James Beshara Homepage

TL;DR * From executives to individual contributors, we all make one career bet at a time. * This is poor “portfolio theory” (to use a phrase from investing), meaning that this is not a balanced “portfolio” of diverse bets. It’s a career “portfolio” of extremely concentrated bets. * You...

Two months ago, I released the shoooooortest version of an album that a musician can release (7 actual songs, and then an intro and outro to make a 9-track album) that you’d call an “EP” (short for extended play). And in celebration of passing 50,000 streams on Spotify, it...

What started as a (very long) blog post, then a five-part blog post, then hit a point where I said “OK, I am just going to do this right and invite two medical expert friends to help”… became this book that is now live on Amazon. It’s been a...

On April 2nd, I launched a project I had been working on for the last several months. What started as an inner voice to research and write a book on a specific set of topics around the psychology of creators, founders, and leaders (and finding the optimal psychological approaches...

November 2018 When I write, my aim is to learn more about a subject, to start conversations, and to serve as a point of departure for further exploration (rather than a point of reference or conclusion). So please feel free to contribute to the exploration of this topic either...

“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” –Benjamin Franklin What’s the difference between a “mob” and a “crowd”? It’s a subtle but important distinction — because each is known for almost completely antithetical outcomes. One is known for wisdom, in the sense of “the wisdom of...

Years ago, I used to write songs on the piano and transfer them into Apple’s Logic Pro DAW via a midi-controller (piano-like instrument that plugs into my macbook). This past three day weekend, I knocked the rust off and got back into the hobby with a few songs. Check...

I’ve got 25 minutes, and I’d like to try an experiment… Despite the backlog of ideas for posts, I’d like to just sit here, looking at a blank page and come up with something on the spot, primarily using the time I have for content (not editing), and then...

“The real world is unspeakable.” -Alfred Korzybski I was walking with a friend recently, and we were discussing the limitations of language (among many things, like the best pancakes in San Francisco). But we kept going in circles on just how difficult it is to explain something using the...

The frequently polarizing (and often brilliant) venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, has an interesting interview question that goes like this: “What is something you believe that no one around you believes?” It’s an interesting thought exercise to see if you only keep beliefs kept by those around you (or if...