Sep 15, 2020

🧠 Proof of Learning 20: The one where I forget to add a subject

By Jamie Sutton • Issue #20 • View online

Hello. I’m still alive.

The latest niche subreddit I’ve been enjoying is /r/whatsinthebag.

Here’s what I’ve thought about this past week:

💭 On my mind

🛠 Meta-skills are underrated. From Linchpin, a book I read this week: Emotional labor is available to all of us, but is rarely exploited as a competitive advantage. We spend our time and energy trying to perfect our craft, but we don’t focus on the skills and interactions that will allow us to stand out and become indispensable to our organization. More below.
🖱 Brand name or not? I buy everyday goods with value in mind, but I quit buying the cheapest products a long time ago. Cheap goods have hidden costs (replacement costs, time spent researching a replacement, etc) we often forget during the purchasing phase.
💪 Frame questions to produce action. Framing is everything. Don’t ask: do I want to workout today? Instead, ask: do I want to get stronger today? The latter is harder to deny.

📚 Books of the week

📗 Finishing Up: Linchpin by Seth Godin. Linchpin reads a lot like Seth’s blog—which I love… but I’m always moderately disappointed when a book jumps around dozens of sub-chapters. It hurts the rhythm of reading, to me.

This book stresses that you should be making your art, not working as a cog in somebody elses’s assembly line. It can read a bit too much like entrepreneur porn at times. If you read a lot, you may find yourself skimming through sections you’ve read about elsewhere with regularity.

Enjoyable read. Can be summed up with: Make your art, ship often, work for companies that want indispensable people (avoid those who don’t), and show, don’t tell.

📙 Just Released: Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson. Naval Ravikant is one of my favorite sources of modern wisdom. Eric Jorgenson, who built the Evergreen Library, has been working on this for a while. I don’t know if I’ll read this immediately but it was a must-buy for me.

👋 See you next Tuesday!

Thanks for reading.

Here’s a quote from Linchpin:

The only way to prove (as opposed to assert) that you are an indispensable linchpin—someone worth recruiting, moving to the top of the pile, and hiring—is to show, not tell. Projects are the new résumés.

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By Jamie Sutton

Bite-sized ideas for curious minds, every Tuesday.

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