Frida Finds (Twitter, Warren Buffet, Uniqlo, Vibes, Learning)

Hi friends,

Greetings from Austin!

I spent the week planning the next Write of Passage cohort, which begins in February. We just launched our first satellite course (the Writing Studio), and now we're thinking of launching another one about creative blocks in the writing process. I'll share more in two months, when I publish this year's Annual Review.

Here's what I want to share this week:

Writing, Twitter and Cohort-Based Courses: A sprawling interview about many facets of my writing process, from refining ideas to growing a Twitter following. Here's the full video and podcast.

​How Learning Happens: Why do people learn things? Sometimes, because they need to. They're spurred to action by a desperate desire to solve a problem or make something happen in the world. But desperate learning is usually stressful. In this video, I ask: What do you need to enjoy learning?

Today's Finds

​Vibe Capitalism: The original vision of Silicon Valley tech was that we could be so efficient that we could level up and nurture our humanity. But in truth, since efficiency has no end, we knocked the soul out of the Internet. As investor Geoff Lewis explains in this 20-minute talk: “Somewhere along the way to global domination, many of us in tech traded in the goal of the good life for an efficient life without even realizing it.”

​Buffett's Reading Obsession: Many people look at the way Warren Buffett reads 500 pages a day and try to do the same. The problem is that the things that made him successful on the way up aren't the things that keep him successful now that he's made it. This article goes into the things that made Buffett successful on the way up. He obsessed over the biographies of people he admired, interrogated executives to understand the mechanics of business, and hosted friends for a bi-annual conference in what eventually became known as "The Buffett Group."

​The Ladders of Wealth Creation: This essay from Nathan Barry lays out the roadmap for transitioning from an employee to running your own business, similar to the one I walked before starting my business. He describes a four-step process: (1) trading time for money, (2) starting your own service business, (3) selling productized services, and (4) selling products.

​The Story of Uniqlo: The CEO of Uniqlo shares his principles for the soul of his company. Maybe I like the article because Uniqlo is one of my favorite brands, but it doubles as a window into the kind of Japanese craftsmanship I learned about in my podcast episode with Patrick McKenzie. For years, Uniqlo was seen as an undesirable brand. But that changed with the 1998 launch of a flagship store in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood, and today, Uniqlo is a global brand with ~$16 billion in yearly sales.

​Frequent Flyer Programs: Speaking of airplanes, here’s a wild article from Byrne Hobart. Basically, airlines look like they make money from flights, but they actually make money from loyalty programs. Without its loyalty program, Delta would be worth -$7 billion. With it, it’s a $19 billion company. This quote stuck out: “The mechanics of a loyalty program are simple: Flyers earn rewards, generally by flying or using branded credit cards. They redeem those rewards for flights.” You can read the full article here.