.