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Returning the favor
Over a decade ago, Craig Miller was recruited to work at Shopify as its VP of Marketing. The problem: he had just bought a home in Toronto and his life was there, and Shopify was Ottawa-based. They were not flexible with the location, and neither was he. So he passed on the job offer. In…
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“Exaggeration with a purpose”
One of my favorite passages in The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene (recommended in this month’s Best of Books): “What we must understand about the attitude is not only how it colors our perceptions but also how it actively determines what happens to us in life—our health, our relations with people, and our…
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Repairs or renovations
A common piece of business advice is to find someone with an urgent, painful, and ideally expensive, problem, and to solve it. You don’t want to be a solution looking for a problem. This is generally good advice; the definition is also far more expansive and flexible than it would seem. Repairs, for example, fit…
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The Tyranny of the Note Taking Industrial Complex, and Other Notes on Notes
There’s been a lot of critique going on lately about notes. My friend Rick and I talked about it a few months ago, and I’d been copying and pasting the links down in an Airtable record (Haha—not kidding though). I’ve written 1,000+ notecards at this point, at least 200 of which made it into this…
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Focus involves quitting
Quitting sucks. We’re taught not to quit it. We’re also taught to do more, all the time; to always grow. This is a tension that often gets in the way of us being the best at what we do. The Dip isn’t just a book about quitting, it’s a book about focus; “The way you…
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The best way to be the best
In a Hot Ones interview, Pusha T says: “I am the Martin Scorsese of street raps. That’s how I want to be seen. Even just creatively, Scorsese gives you The Departed, Goodfellas, and a host of other joints. You never say, “Hey, I want him to make a love story.” That’s how I want you…
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Web2.0 in a Web3 world
Preamble: Okay so I’m on my final four index cards, living in a place where they’re not as easy to come by (I’m probably going to need a plan for this very outdated tech!), which has made my life hellish. So excuse me while I dive in… 1. There’s this idea, hitting mainstream media last…
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It’s right in front of you
The magic is in just putting one foot in front of the other. In not quitting. In doing less, but still doing it. To just make time, or a little more energy, to do that thing today, that gets us closer to the goal tomorrow. It reminds me of Will Smith, writing with Mark Manson,…
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The marble of the day
I used to be even more obsessed with time than I am now. I had no idea how people made time to do stuff, and I never felt like I had enough of it. And honestly, I still don’t. I don’t even think anyone has a real answer to this. The best thing I’ve seen…
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5 hook sentences to compress your ideas
Compression is the new creation. These sentence structures enable you to frame your point in a clear, powerful, and interesting way that “hooks” readers in. 1. [X] is the [Y] to [Z]. Example: “Writing is the antidote to confusion.” — James Clear 2. “We [X] our [Y], and then our [Y] [X] us.” Modification: “We…