Two secret agents need to meet for the very first time. They don’t know anything about each other—can’t even be sure that they live in the same hemisphere. They will recognize the other agent when the day comes, but that’s about all.

The spies haven’t previously agreed on anything, and they can’t communicate in any way, neither directly nor indirectly. The deadline for the meeting is one year. Within 12 months, the two agents need to meet without sharing so much as a tweet.

Where and when will they meet? And what would you do if you were one of the agents?

This puzzle is obviously “unsolvable” in a way that no two people will come to the same conclusion. Rather, it is an opportunity to observe creative problem-solving in real-time and to see how candidates talk through different approaches.

To maximize the chance of having a successful meeting, the agents need to think through what they themselves would do in such a situation, as well as imagine what the other agent might do. Since there’s no prior agreement and no knowledge of each other’s whereabouts, their best hope is to increase the probability of a chance meetup by choosing a place and time that most other agents would reasonably think of.

I don’t know much about spies, but I know that when I lived in Berlin, Germany, I only ever met up with friends who specifically came to visit me. On the other hand, when I lived in Manhattan, I only needed to wait, and sooner or later, all my friends from all corners of the world would eventually come by. So, “my” agent would choose New York for the meetup, and if it’s New York, it has to be Times Square, and if it’s Times Square, it’s probably New Year’s Eve. In my line of thought, the whole ball drop thing is just one massive secret agent meetup.

On the opposite side of my co-working desk is a project manager who’s been in meetings since he sat down. His constant voice makes it impossible for me to concentrate. While he gestures wildly and talks at the top of his lungs about some buttons on a website, I look around and realize that I’m the odd one out in this space. Most everyone else is also chatting away on video calls–that is, those who aren’t playing ping-pong.

Anyone in this room who wanted to get focused work done has given up by now, having left for a quieter corner or a different office altogether.

Open spaces promise to bring people together and increase the occurrence of serendipitous meetings–those water cooler or coffee chats where important conversations can happen. But the open-plan office can be challenging for people who need to do deep work, especially during lunchtime or whenever noise levels rise.

The perfect working environment depends on the person just as much as the space. Depending on who uses it and what they want to achieve there, the same office can be heaven or hell.

A workplace is more than a physical place where work is done. The more we learn about how people work, the more we understand that the environment affects work performance in profound, sometimes surprising, ways. Everything in the environment matters: The size of the desk, the availability of natural light, and the air quality. These elements are all predictors of our comfort, our happiness, and ultimately, of our productivity.

When children first learn to count, they often use pebbles or other physical objects to aid them. Once they get good at counting on their fingers, it still takes time and effort to transfer this skill into a different context. Children who have learned to count using their fingers need to learn to do the exact same thing using pen and paper.

Applying our existing knowledge and skills in new situations is not a spontaneous process. It’s harder to apply something at our workplace if we learned it a long time ago in a classroom — sounds true, and is true, as confirmed by by university professors Susan M. Barnett and Stephen J. Ceci in 2002.

It doesn’t help that our brain was built to forget information that doesn’t seem relevant. Even if we paid attention while studying, and our brain encoded the information correctly, it may not have been consolidated into our long-term memory. That step can be influenced by anything—from how we slept that night, our stress and anxiety levels, or whether the new information conflicts with what we already know.

And even when we’ve done everything right and have the newly formed memories in our long-term storage, our current situation might be missing the cues that allow our brain to retrieve them. Think of all the times you went to the kitchen for something, only to find yourself there and not remembering what you wanted to do — you left the cue back in the other room.

In one joke, a hiring manager says, “We always put half the incoming applications in the bin—because who wants to hire unlucky people?”

Psychology is not fair. In my limited experience with dating, I observed that girls seemingly wanted to date me only when I already had a partner—never when I was single. And quite similarly, companies seem to prefer hiring people who already have a job. Though unfair, long-term unemployment is as unsexy as a dateless math major.

Why is it so hard to enjoy the time off between jobs? For many, this could be the first chance in a long while to unplug and maybe even get a full night’s sleep. There’s a lot to like about having a day off: the time to indulge in hobbies and sports, reconnect with friends, or simply enjoy a walk outdoors.

And yet, somehow, a layoff doesn’t feel like a real holiday. Redundancy fuels uncertainty. Not knowing when the “holiday” is going to end makes it hard to set goals and plan for the future. This uncertainty makes layoffs one of the most challenging experiences in life.

Like in college, friends can provide a much-needed confidence boost. Confidence is the currency of job interviews, but it’s hard to maintain high self-esteem during the redundancy process. The more time that passes between jobs, the harder it becomes to perform confidently in an interview, which in turn makes it take even longer to find the next gig.

After being laid off, many people discover that their former teammates and work friends are very helpful in finding the next opportunity. The power of weak ties has been proven over and over again: These days, most people get a job through friends of friends. One just has to put the message out there and ask for help. For example, on LinkedIn, people with even a small number of connections can get the eyes of recruiters and hiring managers on their profiles.

I spent most of high school trying to convince teachers that daydreaming and gazing around the room is a large part of the creative process. In a surprising turn of events now there’s a new study, published in Nature, that says more or less the same.

They get there in a rather roundabout way. Melanie Brucks, who’s the lead author of the paper and an assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, didn’t realize the true value of the study and named the thing “Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation”.

They recruited hundreds of people, matched everyone up in pairs, and asked each group to come up with creative uses for a product. Pairs were randomly assigned to work either in person or over video conference — and it turned out that people on Zoom came up with less creative ideas than people who had the chance to talk face-to-face.

The reason? People who look in the camera ignore most of what’s going on in their peripheral view. The narrowed visual focus narrows their cognitive focus, and this narrowing of the underlying associative process is what hinders idea generation.

Here you go, friends: don’t ignore your peripheral view.
And use daydreaming as part of your creative process.

At a startup, self-doubt is real. Nobody knows whether the original idea is any good until the product is on the market, generating real feedback. So, a founder’s job is to perfect the following balancing act:

1. On the one hand, they need to believe in the product. Without that conviction, it’s impossible to convince anyone else to join their team, or to buy the product.
   
2. On the other hand, believing in an idea without a market is a very dangerous thing to do. If a startup spends too long building a product that, in the end, nobody will want to buy, they will run out of money before even making their first sale. At the end of the runway, a “plane” has to take off.

The successful poker player Isaac Haxton once said that perhaps the most important skill of a professional poker player is to know exactly how good you are. Overconfidence will bankrupt a person if they keep sitting at poker tables, going against better players.

There’s constant chatter in the founder’s mind: the replays of user interviews, the marketing messages of competitors, the opinions of product and sales teams.

Sounds counterintuitive, but what often helps distill the noise into something more productive is: more chat. Talking to mentors and peers can help us find our bearings and separate the signal from the noise.

This year’s reading list is some 50% thinner than it usually gets, but hey ho. I blame missing commute in 2021.

• From “Small Giants by Bo Burlingham” I learned that if you want a company that cares, you need people who care, and they need to be motivated by more than money
• From “Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb” I learned that a doctor is pushed by the system to transfer risk from himself to you, from the present into the future.
• From “Zilch by Nancy Lublin” I learned that if you need to ask for something, be as specific as possible, see “This thing X will cost you Y and will help Z number of women.”

Reading through my notes, I’m sure I’ll re-read some of the books from this year. The complete list:

• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter F. Drucker
• Zilch by Nancy Lublin
• Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
• Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
• The E-myth Revisited by Michael E Gerber
• Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer
• Ä by Max Goldt
• Traction by Gino Wickman
• After the Quake By: Haruki Murakami
• The Most Beautiful Woman in Town by Charles Bukowski
• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
• Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey
• A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking
• 12 Months to $1 Million by Ryan Daniel Moran
• Big Money Energy by Ryan Serhant
• All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin
• I Never Knew That About New York by Christopher Winn

Every time physicists discover something new about the universe, they realize that the world is more complex than they previously thought. Ancient Greeks learned that the physical world can be broken down to tiny particles, and they named the particles “atoms.” They used their word for “indivisible” because they thought, surely, this is as complex as it gets.

Later, the first physicists who worked with the electron had no inkling of quantum mechanics. Now we talk about the types of quarks, and the next time we learn more, would you bet along with me that it won’t get any simpler?

It’s as if our understanding of the world is in constant movement toward the increasingly complex. And most people’s default mindset seems to have adjusted to this well.

When we work on many types of problems, we tend to favor additive solutions rather than starting with the simplification step. We fit an extra wheel to carts, use more description to explain things, or add another layer to a cake—to make it “better.” Sometimes we do these things because the additive solution appears easier, and often because we didn’t even think to consider the alternative.

Simplifying takes effort. Consider the quote, widely attributed to Mark Twain: “I apologize for such a long letter—didn’t have time to write a short one.”

A few years ago, we built a startup headquartered in Rome. Everyone on the team was Italian except for me, the only outsider welcomed into this dolce vita. I quickly learned what seemed to be the most important rule in negotiations: first we eat, then we talk business.

Italians seem to have learned that hungry people make bad decisions, probably in much the same way that tired people do. And the easiest way to make sure you and your negotiation partners are both well fed? Take everyone out for lunch.

All roads lead to Rome

Hospitality plays a key role in Italian business culture anyway, and one way or another, it usually involves eating. Refusing an invitation for dinner is likely to be taken as an insult. It’s actually polite to let your business partners invite you out. By letting them demonstrate their “Bella figura” to make a good impression on you, you are allowing them to express their goodwill and hospitality, which makes them look good.

Negotiations start by building relationships. Perhaps a sense of urgency can be seen as an attempt to weaken the other’s bargaining position, but a business discussion can only truly start once trust has been established and every last bit of urgency has been purged from the discussion. A rushed decision might invite regret later on, and a remorseful deal is not a good deal for any involved.

Writing a resumé is an exercise in persuasion, even if it doesn’t sound like one. The purpose of a resumé is simple: to communicate, with clarity, why the writer is the ideal candidate for the job, and to persuade the employer to hire them.

“Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well.”
– David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy, the “father of advertising,” or the original “Mad Man,” was a proponent of clear and concise writing. From him, we gain at least two takeaways that will help improve any CV.

1. Know your audience. A good resumé will be tailored to the role you’re applying for. Step into the employer’s shoes and ask: Who are they seeking? What skills and experiences would their ideal candidate possess? Emphasize your corresponding experience, and you’re golden.
   
2. Keep it short and simple. Don’t use jargon where you don’t have to; remember, your CV will probably be read by HR first, and they too need to understand your words. Include only facts and experience that help your case, and leave out things that are not relevant.