Dickie's Digest - Shipping, Idea Flow, Mental Wealth, Peter Drucker, and First Principles
Hey there - happy Sunday!
This was easily the longest seven-day period in history. Luckily, the Digest is here to propel you into next week. And grab a comfy chair because this one is packed.
A few quick things from me. First, last week I talked about the 30 atomic essays in 30 days challenge We are moving forward with it, and it’s called Ship 30 for 30. If you’re looking to start a writing habit, check out this webpage for more information. It would be epic to have some Digest readers in the community!
Second, I was interviewed on two podcasts this week. They’re linked in the This Week in Podcasts section. And finally, I uploaded my takeaways from The Almanack of Naval. I think this was the fastest I’ve ever read a book. I read it in one sitting - I simply couldn’t put it down.
That’s it from me! In this week’s Digest:
Have an epic week!
Dickie
💭 Idea Flow and Mental Wealth
This week I published an essay on how I set out to reconstruct my idea flow. I’ve been spending a lot of time on the internet this year. With all this time, I’m trying to be more mindful of the ideas I let grab my attention. The more I reflected on it, the more I realized the way I see the world is largely a function of what I consume. And then the metaphor hit me. Just as cash flow leads to financial wealth, idea flow leads to mental wealth.
With this metaphor in mind, I asked: what does mental look like? And how could I create an idea flow that made mental wealth inevitable? This post is a deep dive into what I did.
In thinking about my idea flow, I thought about the principles strong cash flows are built on. They were:
High return on investment
Diversified across different sources
Built incrementally and audited periodically
Passively compounding for you 24/7
I then applied these principles to my idea flow. This meant finding the sources of ideas that were worth investing in, like high-quality online communities and subscription-based writers. From there, I set out to diversify across medium, time horizon, and thought bucket. It’s still a work in progress, but I can already feel the mental wealth compounding. And with mental wealth, financial wealth is inevitable.
Read more: Idea Flow and Mental Wealth
💼 Managing Oneself with Peter Drucker
This week I revisited the best business book under 50 pages ever written: Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker. For any young professional, this book is a treasure chest of ideas on finding your strengths, weaknesses, and where you can best contribute. It’s also only 1.99 on Audible if you’re into audiobooks. You can breeze through it on a short walk.
The book focuses on six questions:
What are my strengths?
What are my values?
How do I perform?
Where do I belong?
What should I contribute?
The goal: become the CEO of Me, Inc.
If I could gift one book to someone in college or early career who feels a bit stuck, overwhelmed, or not sure what to do next it, it would be this one. You can buy the book here or see my tweet thread of takeaways here.
Read more: Managing Oneself
🧠 The Ultimate Guide to First Principles Thinking
Talk about rabbit holes - this website fpt.guide is the classic definition. After clicking through it, I wanted to run away to the woods for a week and read every book it mentions. Put together by my friend Ayush, this is a compendium of resources to master first principles thinking.
If you’re unfamiliar with first principles, they are basic assumptions that cannot be deduced from any other assumption. First principles are the Lego building blocks for thinking. These Lego blocks, once carefully assembled with forethought, are reusable. With the right set of first-principles, you can start mixing them in ways you couldn't before allowing you to think better and faster.
This website has deep dives into the first principles of writing, learning, probability, physics, computation, game theory, philosophy, economics, mental models, and design thinking. I plan on spending hours flipping through this thing, and I hope you do too.
Dive down the rabbit hole: fpt.guide
🎧This Week in Podcasts
Two shameless plugs this week of podcasts I was featured on! Then an epic conversation between David Perell and the CEO of Whoop.
Your boy on the Steal My Marketing Podcast
This was the most spontaneous thing I’ve done in a while. Abhishek reached out on Twitter and bang, we were on Zoom the next day recording this episode. This was a fun and wide-ranging conversation talking about my journey growing this newsletter, habits, routines, my favorite books, and a quick deep dive into SPACs and Rolling Funds. You can also check out the blog post version.
Your boy on the Danny Miranda Podcast
This was my first time on a podcast which was pretty exciting. This episode was recorded almost five weeks ago but was published this week. Danny Miranda brings the juice and positivity better than almost anyone I’ve met. In this conversation, we talk about health and fitness, lessons from losing 100lbs, consistency, habits, and the leverage of writing online.
WHOOP CEO Will Ahmed on the North Star Podcast
WHOOP is a fascinating brand. I picked one up after listening to this episode because the CEO has an epic vision for the future of health and wellness. The coolest part of this conversation was the limitations of gathering health data. Ideally, chips would be planted in our stomachs/brains to get the most accurate health and longevity data. Some people would bypass the privacy concerns and be all about that, but the limitations are technological. For example - how would you keep the device charged? I’d never thought of some of the things they mention.
😎 Cool Things Corner
This week I found this super simple website called Sunday.fm. My absolute favorite music to read and chill to is lo-fi music. This is a one-click button for a 24/7 drip of lush lo-fi. It’s firmly earned a spot on my bookmark bar.
🧠 Idea Corner
🥃 Sunday Chaser
Politics aside, this is one of the funnier stories I’ve ever read.
Thanks for reading!
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