I'm obsessed with living a better life each and every day. I want to share what I learn and discover with you.
Priceless Career Advice, Silent Pandemics, and My New Productivity System
Hello friend—Colby here. I spent Sunday on the beach. Which means I'm spending Monday nursing my sunburned body with aloe vera and air conditioning. Hope you had a great weekend. Let's dive in. Estimated read time: 4 minutes Before we begin... a big thank you to this week's sponsor: 1. 😷 The Silent Pandemics - Tweet Thread from Dan GoEye-opening post from Dan Go this week. There are so many issues bubbling under the surface in society right now. Many of them completely ignored by mainstream media. A few here that stood out to me: 6. We don't allow ourselves to be bored anymore. Being constantly stimulated is not sustainable for a good life. In my experience it leads to lower levels of happiness/creativity, and an increased chance of burnout. 12. Some scientists promote sugary cereals to be more nutritious than eggs and beef. This one is crazy. More than ever before, it's important to try things out and form your own opinions based on how things make you feel—rather than blindly following the advice of professionals. 16. We trade our sleep for more social media time, which messes up our sleep even more. Poor sleep is a negative multiplier. It takes any problems you already have in your life and injects them with fatigue, irritability, and stress. 2. 💼 5 Priceless pieces of career advice - Tweet from Sahil Bloom
1. Swallow the Frog: This is one of the greatest “hacks” to get ahead early in your career. Observe your boss, figure out what they hate doing, learn to do it, and take it off their plate. Easy win.
2. Do the “Old Fashioned” Things Well: There are simple things that still stand out. Look people in the eye, do what you say you’ll do, be early, practice good posture, have a confident handshake. It sounds silly, but these things are all free and will never go out of style.
3. Work Hard First (& Smart Later): It’s in vogue to say that working smart is all that matters. Wrong. If you want to accomplish anything meaningful, you have to start by working hard. Build a reputation for hard work—take pride in it. Then you can start to build leverage to work smart. If you want to read 3 and 4 (trust me you do) go check out the full thread from Sahil. This post made me think of another great piece of career advice from Barack Obama: 3. 💵 Warren Buffett's "20 Slot" Rule - Article from James Clear"I've told students if when they got out of school, they got a punch card with 20 punches on it, and that's all the investment decisions they got to make in their entire life, they would get very rich because they would think very hard about each one." —Warren Buffett This article from James Clear talks about a powerful financial concept Warren Buffett used with his students. Not only is it great financial advice. Imagine if instead of chasing every shiny object that came into view, we chose only the 20 most important things we wanted to dedicate our lives to. It's this selective focus that allows for extraordinary results. "If you want to master a skill — truly master it — you have to be selective with your time. You have to ruthlessly trim away good ideas to make room for great ones. You have to focus on a few essential tasks and ignore the distractions. If you view your life as a 20-slot punch card and each slot is a period of focused work for a year or two, then you can see how you can enjoy significant returns on your invested time simply by going all in on a few things." "Don’t waste your next slot. Think carefully, make a decision, and go all in. Don’t just kind of go for it. Go all in. Your final results are merely a reflection of your prior commitment." —James Clear 4. ⚙️ The new productivity system I've been usingI call it "Moding" (awful name, I know). Basically, rather than blocking out my time into tasks, I've been blocking it into "Modes" based on my current goals:
Within each mode are sub-tasks for the day (these may change depending on the day/week): The idea was triggered by this YouTube video where Brian Dean talks about starting your day in "Create Mode" rather than "Consume Mode". He emphasizes that once our brains have switched into a certain "Mode", it can be hard to get them back on track (similar to task-switching). Expect a post about this with more detail in the future. 5. 📝 The best productivity article I've ever read - Organize Your Life by TodoistSpeaking of Todoist, if you're interested in giving it a try, this is an insanely valuable article which lays out how you can use it to get your life in order. I still refer back to it quite often. If someone forwarded this to you, Subscribe here. |
113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205 |
Hi! I'm Colby!
I'm obsessed with living a better life each and every day. I want to share what I learn and discover with you.
By Colby Kultgen Microdosing Content, Showering In The Dark, and Cold-Emailing Billionaires Read online / Read time: 4 minutes Hey friends! A bit under the weather this week, so I'm keeping this issue short and sweet. A system for intentional content consumption - Tired of Doomscrolling? Try This Consuming content isn't inherently bad. Where we run into problems is when we constantly let the algorithm decide what content we consume. This video proposes something I haven't seen before. Instead...
By Colby Kultgen Everyone Should Try a 30-Day Challenge, A Word That's Changing How I See the World, and LinkedIn Speak 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. Why I think everyone should try a 30-day challenge I don't mean to alarm you, but we're almost a quarter of the way through 2026. How are those January goals...
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. 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...