Deep work & focus

Podcast

Deep work, digital minimalism, and the harms of screen-dominated life

Deep Questions with Cal Newport August 23, 2020

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Deep work & focus 10

Productivity & habits 7

Management 5

• Name deep vs. shallow work before trying to change your team's culture
• A digital presence amplifies value — it cannot create it from nothing
• Heavy screen use degrades social skills, empathy, identity, and mental health

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Goal setting

Podcast

Arnold Schwarzenegger's rules for building an extraordinary life

Founders August 23, 2020

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Goal setting 9

Resilience & grit 7

Bootstrapping 6

• Schwarzenegger was a millionaire before 30 — from bricklaying and mail order, not movies
• Skipping the ladder: always seek the hardest competition, never the safe next step
• Harsh upbringing became fuel — he credits his father's cruelty for driving him to America

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Productivity & habits

Podcast

Productivity habits: systems, skill-building, boredom, and deep work

Deep Questions with Cal Newport August 20, 2020

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Productivity & habits 9

Deep work & focus 8

Resilience & grit 6

• No productivity system removes the hard work — stop switching.
• Interview career role models for their story, not their advice.
• If a grad could do 80% of your job in a day, alarm bells.

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Delegation

YouTube

Finding Your Sweet Spot: The Four-Quadrant Framework for Peak Performance

Bill Gallagher August 19, 2020

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Delegation 9

Identity & self-belief 8

Business operating systems 6

• Sweet Spot sits where skill, enjoyment, and high value intersect.
• Eliminating non-Sweet-Spot work always requires paying upfront first.
• Repeated quarterly practice turns the exercise into a recursive mindset.

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Productivity & habits

YouTube

A practical four-step system to break dopamine-driven procrastination

Noah Kagan August 19, 2020

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Productivity & habits 9

Deep work & focus 7

• A 24-hour screen-free detox resets your baseline and restores perspective.
• Removing notification badges and sounds puts you back in control of rewards.
• Gate leisure behind real work to make dopamine intentional, not automatic.

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Hiring & recruitment

YouTube

How to find and work with the right co-founder

Noah Kagan August 17, 2020

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Hiring & recruitment 9

Management 6

Equity & cap tables 5

• Start alone first — momentum makes co-founder recruitment far easier
• Shared vision is non-negotiable; disagreements on tactics are fine
• Equity is permanent — treat co-founder selection like a marriage, not a date

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Deep work & focus

Podcast

Cal Newport on deep work, digital detox, and the costs of autonomy

Deep Questions with Cal Newport August 17, 2020

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Deep work & focus 9

Productivity & habits 7

Identity & self-belief 6

• Deep work produces disproportionate value — but access to it is structurally unequal.
• Digital detox rules fail; rebuild your tech life around values first, rules last.
• More autonomy demands more self-imposed structure, or it becomes destabilising.

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