Another Excuse Newsletter

Welcome back to the Another Excuse Newsletter. It isn’t just another excuse, but a reason to start that thing you’ve been putting off.

What to expect this week:
👓Perspective - 95% of who we are is programmed by the time we’re 35
🔨 Tool - Clay.com
🍿Consume - 33 rules to change your life
📖Concept - Core Design Loop

Latest Podcast Episode

Today I spoke to Matt De Vries. The Co-Founder of Sentinal4D, a cancer drug discovery company. While getting the business up and running, he's doing his Ph.D. in the same field. He's working extremely hard and managing to train for a half Iron Man. He's doing it all and I try to figure out how.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What Sentinal4D does
• Their Mission
• The Future of AI
• Time Management
• Finding Purpose
• Training for a Half Iron Man

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

95% of who we are is programmed by the time we’re 35

The point of this quote is not to make you give up and say, “Oh well, that’s who I am now”, but rather think that it’s going to be slightly harder to rewire your brain to think differently.

Dispenza has written many books on changing your mind and I found it fascinating just how we become so set in our ways so early in life.

It’s important to understand what kind of work needs to go into changing the wiring of your mind and how to do it.

If you’d like to explore it further, you can check it out here.

Tool

Clay.com 

Clay is an AI-powered automated lead gen tool. I stumbled across it while listening to a podcast.

It helps you automate your sales prospecting by combining data from any of their providers to find your ideal customer and send personalized messages.

It’s able to find the best data that’s relevant and up-to-date for your outreach. It automatically drafts tailored messages for that outreach and connects with all your CRM tools to stay on top of your outbound.

It’s use cases like this that AI can be so helpful.

No one likes cold outreach, and everyone knows it’s a numbers game. The task can get tedious and can be disheartening for those with the wrong incentives.

If you’re able to fully automate your outbound and it does a good enough job that you meet your quotas, why wouldn’t you use it?

Let me know if you use it and find it helpful.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

33 rules to change your life

Stumbled across this post and thought there were some great nuggets in there.

Here they are:

1. Be Patient. But don’t wait.
2. If you’re questioning it, you know the answer.
3. Getting 10 reps beats reading 10 steps.
4. Discipline does what most won’t. Obsession does what most can’t.
5. The longer the game, the fewer the players. It’s easy to win when you think in timelines most never consider.
6. When you’re about to quit, things are about to click.
7. The struggle you’re facing is, usually, exactly what you need.
8. The best creators are paradoxes. Artist and hacker. Chaos and calm. Spirituality and science. Genius and madness. They move between both with intensity and control.
9. Train your mind to act on the first thought.
10. Take a simple thing to extreme lengths.
11. Everything is people. Put relationships in first and you’ll come in first.
12. Don’t ‘network’. Do work, on the Internet. Great work networks for you.
13. Don’t trust an idea you force yourself to think. The best ideas come to you. And you have no other choice.
14. Play life on hard. The game won’t be easy, but will be way more fun.
15. You don’t need new ideas. You need new inspiration.
16. Energy beats tactics every time. People can ‘feel’ what you put into your work.
17. Don’t forget that 99% of people are lazy, comfortable, and self-centered. If you obsess over one thing, in service of others, winning is damn near written.
18. Be loved or be hated. Just don’t be ignored.
19. Don’t bet on the most talented. Bet on the most committed.
20. Say yes to everything, until you find something to say no to everything.
21. Failure today is fuel tomorrow.
22. Being a ‘natural’ takes an unnatural amount of effort.
23. You only have to be right once. When the opportunity comes, be ready, and relentless.
24. If you’re good, they tell you. If you’re great, they tell others.
25. Most people don’t need advice. They need one human to believe in them.
26. If it compounds, don’t worry about how you start. Worry about starting now.
27. You’re on the right path when the hard part becomes fun.
28. Freedom isn’t about decades. It’s about decisions.
29. Happiness is less about pleasure and more about pursuit.
30. Hard times make great stories.
31. The work no one sees is the reason you get seen.
32. Suffering is an underrated skill. Hand-to-hand combat between emotion and logic. Those who persist the longest, win the most
33. If you delay goals for a ‘better time,’ you don’t care about them enough.

If you like these, go show the post some love.

Concept

Core Design Loop

Justin Gary is a game designer who has a core design loop that applies to every game he makes.

Not only can this design loop be applied to games, but the rest of your life too.

We tend not to pay as much attention to the actions we take in our lives, but if you apply this process, progress is guaranteed.

1. Inspiring

This is at the heart of what you aim to do and why you’re doing it.

2. Framing

Apply constraints and deadlines to achieve the desired outcome. Even if it’s not in the state you would have hoped the constraints force you to be creative and put something out.

3. Brain Storming

Ideate by exploring as many possibilities and ideas as you can, find patterns and eliminate everything that’s unnecessary.

4. Prototyping

What’s the easiest way to get your idea in front of people to test it? Create a very basic MVP.

5. Testing

Get as many people as you can to test your idea. You’ll be surprised at the feedback and considerations you hadn’t thought of.

6. Reiterating

Take everything you learned and start the whole process again.

If you apply this thinking to almost everything we do, we would make. a lot more progress.

Thanks for Reading

Now start something!

P.S. Feedback is welcome and needed! If you’d prefer to send me an email and not respond, you can do so here: [email protected]

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