Hi friends,

Greetings from Austin!

Weekend plans canceled. It's time to write.

I've been pretty frustrated with my writing output in the past year, and I've definitely had a few mental blocks. This week, I told my coach that I wanted to get back to being a "creative force." He smiled, shook his head, and said: "Why do you keep labeling yourself? When you've been in your best flow states, were you driven by the desire to be a creative force?"

"Nope."

He replied: "What drove you, then?"

"Oh, it was simple. I'd get obsessed with an idea, try to figure it out for myself, and then share what I learned with others."

"Then, do that and stop labeling yourself."

The conversation was an epiphany for me. I got so swept up in the big-picture vision that I lost sight of the practical little actions needed to write great essays. This weekend, when I sit down to write, it's back to the basics.

Here are today's finds.

Today's Finds

Main Street: Brent Beshore is one of the best hosts I know. His annual conference, Capital Camp, is the only one I attend every year. It's technically an investing conference, but it feels like more of a food festival or summer camp (with really smart people). Brent just announced a second conference for small business owners, operators & investors called Main Street. I'll be speaking, and I'd love to see you there. Here's the link.

​Music and Burial in Human Evolution: If you aren’t familiar with Kevin Simler’s writing, it’s time to change that. He writes at the intersection of anthropology, psychology, and evolution. His entire archive is worth reading, but I recommend this essay on music in particular. Humans are the only ground-dwelling species that sings (the others like birds, gibbons, dolphins, whales, and seals sing from water or the air). Of all the animals that sing, humans are the only ones that use rhythm. This essay explores why.

Kevin Kelly's Advice: For the past few years, Kevin Kelly's been dropping some excellent advice posts. Now, he's collected them into a fun little book called Excellent Advice for Living. As I mentioned in this video, here are my three favorites: (1) What you do instead of work might become your work. (2) The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. (3) Don't be the best. Be the only.

​Mechanical Paradise: A documentary that asks: How did the machine transform human consciousness? For one, the Eiffel Tower promised unlimited control over the world. Standing at the top made humans feel like guardians of the future. The view from the top was as breathtaking as the sight of the Earth from the moon, which humans saw almost 80 years later. Then, around the turn of the century, Ford rolled out the car, Edison invented sound recording, and Einstein invented the Theory of Relativity — the basis of the largest change in humanity’s view of the universe since Newton. As this documentary shows, our perspective shifts are most evident in our art. For instance, this is true for the shifts from nature to machine and from impressionism to cubism.

Furnishing Your Home: When it comes to interior design, we've used our wealth & prosperity to make homes functional and efficient instead of expressive. This was most obvious to me when I had dinner at a ~$150 million home in Bel-Air. Yes, it was grand. And yes, it was expensive. But boy, was it drab. The home wasn't really built for somebody to live in. It was built as an investment — to be re-sold to the highest bidder, as soon as Los Angeles housing market was hot. There was neither charm nor personality. It seems that at the highest levels of architecture, there's an inverse relationship between the cost of a home and the personality of it. What we've gained in economies of scale, we've lost in individuality. Rare are people like Frederic Edwin Church, whose home at Olana is one of the prettiest I've seen. I'm always on the hunt for websites that help people express themselves. Anthropologie Home is a good place to start. If you're looking for something even more distinct, I recommend Chairish. Simon Sarris has also shown how such distinctive homes can be built on a low budget, as you pour your heart into the project.