13 September 2021
This week's additions focus on mindset, founder stories, and leadership, with new digests from Silicon Valley Girl, Founders, and Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life. Highlights include Reframe rejection: you offered an opportunity, they declined it 5,127 prototypes and 15 years of debt before any success
Showing 13 digests for 13 September 2021.
AI tools & automation
YouTube
Overcoming fear of rejection: mindset tools for taking action
Silicon Valley Girl
September 18, 2021
AI tools & automation
10
Deep work & focus
9
Prospecting & outreach
8
Reframe rejection: you offered an opportunity, they declined it
Process goals guarantee success; outcome goals guarantee disappointment
Name the worst-case scenario — it's almost never life-changing
Founder interviews
Podcast
James Dyson on invention, manufacturing, and rethinking education
Founders
September 18, 2021
Founder interviews
10
Resilience & grit
7
MVP & prototyping
6
5,127 prototypes and 15 years of debt before any success
Experts kill new ideas by believing they have all the answers
Dyson University: no tuition, real salary, debt-free graduates
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Remote work productivity: routines, rhythms, and ending the day
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
September 17, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
6
Manage by task completion, not hours — it tells you when to stop.
Friday planning eliminates Sunday anxiety and protects Monday execution time.
A closing ritual is essential when your office is always visible.
How to retire in the next 12 months by designing a life worth living now
Noah Kagan
September 17, 2021
Goal setting
7
Work-life balance
6
Bootstrapping
5
Low costs plus work you'd do free beats decades of deferred living.
Your real retirement number is almost always less than you think.
Freedom without stakes feels empty — meaningful hard work is the point.
How Broadway survived shutdown and rebuilt its audience with streaming
Masters of Scale
September 16, 2021
Case studies
9
Business models
8
Growth hacking
7
Streaming theater converts new fans into live ticket buyers, not replacements.
Only 4 in 10 Broadway shows recoup investment — yet it drives $16B in economic impact.
Broadway's core audience is narrow; the pandemic forced a reckoning on who makes theater.
Productivity & habits
YouTube
How a CEO structures a full day running a $100M company from home
Noah Kagan
September 16, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Management
6
CEOs only deal with problems nobody else has solved yet.
Themed days keep strategic priorities from being swallowed by meetings.
A mid-day reset — walk, water, scenery change — visibly shifts afternoon performance.
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Leadership, deep work, and structured availability for knowledge workers
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
September 16, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Management
7
Productivity & habits
6
Full availability makes you a worse leader, not a better one.
George Marshall ran WWII by restricting access, not expanding it.
Intensity needs recovery at every scale: daily, weekly, annual.
Five founder personality types that cause burnout and block growth
Bill Gallagher
September 15, 2021
Delegation
9
Identity & self-belief
8
Processes & SOPs
6
Your unexamined beliefs about work are what's blocking scale.
Delegating tasks while checking every step keeps work on your plate.
Burnout patterns show up identically in solo founders and billion-dollar leaders.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Robert Reffkin built Compass by turning setbacks into momentum
Masters of Scale
September 14, 2021
Founder interviews
10
Pivoting
6
Management
5
Why losing everything in the dot-com crash made Reffkin a better founder
Vague mission statements silently destroy team momentum and alignment
Public ambitious targets inspire far more than careful internal goals
Developer joins startup, becomes CTO, then buys it for $1
Startups For the Rest of Us
September 14, 2021
Case studies
10
Equity & cap tables
6
Bootstrapping
5
A messy cap table blocked every funding round despite real revenue.
Buying the company for $1 was the most de-risked bet available.
Second startup hit mid-six-figure ARR within nine months of launch.
Steve Jobs: the principles behind Apple's remarkable comeback
Founders
September 14, 2021
Case studies
9
Business models
7
Hiring & recruitment
5
Cutting to four products let Jobs staff every team with A players
Magic is someone willing to embrace the grind others won't
Monopoly success reliably destroys the product culture that created it
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
How to move from employee to entrepreneur without quitting blind
Noah Kagan
September 13, 2021
Identity & self-belief
8
Business models
5
Your day job funds and de-risks your first business attempts.
Don't quit until side income covers your minimum monthly expenses.
Inertia keeps you stuck — start planting seeds now, not later.
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Is organisation the same as productivity? Plus deep work and life Q&A
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
September 13, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
8
Goal setting
5
Knowledge work chaos stems from poor design, not capitalist exploitation
Saying no to projects is the default — meaning doesn't scale with quantity
Remove the smartphone: peer pressure is easier to solve than lost interests