By Colby Kultgen
The Greatest Blog Posts Ever Written, A 172-Year-Old Letter, and The World Is a Museum of Passion Projects
Read online / Read time: 4 minutes
Hello friends!
Here is your weekly dose of 1% Better.
The newsletter where I share my 5 favorite ideas, lessons, and discoveries of the week.
Let's get right into it.
I was scrolling Substack last week when I saw this note:
Now, any time someone says something is the greatest of all time, my ears perk up.
Not because I automatically believe it, but because I want to judge it for myself. And because there's a real thrill in the idea that what you're about to consume could change your life forever.
It's a bit too early for me to say if the article shared here is one of the GOATs, but it's pretty dang good.
I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and try putting together a list of my own "greatest of all time" articles:
I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch.
So I want to turn this over to you:
What’s the best article or blog post you’ve ever read?
If enough good ones come in, maybe we'll put them together into a mega list for everyone.
2. An app that instantly sends any article to your Kindle - Inkwell
Speaking of articles—I have a bit of a hot take.
I don't like reading them on my phone or computer.
This is for two main reasons:
- I get distracted easily.
- Even when I'm not distracted, just having the option to check something else keeps me from fully engaging with what I'm reading.
That's why I was stoked to discover this tool.
You paste any article URL and it lands nicely formatted on your Kindle in a few seconds. You can also subscribe to a Substack and every new post will be automatically pushed to your device.
I'm excited about this if you can't tell.
Please, someone reply and let me know I'm not the only one who was dying for a tool like this.
3. A quote that's making me see the world differently
This banger comes courtesy of John Collison (the co-founder of Stripe):
Sometimes I look up at a skyscraper and think to myself “Holy shit, humans made that?"
Every inch of steel, glass, and wiring was put there by someone who figured out how to make it happen.
It's crazy!
And I think it’s really important that we never lose this sense of awe.
That we don’t become desensitized to the ridiculous amount of human effort hiding in plain sight.
The world isn’t just a collection of things; it’s a testament to human persistence.
And once you see that, it changes what you believe you can create, too.
4. A 172-year-old letter I can't stop thinking about
What gets me is that this might be more relevant now than it was in 1854.
Because when I read it, two things come to mind:
The original (and intended) interpretation about not dwelling on the past. You did what you could today, some of it went badly, and the move is to forget it and start clean tomorrow.
But the more modern reading feels even more literal: finish the day. Be done with it. In a world where work follows us from our laptops to our phones to our beds, the day does not end unless we consciously end it. And I think a lot of burnout is really the exhaustion of never feeling finished.
5. Tweet of the week
This one took me a second 😂.
A few more things I'm into this week:
🤯 Fully playable browser version of Half-Life 2: hl2.slqnt.dev
📰 TV series I thought was amazing: Widow's Bay
💭 Quote that knocked me on my butt:
The easiest way to betray yourself is one small compromise at a time.
P.S. A new cohort of Archimedes is starting soon. It's the private community I run with Ben Meer and Jade Bonacolta for people serious about building and monetizing a personal brand. Today is the last day to get the early bird discount ($500 off). Apply here.
— Colby
