Daily Micros, Working in Public & Digital Diet Update #2
What I Learned at School this Week
Hey y’all,
I’m excited to try leaning into “working in public” a bit. As I mentioned last week, I’m going to be trying some different things with this newsletter. And I figure, what better place to document my learnings along the way than here!
Let’s jump right in.
1. Visualize Value
I came across this Twitter account because it was built by Jack Butcher. And Jack did the Almanack of Naval Ravikant (aka The Navalmanack). You can get it free here.
Anyway, Jack built an incredibly valuable (pun intended) resource with Visualize Value. This thread in particular packed a serious punch of wisdom.
Here was one of my favorite images from the thread:
2. Housing Prices
This week, Zumper published a study showing the following data (pretty significant):
What’s interesting is that, specifically in San Francisco, it’s mostly the condos that are being sold that has caused some of the decrease in rent prices.
And here are a few other cities — interestingly some cities have actually increased in prices:
3. The Daily Micro
I found and subscribed to The Daily Micro this week. And it’s been a treat.
The concept is simple:
Insightful ideas the size of a screenshot delivered daily.
50+ summaries of the best essays in tech and business sent to you one at a time via SMS every weekday for only $10.
PS - this was created by one of the people who started Launch House. From their website: “This isn't a hacker house — it's Hype House meets Y Combinator.” The house is in Tulum, Mexico. And it might just be a sneak peek into the future “Digital” Silicon Valley.
You can try The Daily Micro for free here — you’ll get the first five summaries, no credit card needed.
Below is the first one I got this week: Sam Altman’s “How To Be Successful” essay.
4. Continuous Testing
Writing this little newsletter every Friday has been a ton of fun. I started it to force myself to write more. And it has worked.
But recently I’ve thought more about the content of this little corner of the internet, and if/what I want it to include. More on that later, but for now, I wanted to try to “work in public” and call out a few things I’m going to be intentionally testing. Three focus areas in particular: Format, Content, and Data.
Format
I have pretty consistently done “5 bullet points” each week. Stolen - er - inspired by Tim Ferriss’ 5 Bullet Friday. The problem with this format is that I feel constrained.
Maybe I only have three things to share. Or maybe I have six things. Maybe I only have one topic I want to go deep into and skip the whole “Tech Twitter” updates for this week. I’m going to start being more open to testing different formats.
Content
Someone with a huge following, like Tim Ferriss (1.5M+ subscribers) can be super broad. But he didn’t start out that way. I want to start narrowing in. And be more focused. The question is: where?
My “expertise” - Enterprise B2B SaaS Sales & Marketing.
My “interest” - Entrepreneurship, Investing, Productivity.
Whether I choose one of these. Or find a way to overlap them. Or look elsewhere. I’m not sure yet.
But ultimately, here’s what I’m aiming for:
Last note around content: Timeless vs. Timely.
It’s something I’ve considered, but want to explore further.
For example: this week it might interest you to learn that the five-month old startup, mmhmm, raised $31M. Maybe they should have turned around and spent that $31M to buy the T-Rex that sold this past week for that exact amount. 🦖
Anyway, if someone stumbles upon this post in six months, that won’t be very relevant (valuable) at that time. It may be valuable to readers to stay up to date on tech news and commentary around it. But it feels like a big choice.
Maybe there should just be a “ICYMI - Tech Updates” section, that only includes timely updates? TBD.
Data
I want to have data to back the direction of this newsletter. Opens, Clicks (links) and Replies is all I have right now.
Sometimes I explicitly ask for feedback, but less than 5% usually reply (step up, people! …jk).
The digital digest post had about 3x the number of Views and over 10% reply rate, one of the highest reply rates I’ve had. This showed me there was interest in the topic.
I stole an idea of another newsletter (Everything) and replicated it for myself. It’s a simple survey at the end of each newsletter. You’ll see it below! You can click one of the options to give feedback on what you thought of this piece of content. Hopefully like things like this will help aggregate data to achieve the bottom circle of the Venn diagram I outlined above.
5. Digital Diet - Update #2
I did a hike through the city to Corona Heights last night with two buddies. We turned our phones off. It was great. I’m learning that even if I am not on my phone, but others are, I’m still affected by technology’s pull.
Also, even if my notifications are off, leaving my phone at home when I go out is 10x better for me. Just knowing I don’t have the option to pull it out gives me a much clearer head.
Challenge of the week: leave your house (for a walk, dinner, coffee, whatever) and don’t take your phone. It’s eerily freeing.
That’s all for this week. And as mentioned above, feel free to click an option below. You can be honest, I promise! :) I’m not going anywhere.
Thank you for reading this far. And thank you to everyone for all the replies, texts, etc. Keep them coming!
See you next week!
How did you feel about this week’s post?
Brendan J Short