Reducer #3: Monoliths, bash, and habits.
Writing
David Perell - Mastering Twitter to Grow Your Newsletter and Make Money - The Nathan Barry Show 017
I consumed so much of Perells' content that this show didn't show me a lot of new things.
It's a great overview of his work, made me recall a few ideas, like the burnt ends.
6 Steps to Draw Anything
Build strong fundaments drawing basic shapes and only then move to the advanced topics.
Knowledge will layer and advanced will become easier with a strong basis.
Not nailing the fundamentals will make advanced extremely hard.
It can be fun to master the basics. Steps:
1) draw basic shapes
2) distort shapes
3) connect distorted shapes
4) draw the structure of real-life things with connected distorted shapes
035: Dickie Bush - How to Make $100,000 Writing on Twitter
Consistency is hard. These are great tips on how to achieve consistency when writing. Peer pressure is powerful for accountability. The episode reminded me of a lot of the ideas from [[perell.com]] on how to build audiences.
The idea of using Twitter to test ideas is really good:
> There's not that clean of a system, but my kind of mental hierarchy is everything starts at the tweet and if it's got a little engagement, I'll exploit more for myself and posted as an atomic essay. And then in fact it's a lot of engagement. I know there are people who are more likely to share threads. (Time 0:42:15)
Probably good #book on writing: [[the art business of online writing]]
The best idea here is the shared hashtag everyone going through the course uses. It creates a similar virality to what Roam gets with #roamcult. Building shared hashtags for communities is a good viral component. #growth #viral #community
Ann Handley - How Expert Marketers Get More Subscribers
The callback is a technique from screenplay writing that comedians use a lot. I'll try to use it in my blog post writings.
One of the ideas I got hammered so much that made me go back to releasing the newsletter.
> It's not that I'm going off into this whole new thing. I'm just packaging up what I've already created and letting the people who are most engaged, which is not everyone purchases a shortcut, a shortcut to the same outcome.
022: Lenny Rachitsky - The Dark Side of Paid Newsletters Nobody Talks About
Lenny Rachitsky has 3 months of content planned ahead for his newsletter. This is a great tactic to reduce the pressure of coming up with something new every week. Something he struggled with in the beginning.
Promoting long-form content as a product is important. Don't work on something like a blog post for months and then just put it on the website and share on Twitter. A great tactic to get some launch boost is to get other people involved in the process of building it. When someone reviews the piece they get emotionally attached to it and will help promote it when it comes out.
Photo by Katie Hafner on Unsplash
Engineering
Nadia Eghbal: Open-Source Software @ North Star Podcast
Steven Pruitt edited more than one-third of all the English language articles on Wikipedia. Less than 5% of developers on Github are responsible for more than 95% of code and social interaction. #ideas
perell.com:: the Wikipedia guy he's edited more than one-third of all the English language articles on Wikipedia. What an insane example of open-source not encode, but open-source knowledge sharing information. That was insane statistics.
Nadia Eghbal:: it's funny because, like, Wikipedia is this canonical example for so many people of, like, you know, decentralized, large scale, collaborative effort across the globe, which it is, to some extent. But we can't ignore the fact that some people are making these sorts of insane contributions.
Nadia Eghbal:: even on Github, less than 5% of developers are responsible for more than 95% of code and social interaction. So what is it? (Time 0:17:22) #ideas #open-source
The analogy of open-source and religion is extremely interesting. Religion has great insights into how good communities work. Two critical pieces: 1) people get involved and become part of building the community (some religions even have ranks), and 2) new members aren't afraid to join. You know that you will be welcome to enter any church even if you never did.
Nadia Eghbal:: to a religious service and me coming every single week and being super involved. And I think like some of that, that understand that those kinds of norms could stand to really benefit open source and as well where you know, just because I contributed once doesn't mean I have the right to tell you how to run your project. Yeah, you had some
perell.com:: really interesting statistics that I collected because I was like, Oh, it's just the 80 20 rule. But it's like actually an ultra-long tail sometimes. First of all, I couldn't believe that Steven Pruett, the Wikipedia guy he's edited more than one-third of all the English language articles on Wikipedia. What an insane example of open-source not encode, but open-source knowledge sharing information. That was insane. (Listen)
The Majestic Monolith
> This in turn puts immense pressure on making the application understandable and changeable by individuals, not teams. Which in turn again forces you to take the time to turn a long letter into a short one. (View Highlight)
Monoliths have a force similar to open-source:
When a piece of code goes to a repository of a small team, everyone knows how crazy things are and it's fine if the code isn't great. No need to check.
When a piece of code goes to a repository shared with all the companies, everyone will pull this code and likely look at it. You double-check before pushing.
One of the most [[underrated]] features of open-sourcing internal [[code]] is [[quality]]. When I know something is [[open-source]], I triple-check the quality. "Let's [[fix]] this next week" becomes "This can't be on the [[internet]]"
20 Bash Tricks in 5 Minutes - Spencer Krum - YouTube
Great inspiration for the Bash series I'm working on. Initially as Twitter threads will later become blog posts. First ones:
Productivity
Habits
This tip from the [[Atomic Habits]] book on [[James Clear]] newsletter reminded me of some of the ways I'm applying it:
> Pick a standard time and place to do it.
I'm using this technique: the first thing I do in the morning is writing. No checking email, Slack, social media, or anything. The only application open is [[Roam Research]] and I write for 1 hour before doing anything else.
Another that is working well is going to the Gym. I've added to the calendar 3 days a week at 17:30. No meeting ever gets scheduled at that time and it's becoming a routine.
The art of focus – a crucial ability
Good reminder to go slow, the story isn't great, but the delivery got me hooked. Pause. Pause. Slow Down. Pause.