By Colby Kultgen

A Year Without Screens, A Cure For Procrastination, and An Important Lesson For Spending Money

Read online / Read time: 4 minutes

Hello friends!

Welcome to 1% Better.

The newsletter where I share my 5 favorite ideas, lessons, and discoveries of the week—no fluff, just the good stuff.

Let's get right into it.

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1. A series that might cure your procrastination - How Long Does it Actually Take?​

This is my current favorite thing on the internet.

Christi Newrutzen runs a series called "How Long Does It Actually Take?", where she sees how long it takes to help her friends do something they've been procrastinating on.

A few lessons here:

1. Most things take way less time than we think. We'll spend years avoiding something that takes a couple hours to finish.
2. Taking on projects like this with a friend makes them 10x easier. There's something about having another person in the room that kills the resistance.

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2. The harsh truth about building a strong community

This is one of the biggest lessons I've learned moving to a new city in my 30s.

Building a friend group isn't always fun and easy.

Here's the best approach I've found:

Be the one who makes the effort.

Host the dinner. Plan the thing. Follow up after you meet someone new.

I can already hear the pushback, "Colby, it's not fair that I'm always the one to reach out."

Yes, it can feel a bit one-sided at first, but you quickly find out who's willing to match that energy.

Those are your people.

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3. A guy who's spending a year without screens - The Year Unplugged Experiment​

This is David Daines.

Starting April 5th, David is going an entire year with no screens.

No phone. No computer. No TV.

He's tracking everything (brain scans, IQ tests, biomarkers) before, during, and after to see what actually changes.

You guys know I'm a bit obsessed with what screens do to us, so I'll be following this closely.

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4. An important lesson for spending money

This lesson was burned into my brain after reading Ramit's book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich.

Know the areas of your life where you like to spend extravagantly—and know the areas you can cut mercilessly on.

Personally, I just spent $500 on a new espresso setup.

This might seem ridiculous to some. But coffee is one of my favorite parts of the day. I use it every single morning. So yeah, I went all in.

(also, an americano in Toronto costs $6 🤢)

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5. A new competitor in the AI race 😂

Have a great week friends!

P.S. reply to this email letting me know what resonated with you this week (I read and respond to them all).

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