I’ve been working on a lot of ideas behind the scenes lately. This might sound a bit odd, because I’m all about building in public. But I do plan on sharing everything as I figure it out a bit more.
I’ve realized that I use a lot of terms that make sense to me, because I’ve defined them well in my head. It’s how I figure out my vision for what’s happening in the future, where I want to go with things, and how I can potentially get there. I just don’t do a great job of explaining all of that to the world. Too much of it is in my head, and then I share bits and pieces that speak to it, but there’s nothing that really explains my overall vision of things.
I’d like to remedy that.
I started an exercise the other day that really helped me quite a bit, and I wanted to share it.
Imagine you’ve just been asked to give the keynote talk at a conference somewhere. What do you talk about?
Write that keynote, even though you have no plans to give it.
I started writing mine, and it helped me clarify a few thoughts well. One of my main thoughts/plans/brands revolves around the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Future, because this is how I’ve been approaching my future.
So I started with asking the audience to visualize themselves walking along a deserted country road at night. They are tired, having walked all day.
Suddenly, they see lights coming up behind them, a car pulls up next to them, and the door opens. The driver looks out and says “can I give you a ride into town?”
Then I ask if they get in.
From there, I go into my own story, explaining how that was essentially me when I started out on my startup journey, except I refused every ride along the way, because it wasn’t going exactly where I wanted to go. So I decided I needed to walk the whole way.
The cool part of this approach is that it’s really helping me wrap up my philosophy in a story and I can use pretty strong analogies to wrap concepts that I believe are incredibly important.
I think I might record my keynote when it’s done and put it up on YouTube as well. I think that could be fun.
This has also led to me considering a rebrand of a few things, including this newsletter.
Potential Rebrand
This newsletter is called the Internet Factory, because I do have a belief that everyone should build their own internet, in the sense that they should consciously create a subset of the internet to call their own. But I don’t think that’s resonating, because the term “internet” is too big and vague for what I’m trying to represent. It’s too focused on a specific implementation of the concepts I’m thinking about.
What I’m leaning toward instead: The Information Factory.
Instead of building an entire internet, it’s something that can process raw data and all sorts of granular information into refined information that can be used to achieve some goals.
I kinda want to play with the idea of an information supply chain - where does the raw data come from? Is it free-range organic data? Is it sweatshop data?
I think a lot of the things we use to describe our actual factories and production processes can be used to think about the information we are consuming, and we need to think more about what we consume. I think our information diets and our actual diets have a lot in common, in terms of what we end up consuming and how it affects our health. So stay tuned on that front.
Paradox of the Week
This is a new section I’m thinking about adding: a weekly review of a paradox. Let me know if you enjoy it.
This week’s paradox that I’ve been thinking about: Jevons Paradox
Jevons Paradox states that as efficiency in producing a resource gets better, our demand for that resource goes up.
The 19th-century economist William Stanley Jevons observed that as coal became more efficient to use, the consumption of coal actually increased.
I’ve been thinking about this in terms of the content we consume. As it has become easier to create content at scale, our consumption of said content has increased.
I also wonder: how can we use this to improve our lives? Can we increase our efficiencies in certain areas of our lives to increase our own personal demand for that?
It makes me think about how James Clear talked about changing environments to change outcomes. Reduce friction when you want to start doing something more, and add friction when you want to do it less. Set up your environment to be efficient, and it’s more likely you will do the thing you want to do.
Content Corner
A couple of different podcasts for you this week. First up, let’s talk about an AI Town. This kinda blew my mind and made me think about what I’m doing with buildinpublic.coach, and actually made me change my approach slightly.
Next, I hope you have some time on your hands, because it’s about 7 hours over 2 parts. And I listened to the whole thing. I’m always curious about what Balaji has to say, not because I agree with him on everything, but I do think that he thinks about things at a deeper level than most. And I usually gain some insights into various things.
Jordan Harbinger also had a couple of great episodes the past couple of weeks, with Tim Urban and Marc Andreessen.
Well worth a listen.
Finally, I’ll leave you with one of my videos, where I explain why execution doesn’t matter nearly as much as it used to. Instead, ideas are what matter going forward.
Until next week!
~Leo