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Hey friends,

This issue marks the 1-year anniversary of this weekly email newsletter. What started as a deviant thought has grown into a weekly ritual with 6,000 subscribers who (somehow) seem to care what a random 20-something has to say.

So firstly, thank you – for allowing me to invade your inbox every Sunday, for engaging with the stuff I write, for emailing back with your own thoughts. I’ve had a lot of people say that they look forward to the email each week, which is a pretty solid dose of motivation to keep going with this.

In an ideal world of course, we wouldn’t need to rely on motivation to get stuff done, but it’s quite nice to be genuinely motivated to do something and not have to consistently rely on willpower and discipline. So again – thank you for being so kind in your responses to this email. That’s a big part of what makes it fun to do each week 😁

Instead of trying to come up with something new for the week, I’m going to link to a few older posts that seem to have resonated with readers. You might like to check them out if you’ve got time you feel like making time.

  1. Time Management
  2. A post about consistency contrasted with a post about taking a break
  3. The Parable of the Pottery Class and The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman
  4. Be content to be thought foolish
  5. Journey before Destination

Have a great week!

Ali


This week’s podcast episode

Not Overthinking | 004 – Why do we struggle with consistency? | Episode 4

In this episode we discuss how consistency in almost every domain is a super power, and come to a few conclusions about what helps us be more consistent with things like morning routines, gym workouts and writing practices.

Kindle Highlight of the Week

Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want. This is true of possessions and even time. Lifestyle Design is thus not interested in creating an excess of idle time, which is poisonous, but the positive use of free time, defined simply as doing what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.

From The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.

Stuff I’ve enjoyed this week

1 – Article – How I Sold This Website for $9 Million (Mr Money Moustache) – This was my favourite April Fools joke of the year. MMM is my favourite personal finance blog, and this post takes an interesting look at the role of money in our lives. If you’re not familiar with MMM, start here.

2 – Audiobook – I’ve just finished Oathbringer, the 3rd book of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. It was a solid 65 hours of listening on Audible, and now there’s a hole in my life that needs to be filled with another enormous Audiobook series. Open to suggestions if anyone’s got some recommendations 🙂

3 – Video – How to make coffee (Peter McKinnon) – Peter McKinnon is one of my favourite YouTubers (and probably the single biggest inspiration for starting my own channel). This video about how to make coffee highlights what I love about his style and charisma.

This week’s video

Ali Abdaal Avatar