Info Diet gives a glimpse into the personally selected feeds and media routines of the people building what comes next. In each edition, a different builder spends two days recording everything they take in to stay ahead of the curve. This time: Rajiv Ayyangar, cofounder and CEO of the virtual office app Tandem. Rajiv was born and raised in Menlo Park, California, and lives in San Francisco.
Saturday, May 7
8:30 a.m.: I begin the morning with coffee and a chapter of Mac creator Jef Raskin’s classic The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems. Our head of design, Andriy, recommended it. I had asked him whether he had a favorite book, expecting fiction, and he absolutely went on about Raskin.
Raskin presents a beautifully reasoned first-principles view of usability. I’ve found that reading one chapter at a time is both pleasurable and a good source of UI inspiration. This morning’s chapter focuses on interaction efficiency: Raskin notes that the familiar Fitts’s Law and its discrete counterpart Hick’s law both take logarithmic form, much like Shannon entropy in information theory. Put differently, the speed at which you can enter information into a computer through interaction (for example, clicking a button) is proportional to how much information you’re sending the computer. (If you click one button out of 10, that conveys more information than clicking one giant button with no alternatives.) Intuitive, maybe, but still a lovely connection.
9:15 a.m.: On the way to getting my car repaired, I listen to a rock-climbing podcast called The Nugget. I’ve been a serious climber for nearly two decades — there’s something transportive and freeing about finding a path up a rock. (I wrote a bit on why I climb here). This particular episode features Mike Kerzhner, a friend and web3 engineer, who also happens to be a world-class climber. It’s frank and in-depth.
10 a.m.: Then I do a yoga session while listening to Bach cantatas. Today it’s Gardiner’s BWV 61, with a gorgeous bass recitative and fugue. The complexity helps offset the pain.
10:30 a.m.: I check a few WhatsApp groups before getting into work. One is a group of CEOs organizing to support efforts in Ukraine. It’s encouraging to watch the quick cooperation, though the situation sits heavily with me. Another is a group of Y Combinator founders doing a fitness challenge — lots of encouragement and broadly positive energy.
1:30 p.m.: I wrap up the Nugget episode with Mike while driving to the gym to climb with a friend. Host Steven Dimmitt does a terrific job of asking the right questions for every guest, then following them in a way that adds a great deal of color and depth. You come away feeling as though you know the guest better after the conversation. Mike’s episode is no exception, even though he’s already a friend.
8 p.m.: My brother and I both started piano when we were young, but while I’m only an amateur (rock climbing, it turns out, isn’t great for the fingers), he’s a full-time pianist and musicologist now working on a recital program. I get to be the only audience member, taking in a private performance on a beautiful Steinway I’ve squeezed into my apartment. He plays Bach and Schubert. The audience goes wild.
9:30 p.m.: Spurred on by my brother, I open Tonic, a live-practice audio app, and listen to classical musicians playing in virtual studios. (Jfyi, I’m a tiny investor.) It feels as if I’m in the basement of a conservatory, seeing what different people are working on. After typing applause and encouragement into the studios’ chat, I open a virtual studio myself and practice for a while. Today it’s “Goldberg” variations (No. 7). I stopped playing piano in college, but picked it up again a few years later. Thanks to the Tonic community, I’ve been practicing at least 15 minutes a day. Gotta keep the streak going!
11 p.m.: Before bed, I browse YouTube for my climbing-video fix. I pick one titled “Return of the Sleepwalker” on one of my favorite channels, Mellow. I like Mellow because they provide excellent climbing footage and not much else. It’s very straight to the point. The video follows pro climber Daniel Woods as he works on what may be the hardest boulder problem (short climb) in the world. For a broader audience, I strongly recommend the documentary The Dawn Wall. The film captures the struggle of two pros climbing the hardest route up El Capitan in Yosemite in a multi-year effort that most people in the climbing world thought was impossible.
Monday, May 9
8:40 a.m.: I start the day with coffee and catching up on email. First I read This Week in Hybrid — Tandem’s newsletter, but also plainly the best weekly roundup for return-to-office news, policies, and trends. It includes notable updates from Airbnb, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Roblox, and news about an in-office perk at Google (a private Lizzo concert!). It also highlights a WIRED essay about a part-time telecommuting experiment from the ‘70s, and what it can teach us about hybrid work now.
Larry Gadea, CEO of Envoy, sent me a Kickstarter announcement on Product Hunt for a Tandem shower, joking that he thought we had hard-pivoted. That sent me browsing other product launches to get a quick read on new and emerging startups. Most of the top products, I notice, are in productivity, such as calendar upgrades, internal company links, and browser tab organization.
I skim the Y Combinator forums email digest, which I do most days. More than other forum digests, I almost always find something interesting, useful, or inspiring there — often product launches or founder questions. Today the top post was a video from YC’s YouTube channel that walks through early-stage advice. I often send their videos to founder friends to bolster my own advice. My most-shared videos are Dalton Caldwell (YC head of admissions) on pivoting (we pivoted five times before Tandem), and Michael Seibel (YC CEO) on how to think about co-founder equity.
8 p.m.: While clicking through Youtube, a John Oliver video about the Philippines election catches my eye. I’m part Filipino. The segment is accurate and thoroughly reported, and it breaks my heart to see the country’s bleak history, which my family members remember firsthand, echo itself. For instance, my uncle recently described how my grandparents’ colleagues at the University of the Philippines lived in fear of arrest, and how after the Marcos regime was toppled, the end of censorship had a visceral effect. For the first time, he said, TV was actually interesting because people could tell the truth.
Overall, it’s an uneasy night. To clear my head, I stay off Twitter, listen to Bach, and play a little piano.
***
Get Rajiv’s Info Diet
Read
- The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems, by Jeff Raskin “The Original Hybrid Workers Can Teach Us How to Do It Right,” by Megan Carnegie [Wired]
Listen
- The Nugget, hosted by Steven Dimmitt BWV 61 and “Goldberg” variations (No. 7), by Johann Sebastian Bach
Watch (and learn)
- “Return of the Sleepwalker,” by Mellow [YouTube] “All About Pivoting,” by Dalton Caldwell for Y Startup School [YouTube] “How to Split Equity Among Co-founders,” by Michael Seibel for Y Startup School [YouTube] “Philippines Election: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” by LastWeekTonight [YouTube]
Subscribe
- This Week in Hybrid, from Tandem
Join
- Tonic