Dan's Notes / Issue 1

Hi! 👋 Thanks for joining my new email list :)

I'm excited about this project. As I said on Instagram, this is a new exercise for me in writing in public. One of my favorite practices is saving all of the interesting links I find during the week and spending time over the weekend reading, writing, and connecting the dots between themes I'm interested in.

So, as writing practice, I'll be sharing my favorite links from the week along with some of my own commentary on them.

I'll mostly be sharing articles here, but I'm kicking off this week's issue with a podcast episode that's been stuck in my head all week.

The science of waking up (and my new morning experiment)

The best thing I read or listened to last week was this podcast from neurobiologist Dr. Andrew Huberman about the science of sleep and wakefulness. The whole episode is really interesting and well worth a listen (Spotify, Apple, YouTube), but one part in particular really stuck out to me, and I'm going to run an experiment on it this week.

Your body runs on its own internal clock, anchored by the natural chemical processes that happen when you wake up and when you go to sleep. Shortly after waking in the mornings, your body naturally releases a pulse of hormones including cortisol, adrenaline, and epinephrine. This is what makes you feel awake and alert, and it's triggered by the light that you see in the mornings.

Now, I've always thought that the mere presence of light is what tells your brain, "hey, it's morning!" - but this is incorrect. What actually happens is that the neurons in your eyes absorb the light, kicking off a sequence of chemical changes that wakes up your body. These neurons don't know about "sunrise" or "sunset", they only detect the quality of the light source, and natural sunlight - specifically the low morning sun - is best. Artificial light from lamps or your phone, or even sunlight seen through a window, is significantly less effective than unfiltered sunlight. Therefore, going outside within 30-60 minutes after waking up and letting your eyes absorb ambient, natural sunlight is one of the best things you can do to start your day. (Dr. Huberman is a great teacher and explains all of this and more in a lot more detail - seriously, go check out the episode.)

OK - experiment time! My current morning routine involves drinking home-brewed cold brew first thing in the morning, often within ~10 minutes of waking up, while I read and get ready to start the day. I'm always tinkering with the first ~2 hours of my day - more on that in a future issue - but I'm intrigued by this science behind getting sunlight first thing in the morning, so for the upcoming week I'm going to postpone my usual wake-up coffee and commit to getting outside within ~30 minutes of waking up, and see how that compares to my usual caffeine rush first thing in the morning.

If you'd like to join me in this experiment I'd love to hear how it goes for you! I'll report back with the results in next week's issue.

A few of my other favorite reads of the week:

Builder Brain

Charlie Warzel writes about the "builder mindset" and how tech tycoons' approach to "innovation" often fails to address or even recognize the underlying problems they're supposedly setting out to solve. The exchange in question involves proposed solutions to Elon Musk's lamenting about declining birth rates - hint: it's not expanding paid leave, providing universal childcare, or finding ways to reduce the insane costs and stressors associated with parenting.

The Builder mindset often eschews policy completely and focuses on the macro issues, rather than the micro complexities. It is a mindset that seeks to find very elaborate, hypothetical-but-definitely-paradigm-shifting, futuristic technology to fix current problems, instead of focusing on a series of boring-sounding and modest reforms that might help people now. [...]

Where this idea runs into trouble, though, is when the Builders are so focused on building that they misunderstand the problem they’re trying to solve. They are so interested in pushing the boundaries of the possible that they make illogical leaps. The worst version of Builder mentality is that their dreams become reality, but instead of maintaining their creations, they simply move onto the next Big Thing, leaving others to deal with the mess they’ve made.

11 disciplines to sharpen your effectiveness as a generalist

A thread from Wes Kao on Twitter:

“Being a generalist” is harder than it sounds. The best generalists are actually mini experts in a bunch of areas. 11 disciplines to become a sharper operator:

I've always preferred generalist roles. There's tremendous value in having a breadth of skills, experience, and knowledge to apply to a new role or when building something brand new, plus I love diving into new contexts and synthesizing new learnings with existing knowledge.

This list was a helpful reflection tool as I transition into new territory at work. Sharpening my product sense and analytical thinking has been an ongoing effort, and I've recently begun thinking more deeply about sales & marketing, too. It's tempting to want to improve in all areas simultaneously, but it's far more effective to practice 1-2 skills that you can apply to the work you're doing today. Having a singular "theme of the week" in my daily notes (currently: begin with the end in mind) has worked well for me.

Also check out the career martini as another framework for approaching the arc of your career.

More People Should Write

Topical!

You should write because when you know that you’re going to write, it changes the way you live. [...]

When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me.

That's all for this week!

A big heartfelt thank you to the 38 of you who signed up for issue #1. I'm excited to have this new weekly practice and am looking forward to exploring some of my favorite themes in the coming weeks. Replies go right to my inbox; would love to hear what you think :)

Until next week,

Dan