BC CULTURE
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

Earlier today, I gave a talk at the @SubstackInc's writer conference about building a writing habit. Below are the ten concrete strategies I shared that have helped me publish a post every week for 1.5 years 👇

 0/ First of all, just sharing advice about this topic gives me serious impostor syndrome because writing is still pretty new to me, and I have much to learn. But these are things that have helped me, and I hope they'll help you.
1/ Strategy 1: Commit publicly

This was maybe 50% of my initial motivation. Having told people I was going to write weekly made me feel bad when even thinking about skipping a week. It gave me just enough nudge to keep going.
https://t.co/R0EWblrHnW
1b/ You don't need to make this super public. Just sending an email to a few friends regularly with your concrete goals about writing (and anything else) works wonders.
1c/ If you *really* want to be motivated, ask people for money. Nothing motivates you more than people paying you for regular content.
https://t.co/ZH6Dm87jFr
2/ Strategy #2: Stay close to what interests you

Writing is hard enough. Write about things that you're genuinely energized by, excited to learn more about, or curious about. Don't force yourself to write things you think you *should* or *need* to write about.

It won't last.
2b/ On that, the classic advice is to find a tiny niche and become the best person in that niche. I ignored this advice. I didn't want to spend all of my time thinking about *just* PM, or just growth, etc. I stayed broad so that I'd stay interested in the topic(s).
3/ Strategy #3: Maintain a sustainable pace

Here's what your pace should feel like, IMHO. Writing a newsletter is a marathon. Don't burn yourself out. I personally love the weekly cadence. Daily newsletters blow my mind.
3b/ Important: People don't want MORE emails. They want better, more valuable, emails.

Consistency + quality = you win.
4/ Strategy #4: Protect deep work time

Valuable, interesting, creative work always comes from focused, distraction-free time. But the world is always trying to take this time away from you. You need to find strategies to protect this time. Read this book.
https://t.co/cWaAYRzZMd
4b/ If you don't have a full-time job, my advice is to avoid booking any meetings until 3pm. Try it. It's game-changing.

If you do have a job, can you add 3-hour blocks of time the mornings of M/W/F? Or on a weekend?
4c/ The #1 highest-grossing Substack writer does it part-time, every day, and makes over $1m. It's possible.
https://t.co/oZ9qOgC7nW
5/ Strategy #5: Turn on do-not-disturb mode on both your phone and computer

We have puny brains with no ability to avoid distractions. Embrace "ignorance is bliss." Shut off notifications by turning on DND.

At a minimum, do this during your deep work time. Ideally, all day.
6/ Strategy #6: Find tools that help you stay focused, organized, and distraction free

1. A TODO app to prioritize your tasks (I use @centered_app)
2. A doc tool to organize your content (I use @coda_hq)
3. A note-taking tool for quick notes (I use https://t.co/YHvgJvV9dt)
6b/

4. Tools to help you with writing (I use @Grammarly and https://t.co/tTNv9lH9Ik)
5. Nutrients to boost energy and focus (I drink tea and @magicmind)
6. A platform for hosting/sending content (I use @SubstackInc)
7/ Strategy #7: Have an idea dumping ground

When you have time to write, you want to avoid the blank page as much as possible. What helps me is having a place to dump random idea as they come, which I can build and add to over time. I use Coda pages for this.
8/ Strategy #8: Turn this idea backlog into a prioritized list of your upcoming content

Give your brain a chance to marinate on what's coming up next, and let go of the things that are way out in the future. And once it's fleshed out enough, throw it into your email system.
9/ Strategy #9: Go where the energy takes you

Give yourself permission to change course on your next topic if you aren't feeling it. Go where your energy takes you.

You don't owe anyone anything (usually). More excited about something else? Roll with it! It'll be better also.

More from Lenny Rachitsky

Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny Rachitsky
@lennysan
If you want to get better at writing, do yourself a favor and subscribe to this free email series by @david_perell. I read every issue and take something away each time. Often, something game-changing. And it’s
ALL
Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny Rachitsky
@lennysan
I'm excited to share a new growth framework that @danhockenmaier and I have been developing (with help from the amazing @reforge crew)

I've been finding myself coming back to this framework often when talking to founders about growth.

Thread

1/ As a startup, it's essential that you, and your team, have a clear understanding of how your business is likely to grow. We call this building a Growth Model. With this, you'll know which growth investments to make right away, which to avoid, and which to double-down on.

2/ Our advice is to think about your business like a high-performance race car. The same four components that help a car drive faster also help your business grow:


1. ⚙️ The (Growth) Engine: Self-sustaining growth loops that drive most of your growth (e.g. virality, perf marketing, content, sales)

2. 💥 Turbo boosts: One-off events that accelerate growth temporarily but don’t last (e.g. PR, events, Super Bowl ads)

3. 💧 Lubricants: Optimizations that make the growth engine run more efficiently (e.g. improved conversion, a stronger brand, higher customer retention).

4. ⛽ Fuel: The input that your engine requires to run (e.g. capital, content, users).
TECH
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Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny Rachitsky
@lennysan
The clearest sign of finding product-market fit is feeling "pull" from the market.

But what does "pull" look like?

👇 Read on 👇

1/ Sign 1: A sudden inflection in organic growth

Netflix: "Where before we were struggling to get traffic, all of sudden we couldn’t keep up." - @mbrandolph

Tinder: "Downloads started to skyrocket" – @badeen

Uber: "Word of mouth was uncontrollable" – @ryangraves

2/ Sign 2: Customers ask to pay for the product before you ask

Carta: "I've been trying to get to your sales people for weeks!!! Why won't you take my money???" – @henrysward

Github: "To our surprise, users started writing to us asking ‘Can we pay for this??’" – @mojombo

3/ Sign 3: Users flip from excited to upset

Datadog: "When we hit early product-market fit, our users switched from being excited at all the things our product could be to them to being upset about all the things it didn't do yet." – @oliveur

3b/ Segment: "The thing that flipped was, people would previously tell us they wanted a feature, but not use it. Whereas now, people were using it and they would want a second feature." – @reinpk
STARTUP
Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny Rachitsky
@lennysan
Mission → Vision → Strategy → Goals → Roadmap → Task

As taught to us by Oceans 11 👇


Mission: Rob the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand casinos, and get back at rival Terry Benedict.


Vision: Great wealth and revenge


Strategy: Get into the vault that all three casinos share
1. Get into casino cage
2. Get through doors w/ code that changes every 12h
3. Get into an elevator that requires fingerprints+vocal verification
4. Get past two guards with uzis
5. Break into

Goal: Walk out with
PLANNING
Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny Rachitsky
@lennysan
The most sophisticated growth team no one talks about: @WishShopping
1. The #1 shopping app in 40+ countries
2. Rumored to often be the #1 spender on FB and Google
3. 2 million items sold daily

I sat down with @cplimon to learn about the notoriously secretive company. Read on 👇

1/ Your brand constraint is Wish's opportunity

Wish's superpower is leaving no room for taste or opinion. It's what happens when a machine builds a company based on data. The founder didn't plan to sell cheap goods to low-socioeconomic customers, but where the data took him.

"Until you work at a place like Wish, you don't know what data-driven is. Everyone else is data-driven when it's convenient, when it agrees with your opinions. Wish is great at ignoring their own emotions. It's data-driven with as much intellectual honesty as possible."

For example


2/ Differentiate by serving the under-served

Most of Wish’s initial sales came from places like Florida, greater LA county, and middle-America. Specifically, zip codes with 95% Spanish speakers. Later, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe (avg household income $18,000/year)
WORLD

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Pulp Librarian
@PulpLibrarian
As it's #AppreciateADragonDay let's do some classic covers from Dragon magazine!


Tony DiTerlizzi's cover art for Dragon magazine #242, December 1997.


Dragon magazine issue 106, February 1986. Cover by Keith Parkinson.


Dragon Magazine #71, March 1983. Cover by Clyde Caldwell.


Dragon magazine issue 65, September 1982. Cover by Clyde Caldwell.
CULTURE
Farnam Street
Farnam Street
@farnamstreet
The Blank Sheet Method that will 10x your reading comprehension.

Here is how it works.

Before you start reading a new book, take out a blank sheet of paper. Write down what you know about the book / subject you’re about to read — a mind map if you will.

After you finish a reading session, spend a few minutes adding to the map with a different color.

Before you start your next reading session, review the page.

When you’re done reading, put these ‘blank sheets’ into a binder that you periodically review.
CULTURE , ALL
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Chamath Palihapitiya
Chamath Palihapitiya
@chamath
A children's book explanation of what's happening:

1. If you are "smart money" you are allowed to take your $1 and leverage it up to $15+

2. You can now buy $15 of stock AND if you promise to short companies, you can short $15 of stock as well

3. In finance language, this means that you are $30 "gross" ($15 of longs + $15 of shorts) but $0 net (+$15 of longs -$15 of shorts). This makes everyone feel good because it feels like you are taking zero risk...but in reality, your $1 is exposed to $30 of risk.

4. Now you go around and tell your friends about both your longs and your shorts and when you do it at a restaurant vs on Reddit, its called an "ideas dinner".

5. You also publish your longs on a quarterly lag via an SEC rule. You don't have to tell anyone about your shorts.

6. Now the less cool people who weren't invited to the ideas dinners, start copying your longs based on your report.

7. You realize that publicizing your shorts is also a good idea so instead of only selling stocks, you also BUY options (puts) which has to be reported.

8. Now everyone can see both your longs and your shorts and if you have a hot hand, you can likely predict that the cool people from the dinner as well as the less cool people monitoring your filings will copy you.

9. But then an outsider notices that the math is way off!
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Pulp Librarian
Pulp Librarian
@PulpLibrarian
Time once again for my occasional series "Women with great hair fleeing gothic houses!"

And today all the covers are by Walter Popp...


Crucible of Evil, by Lyda Belknap Long. Avon Gothic Original, 1974. Cover art by Walter Popp.


Hornet's Nest, by Evelyn Bond. Avon Gothic Original, 1972 Cover by Walter Popp.


The House In Munich, by Dorothy Dowdell. Avon, 1974. Art by Walter Popp.


The Secret Of Chateau Laval, by Susan Marvin. Avon Gothic, 1973. Art by Walter Popp.
CULTURE
Dr. Stephanie Deppe | she/hers
Dr. Stephanie Deppe | ...
@SpaceSciSteph
My (probably) last co-authorship paper from grad school is out!!

The long story short is, any evidence for Planet Nine is gone. It doesn't exist.

This is the most comprehensive study EVER that examines the original clustering argument, led by @kjnapes. Let's get into it!

🧵


First, some background.

In 2014, astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo noted a weird clustering in the orbital elements of the most distant Kuiper Belt Objects they'd found. They hypothesized sorta in passing that a new planet could be responsible.

Enter Batygin & Brown

Mike Brown & Konstantin Batygin originally set out to DISPROVE the new planet hypothesis!

But instead, their simulations suggested a new planet, & even predicted its properties!

The resulting paper set off the biggest planetary debate of the century since Pluto's demotion.


What's the debate?

Well, the argument for the last five years has all centered around the fact that you find objects where you look in the sky.

No surprise there, right?

This problem is complicated though, because the objects we're talking about have some of the most distant and elongated orbits of all the objects in the solar system.

We only find them when they're closest to the Sun, when they're at their brightest.
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So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

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the solution to this variant being:
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If there is one thing I have learned it is that people love bullshit. They buy bullshit stories from professional bullshit artists, accept bullshit philosophies, purchase bullshit how-to-books, vote for bullshitting politicians.

At first, I resisted believing this because it is illogical and dumb and frankly, doesn't reflect well on the human race of which I am a member (and thus have long been hopeful that it is more of a distinction than it actually turns out to be.)

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Sometimes it is because just one tiny fact will upset a whole worldview that has grown as comfortable as an overstuffed chair. (Settling into such worldviews is a lot like settling into chairs like that because the longer you're there and the deeper you sink...

...the harder it is to hoist yourself up and out of your fat-assed intellectual laziness.) But I actually think the reason people have such an appetite for bullshit goes deeper, goes to an aspect of ourselves we just can't accept.
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Spent a quaint half hour in a cafe listening to a guy yell at his dad after his dad said that the women Trump molested wanted it: "Dad, that's like saying the Jews who died in the Holocaust were asking for it!" ENJOY YOUR TERRIBLE FAMILIES THIS WEEK!

"Mom, has a man ever touched you without your consent?"
"Of course."
"Did you report it?"
"No."
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Dad was unmoved and told the guy to stop arguing with him.

At this point we learned the boy child has allergies.

I forgot to remark upon the presence of the very cute grandson, who was very small and gave not one shit about the yelling. I believe a sister or aunt was present and feeling very stressed. I wanted to hand her a Xanax or seven.

It was really hard to not jump in and say, "Sounds like you guys are going to have a fun meal tomorrow!" so they could unite in hatred against me, the outsider, and stop squabbling. Instead I exchanged glances with a nearby fellow lady patron, who also emotionally ate a cookie.

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1. The major problem most startups face is marketing and the ability to carve out a niche, find and retain paying customers.

Even with a stellar developer team and a stellar product, your startup may not grow or survive without a great marketing and sales teams.

2. Start growing your audience before you’ve a product or an idea.

You should start promoting yourself and building your audience before you have a finished product or even before you have a great idea that you want to build.

3. Don’t wait to start building your audience after you’ve launched a product.

Most first-time developers actually ignore marketing.

They’re oblivious to the challenge of attracting people to take a look at something they’ve created.

4. At least until they see their first project crash and burn within hours of the launch.

There are so many times that I have seen developers spend countless hours building something, releasing it with no fanfare...

5. and only then trying to figure out how to promote it by asking marketing questions on Indie Hackers, Quora or Hacker News. Don’t make that mistake.
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Paul M Domenick\U0001f43a
Paul M Domenick🐺...
@PaulMDomenick
10 Signs of Social Intelligence 🧠

1-Smile
2-Good posture
3-Strong eye contact
4-Fluid hand gestures
5-Let’s others talk more
6-Listens & relates
7-Comfortable Touching people
8-Walk with a swagger
9-Speaks at slower pace
10-Keeps calm under criticism

[ QUICK THREAD ]


1-Smile

How do you feel when you see someone that looks angry?

It’s a downer

No one will want to interact with you if you look pissed all of the time, it’s just negative energy

Plus, smiling is a sign of confidence and boosts others moods


2-Good posture

Don’t walk Into any social setting looking like the hunchback

It’s weak and makes you look low energy

Plus, you’re displaying low status with weak posture

Stand up straight with your chin up & chest out like a god

Walk like you’re proud of yourself


3- Strong eye contact

Ever shake someone’s hand & their eyes are either looking down or darting?

It’s weak & you probably won’t trust them

Or in conversation?

Eye contact while talking means you’re listening and paying *Attention*

Strong eye contact displays confidence


4-Fluid hand gestures

Use your hands to talk & express your points

Don’t stand there like a robot

Using the hands can make what you’re talking about exciting

It can also be used to emphasize

Exciting = positive emotion

Remember, making people FEEL is what’s important
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