🎯 Get a Competitive Edge with this Month's Best Resources
👋🏼 Hello friend
💬 In this week's issue:
- Find flow even in noisy environments with white noise
- A one-minute article on why poor execution is better than the best idea
- My current favorite podcast by Derek Sivers. Simple, quick, and easy-to-recreate tips.
- A heart-wrenching story: "Frame is more important than content." Find your frame in life that allows your talents and character traits to shine.
- How to evoke creativity at the touch of a button
- My method for making progress visible and being more motivated as a result
- Shortform makes the world's best guides to non-fiction books. They're like book summaries on steroids.
🦎🥚 Look carefully; there are quotes, like easter eggs, to be found between the lines.
Get a Competitive Edge with this month's Best Resources
🔊 Tech- Tip: Too loud on the bus or train? White Noise helps to get into the zone and stay there.
Enter "White Noise" on Spotify.
The pleasant noise "drowns out" outside noises. White noise contains all frequencies across the spectrum of audible sound. If you switch on white noise, with or without noise-canceling headphones, you have continuous sound without interruption.
🧖🏼♀️ Relaxed and undisturbed. More on white noise @sleepfoundation.org
🥚 If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. - Milton Berle
📝 Favorite article: "Ideas are just a multiplier of execution" by Derek Sivers | Why poor execution is better than a great idea.
In this 1-minute article, Derek Sivers presents a unique scoring system on how you can calculate your company value.
Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. - Derek Sivers
🎧 Podcast: Derek Sivers
Most episodes are no longer than 2 minutes, with one idea each.
I love Derek Sivers's ideas because they are simple, quick, and easy to recreate.
Writing Idea from a Podcast Episode: Write one sentence per line.
This leads to:
- Better overview
- Optimization of each sentence, line by line
- Simplicity of language
🥚 Don't be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams. - Derek Sivers
🐧 The Penguin Principle: "Frame is more important than content." - Find your frame in life that allows your talents and character traits to shine
The Penguin Principle (with English subs)
The penguin principle explains one of the most important wisdoms of our time:
Don't constantly strive to be like others. Stop comparing yourself with neighbors, colleagues, and friends.
There are already enough others.
- We should be the way we are.
- We do not have to change.
- We need to change the environment in which we live.
For that, we have to deal with ourselves and get to know ourselves.
The Full Story of the Penguin-Principle
This story is true and actually happened to me.
I was working as a moderator on a cruise ship and initially thought, 'Cruise, great thing!' until I realized I was on the wrong ship. Seasickness shows no respect for credentials; it wasn't funny.
Finally, with solid ground under my feet, I went to Norway and saw a penguin standing on a rock.
I thought, 'What a poor thing.' Small wings, stout stature, and it seemed god forgot its knees—a clear design flaw. Then, the penguin jumped into the water and swam. I thought to myself: What an excellent swimmer, so well-suited to swiftly move in water, using the energy from a liter of gasoline to swim 2000 kilometers. That's better than anything humans have ever built.'
And I thought, 'Design flaw.'
The penguin reminded me of two things:
- How quickly I make judgments, and how I can be completely wrong when I've only seen people in one situation.
- Secondly, how important the environment is in bringing out what one can do. People don't change entirely and fundamentally.
Even if born as a penguin, seven years of psychotherapy won't turn one into a giraffe in this life.
And a good therapist, of which there are many, won't dwell on why someone would want a long neck, what it has to do with the kids or the loss of a grandfather. They'll ask:
- Who are you?
- What can you do?
- What do you want?
- What are your strengths?
It's much more sensible to work on strengths than fiddle with weaknesses. If one always thinks, 'I should be like others,' a small consolation:
There are already enough others. All that's demanded of us is to know ourselves and to see if we're in the right environment for that.
If I'm a penguin in the desert, and things aren't working out, it's not my fault. I need to take small steps towards my water and then jump in. Then, I'll know what it feels like to be in my element. I'm very grateful that I know this repeatedly from the bottom of my heart.
I loved to be a doctor. However, one of my weaknesses is that my creative process is a little chaotic, which is unsuitable there.
One of my strengths is to come up with new ideas without a fixed text, but that's not ideal for dictating medical records. In other words, today, I focus more on my strengths; my weaknesses matter less. This is a small example of motivating recipients to discover and stay true to themselves and bring out their greatest potential.
I wish you a lot of time in your element.
🥚 Obvious to you, amazing to others. - Derek Sivers
🎬 Netflix Movie The Social Dilemma: Tech Designers control how we think, act, and live.
“There are only two industries that call their customers 'users': illegal drugs and software” - Edward Tufte
Leaders and employees of Facebook, Google, and other big tech companies give an insight into what goes on behind the scenes. The brightest minds work day and night on apps to get users hooked.
📱 The Data Detox Kit: Take control of your digital privacy, health and overall wellbeing
This page shows you how to use your cell phone and computer safely.
The category "Escape Defaults: To enhance your digital well-being" made me create this wallpaper. Whenever I look at my phone, I ask myself: Why now? To prevent mindless scrolling.
Download your free Digital Detox Wallpaper:
Get easy-to-understand summaries on their download page or a collection of privacy-conscious tools, apps, and services.
🥚 All things are difficult before they are easy. - Thomas Fuller
🚨 Creativity at the push of a button
Creativity is not created on push and press.
To be creative, create an environment that allows creativity. Sitting in front of a desk staring at a screen is not quite a creative environment.
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking" - Friedrich Nietzsche
Exercise and let your thoughts run free. Then creativity comes "all by itself."
🥳 Increase your motivation by making progress visible
The Ironman 70.3 consists of a 1.9km (1.2-mile) swim.
That's 38 x 50-meter swim lanes. During training, I encountered an obstacle. I couldn't give it my all and count the lanes I swam simultaneously. I counted myself wrong again and again.
- Take two cups.
- Put 19 marbles into one jar.
- Leave the other jar empty.
Whenever I swam 2 lanes (50 meters there, 50 meters back), I put one marble out of the full into the empty jar.
I killed two birds with one stone. I no longer miscounted. The progress of filling the jar with marbles motivated me to keep going.
Do you have any ideas for what else to use this method for? Send me your ideas and I will publish them in the next newsletter anonymously if you wish.
Have a great week! 🌞
xx Lukas
💉 Shortform makes the world’s best guides to non-fiction books. They’re like book summaries on steroids.
I've been using Shortform for a while and have partnered with them as an affiliate! Use my link for a 20% discount on the annual subscription. That’s about 2 and a half months of the service for free.
🕳 Use small gaps in the day to get to know new genres on Shortform
Net time: No extra time. This is the time between the daily work blocks.
- When riding the bus or train
- in the doctor's waiting room.
I used to be bored during this time.
Now, I use that time to read Shortform summaries of new genres.
Why I love Shortform:
- They’re super detailed, so you get the book’s key points at a deep level.
- They have interactive exercises to help you apply the ideas you just learned so you don’t forget them like I do when I read a book.
- They add smart insights, like connecting what one author thinks about another. You end up understanding the ideas at a super deep level and building awesome connections between ideas.
You can even download PDF versions of the book guides, print them out, or read them offline on your device.
With no task switching, you can focus only on what's in front of you.
Learn more than ever from important non-fiction books and receive 5-days of unlimited access and an additional 20% discount on the annual subscription. 🤩