Hey friend,

I'm slowly getting sucked back into chess via correspondence. If you want to challenge me to a game add me on chess.com here. I'm also exclusively using Twitter for social media, and loving it. I'm trying to fleet actual images, so it's filling the Insta stories-shaped hole in my life.

🔥 Highlights

Connected with a new friend, Cameron, via a YC Startup School telegram chat. We decided to work together for a month-long build sprint on an outbound sales prospecting tool.
I bought way too many books last week, but I've been plowing through them. A couple by Scott Adams (Dilbert), Scott McCloud, and Sara Young. The common thread between these authors is related to my devotional visual project which you can find in progress here.
Received a cold email that turned my blog post into a podcast. This light ego stroke made me forgive the fact that he just cold emailed me trying to sell his software.

💔 Lowlights

My morning pages habit has kind of fizzled out, partly because I've just started to read for 30 minutes after meditating and gratitude. The solution? Wake up earlier so I can have more me time before starting work stuff.
The equity negotiation for my government challenge prize winnings has still been unresolved. At this point I just want to resolve it and move on to bigger and better things...

🎯 Goals

Apply for a raise at my current full-time job. I might as well while I'm still employed by them. My justification will be that I do a lot of design work in addition to my front end development.
Start posting to my devosual's instagram account daily
Turn my handwriting into a font via Calligraphr

🔗 Link
Rob Walling's MicroConf State of Independent SaaS Report 2021
One key insight I took away was that founders worked fewer hours per week this year, presumably due to COVID. Also 6 in 10 founders have started a previous company, and a majority of which were solo-founded.

🎵 Song
Ala Vida - El Michels Affair
Yup that's a Yeti. They are an instrumental band (no vocals), first found them via their Wu-Tang covers.

🖼️ Picture
"Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud
This pyramid shows the spectrum of art between Picture, Reality & Meaning.

🎙️ Podcast
Sendhil Mullainathan on The Knowledge Project (Shane Parrish)
A conversation ranging from meta-cognition (e.g. "How many questions do I ask in a day?"), to multiplicity of self. My favorite quote was "Process lends moral credence to a rule".

📖 Book
How to fail at almost everything and still win big - Scott Adams
Lots of gems, and funny stories from this cartoonist's life. I particularly loved his chapters on the 'Energy Metric', and the 'Math of Success'. He is not the greatest cartoonist, nor the best businessman, nor the funniest comedian, but he is the best at drawing funny cartoons about modern office life.

What's an example of 1 decision you've made in your life that has removed choices downstream of that decision? (e.g. being vegetarian, being married, or a good habit) I'd love to hear some of your own examples from your life.