I see posts and videos of people talking about how AI is stealing our creativity... I haven't felt more creative since I was taught to use Claude Code!

I was listening to a podcast yesterday about Hitler (Really well done, from the channel @HTTOTW). I don’t know much about the life of Hitler, but I’ve heard him being portrayed as a charismatic speaker able to move the crowd. Where did he get that ability from? Because of the podcast, I learned that, in his youth, Hitler spent a lot of times inside hostels. From the outside it looked like he was wasting time not being very productive. It seems like he was a bohemian, going nowhere. He spent his time reading. Arguing politics. Debating his views with anyone who would listen. While it might seem like that was a lazy period, I think that’s part of where he sharpened his axe. I can imagine he got a lot of reps when it came to learning to speak about his political beliefs in a persuasive manner. Getting real-time feedback on what resonated and what didn't. It’s weird to learn this lesson from such an evil person, but if you want to become a great speaker, you have to speak, a lot.

Taking the identity of the teacher is heavy. You’re an expert. That’s the end. It also feels like playing the game from the role of a teacher is a 0 sum game. You TEACH. What you’re teaching is “the truth”. There is no more room for other ideas. That feels bad. Instead, a contributor is better. What you share does not invalidate anyone else. You’re simply adding to the pie. You’re contributing your point if view without eliminating other possibilities.

STOP doing "the boring work" So many people out there advise you to “do the boring work.” “That’s how you get ahead!” I’ve been using AI to analyze the life and work of really successful people, and based on what I found, it doesn’t look like they were bored to death doing work that drained them all the way to success. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Warren Buffett didn’t grind sales calls. They didn’t grind boring admin work. They didn’t grind support tickets… They weren’t bored to death with their work. From the outside, people might look at their work and think “that looks boring!”, but internally they were engaged and enjoying the work. Examples Elon Musk Obsessed with: - Physics - First principles - Scaling systems He sleeps on factory floors not out of discipline, but obsession. He says he works because he can’t stop thinking about the problems. Factory logistics might look boring to outsiders, but for Musk it’s a physics puzzle, not boredom. Steve Jobs Obsessed with: - Product taste - Simplicity - User experience - Storytelling Delegated execution details aggressively. Known for pacing, arguing, refining, not administrating. Jobs didn’t “push through boredom.” He protected his attention for the work that lit him up. Warren Buffett Spends most days: - Reading - Thinking - Talking through businesses He has explicitly said he does this because he loves it. He avoids operational grind entirely. What looks “boring” (reading annual reports) is play to him. He structured his life to eliminate work he doesn’t enjoy. Mark Zuckerberg Obsessed with: - Systems - Code - Network effects - Long-term architectures Zuckerberg enjoys abstract system design. What drains others stabilizes him. Walt Disney Obsessed with: - Story - Experience -World-building He hated administration and finances. He nearly destroyed himself when forced into roles that didn’t fit. Disney thrived when creating worlds — and suffered when stuck in misaligned work. Surely, all those entrepreneurs I just listed pushed through a lot of work in their careers that they didn’t love. But that wasn’t 80% of the time. It was the minority. I think that’s how they lasted so long. If they did some boring work, it was because they had to, not because of this mentality of: “You have to grind!” Based on every book I’ve read, success is a long-term game. How are you going to last a long time if you are bored to death? If you are bored, you will quit — unless you have a high pain threshold. But that’s not the type of success I want. My takeaways from this research: The people who win long-term aren’t better at tolerating boredom. They’re better at structuring their lives so their hardest work is also the work that engages them, aka “aligned work”. Pushing through work that you find boring should be the minority, not the strategy. I think you can use the feeling of being bored as an important signal that you are doing work that is misaligned with you, and that you should ultimately find a way to reduce, redesign, or remove. Here are some things I wrote for myself that you can do to stop feeling bored: - Re-engineer the task or job so it does not feel boring. - If you can’t, try seeing if you can get away with not doing the task at all. If you can’t, delegate it. Find someone who loves what you find boring. - If that’s not possible, sometimes you have to push through, but it should be 20% of the time, not 80%. If pushing through most of the time is what is required to be successful in the game you are playing, you are going to have a rough time. The way I think about it is that if you are playing a game that bores you, and someone else finds it exciting or calming, and they love it while you hate it, it’s going to be tough to beat them long term. When it comes to boring work in relation to success, I think a better way to say this is: Do high-value work that seems boring on the outside, but you find deeply rewarding inside.

I wonder if content creators feel the same way. I would love to have a simplified version of OBS in the iPad. It connects your iPhone as a camera, you can integrate your EarPods as the microphone, and you can connect your iPad as the whiteboard. I think this can work well for educational content.

From 130 to 220 Students! Here’s How Ashley Rebuilt Her Studio After the Pandemic! Last week, I had an awesome success call with Ashley Palmer, the owner of Encore Dance Studio in Adrian, Michigan, and I wanted to share her story with you all for some Monday motivation! Before the pandemic, Ashley’s studio had 250 students and it was thriving. But like many of us, the pandemic hit hard, and her student numbers dropped. She went from 250 students down to just 130. For a while there were struggles... Despite trying everything to try and rebuild her student numbers—free trials, Facebook ads, marketing on her own—she wasn’t seeing the growth she needed. Then, in March this year, Ashley teamed up with us at StudioHub. Within months, things started turning around. Now she’s at 220 students and growing! For the first time in a long while, she’s had to open up new classes because some are already full. She finally feels like she's getting her confidence back! With the power of StudioHub's automation, and the help of our amazing Client Success Manager, Steph, Ashley was able to turn her business around! Now her studio is back to thriving, her classes are packed, and she’s back to doing what she loves most. Want to see how Ashley did it? Watch her success call below! PS: If you're a dance studio owner, and you're interested in getting a free trial of StudioHub, reply back "FREE TRIAL"

I just saw a YouTube video where this guy talked about how to make it as a writer. He said that for writing to work, you needed to do lots of VOLUME! It’s about writing a LOT! To get good writing, you have to do a lot of bad writing. Alex Hormozi said that volume negates luck. That seems to be a principle of life… For a tree to proliferate, it needs to make LOTS of seeds. Most of those seeds aren’t going to turn into trees. …I just googled it and said that anywhere from a “small percentage to 20% of seeds make it into trees”. It’s crazy how the 80/20 formula applies here. In any case, if you want to create good writing, write a lot of bad writing!

I just read a blog post about how people are copying Mr Beast, but there are some people that are doing the opposite and succeeding. archive.is/3rCIZ What’s incredible to me is that some YouTubers are actually copying Mr Beast’s video premises, thumbnails, and titles and are succeeding. It’s just like that book I’m reading by Derek Sivers. He said in his book that if you like a business, an idea, a song… copy it. We are imperfect mirrors. By copying it, we’re actually sharing ourselves. The article also made me thing of what Alex Becker said yesterday. He is just sharing. He’s putting content out there that he enjoys. Some people are doing that successfully. I want to do that for myself and share more!

Today, I realized that when playing pickleball, you have to get REALLY low. Lower than you think. I didn’t realize how low “low” is. It is low! This is the before: This is the after: It might not seem like much of a difference, but I am going significantly lower on the second image. I didn't realize how low you had to get until I saw my video recording. And yes… this is me practicing in my living room!

True styles aren’t planned. Styles happen because you follow your curiosity and excitement. However, for style to manifest itself, you need to learn the foundations of your craft. Master the basics.

I think that I have stumbled onto the pickleball skillset that you need to have to be good. I thought about this because I see someone like Matt Wright winning in doubles and someone like Quang Dwong losing in doubles. Quang is very athletic. Matt Wright is not nearly as athletic. Quang has the strongest forehand drive in pickleball. Matt Wright doesn’t have nearly the strength in his drive. Although Quang is more athletic and has better drives than Matt, Matt does better in doubles than Quang. The idea is that strength, power, and athleticism are NOT the key to winning. So, what is it, then? I think the skills you need to have to be great at doubles: - Drop shots - Dinking - Blocking - Speed ups Those 4 skills can make you better than 80%, probably 90% of the players. Drills to improve these skills: - Drop shots practice with a partner who’s trying to defend them. - Dinking mini-games against partners - Partners who drive hard against you repeatedly while you defend the drives. - Speed-up battles against a partner. Those skills will set you up for success.

Note to self: Do not optimize “fun” out of work. Fun > Efficiency. If it takes a few more extra days, but it provides WAY more fun, then do it the fun way. Longevity > short term

At work, I’ve actually enjoyed the work more by appreciating forward momentum, instead of efficiency. Efficiency can be a paralyzing force for me. If I can’t get into the flow of work and complete it in one sitting, I tend to feel lethargic to start. Often, when starting something new, it’s kind of like sweeping the floor at my old house. The first few minutes of sweeping didn’t feel like they did much. After a while the dust would stick to each other and balls of dust would form. That’s when things start to pick momentum. Same thing at work. When starting something new, you can’t just dive into it and do it. You might not even be clear about where you’re going, so it’s hard to feel the progress being made. This stage of the work feels painful for me. The lack of momentum makes me procrastinate the work. It’s much easier to start the work when you’ve got momentum and you know where you’re going. Lately though, I’ve learned to appreciate the forward momentum more and more, so that even if I don’t complete the project like I was hoping. I still learn to recognize and appreciate the progress, even if it slow, and even if it doesn’t feel efficient.