Working smarter, sharing ideas, sunlight and Notion
Working Smarter
Edition #041
Hey friends, happy Sunday!
A phrase I often hear is that you should "work smarter, not harder".
But this isn't always the case.
When you're figuring out what you want, what you enjoy, or what you're good at it's crucial that you work hard and it isn't always possible to "work smart".
There's no denying that in the internet age you're rewarded for being efficient and leveraging your time and attention.
But before you can build leverage you need to first gain clarity and competence.
Clarity comes from figuring out what you don't want, so you can uncover what you do want. You need to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. A process that is often messy and inefficient.
Competence comes from putting in the hours and building the foundational skills needed to thrive. In many cases the people making the biggest impact in the world are not the best in their field, it's the people who develop the competence to automate, lead and teach others that make a difference.
It's the action takers who push humanity forward, the people who try things, build competence and then work smarter - in that order.
Those who try work smarter from the get go often stay at the start line optimising nothing, looking for shortcuts instead of taking action and iterating along the way.
When you have no experience working smarter can be a detriment to your growth. You end up never putting yourself into situations that require you to be uncomfortable and work hard.
These situations are the driving force for change, without clarity and competence you'll spend years optimising nothing.
Here are this weeks finds:
I.
On sharing ideas online
(Article)
📱Small teams and one-person businesses are my favourite kind. I love seeing people have an outsized impact and building cool companies on their own terms.
Those companies are typically following the model Naval Ravikant laid out in his how to get rich (without getting luck) thread. They learn to build and sell then use permissionless channels like code or media to distribute what they are doing.
This post from Stew Fortier talks about why you should share your ideas online and breaks down the different business models of those who do.
II.
On sunlight
(Article)
🌞 I'm becoming increasingly interested in how to incorporate more sunlight and less screen time into my life.
Countless studies show that lack of sunlight exposure (and excess blue light from screens) can lead to fatigue, poor sleep, worse mood, and that weird thing where you feel tired throughout the day then wide awake when it's time to sleep.
Nat Eliason has a cool outdoor desk setup to ensure he's getting enough sunlight - but in the UK I'm not sure how viable something like this is.
I'd love to hear any suggestions on how you try get more sunlight and less screen time?
III.
On Notion
(Tool / Tutorial)
☑️ For a long time I thought that Notion kinda sucked. I get that it’s meant to be the “all-in-one tool” that replaces all other knowledge and task management but I could never get it to work for me.
Every tutorial or template I’d find created artificial complexity to doing simple things like adding a task or jotting down an idea. A lot of the Notion content is around making your Notion look nice and moving information around, not using Notion as a tool to get things done.
But now I think I get it. This tutorial from Khe Hy is where it all started to click. If you’re interested in using Notion then I’d highly recommend checking out Khe’s work, he’s the only person I’ve seen explaining Notion for work rather than Notion for the sake of using Notion.
IV.
On goals are only guesses
(Article)
📈 There has been a backlash against goal setting recently, but setting goals has been proven to be helpful.
The caveat is that you need to be okay with changing those goals and not letting them hinder your progress. This post from Behavoir gap shares some great ideas on goals:
" Goals are guesses. As the self-declared King of Permission Granting, I’m granting you permission to relax when it comes to goals. Just guess! No one knows exactly what you’re going to be doing 17.5 years from now— so no sense in laboring over a false sense of precision. Just guess."
One interesting quote
"Criticism without creativity is just pessimism.
The honest way to critique is to create the alternative." - Naval
End note
If you enjoyed this edition of the Sunday Filter then I’d love it if you could share it with a few friends. You can send them over here to sign up or share on Twitter.
Have a great week!
- Stephen
p.s passive income is so last year…