The Case For Small Inconveniences | #31

The Case For Small Inconveniences

No. 31 — read time 4 minutes

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Today at a glance

• The Case For Small Inconveniences

• Article: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

• Tweet: Is Being A Creator “High Status”?

• Tweet: How To Make Google Docs Zen-Like

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I appreciate the feedback on last week’s question. The resounding answer was less clutter in the inbox and to make these newsletters more robust (vs. splitting it out into separate newsletters). Heard loud and clear. Thank you to all of you who wrote back.

The Case For Small Inconveniences

Next month I’m moving my family to a different state. To be closer to family, closer to friends, and be part of a community where (I hope) we will thrive.

Part of the move means purging. Going through all the accumulated crap in the house and deciding what makes the move and what does not.

To prepare for this, I read an excellent book called Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki.

A particular lesson that stood out was this idea that little inconveniences make us happy.

By learning how our neural pathways are primed to find variances in our surrounding, we condition ourselves over time to constantly seek new and more.

A shirt that we once wore with joy now gets lumped into the “I have nothing to wear” category. And so on.

By choosing to do with less, we recenter those neural pathways to find joy in some of the basics that we may have started to take for granted.

There’s a corollary here to charting your own path as an online entrepreneur.

One of the biggest shifts happening this year for me as I explore solopreneurship is learning to thrive with less.

Coming from the VC-backed tech world where fortunate startups that are able to acquire capital have everything they might want at their disposal, my baseline was that money can solve most problems.

In fact, those who’ve worked with me no doubt heard me repeat (on multiple occasions) the old Jewish saying “if a problem can be solved with money, it’s not a problem — it’s an expense”.

Leaving that world to be a solo entrepreneur, or a creator, means foregoing much of the conveniences I was once accustomed to.

EAs. Unlimited software budget. Corporate cards for travel.

If you’ve worked in big tech, finance, law, or a funded startup, you might recognize some of these creature comforts.

Making due with less often means going back to doing much of the gritty work yourself again.

And while I believe there is a case for productivity maxims such as automation, delegation, and elimination, there is too much emphasis on the first two and little on the third.

The act of elimination, of saying No, is itself a powerful statement.

It’s a rejection of the abundance of our modern world.

A chance to slow down and be grateful for the basics.

It’s why I’m not active on social platforms outside of Twitter. Why I stick to one newsletter each week. And why I don’t have any VAs or employees.

The Soloist path must be an intentional act or it risks becoming another job. And with it, the joy of working for oneself.

Till next week,

-Tom

Article: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

I know so many people like this and I bet you do too. From MBA peers to folks wrapped up in the Silicon Valley tech world, the price of admission that comes with chasing for more is predictable. I once had a potential recruit turn down my offer in favor of one from a major PE firm. A much better financial return for him but when I asked for his assessment of where the decision could go bad, he responded “We all know the dangers — divorced, never see your kids, health issues from stress. But I’ll know to watch out for that”. I genuinely hope so.

Read the post

Tweet: Is Being A Creator “High Status”

Dan makes a great point with this tweet and reflects what I’ve noticed as well. Lots of startups raised lots of money in the past 5-10 years but we can only count a handful that have made a serious dent on the economy, let alone the world. Building a “generational company” is freaking hard. Most don’t have the stomach for the kind of life that demands of you.

But does that mean more would-be startup founders will be pivoting to bootstrapped founders in search of profitability, or even becoming creators?

My hunch says no. Most people from my previous life can’t fathom why I choose to do this whole solopreneur thing. There’s no status so it’s not interesting to the ambitious crowd. Maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?

Tweet: Making Google Docs Zen-Like

I met Nate for the first time this past week as he ran a free design workshop where he redesigned Paul Millerd’s Youtube Thumbnails in real-time, showing us all how powerful Figma can be. Nate is incredibly talented so I recommend checking him out. And I loved this piece he wrote on how to make Google Docs suck less.

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