Arman's Antics (#017)
From January 10-17, 2023
Hi comrade,
Coming to you live from Austin, Texas. Here’s your weekly dose of Arman’s Antics. A few things I’ve stumbled upon that could be useful to you. Please feel free to share this with a friend.
Welcome to the seven new subscribers receiving this for the first time (171 total). Thank you for joining me on this journey.
I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. And that’s OK.
There comes a time in every online creator’s life where you are faced with your first unsusbcriber. I had a handful this week, but that’s OK. It’s been said that if you try to create something for everybody then you end up creating something for nobody. Those unsubscribers took a chance on me and decided I wasn’t for them. No hard feelings. Moving forward I have turned off unsubscriber notifications because I don’t need to fret over that. To all my fellow creators, consider doing the same.
Essay I wrote last week
The upside of inefficiency. This begins with a story about General Tso’s chicken. It concludes with a reason to reject the constant pressure to become incrementally more “efficient”. In short, inefficient = better.
Twitter thread I’m reading
Life advice everyone needs to hear. Sahil Bloom has blown up on Twitter over the past few years. He just turned 32 and shared a collection of gems after asking a bunch of 90-year-olds what they wish they knew at his age. My favorite was #9: “Find the things that make you light up and do more of those.”
Universal life advice can be tricky but your bound to find one or two from this list that resonate with you.
Plus, Sahil is a handsome man so you might as well check him out for that.
Book I finished reading
Wild Problems by Russ Roberts. I’m making more of an effort to quit books that don’t jump out at me. I’m judging more books by their covers. A fantastic rule of thumb I picked up from Shane Parish of Farnam Street is to subtract your age from 100 and only read that many pages before deciding to keep going. Since I’m 30, that means 70 pages per new book. This one passed my sniff test and felt worth reading to the end.
From Goodreads: “Roberts asks us to see ourselves and our lives less as a problem to be solved than a mystery to be experienced. There's no right decision waiting to be uncovered by an app or rational analysis. Reality is harder than that and, perhaps, a little more interesting.”
My favorite question I took away from the book was: “How can I create a flourishing life?”
My favorite line I jotted down from the book was: “You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to connect those dots.”
Podcast I’m planning on relistening to
Naval. Naval Ravikant is one of my favorite modern day thinkers. I was first introduced to him by none other than Tim Ferriss. Naval started his podcast a few years ago as a way to go more in-depth on his mega-hit twitter thread on How to get rich without getting lucky. But he doesn’t just talk about money. He dives into many of the topics I am curious about. Wealth, health, happiness, philosophy and science.
I love finding podcasts so good that you don’t need to keep searching for the next best thing. I will be relistening in the coming weeks and am sure to discover new hidden gems that I completely missed before.
Random thought
If you think that all you need to do is find some extra time to make extra money, well then forget it. There isn’t anymore time lying around.
That’s all my antics for this week. What are your thoughts? The best (and my favorite) way of earning new subscribers is when they were forwarded this from a trusted friend. Know any?
Have a Terrific Tuesday, comrade!
Cheers,
Arman
PS - Want to check out another great newsletter on Substack? Here’s one by my friend Arjun - The Principle Podcast.
I love reading and responding to your insightful comments. Comments are below.
"there isn't more time lying around" My favourite line in a laden post.