Hello friend 👋🏼,

Better late than never to pick up the virtual pencil - saying that, I feel justified because I’ve got some GEMS to share with y’all.

This past month I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose and wanted to share some learnings:

• Growth happens outside your comfort zone

• Collect new experiences and try new things with new people

• What gives you purpose? What makes you happy? What drains you?

• Avoid comparing yourself to others

• “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” - Vincent Van Gogh

A couple of articles I enjoyed reading on the topic:

Let’s get to it!

On Wealth:

1/ The Top High Income Skills for 2023

I’ve enjoyed Nick Maggiulli’s blog over the years and this post didn’t disappoint.

How do we define a high-income skill?

• Earning potential - be in the 20% for where you live

• Demand and relevance

• Barriers to entry

• Scalability

Some of the top high-income skills include:

• Data Science

• Sales

• Software development

• Digital Marketing

• Traditional pathways (Medicine/Law)

I’m sure there are a ton more, and even more roles that have barely entered the job market yet (ever heard of a ‘Chief Automation Officer’?), so maybe I’ll do update this analysis in a couple of years.

2/ Business Lessons from BrewDog

Came across the BrewDog entrepreneurial story - these folks are genius marketers - some of their ads:

5 business lessons from the founders:

1. Remove the barnacles - at least once a year, analyze EVERYTHING in the business. Is it still serving us? Or is it an anchor needs to be cut?

2. Remove the stones - if something is slowing you down, get rid of it. It’s your business or job on the line if you don’t make the hard decision.

3. Don’t skimp on product - cheap product attracts cheap customers. Find customers who know and appreciate your value.

4. Use other people’s money - BrewDog raised money from those they know best - their customers. They raise an equity round every year - fact: if you invested in the first one back in 2009 and bought 1 share at £95, you’d be up £37,213.

5. Be weird - don’t be afraid to do weird sh*t to stand out. Table stakes are high, you gotta be different to filter the signal from the noise.

3/ The best returns come from private markets

Check out the below tweet by @ali_moiz - one issue with accessing liquidity on pre-IPO/private companies is you can’t just sell shares on the public market, but there are secondary markets you can tap into.

On Health:

1/ When should you do your best work?

We don’t need to listen to the alpha-bros who tell us if we don’t wake up at 4am then we’re failures. Here’s the daily schedule for some of the top creatives of our time:

So productivity can come at any hour.

One of the big determinant factors to this - knowing your sleep chronotype. This is your sleep/wake pattern.

Lion (15-20% of the population)

• Early risers

• Peak energy in the early morning

Bear (55%):

• Most common

• Wakes up with the sun

• Peak energy in mid-morning and early afternoon

Wolf (15%):

• Late risers, night owls

• Peak energy in the afternoon and evening

Dolphin (10%):

• Inconsistent sleep patterns (may struggle with insomnia)

• Peak energy varies, often in the late morning

Imagine you set no alarm clock. Which one sounds most like you?

Once you’ve worked that out, here are some tips for each type:

On Happiness:

1/ Who’s happier - men or women?

Trick question — both genders are equally happy at around +19 (zero is neutral, negative is unhappy).

But it doesn't look like it's going to be tied for long.

Sam Peltzman, and the glorious University of Chicago Booth School of Business put together a study recently that broke down happiness levels across a number of demographics.

What about between married and non-married folks?

How about white people vs African Americans?

These results conclude that the happiest people would likely be:

• Rich, white, conservative, suburban, older, well-educated men living in the west

And the unhappiest are:

• Poor, black, liberal, urban, young, poorly educated women living in the northeast.

Keep in mind this is US data, but quite thought-provoking!

2/ The purpose of life

3/ Failure

That’s all for today - till next time 🙂 

Fahim

P.S. Feel free to hit reply and let me know what you think of the format / design / ideas!