Dickie's Digest #71 - Life Lessons, Permissionless Projects, Lindy Articles, and Business Writing
Hey my friends, happy Sunday.
Two quick things from me:
It’s the one-year anniversary of the blog post that changed my life: Grab A Shitty Rod and Start Fishing. I wrote it to myself as a reminder to stop spending so much time planning and procrastinating and just get started. And one year later, that framework drives everything I do.
We have a week left before sign-ups close for the June Ship 30 for 30 cohort. Today wrapped up Day 30 of the May cohort, and if you want to learn more, read all 300 of their Day 30 reflection essays.
That’s it from me! In this week’s Digest:
🧵 💵 42 Life Lessons from legendary copywriter Craig Clemens.
🧵✍🏼 10 Business Writing Tips from the Bible of Business Writing
🧵 💵 42 Life Lessons from legendary copywriter Craig Clemens. I loved reading these life lessons from my friend Craig. In fact, whenever I see someone writing an “X lessons from my X birthday,” I stop and read it every single time. There’s something about someone putting their learnings in a single place. A few I loved from this one:
There is no such thing as being overdressed. There is only making other people feel underdressed.
When in doubt, pay for the entire bill. And when unsure, tip higher.
If busy, meditate once a day. If really busy, meditate 2x per day.
** Find your oldest email box and sort by reverse order. Read and enjoy how far you’ve come. **
📖 ⚒ Paul Graham on A Project of One’s Own. This essay from Paul Graham put an idea I think about every day into perfect words.
My favorite question to ask people my age is “What you are working on?”
And most of the responses are something they’re being told to work on, not something they want to work on. So then I rephrase the question: “What are you working on, without permission?”
These permissionless projects are something everyone should work on. Projects you have complete control over and allow you to see the direct impact of your efforts. Writing, podcasting, tweeting, designing, filming - whatever it is, have something you are working on without permission. And bonus points for doing it with the goal of building a permissionless skill.
📖 💎 Read Something Great - readsomethinggreat.com. This is the coolest web app I’ve come across in ages. Instead of doomscrolling Twitter, throw this one on your bookmarks and click on it whenever you get bored. Read Something Great resurfaces some of the internet’s most timeless articles across five categories: living better, business & tech, history & culture, and science & nature. I’ve already found a few rabbit holes just in my first day using it.
🧵✍🏼 10 Business Writing Tips from the Bible of Business Writing. After last week’s thread on writing tips from the world’s best marketer, I dug into the book he recommended everyone read three times before sending another email. And in the first 50 pages, I found 10 business writing tips that everyone should staple to the top of their desktop.Give this a read and forward it along to that coworker who writes terribly long emails.
🔥 Last week’s most popular link: 🧵 ✍🏼 10 writing tips from the world’s best marketer.
This is an idea I’ve been wrestling with for a while. Any time you learn something new, you start out experiencing the Dunning-Krueger effect. Then, once you’ve been learning for a while, impostor syndrome kicks in.
I want to write about how you can overcome both by writing about what you’re learning. Stay tuned!
That’s it for this week. As always, I appreciate your time and attention. Shoot anything you find interesting this week my way.
Have an epic week.
Dickie
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