If you're new here, welcome to Never Enough, where I brain dump interesting stuff that has been on my mind over the last week.
Today's edition is brought to you by Write of Passage*.
This is the last week to enroll in David’s writing bootcamp – Write of Passage.
They only host this program 2 times a year, so if you want support improving your writing skills, now is the time. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until their next cohort in September.
I wouldn’t be sharing this with you unless I knew they were the real deal. There are a lot of bad courses out there, this isn’t one of them.
They are closing registration this week. If you want to up your writing game, enroll here.
Now onto this week’s issue…
When you die, your stories die with you. The reality is that very few of us know much about our grandparents, let alone our great grandparents. How crazy is that? The history of your family just disappears into the ether. All of your collective knowledge and values. The struggle they went through to get you where you are today. Poof—GONE—within a generation or two. Sure, there’s usually some great uncle who puts together a family tree or something, but the actual lives and stories of those who came before you disappear. Last year, I gave my parents Storyworth for Christmas. It’s a really cool service run by my friend Nick Baum. Each week, it sent them a prompt like “What is your first memory?” or “What was your father like?” It resulted in a few cool stories, but unfortunately neither parent stuck with it. After a few months, they got lazy and started to ignore the emails. Around that time, I met a local entrepreneur named Andrew Hall who started a company called No Story Lost. Think of it as the white glove version of Storyworth. They hire a writer to interview your family members and then write a book about their life. I just got a copy of my father’s and it comes in at an astounding 50,000 words. Despite having spoken to my father more than almost anyone in my life, there were so many stories about his childhood and life that I’d never heard, and I’m so excited for my sons and their future children to be able to to get to know my father and glean some lessons from his life. Check out No Story Lost, it’s such a great service.
In 2017, Elon Musk announced Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software and predicted that there would be a million Tesla Robo Taxis on the road within a few years. I fell for this hook line and sinker. I bought a new Model S and paid thousands of dollars for the upgraded software. Then, I hit the “autopilot” button and realized it was…cruise control. And not even a particularly good one, it would often try to drive me into highway dividers. I gave up on the self-driving dream and felt that maybe the self-driving future was all fluff. The flying car of the 2010s. Last week, I found out I was wrong when I got to ride around San Francisco in a Waymo. If you haven’t tried it, you need to. It felt like using an iPhone for the first time. They have an Uber-like app, and magically a little robot taxi shows up and takes you to where you’re going. The driving was flawless. If I hadn’t looked into the front seat, I would have thought there was a human driver there. Even my girlfriend, who is never impressed by technology, was blown away. Now, Tesla has also made some strides. I recently got to try out their new AI-trained Full Self Driving version 12.3.2 and was very impressed. Elon also just announced their Robo Taxi service is coming (we’ll see…). I think within the next year, self-driving cars will be somewhat mainstream and it will be fascinating to watch all these companies duke it out. If I shorted stocks, I’d short Uber. If you’re in SF, Phoenix, or LA, check out Waymo One (Waymo’s own robo taxi Uber).
Daniel Kahneman, who made many huge contributions to the field of psychology, died last week. He was the first to admit that, despite knowing everything he knew about bias and decision making, he still fell prey to all of the same influences we all do. Yesterday, my friend Shane Parrish reminded me of this rule Kahneman made for himself, which all of us yes-prone calendar optimists should likely implement: “Never say yes on the spot. Always give yourself some space. Make it a rule. Tell people.” I absolutely love his 2010 TED Talk, which changed how I think about travel forever.
My business partner, Chris, has a saying “Stress is like water: it will find its way to you.” Avoid phone calls? Your email will blow up. Avoid email? Your texts. Over the past year, as I’ve spent less time in my inbox, my text messages have gone crazy. I’m a huge fan of Texts.comon the desktop (which lets you combine Signal, WhatsApp and iMessage into one super fast interface), but one of my pet peeves has been that if I miss an iMessage on my phone and if it slips below the first few scrolls I’ll sometimes have an unread badge I can’t get rid of on my home screen. When I discovered that there’s an iPhone setting that allows you to filter by unread, it was a (incredibly boring and nerdy) gift from the gods.
I’m a huge fan of hiring remotely, and hiring in Latin America and The Philippines is roughly 1/5th the cost of hiring in North America. My best experience has been with Athena. TLDR: They hire virtual assistants, train them to be world-class, manage them, and you get an expert assistant who will not only help with your work, but teach you how to improve your workflow and delegate more effectively. The cost is higher, about $3,000/mo vs $1,000/mo if you trained/managed them yourself, but it’s well worth it. I’ve been using an Athena assistant for about 6 months now and she’s absolutely incredible. I asked Athena to give my readers a deal, so if you sign up here, you'll skip the waitlist and save $1,500 on your second month. Highly recommended.
Note: This Monday at 10:45am PT, I’m hosting a private AMA on Zoom all about hiring CEOs for my Twitter subscribers. Maybe I’ll see you there.
That’s all for this week…but one more thing. If you’re enjoying this, can you do me a favor and forward it to a friend? Thanks.
-Andrew
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