Sup friends 👋🏼,

It’s been a while - I’ve been out sick 🤒 (viral infections suck 👎🏽), so I had to take some editions off.

Anywayyyy, I’ve still been reading, researching and learning, so i’m bringing the heat - I’ve got 10 valuable things to share with you.

Also, I was in Switzerland earlier this month (which is how I got ill in the first place 😅) and my talk is now live. Let me know if you decide to watch & any feedback you wanna share.

Some photos below:

I’m still due to write a recap post with key takeaways!

Without further adieu, let’s get to it 🙂 

💎

1/ How to Do Great Work - Visualized

Love this post by Paul Graham on doing great work - this visualisation perfectly captures the key aspects of the post.

Things that stood out to me:

• Make things people want

• Do work that compounds

• Seek out the best colleagues

2/ All we have is today

This is a good reminder - its only about today.

Put your heart and soul into your work, because there is only today.

/3 50 simple things to stay young at 50

One of my favourite posts this year - I swear if you adopt three of these that matter to you, it will change your year.

A selection of those that resonated with me:

• Have a clear vision for your future. How can you decide which direction to go if you haven’t clearly defined the destination?

• Think globally but act locally. Too many people put their energy into far-away problems they don’t understand and can’t impact, while ignoring problems right under their nose. Talk is cheap—BE the change you want to see in the world.

• Organize your life around experiences, not things. People frequently regret buying things, but rarely regret investing in great experiences (especially when shared with loved ones)

• Choose to do hard things. Everything you want is on the other side of fear and hard work. As Jerzy Gregorik said, “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.”

• Show up on time, every time. Poor time management limits success more than most people realize. If you struggle with punctuality, stop everything else and fix that first.

  • Note to self - this is me 🙋🏽‍♂️

Read this, it’s worth your time.

/4 Focus = Saying No for the Greater Good

I’ve been intentionally practising saying ‘No’ more for things that either are a low priority or outside my core area of competence - it’s tough one, as I used to say ‘Yes’ to every opportunity as I enjoyed what new responsibilities and opportunities can bring.

I guess I’ve reached that phase in life where I know what I enjoy and know what I need to focus on (and what my responsibilities are), and say no to everything else.

It probably means I’ll say no to ‘serendipity’ (which I’ve always optimised for), but I’m now going to have to realign what this means for me.

It’s a tough balance though, as we have to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone, instead of just doing what we know we’re good at.

However, by focusing, we work on things we believe to be the most impactful thing we can spend our time on.

/5 Deciding What Not To Do

After Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the new leadership’s general assumption was that more products across more industries would generate more profits.

Actually, it sent Apple into a financial free fall.

Apple was close to bankruptcy in early 1997, after a $708 million loss was posted.

Steve came back as CEO.

He then ruthlessly cut the number of products down from 40, to 4.

He believed that focusing on fewer products in fewer markets would allow Apple to develop world-class products and refocus their attention on the things that mattered.

Suffice to say, it worked.

Near-bankruptcy to a $3.4bn market cap in <30 years. Not bad!

/6 Making AI Art with Midjourney

Midjourney is an AI image generator tool that uses machine learning techniques, including large language models and diffusion models, to convert text "prompts" into images.

This article is a bit technical but is also a good ‘getting started’ guide to style codes and how to use an image generator tool effectively.

/7 A Tiny Thought on Humility

A reason to go the route of humility.

/8 Joe Rogan was 42 when he started

It’s never too late.

/9 Kevin Kelly’s Sage Advice

Some points I enjoyed:

• Don’t save up the good stuff (fancy wine, or china) for that rare occasion that will never happen; instead use them whenever you can.

• Never hesitate to invest in yourself—to pay for a class, a course, a new skill. These modest expenditures pay outsized dividends.

• Try to define yourself by what you love and embrace, rather than what you hate and refuse.

• Read a lot of history so you can understand how weird the past was; that way you will be comfortable with how weird the future will be.

• To make a room luxurious, remove things, rather than add things.

/10 The Power of Power Hour

Final 💎 of the week - love the concept of the ‘Power Hour’.

We all probably know the below matrix - this is the Eisenhower matrix, where we’ve split tasks into the below four quadrants.

To actually get the ‘blue’ work done, we need to schedule regular time for us to actually make progress.

When I first came across the concept of the Power Hour, I instantly put it to good use and scheduled a 1-hour block in my calendar each day to work on the most important thing (remember, it’s important, but it’s not ‘hair-on-fire-deal-with-this-thing-right-now, so it usually gets pushed back).

Constantly re-evaluate what’s important to you and figure out what you need to make progress on each week.

If I actually prioritised putting my newsletter in this category over the past few weeks, maybe I wouldn’t have missed it! I rectified that this week and made sure it was in that category so I could get this issue out.

That’s a wrap - let me know your favourite link 🙂 

Till next week (I mean it this time),

Fahim ✌️