Joe Notes @JoeNotesX

@lennysan Rockstar Games or Take Two Interactive seem interesting. I like the Costco answer the best though.

Silence is powerful. Today I felt overwhelmed and unsure about what direction to go with my work. I laid down in silence for 10 minutes with my eyes closed… now it all lines up. Without the distraction of the world I can think clearly, see what needs to be done, and move forward. Interestingly, when I’m feeling overwhelmed the last thing I want to do is take 10 minutes to do this.

I just had a mini The Alchemist moment. I’ve been trying to figure out what I wanted to build, and somehow came full circle back to where I started. I started with a newsletter. Then it became a consulting-lite product. Then a self-serve AI queryable SaaS platform. And then eventually back to: oh, this is a newsletter. The thing that originally made me start building was intellectual curiosity, wanting to learn, and wanting to write. Then came all the “opportunities.” Ways to “make it bigger” or “better.” After a few weeks of building toward those, it became clear they were pulling me away from the original thing. My intuition at the beginning was probably right. The opportunities and shiny objects will always be there. The hard part is staying disciplined to what your thing actually is, what purpose it serves, and what made you want to build it in the first place. Shiny object syndrome has a way of disguising itself as intelligence. The virtue is discipline to the core. A reminder to myself.

Is it interesting to think about how while you’re doing whatever you’re doing, everyone else on earth at the exact same time, is doing whatever they’re doing? From our eyes it almost feels like the world is whatever we’re experiencing. Meanwhile, billions of other people feel the exact same way, all living their lives simultaneously. Wild to me.

Anger is a signal something you value has been taken from you. “When someone tells you what ticks them off they are telling you what makes them tick.” @kevin2kelly

I’m interested in how people live their lives. I’ve wondered what my “thing” is. I look at someone like @dhh and his love for computers, and think: what industry or product is my thing? But I think it’s this—how people live their lives, and why. Why they choose to spend their time on earth the way they do. And then turning that same question back onto myself. That’s my thing.

We’re all so busy. We have never-ending personal to-do lists. We have never-ending work to-do lists. When we have breaks, we fill them—music, podcasts, texts, social media, a million emails. In the shower, on the toilet, in the car… we’re still occupied. Do we have a moment to think about what we want? Are we navigating toward a life we design, or one that gets poured onto us? The nature of our modern world—historically too—is that forces will push you in whatever direction they choose. We have to exert constant, thoughtful effort to create the lives we want. It’s hard.

Why did time feel so slow as a kid? People say it’s because you haven’t lived long. I don’t know. We didn’t have shit to do. We were stuck in a classroom all day. Always bored. I wonder when life slows down, will it feel slow again. Do retired people feel that pace again?

A cofounder is like a spouse — you don’t get to ignore conflict. When tension shows up, you have to confront it, find common ground, and reconcile — or what you’re building won’t last. In no other relationship is this a necessity.

We don’t have to be famous to understand fame. I’ve never experienced it. But I think we all recognize the feeling. And you can feel your attraction to it if you’re honest. Wanting attention. Praise. Someone telling you you matter. The scary part is how thin that is. Like a thin layer of ice ready to break. Fame seems like a golden ticket to self-esteem, but maybe it’s essentially just high school popularity all over again, scaled up and monetized. No judgement. This is something I think we’ve all felt. No advice. Just trying to observe how human it all is. How it’s probably not as foreign as it seems. And how strange it would be to be famous.

Costco is primal. Yes, I'm half kidding. But it really is. Three years worth of ketchup hits deep. In the BACK COUNTRY of Naperville, Illinois. Loading up on this much shit feels good. I’m the provider. I'm a man. So I got to Costco. Like Pocahontas going through the aisles. @harari_yuval Back me up on this. And @Costco... You know what you’re doing. I left $300 over budget feeling like I was the winner.