Postcard 13: Time
Hello from New York, and happy belated fathers day to all the Dads on the postcard.
I had a few days off where I had the chance to reflect a little bit on the time constraints in my life. I noticed that with time constraints, I produce faster and better work. For example, with the 30 essays I wrote daily as part of Ship30, I noticed that the ones under the tightest timelines were some of my best work.
I wrote a longer essay this week on the topic of time, aptly titled just enough time.
Let's get into the postcard and some of the best knowledge from this last week:
The best tweets and ideas from this week:
Pareto distributions (power laws) are at play when dealing with knowledge work. The best engineers aren't the best because they have more time than the rest but because of how they apply their effort. We might all be able to work harder, but working on the right thing can deliver 100x results or even more, as Naval says.
A great thread by Calum where he reminds us that even if they won't let us in through the front door, every place has a side door.
Matthew seeds the idea that micro-management will never attract, develop, or retain the very best people to our cause and efforts. And I agree.
A few Articles I've read from others this week:
The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers by First Round Review
A good article with a lot of great tips and examples of the sorts of habits that lead to being a great people leader. It is a little long so digest it slowly.
The Art and Science of getting to the very top of Crowded Creator Markets via Reddit
What an amazing set of statistics about what it takes to get to the top of the creator economy.
"90% of podcasts don’t get past episode 3. That’s 1.8 million who quit.
Of the 200,000 left, 90% will quit after 20 episodes. That’s another 180,000 gone."
If you are blogging, making videos, making courses, or apps, all it takes is not to quit prematurely.
A reminder that my inbox is open; feel free to reply to this email. I love hearing from my friends who subscribed to this weekly postcard, and I am happy to help in any way.
Have a great week,
Louie