ARCHIVED: Cultivating Resilience

Hi, I’m Jason (@jasonshen).

I’m a product leader, serial entrepreneur, and resilience expert who believes life is better when we have the courage to play by our own rules.

In 2020, Facebook acquired my last company, Midgame, an Amazon & Techstars backed gaming & esports company. At FB, I work on knowledge and productivity tools.

I’ve been writing for the web since 2010 and started this newsletter in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic to explore themes of change and adaptability. We owe it to our families, teams, and communities to cultivate resilience and rebuild in the face of adversity.

Each Saturday, I publish new ideas, illustrations, and inspiration around topics adjacent to resilience: stress, burnout, fitness, strategy, organizational development, social change.

Past topics include:

• A four-part resilience framework

• Reflections after the Atlanta shootings

• Doris Kearns Goodwin on Presidential leadership in turbulent times

• Tech worker burnout in the pandemic

• How near misses and failures lead to success

• Adaptability is a pandemic coping skill

• The science of winning teams

To keep things light, I like to include some kind of visual, including an occasional webcomic I do called Scotch & Bean

If you’re looking for a more formal bio, here’s one:

Jason Shen is a three-time startup founder turned Facebook PM. As a resilience expert, he’s published in Fast Company, Vox, TechCrunch and spoken at events at TED, Google, and The White House. Raised in New England, Jason spent nearly a decade in Silicon Valley before settling in Brooklyn with his wife Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, a multidisciplinary artist, along with two kettlebells and many piles of books.