Tuesday Letter #19 - Pragmatic Thinking, Zettelkasting, and Partnerships
I've sent this email to my subscribers last Tuesday. If you like this and would like to subscribe, you ca do it here -> Rasul's Tuesday Letter
If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it. Thanks for reading.
Gratitude
I would like to take a second and thank the people who joined since my last issue. Sukh, Kumaresh, and Robert, thanks for joining.
I would also like to thank all the people who are still here reading the newsletter. You guys give me the motivation to do this newsletter.
📜 Quote of the week
Ideally, you want a mix of skills on the team: having an all expert team is fraught with its own difficulties; you need some people to worry about the trees while everyone is pondering the forest.
I've been thinking about skills lately. I realized that if I were to switch jobs, I wouldn't have many chances of getting hired in my dream companies like Doist, Parse.ly (remote companies with heavy Python/Django emphasis). Those smaller teams generally senior-level programmers. So this quote came in handy. I will certainly refer to it when contacting my dream companies.
💡 Project Ideas
📊 Service that people use to receive the newsletter. Instead of using their email, people get an account where they receive all the newsletters. This way, they can enjoy them at any time. Think of it as Pocket for newsletters. You can make notes, highlights in that service. This will make the newsletter more accessible and easily searchable.
🗄️ Zettlekasten
I have decided to give Zettelkasten a serious go. I want to make a distinction, though.
There has been a lot of buzz around Roam Research lately, especially with Nat Eliason's course. As far as I understand, Nat is making Roam Research his go-to tool for everything, for general, Personal Knowledge/Life Management. In my experience, whenever I have tried to use any tool as a solution for all my problems (Personal CRM, Journal, todo list, book notes, and other things), it eventually failed. So, I'm not going to do that. I will use Obsidian to create a slip box (Zettlekasten) with my thoughts only.
I have been building my Zettelkasten for a month now, and it looks like this:
Or this, if I only display notes that "exist" (i.e., not just tags):
I really enjoy the process of reading books, making notes, and adding them here. The next step would be to actually produce content (blog posts, videos, etc.). Right now, my tech stack surrounding this Zettelkasten includes, Joplin, Obsidian, Readwise.
Once I feel 100% with the system, I'll write a blog post about my Zettelkasten.
Partnerships
Justin Jackson wrote a great post on partnerships this week.
There is something about the “Voltron effect:” where two highly talented people can do way more together than either could do solo.
(Off the top of my head: Tailwind UI, Tuple, Basecamp, Fathom Analytics).
Solo, we were both a "10." Together, we're a "100." Teaming up hasn't given us 2x; it's given us 10x.
With a good partner, you get their whole brain, skills, passion, energy, network. It's hard to replicate that kind of commitment with employees or investors.
When you can make partners with someone your level of skill, knowledge, and enthusiasm, it makes sense to do it, because together you can make 10x more than each one could do alone. It's awesome if people have slightly different expertise, complementing each other.
🧍 Person of the week
I found Curtis through a video on Youtube that he made. The video is about the book "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens. His youtube channel is a gold mine for people who want to create their own Zettelkasten. He has good book reviews, also.
🐔 Tweet of the week
🔥 This is for the Python developers out there. This is a gold mine.
