WIN OF THE WEEK
What the hell is happening?!

I gave up all of the efforts to continue growing this newsletter about a few months ago.

Not because I don’t think it’s valuable enough, but simply because I had other priorities, and wanted to start treating these weekly wrap-ups mostly as public bookmarks on my favorite ideas.

As I expected, all the metrics declined brutally, and after that, they were steep for a long time.

Until last week, I checked my analytics dashboard after a few weeksand saw this:

A sudden spike in growth at the beginning of January.

No idea how it happened.

But sure as hell it is a win for me.

P.S.: Because of this weird spike in subscriber growth, I had a dream last night that about 10-15 people reply to my emails every week. Got kinda disappointed when I woke up and see it’s not true, but at least got something to shoot for next lol.

3 HIGH-IMPACT IDEAS
1) Reconstructing the Past

Often times we go back in time, thinking about how everything could be better today, only if we didn’t do XYZ thing.

We fantasize about how would our past ideally looked like, and blame the little actions we took 3, 5 or 10 years ago for the way our life looks like today.

But in reality, those little things are a blessing.

They’re responsible for the version of you that exists in the present moment - the version of you that is aware of the mistakes they made in the past, and won’t repeat them again, because you’re conscious of how they shaped your future.

Moral of the story:

Let life through shots at you. Be open to learning new lessons. You can only connect the dots looking backwards.

2) What to Work on When You’re Young

Should I go to college, or should I build a business?

Should I start a company, or join a company?

Should I create content, or should I focus on cold traffic?

If you’re an ambitious teen, those are likely the most frequent questions racing through your head.

But as I recently learned, none of those things matter, as long as the projects you pick:

1) Maximize your learnings in the area(s) you care about

2) Throw you into spots with smart & ambitious people you aspire to be like

(h/t: Shaan Puri).

The latter especially hit hard for me.

I feel like I’ve been really slacking on connecting with other ambitious people (whether young or old), and it is something I definitely want to focus on more this coming year.

3) Closed Mouths Don’t Get Fed

Here’s the tweet from Sahil Bloom I stumbled upon yesterday:

And…

It finally made me face myself and be honest about thing:

I haven’t applied even 10% of this advice’s potential.

The reality is, I always see young people working for & connecting with people I look up to, thinking “they’re for sure smarter, more talented or more hard-working than me.”

But is it really that? Isn’t it just that they were a bit bolder to put themselves out there?

Later that day, I stumbled upon another tweet, this time from Matt Gray:

Well, it looks the goal for the next decade is clear.

Side note: I asked Sahil if he’s down to get interviewed for my podcast. I think nothing delights a teacher as much as their student directly applying what they learn from them ; ). Wish me good luck.

FAVORITE QUOTE