Weekly Mix #175 - Mastering Twitter, Sapiens, Tech Scenes, 2020 Learnings & Writing Well

Weekly Mix #175 - Mastering Twitter, Sapiens, Tech Scenes, 2020 Learnings & Writing Well

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Happy Sunday!

I'm trying a little experiment this week, and sending out on Sunday instead of the usual Monday.

I hope you all had a relaxing weekend, wherever you are. It’s encouraging to see the days getting longer, even if we are approaching the coldest part of the winter here in North America.

I spent most of my Saturday giving my website a bit of a revamp, which was fun, but much more time-consuming than I’d planned.

I wrote a brief piece about how bad we are at estimating as a result.

My most popular short piece this week was Remote Work is Killing Culture.​

I read a lot about writing this week, in an effort to level up my own work. I’ve included my go-to guide below (Julian Shapiro’s).

I’ve also included a link to this landing page, which is a signup form for my Twitter email course.

I’m going to be developing this email course, and then a longer, more formal course, over the coming weeks.

Sign up if you’re interested!

In this week’s newsletter:

Free Email Course: Mastering Twitter​

Book Notes: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari​

Article: Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work​

Article: Is mood a gift or skill?​

Article: Coolest things I learned in 2020​

Article: Going from 0 to $20K revenue in 3 months - a study of Newsletter OS by Janel​

Guide: Writing Well - Julian Shapiro​

Ten Tweets

What I’m Watching: America’s Cup Racing in New Zealand​

Have a wonderful week!

Graham

Free Email Course: Mastering Twitter​

Building a Twitter following is both an art and a science. I've studied how to do it successfully, and in this email course, I'm going to teach how you can do it too.

Book Notes: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari​

Sapiens is a fantastic book, full of broad lessons about humans, history, and the stories we tell ourselves.

"Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more products and services as a positive thing. It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves, and even kill themselves slowly by overconsumption. Frugality is a disease to be cured.

It has succeeded. We are all good consumers. We buy countless products that we don’t really need, and that until yesterday we didn’t know existed. Manufacturers deliberately design short-term goods and invent new and unnecessary models of perfectly satisfactory products that we must purchase in order to stay ‘in’. Shopping has become a favourite pastime, and consumer goods have become essential mediators in relationships between family members, spouses and friends."

Article: Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work - Alex Danco​

A controversial piece, but one that rings mostly true to my ears and experience.

Most of the pushback I saw on this one was more "maybe we don't want to be Silicon Valley" rather than disagreement with the piece itself.

Must-read for anyone interested in the Canadian tech scene, or tech ecosystems outside the US.

Article: Is mood a gift or skill? - Seth Godin​

A quick read from Seth Godin on something I've been thinking a lot about lately: how much of our work is due to "riding" waves of productivity or feeling good, and how much is determination through periods of low motivation?

Article: Coolest things I learned in 2020 - David Perell​

All kinds of wonderful things in here, including:

Nassim Taleb's definition of success

The value of tradition

The explosion in microbreweries

How income affects happiness

And much, much more.

Article: Going from 0 to $20K revenue in 3 months - a study of Newsletter OS by Janel​

My interest in the creator economy continues to grow, and this is a great case study of someone I've been following on Twitter, who has grown their business significantly, by building dashboards in the productivity software Notion.

Guide: Writing Well - Julian Shapiro​

My go-to guide when I'm looking to improve my writing.

My biggest takeaway on this read through:

Writing Quality = Novelty x Resonance

To create great writing, say something novel, and then make it resonate with readers through examples, anecdotes, and personal experience.

Ten Tweets

(this week it's just four!)

​How YouTuber Ali Abdaal would start if he was starting from scratch​

​15 ways to increase your team's speed - Lenny Rachitsky​

​The creator economy is just getting started - Alice Lemée​

​Learnings from a conversation between Bilal Zaidi and Jack Butcher​

What I’m Watching: America’s Cup Racing in New Zealand​

This is some of the most exciting sailboat racing available, with the boats doing 90+km/h, big wipeouts, and the fastest monohulls ever built. The coverage on YouTube is free.

This video is the highlights from Day 3, with more racing over the coming weeks.

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Thank you for being part of the newsletter every week.

It means so much that you let me be part of your inbox, and I love building a community of like-minded people with you.

If I could ask one thing: could you forward this to one person you think would enjoy it? They can sign up directly for the newsletter here.​

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