Hi friends,

I've been sharing short videos on Twitter and the one I published this week about surrendering to your nature is my most popular one yet. When I look around, I see masses of people who are trying to be somebody they're not — so they can please their parents, impress their friends, or combat some insecurity in their head. And so, they ignore their inherent strengths and twist themselves into a pretzel to become somebody they're not.

Today, I published another one asking: Why don't book bundles exist? For one price, you should be able to get the book in a bunch of different formats. Readers would be happier, publishers would make more money, and authors would spread their ideas father.

I also published a podcast with Chris Monk, who leads operations at Write of Passage. In the episode, we talk about how we defined our company values, run meetings, and communicate amongst our remote team. (Listen to the podcast: Apple | Spotify | Browser)

Chris used to run giant concerts, and one of the biggest lessons he learned is that the most successful bands are the most operationally buttoned-up too. They run on schedule, communicate well, and pay invoices on time. Similarly, my friend Jeremy says that Jimmy Fallon got the Late Night gig not only because of his talent, but because he’s easy to work with and shows up on time.

Friday Finds

​Becoming a Magician: Whenever I take on a serious new project, I like to ask myself: "Who are the magicians?" In nearly every domain, strategies for success are power laws. I learned this playing golf. It took me four years to find a superstar coach. Once I did, I realized that most of what I learned about golf from magazines and TV was bogus. It was the first emperor-has-no-clothes moment of my life because I saw how many "experts" weren't really experts at all. In short, my golf coach was a magician. His model of how the golf swing works was so much more advanced than mine that he continually surprised me. Magicians are hard to describe, but they're easy to identify when you meet them. The key differentiator is not that they're better than you at something — it's that they're operating under a fundamentally different model of reality than you are, which leads to non-linear outcomes for them.

Tocqueville, on Social Media: We thought the Internet would make people more different, but it's worth asking how it's made us more similar. The homogenization of culture isn't a new idea. Alexis deTocqueville was one of the first people to describe it, when he published a book called L’Ancien Régime in 1856. Though he was writing about 19th-Century French culture, his observations apply to our world today. He noticed how the differences between regions in France were beginning to disappear. Laws and legislation, which were once distinct and differentiated, came to resemble each other — in the words of Tocqueville: “same everywhere, same for all.” The higher people rose in society, the more similar they became, no matter where they lived. Though Tocqueville was writing about pre-revolutionary France, he might as well have been writing about modern America when he said, “What is still more strange is that all these men, who kept themselves so apart from each other, had become so much alike that it would have been impossible to distinguish them if their places had been changed.” A closer look at Tocqueville's study may be cause for concern. On the surface, France was becoming united. But social tensions were brewing, and eventually, the French Revolution broke out. For more, read this Twitter thread or scroll to page 172 in The Gutenberg Galaxy & page 176 in this PDF.

​Always Bet on Text: People often ask why I teach writing when the world is "clearly" moving towards video and audio. Gone are the days of books. In are the days of TikTok and podcasts, they say. "Always Bet on Text" is the article I share in response. The author writes, "Text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period." Text is so easy to store that before starting Stripe, the Collison Brothers created an app where you could basically download all of Wikipedia on your phone.

​Jordan Peterson, on Music: Peterson argues that music is multiple patterns layered on top of each other, just like the structure of reality — which is made up of patterns as much as objects. Thus, music is analogous to the structure of existence itself. Music also represents life by putting you on the border of chaos and order. Good music is predictable enough to be coherent but unpredictable enough to surprise you.

​Brent Beshore, on Brands: Most people think brands are made up of logos and slogans, but here's another way to think about it: "A brand is the range of expected outcomes you can expect from any company or person... What you can count on, rely on, and plan around." It's a set of expectations people have when they interact with you. I like this definition because it brings "branding" down to earth. When you walk into Nike, you expect inspirational slogans and high-quality athletic clothing. When you interact with Amazon, you expect fast response times and outstanding customer service. We don't expect an interaction with Amazon to fire us up or raise our ambitions (that's what Nike is for). But we do expect fast shipping and easy returns. People get mad at brands when reality doesn't match their expectations. Friday Finds has a brand too. You expect interesting, high-quality ideas from outside the traditional news cycle. If I shared a bunch of tabloid pieces from the New York Post, you'd be very confused. A good brand sets expectations and meets them. It attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. The same thinking applies to people too. Everybody has a personal brand. At work, at home, and within your friend group. What's the range of outcomes people have come to expect from you? (Podcast | Transcript | My interview with Brent)