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Good emails
I love a well constructed email - the kind that makes you want to screenshot it and revisit it occasionally just to relish in its magic, so I'm starting to collect
good emails here - including job pitches, cold emails, or emails responses. If you want to contribute to this collection, just reply to this email and I'll give you access!
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On why the magic is in the mundane
I enjoyed this
blogpost by the co-creator of Django on embracing the grind:
I often have people newer to the tech industry ask me for secrets to success. There aren’t many, really, but this secret — being willing to do something so terrifically tedious that it appears to be magic — works in tech too.
A few related thoughts on this:
Startupy curator
Jason Levin wrote a great post on how learning a new skill isn't a straight line up. It's a zigzag across a continent of Google links.
I love
Austin Kleon's simple
Keep Going - let go of the thing that you’re trying to be (the noun), and focus on the actual work you need to be doing (the verb). Doing the verb will take you someplace further and far more interesting.
I discovered
Daniel Kazandijan's writing via startupy curator
Stuart Evans and particularly enjoyed this piece on why
Greatness isn't grandiose:
There’s an aesthetic gap between what success looks like and what it actually is. It appears glitzy and grandiose when it’s actually modest and mundane.
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On the smartest website you haven't heard of
We've been deep down the product design rabbit hole at startupy HQ which is why I was delighted to discover
this - an overview of what a sane, customer-focused website looks like, and why it’s very different from what we've come to see as modern design.
It reminds me of
this by
Don Norman:
Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible.
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On vibe capitalism
I enjoyed
this 20 minute video by Geoff Lewis - a poignant reminder for those of us building tech products not to trade a good life for an efficient life.
"Efficiency is wildly profitable, but when it is treated as a God instead of as a means to the end of aliveness, it undercuts what makes us human - our vibes."
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On being curious > judgmental
A good post on being
curious, not judgmental referencing a video that went viral a few years ago where Twitter was quick to judge the factory reset process for a smart lightbulb.
“There’s more to the design of everyday things than meets the eye. By being curious, not judgmental, we can start to understand these peculiar things around us. Only by understanding, we might even find a way to make them better.”