Hey there. 

This week I completely cleaned about my Stoopinbox because I realised that I was subscribed to over 180+ newsletters, and of those I only read about of them 20. 

Yes I'm not joking. Exactly 20 on the dot, basically me optimising my content diet. I wrote a post about this a while back actually.

I did this because I subscribed to bunch of crap that didn't really mean much to me or could not provide me value. This also made me realise that my taste in content has completely changed over the last year. 

It's pretty hard for me to even articulate, but I love that raw, no bullshit kinda writing. The Kind that actually leaves you with actionable and tangible advice that gets you to do something. 

When it comes to blog posts and articles, I'm a big fan of being authentic and a lot of makers/bootstrappers - while are successful - fail at this. Like cmon, don't give me some vague shit on what it means to be successful. Fuck that, I want to know what it took you to get you there, how did you do it, how did it effect you (mentally and emotionally), what was that process like for you and what takeaways can I as a member of you audience take away from your experience. 

As they say, the journey is so much more fun than the end point. 

- Nic 

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Today is going to be a little different than what I normally do. I spoke about how I cleaned out my inbox and zeroed my newsletters down to only 20 that I read meticulously. The list is way too long for me write it here on the newsletter, so I'll just link this little post of all 20 of them here for you to check out! 

All of these are really good and they've definitely helped me define who I am. Check it out

Boring is fun. 
I’m that kid who got a B in high-school P.E.

I hated exercise. My parents used to force me to go for runs. I’d jog around the corner, just out of sight, and sit down on the curb. For 20 or 30 minutes I’d sit. I would poke at leaves on the ground and ramble under my breath about how dumb running was. When enough time had passed, I jogged back home, pretending to be out of breath.

I knew it was good for me. I knew I could lose some weight. I knew I could breathe easier. I knew I could have more energy. Did I exercise? Of course not. Read More

How I became an honest broker.
This is a really interesting read about a man who had a very unexpected conversation with an Aussie while doing business in China sometime in the 80s/90s.

"I met the drunk Australian. 

He wasn’t a contact on my list, and I can’t even remember his name. This was a chance encounter in a hotel bar late at night. But this hard-drinking Australian was talkative and had interesting things to say. He had spent most of his life bouncing around the capitals of Asia, and was a high-level operator in his own spheres.

He bragged about his insider’s knowledge, and claimed—with some accuracy, as I came to discover—that he knew how to maneuver in China better than the clueless Westerners who were now appearing on the scene. He had traced the secret paths to power and knew all the dangerous mistakes amateurs always make." Read more

How to be lucky
Human beings find comfort in certainty. We form governments, make calendars, and create organisations; and we structure our activities, strategies and plans around these constructs. These routines give us the satisfaction of knowing that, by having a plan, there’s a means of it coming to fruition. Read more

A Natural History of Beauty
Of all the problems that can plague a discussion of beauty — and there are several — perhaps the most damning is how to define the word, to find a sturdy concept worthy of the label. Read more

The Thinking ladder (90 minute read 😐)
The first dimension, as we’re defining dimensions, is the What of life. It’s what we see around us, what goes on in society, what people say and do, what they believe.

Looking at everything in one dimension just shows us what’s on the surface of all these parts of reality. But when we lift the covers off the What of life and look at what lies beneath, we’re reminded that there’s a second dimension to everything as well. Read more

How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business – Phase 1: Crack the Chicken-and-Egg Problem
Having worked at Airbnb for many years, I’m frequently asked about what Airbnb did right in order to grow into what it is today. While sharing my learnings, I’ve become increasingly wary of teams relying too heavily on a single company’s experience. There are so many factors that go into an eventual success story, and what’s effective once may not be again. Thus, I’ve been yearning to get a wider perspective on what has (and hasn’t) worked for other marketplace companies. Read more 

Vanity metrics - how to set goals
If you replayed your life and took the shortest path to where you are today, you’d see what an absurd amount of time was spent on the wrong things.Some say this is unavoidable—that you need a lot of exploring to find yourself. This isn’t the full story. You can train yourself to identify when you’re working on the wrong thing—in real time as it’s happening. Read more

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