Eric Binnion

  • Getting comfortable with discomfort

    My coworkers have occasionally described me as fearless, unflappable, or having a high melting point.

    I don’t think that I’m naturally fearless. What looks like fearlessness is probably the result of a strong desire to learn. In my Clifton Strengths results, you’ll see that learner is at the top of the list.

    It may seem funny that I credit a desire to learn with me seeming fearless. But, the type of learning that I’m considering as I write this is very much experiential. The type of learning that comes from attempting something difficult, working through the discomfort of being inexperienced, and then gradually becoming competent.

    At work, that often means taking on difficult or high-stakes projects. In my personal life, it has meant pursuing hobbies such as competitive shooting, 3D printing, and photography.

    These experiences do not all carry the same consequences or benefits. A project worth millions of dollars creates a different kind of pressure than learning to take a good photograph. But the underlying process is the same, and the specific activity matters less than repeatedly going through that process.

    Instead, I’d focus on the loop. Take on something that stretches you. Endure the awkward beginning. Learn enough to gain a level of competence. Then do it again.

    Over time, being a beginner becomes less intimidating. With every loop, you’ll build confidence that you can enter unfamiliar situations and find your way through them. You’ll also develop skills that often become useful in unexpected contexts.

    “If I had always done what I was ‘qualified’ to do, I’d be pushing a broom somewhere.” As I’ve also heard said, “Amateurs built the Ark, professionals built the Titanic.”

    — Naval Ravikant, paraphrased by Dan Carlin in Tools of Titans

  • Family photos 2026

    We took family photos about a week or so ago with different groups of my family. We ended up with many photos, which I won’t add all of here.

    I’m adding the big group photo, some individuals with each of my immediate family, and then a photo with our godson and his parents.

  • Clifton Strengths results

    As I consider things to share with my children, it occurs to me that they may be interested in seeing the results from personality test that I’ve taken.

    I’ve taken a few of these over the years for work, but the Clifton Strengths test has been my favorite.

    Clifton StrengthsDownload

  • Is it better to be kind than right?

    When Hero and Destiny were attending Cunningham Elementary, there was a poster in the hallway with the phrase:

    It’s better to be kind than right.

    I understand what the phrase is trying to teach. Winning an argument is not worth humiliating someone, and being correct does not excuse acting like a jackass.

    But as a general rule, the phrase is incomplete. It presents kindness and truth as competing values when they do not have to be.

    A better mental model comes from Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor. The framework considers two dimensions of communication: how personally you care and how directly you challenge.

    Source: https://www.radicalcandor.com/blog/gather-interview

    The goal is to care about someone enough to speak plainly while remaining humble about your own perspective. Radical Candor is not permission to be abrasive.

    This is a much more robust mental model for having tough conversations. Perhaps the nuance is a bit difficult for elementary-age children, particularly because “challenging directly” feels a bit confrontational. But, challenging directly does not mean being unkind nor does it mean being right.

    It means expressing your perspective clearly while remaining open to correction.

  • Get your X count up

    I tend to get obsessive about hobbies, then change them every two or three years. My current hobbies are TCGs (Pokemon and Magic the Gathering), but before that it was competitive pistol shooting.

    Shooting is the hobby that stuck the longest. I think that this is because it was the most gamified hobby that I’ve had. Each target comes with feedback. Each match you shoot in stacks you up against other shooters. There are awards that are non-trivial to obtain.

    Perhaps even more than gamification, shooting is also an activity where your competition is yourself. Rather than beating others, the focus is much more on preparation and execution of a shot plan. This always felt a bit zen to me.

    I think that this focus on competing against yourself is perhaps the strongest competition. After all, many of us are our own worst enemies.

    One of my favorite phrases from the bullseye community was from John Bickar:

    Get your X count up!

    — John Bickar

    John and others would always leave this as a comment any time someone posted a target that was a 100 but without 10 X’s.

    In the competitive pistol shooting that I did, targets have rings from X to 5. An X counts the same as the 10 point ring, but the X works as a tie breaker.

    Looking at the target above, this would be scored as a 100-6X. Now, that’s pretty good and I could choose to be happy and pat myself on the back. Or, I could choose to get back to work and figure out how to get to 100-10X.

    Most things in life have an “X count”, some measurement of craft or precision. Don’t settle for mediocrity.

  • Digitized family photos

    My Grandma Yolda recently sent me some old family photos. After going through, I selected a few dozen to get digitized.

    The photos weren’t in great shape, which you’ll see below.

    My brother, Matthew, is pictured below with blonde hair. I’m the dorky looking one with darker hair.

  • Stubborn, in a good way

    I was a big band music nerd throughout junior high and high school. I joined every band and choir ensemble that I could.

    The first instrument that I learned to play was the euphonium, which is a bit like a small tuba. While the instrument was not one that I would’ve picked, I quickly fell in love as I learned to play.

    I joined jazz band in junior high, but euphoniums are not usually part of a jazz band. The brass section is usually built around trumpets and trombones.

    You see, trombones and euphoniums are very similar. They’re pitched the same, they use the same size mouthpiece, and slide positions map to valve fingerings very cleanly. I was excited to learn to play trombone. But, before I knew it, my band director had given me a valve trombone.

    More than 20 years later, I do not remember why I was assigned a valve trombone or why I could not get a regular trombone from the school. I just remember thinking that playing valve trombone would be cheating.

    So, I went and bought a trombone on eBay. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    The trombone that I got was in a rough state with lacquer missing in many areas, particularly around the bell. But, the slide was smooth and there was a beautiful design on the bell because it was a King trombone.

    After I bought that trombone, I didn’t pick up the valve trombone any more. I just learned to play trombone.

    Eventually, I led the trombone section in high school. I played trombone solos in jazz band and marching band. All because, as a stubborn junior high kid, I decided that if I was going to play trombone, I was going to actually play trombone.

    When I recently asked a coworker what he thought of me, he described me as “stubborn, in a good way”. Apparently this stubbornness has stuck.

  • I got to see Ashish today when he came through Wichita Falls on the way back home from a family vacation. And since it was a family vacation, that meant I got to meet his family. <3

  • Juggernaut

    In 2023, I stepped in to lead the product engineering teams of WordPress.com. The role was bigger than anything I’d done previously, but after talking to a friend, I figured I could commit to anything for a year.

    A few months in, Matt Mullenweg pinged me for a Zoom. A funny detail that I remember is that he was calling from a plane and he could hear me, but I couldn’t hear anything he said. We got by with him typing and me talking.

    The subject of the call was a project that the leadership team was concerned about. Matt told me that he thought people were being overly cautious. “Be the Juggernaut,” he said. Break through the walls and push it forward.

    I hung up and started moving. I told the Dotcom leadership team we were doing this. Then I worked across functions to push the project to the end. Sometimes this meant working with marketing or legal to not tone down a message too much. Sometimes it meant deploying or reviewing code.

    We shipped the project. In the end, it didn’t have the kind of impact that we wanted. But, that was fine. We committed and took the swing.

    A while later, I was talking with my coach about that moment. About what it felt like to be the juggernaut, to do whatever it took to make the project ship.

    He listened, and then asked a simple question:

    “What keeps you from being the juggernaut for yourself?”

    That stung. It was a simple but heavy question. I didn’t need permission to push that hard for the things I was convicted about.

  • Finally, a Convertible

    Since the beginning of the year, I’ve lost about 50 pounds. Cancer is one hell of a weight loss program.

    As part of that weight loss, I’ve lost some strength in my legs as well. So, when it came to riding my ~740 pound motorcycle, I decided that it wasn’t a good idea. If I couldn’t support it properly at a stop sign, then I’d drop it. If I dropped it, I’m not sure if I can pick it up.

    So, I decided to sell the bike and get a convertible. Growing up, I’d always been a bit jealous of one of my friend’s Honda Del Sol that I’d occasionally get rides in.

    I ended up finding a 2005 BMW Z4 with only 60,000 miles for just under $10,000, which seemed like a pretty good deal.

    I got a few rides in over last weekend. Looking forward to being back home soon and getting more rides.

  • Six Months

    This past week, at my oncology appointment, my oncologist explained that the first-line treatment had seemingly failed and my cancer had progressed. Clearly, this is not a good thing. After chemotherapy, one would expect either no progression or shrinkage.

    As we were working through this with the oncologist, my wife, Sara, asked a question:

    How long does he have?

    This question had been in her mind for some time. But, she’d been putting it off until our two-month check-in.

    The oncologist, pretty quickly, responded with 6 months, maybe much less. We then saw another oncologist the next day, and he agreed with that guess and even added that if the new treatment worked, that we’d be gaining months, not years.

    While the news isn’t great, not much changes for me personally. We’ll still show up and do the work as I’ve previously talked about, on the chance that we can prove the oncologists wrong. Outside of that, I’ll prioritize spending time with the kids, trying to handle as much as possible to make things as easy as possible for Sara after I die, and enjoying the days that I have left.

  • Statistics are meant to be beaten

    After finding out that I have stage 4 esophageal cancer, one of the first things that I did was to get an idea of what the survival rate is.

    Surprise. It’s about 15%. #winning

    It’s easy to look at that number and get depressed. But, the reality is that, at this granularity of a statistic, that one can find some room for improvement if you position yourself for it.

    For me, this is looking like:

    • Relocating to Houston to go to MD Anderson, a hospital ranked as the #1 cancer center in the USA.
    • Getting very involved with my care team by asking questions not hesitating to share side effects or issues.
    • Staying in Houston until we “stabilize” and figure out the treatment plan that I can then transfer my routine treatment.

    It’s not always easy to keep moving forward in the face of poor statistics. Especially when my doctor is writing clinical notes like this 😄 :

    GOAL OF CARE: prolongation of life

    Performance Status: 1

    Social Support: excellent

    Patient speaks English: yes

    Interpreter used: no

    Patient was here with his wife and daughter

    But, we’ll continue to position for the best outcomes and then do the work.

  • Sara playing with the puppies in Houston ❤️

  • I caught up with Oli while I was down here in Houston. The last time that I would’ve seen him in person was in 2024 when we were here for Ember’s birth.

  • What Started as a Cough

    Just over a month ago, I went to San Francisco for a work trip.

    I had a lingering cough, but after talking with my primary care physician and going to the clinic twice in January, I did not think I was contagious.

    When I arrived in San Francisco, I noticed I was short of breath walking from the terminal to the Uber pickup area. For a moment, I wondered whether I would have made the trip if I had known I would feel that way in the airport. But I was there, and I figured I could visit a clinic if it got worse.

    I made it through the workdays relatively well. What changed things were a couple of nights where I had coughing fits and then coughed up a small amount of blood.

    To be clear, it was mostly mucus streaked with blood, not a large amount. I decided it did not require urgent care, but when I spoke with my wife, she insisted that I see my primary care physician as soon as I got back from San Francisco.

    So, I scheduled the appointment with my primary care physician for the next morning. The earliest I could get was 9:30am. I was coming in from San Francisco at 6am. So, I figured that I’d get to the doctor’s office and then take a nap in the truck.

    After I saw my primary care physician, he sent me to the emergency room for labs and an endoscopy.

    Within a few hours of arriving at the emergency room, after they’d done the endoscopy, I was told that I most likely had stage III or IV esophageal cancer. In addition to tumors in my esophagus, imaging showed lung nodules and pleural effusions, suggesting that the cancer had spread to my lungs.

    The past month has been a whirlwind of tests, decisions, and rapid changes.

    Within two days of finding out that I likely had cancer, my wife, our baby, and I moved to Houston so I could begin treatment at MD Anderson.

    I now have three implants: an inferior vena cava filter to reduce the risk from blood clots, a port for chemotherapy to reduce the number of IV sticks I need, and a pleural catheter so we can drain the fluid on my left side.

    I start chemotherapy and targeted therapy on Thursday. It will be a long road, but we have a plan.

    I’m deeply grateful for the support my family and I have already received from family, friends, and coworkers, and for the support we will continue to receive in the months ahead.

  • Family time in NYC

    I was recently in NYC, from the 5th-16th, for an AI enablement program that our company was doing. I had the weekend free, so we flew the family up to hang out in NYC for a couple of days with me.

  • I saw this poster at a martial parts business in NOHO.

  • Sneaking around the Christmas gifts

    Sara sent me this photo of Ember the earlier today.

    Ember had crawled from the kitchen over to the Christmas tree and was getting into the gifts.

  • Jiu Jitsu with Hero

    Hero and I recently started going for Jiu Jitsu at Dynamic Martial Arts Academy in Wichita Falls. I think that I’ve maybe had 6 classes so far and it’s been fun and challenging.

    This photo is of Hero and I from this past Thursday night.

  • I needed to replace a couple of fuses on Christmas lights today, so I had Ember help me.