Last week I came across a podcast on Andreessen Horowitz’s blog titled “How We Podcast.” General Partner, Connie Chan enumerates several concepts, learnings, and lessons on the best ways to execute building a successful podcast.
One concept still resonating is the term Connie coined: “Insights Per Minute.” Unless you have a cult of personality podcast like Joe Rogan where listeners listen because of the host, podcasts must be disciplined around their storytelling to maximize “insights per minute.” This simple explanation is clearer than your refurbished sunglass lens you just picked up from the Ray-ban store.
Four minutes into a podcast without a tidbit of information or insight and I’m normally on to another one. They’ve learned this at a16z and made adjustments to maximize their ‘insights per minute.’ Little science around optimal number of insights in a minute or span of a podcast have been researched but the overall concepts had me asking the question: “How many insights per day am I exposed to?” or better yet “how do I currently generate insights?” and ‘how do I increase the number?’
Through early reflection, I’ve found there are 5 ways I generate daily insights: reading, listening, meeting, experiencing, and building.
Reading: articles, blogs, Twitter, and books
Listening: podcasts and audiobooks
Meeting: conversations over coffees, breakfasts, lunch, and dinners with friends, colleagues, and interesting people in a group or 1 on 1 setting.
Experience: traveling, observing, watching, reflecting
Building: this is a wide variety and ranges from writing to working out.
These are five areas and the specific examples are ways I personally gain insights. It would be fun to study where most insights are generated today. Of course, this is a fragmented way to answer the questions: ‘at what frequency do you learn and in what ways do you do it?’ However, when framed in the context of insights per minute, the perspective is different.
Either way, thanks to Connie, I view how and where I consume insights with a fresh lens…like a brand new pair of Ray-Bans.