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Hi friends,

I'm trying something a little different this week. Haven't been reading as much, but my creative spirit is roaring and I wrote a few short pieces that I've linked to at the bottom.

So, let's start with two links:

1. ​A Blog Post Is a Very Long and Complex Search Query to Find Fascinating People and Make Them Route Interesting Stuff to Your Inbox: If I had to summarize the purpose of my career in a blog post, this would be a top contender. Writing for the masses is one of the biggest mistakes people make when writing online. They dilute their interests and dumb down their core ideas to make them "accessible." Such a strategy is a residue of what worked in a Mainstream Media world though. The Internet rewards the opposite (specificity and uniqueness). Writing about weirder, stranger, and more obscure topics will attract people like yourself who you'd never be able to meet in the physical world. You should be writing about the intersection of things you love and topics almost nobody is interested in because "almost nobody" is a very large number when you consider the scale of the Internet. Those people will appreciate your uniqueness, become your friends, and fuel your intellectual life in ways you can't imagine before you start publishing.
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2. ​In Praise of Sabbaticals and Doing God's Work: The psychologist Amos Tversky once said: "The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours." Most people are so busy for so many years that they don't get a chance to step back, look peripherally, and ask: "How should I spend my time?" A sabbatical is one way of doing that. There are certain thoughts you can only entertain when you don't have a 9-to-5 to worry about. The posture of leisure is akin to the Latin word otium. It's not the kind of American leisure where you lounge around and veg out. Instead, it's about reading great books, consuming great art, following the compass of interestingness. 'Hard leisure' and the free time that comes from not working a 9-to-5 gives you the space to discover what you should be doing with your life. When you find it, the world rewards you: "If your vision is beautiful and sound, it will flourish. Resources will unexpectedly come out of the woodwork to support it. If your vision doesn't have that virtue, you will be struck down for its lack. That's life. It is also justice. Where this justice conflicts with our own human desires, perhaps it is we who are wrong, not God."

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How I Write

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Mark Manson was arguably the world's biggest self-help writer for some time, and I swear that his book (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) was on the front table of every airport bookstore in America for a few years. I interviewed him about his ascendance from blogging to making a Hollywood movie, co-writing Will Smith's memoir, and selling more than 15 million books.

Here's the best of what I learned:

1. Writer's block is driven by fear, and that fear comes from focusing on the expectations and judgments of others instead of what you're actually working on.
2. The better the idea, the easier it is to write, so your writer's block might be the sign of a bad idea.
3. The work isn't in the 1st draft. It's in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th drafts: “The real writing is revision. Revision is what separates the pros from the amateurs."

(Listen here: Twitter | Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

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​Fast-Twitch vs. Slow Twitch People​

People exist on a spectrum between fast-twitch and slow-twitch thinking.

Fast-twitch people speak fast, work fast, and crave novelty. Socially, they're quick and witty. Throw a problem their way and they'll come up with 3–5 solutions in a matter of minutes. They're the people you want in the room when you're brainstorming an idea.

Slow-twitch people are different. They think much more deliberately. Throw a problem at them and they'll ask for time to think about it, only to come back with something deeper, more polished, and more organized than a fast-twitch person could ever generate.

There are direct tradeoffs between the two.

Out of frustration comes harmony: Fast-twitch people get frustrated with slow-twitch people for being slow, while slow-twitch people get frustrated with fast-twitch people for being scattered.

You need both kinds of people for a group to be successful.

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​What Skills are You Compounding? ​

What skills are compounding in your career?

Physics teaches us that sharp objects move faster. The fastest trains have a pointy front car; the Concorde airplane needed an incredibly sharp tip to become the fastest commercial jetliner ever; narrowing your surface area is the best way to dive deep into a swimming pool; and even the blinding light of a laser comes from a concentration of energy.

You only need to be good at a few things to be immensely successful. The more focused you are, the easier it is to become world-class at whatever you commit to.

Early in your career, it's okay to scatter. Try things. Read a bunch of books. Take on a bunch of projects. But expend energy so that you can eventually find the few things you do exceptionally well. But the experimentation phase has to end eventually.

David Senra has a good line on this: "A novice is easily spotted because they do too much."

They’re scattered, frantic, and unfocused because they’re afraid to slash the parts of their life that don’t align with the desires of their heart, how they can uniquely serve society, and how God wants them to live. And so, they reject the core of who they are for the mirage of short-term productivity.

Working intensely feels joyful and nearly effortless once you find the right thing. Even if there are moments of willpower, there’s almost none of the teeth-grinding you’re trained for in school, and you can cut down on how much coffee you’re slugging every morning.

The goal isn’t to retire on a beach somewhere. No, that's a recipe for lifelessness, purposelessness, and the haunting chills of nihilism. Rather, the purpose of a career is to find the skills you want to compound and never stop doing them.

Every smart person should have a good answer to the question: “What advantages are you compounding in your career?”

You get a maximum of three. Here are mine:

1. Written and spoken communication.
2. Domain expertise in online writing for smart, ambitious, and high-agency people.
3. A large and loyal audience to amplify the first two.

Narrow your focus until your head, heart, and wallet are aligned. Doing less leads to exponential gains in how well you're able to do the things you commit to.
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