We got to round numbers💎 Issue #9
Plus: Greatest speeches and pitches, mental models and sci-fi running shoes.
Hey mates!
What’s up? 🚀
This week I launched Este Meu Jogar.
That’s the blog I wrote about last week and I explain a bit more of my vision for it here. For now, only in Portuguese.
In other news, this is the 10th issue of This Week’s Worth, and the week we got to 50 subscribers! I’m proud of all the little things I discovered in the process, the feedback I received, and the trust people have given me to put all these words into their inbox.
New to me 💡
How the Nike Vaporfly War Was Lost | 10 min read
I was a bit hesitant when I first clicked this link. I don’t run, but I always had a fascination for the sci-fi-like tech that sports brands like to announce on their shoes. I was pleasantly surprised because as the article went on I got more and more interested in all the drama around the evolution in recent years both in records being shattered and innovations testing the limit of regulation. A rabbit hole if there is one.
The Greatest Speech in History? Alexander the Great & The Opis Mutiny | 7 min watch
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Alexander the Great? Is it the military aspect, the drunken aspect, or the 2300 years after his death we are still talking about him aspect? What do you need running in your veins to take an army from Greece to India and conquer everyone in between? That you need to be a great leader is a given, but where I guess this speech shines is in demonstrating how great he was understanding human emotions and desires. See if you feel like mutineering against someone who tells you this.
100 Little Ideas | 12 min read
Morgan Housel again ‘in da house’. These are bite-sized descriptions of ideas, from many fields, about how the world works. Here’s one of my favorites: “Fredkin’s Paradox: Confronted with two equally good options, you struggle to decide, even though your decision doesn’t matter because both options are equally good. The more equal the options, the harder the decision.”
Business is like surfing | 9 min read
My experience with surfing is 0. I surf much less than I run. Yet, from what I imagine and see, the metaphor is very well applied here by Justin Jackson. The biggest lesson that I took from surfing is the “waiting and reading” part. On top of the board, surfers are gathering information about the sea, waiting for the right wave for themselves, and that ends up being the secret for how well you do once you get up on the board.
How To Think More Clearly: Mental Models For Dummies | 9 min read
I have the impression that I’ve been hearing more and more about “mental models” in recent times. Maybe I’m just catching up. This article provides a nice, light, introduction to the concept and includes 4 examples of mental models and how you can improve your thinking and decision making with them. You can go straight to the examples and judge on that if the first part of the article is for you.
How Joe Ades Sells Potato Peelers | 3 min watch
You’ve probably seen the viral video of the ‘Best Salesman in the World’ already. That is on the Internet for 12 years. It’s awesome. This one is the marketing analysis of it. Why was Joe Ades so good at selling potato peelers? What were the secrets of his message? It’s all in the benefits, not the features.
From the archive 🗂️
Mark Knopfler on Guitars | 14 min watch
I rediscovered this video during the week and immediately thought about how perfect it is for my World Experts Talking About Their Craft Is the Most Hypnotic Thing on YouTube playlist. Mark Knopfler, legendary frontman of the Dire Straits, talks about his love of guitars as you see the most loving parents talking about their children. That got me thinking: playing guitar is like smoking 2.0. You get all the looking cool while doing it of smoking but without the shorter lifespan.
A most tourist tweet 💺
These apps I discovered 🔎
SheetUI | Transform your google sheets into nice, simple, sites. Cool name.
icebreakers | Hundreds of questions to get things started, organized by group size and setting.
This week in a gif 🍾
High note ⚡
Last week’s most clicked link was The GIF of Coach Taylor on Friday Night Lights. Given the impact of this show here at the house I will have to write about FNL one day.
I hope you enjoyed these last minutes as much as me putting this together. If so, I’d love if you shared it with some friends.
You can also show some love by clicking that tiny ❤️ at the top of the email. It would help spread the word.
If you are one of those friends and someone shared this with you, you are in luck, buy them a beer next time you are together, and meanwhile, you can subscribe to This Week’s Worth here:
Until next week,
Filipe