2 August 2021
This week's additions focus on mindset, founder stories, and leadership, with new digests from Founders, Deep Questions with Cal Newport, and Bill Gallagher. Highlights include Churchill's irrational refusal to quit forced Hitler into a fatal two-front war. Email drowns you at scale when tied to your name; depersonalize communication channels
Showing 10 digests for 2 August 2021.
Churchill's leadership under the Blitz: lessons from his first year as PM
Founders
August 7, 2021
Case studies
9
Management
7
Resilience & grit
6
Churchill's irrational refusal to quit forced Hitler into a fatal two-front war.
Demoralization was his most feared enemy — more dangerous than bombs.
He transferred belief so powerfully that citizens revelled in standing alone.
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Planning philosophy through listener questions
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
August 5, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
6
Email drowns you at scale when tied to your name; depersonalize communication channels
Weekly plans reveal what you can realistically fit by blocking time for big things
Ruthlessly cut workflows that trade time for marginal perfection gains
Deborah Westphal on building human-centric businesses for an uncertain future
Bill Gallagher
August 4, 2021
Vision & mission
9
Culture building
8
Business models
6
Shareholder primacy is being replaced by a broader stakeholder responsibility
Ignoring downstream impacts — water, waste, supply chains — is no longer viable
Businesses fixated on their product, not the problem, eventually run out of road
How Blackstone built the world's largest alternative asset manager
Business Breakdowns
August 4, 2021
Origin stories
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Business models
6
Scale is Blackstone's moat — bigger deals, not diminishing returns
Shift to permanent capital drove a decade-late stock re-rating
Three capital sources: institutions, insurance, and retail wealth
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
Why external success without internal alignment leads to dissatisfaction
Noah Kagan
August 4, 2021
Identity & self-belief
9
Motivation
7
Work-life balance
5
External fixes — therapy, travel, health hacks — won't solve internal dissatisfaction
Fulfillment beats 'success': define your own measure across life, work, relationships
Entrepreneurial drive requires dissatisfaction, but self-compassion must balance it
Finding your why for the tasks you dread
Bill Gallagher
August 3, 2021
Feeling off is about quality of engagement, not lack of time
A personal 'why' turns dreaded obligations into motivated action
Label every routine task with the reason it matters to you
Productivity & habits
YouTube
Ten traits that predict entrepreneurial success
Noah Kagan
August 3, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Resilience & grit
7
Bias toward action separates doers from endless content consumers
Relentless follow-up matters more than initial output quality
Internal compass beats trend-chasing for long-term founder success
Customer discovery
Podcast
Launching on Product Hunt and DIY vs. DFY
Startups For the Rest of Us
August 3, 2021
Customer discovery
8
Growth hacking
7
Business models
6
Study your launch platform, prepare obsessively, then execute with discipline—not luck.
Simplify onboarding friction, gather beta feedback, delay launch until ready to scale.
Add done-for-you service to reduce churn and gain product insights from customer workflows.
How Clarion Technologies scaled from near-bankruptcy to 400 people
Bill Gallagher
August 2, 2021
Case studies
9
Hiring & recruitment
7
Processes & SOPs
6
Near-homeless in 2002, survival gigs accidentally became a $5M business
Interview performance has zero correlation with on-the-job performance
Pausing all growth to document SOPs was the scaling breakthrough
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Cal Newport answers deep work, productivity, and career questions
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
August 2, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
7
Goal setting
6
Amateur motivation flees negatives; professionals pursue a compelling positive vision.
Money as a neutral value test: get paid before quitting your job.
Fix a broken tech relationship by rebuilding from values, not tweaking notifications.