Happy Tuesday!

I swear these newsletters get longer and longer each time which makes it difficult to post on the same day every week consistently.

Some updates: I’ve started using headings so that it’s easier to jump around. Feel free to read anything that seems interesting to you and skip the rest.

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I’ve also added a feature that allows you to listen to the content if that’s more your thing.

As always, thanks for reading!

First things first, I highly recommend you watch this video before reading this section. Most of my comments will be on style and not content.

This video is only 7 minutes long and is instantly captivating. If you aren’t interested after a minute of watching you can turn it off and return to this.

You’re back? Good.

“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”

Having good taste means recognizing what works and what doesn’t. When you see good content you shouldn’t only borrow from it, you should steal as much as you can. That’s why when I find something I like I try to break it down as best I can into its elements; mini-lessons I can apply to my own craft.

The title of this video is captivating. “Stop pouring. Start drinking,” is esoteric.

What could that mean? Let me watch the first 30 seconds to see what it’s about.

It’s direct, it’s imperative, and you know it couldn’t possibly be literal so it creates curiosity that can only be solved by clicking on the video.

Once you’ve clicked, the pace of the video is breakneck, and you’re hooked.

Let’s talk about the first 15 seconds.

Quick synthetic bass plays as our protagonist whip-pans into frame. His words appear behind him one by one as he says them in real-time(a device used by TikTok and Instagram reels for retention.)

He’s got an “ever-present feeling that he’s not reaching his potential.”

Boom.

Relatable problem and emotional hook and we’re not even 10 seconds in.

smash cut to:

B-roll of him playing video games, and bingeing Youtube.

This isn’t just some talking head Youtube essay. In fact, it seems he can’t even stand still, embodying the frenetic pace of the video himself.

Most YouTubers use B-roll as filler. Footage to play underneath the video essayist’s argument. Not here though. The B-roll is transformative; acting as punchlines to jokes, maintaining momentum, and is integral to the story.

The music is energetic, and intermittently, he cuts on every downbeat. At moments, it seems as if the music takes precedence over the message. The result is a video more akin to a music video than an argumentative essay.

The premise of this video is hardly new. It’s probably wisdom you’ve heard a million different ways from a million people. In fact, the message of this video could be summed up using Nike’s slogan “Just do it.”

The delivery though…

chef’s kiss.

People are rarely persuaded by facts alone. What makes this video so effective is that it’s inspiring. It’s kinetic, and you get this vicarious momentum just from watching.

So if your goal is to inspire or to change minds, paying attention to style, and anticipating the viewer’s experience can be more important than the content of the argument itself.

Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers is yet another addition to my personal catalog of books that I’ll be revisiting at least once a year. It is one of my favorite formats for nonfiction self-development books; short chapters, thematically linked, each with its own argument(much like The Creative Act by Rick Rubin or any of Seth Godin’s books).

Derek Sivers is one of my favorite people. A truly bizarre and eclectic person. He was trained as a musician at Berkley. He was a circus performer, he toured in a rock band, and he started a company in his late 20s that would later have an 8 figure exit.

Every chapter in Hell Yeah or No has some kind of profound take away but here are the 5 that stood out to me:

Is your procrastination a superpower?

A new college campus was built and they needed to decide where to put the walkways. After much debate, a professor suggested that they simply wait a year to see where the grass had been worn away by students and then pave those paths. Derek uses this as an analogy for delaying action until you have more information. “We’re at our dumbest in the beginning and our smartest at the end.”

So are you really “procrastinating” or are you waiting till you’re at your smartest?

You’re working too hard.

Derek goes for a bike ride. At his all-out maximum effort, he finishes his bike route in 43 minutes. One day he relaxes; taking his time to enjoy the scenery, enjoying the ocean’s breeze, and watching the seagulls above him. As he’s looking up “a seagull shits in my mouth. I laugh at the novelty of it all.”

At the end of his route, he looks at his watch.

45 minutes. All of his efforts accounted for two minutes of difference. A 4% increase in efficiency.

How much energy are you spending on the feeling of effort versus efficiency?

Why would you choose between following your passions and being financially secure?

You don’t have to make money doing what you love. You can just do what you love and make money. If you have a career that gives you security and do your art on the side, you have more freedom to work on what you want, when you want. No reporting to a boss or a patron, and no compromising on your vision because you’ll starve otherwise.

Have a career. Make art on the side.

Radical responsibility grants you radical power.

It’s easy to play the part of the victim. We do it in small ways every day. Someone lies to you, or you get stuck in traffic, or get a stomach bug, and you shake your fist “oh how could this happen to me.” You’ve given away all of your power, your agency. What if you accept that you created a situation in which the other person needed to lie to you, or your lack of planning put you in traffic; maybe you need to be more cognizant of what you eat so that you don’t get sick.

This puts the ball in your court. Things aren’t just happening to you.

You’re happening to them.

This is a classic stoic principle. You may not have total control of the world around you but you do control how you react. So, use your reaction to empower yourself.

People who have multiple interests often end up doing nothing at all.

A donkey is stuck halfway between water and some hay. Stuck, not being able to decide, he wavers back and forth until he dies. The donkey isn’t smart enough to realize that he can simply drink water and then eat hay.

We’re not donkeys. We know we have time. We have time enough to do all of the things that we want to do if we just do one thing at a time.

You can have anything you want. Just not everything at the same time. A lesson that’s especially pertinent to ENTPs who are likely to start a thousand projects at once. I know this struggle well.

Not convinced to read his book?

Linked below is the Tim Ferris interview that inspired me to read his book. It’s heartfelt, it’s impassioned, and you’ll finish this interview wanting to download his entire catalog of work right away.

Ethos is not an argument.

When a parent is tired of answering questions or arguing with a child what do they say?

“Because I said so. That’s why.”

It’s an unsatisfactory answer. It’s lazy and meaningless. The child has no recourse and in the end, they must default to what their parent says because father knows best.

We’d like to pretend that we live in a culture that inspires curiosity, investigation, and dissenting opinions, but that’s not true, is it? From an early age we’re taught to value a person’s station over their message.

I don’t care what your message is. Show me your credentials.

This is absurd.

We’ve all experienced this flawed logic in action.

You go to the doctor because you sense that something is wrong with you. You’ve done the research, talked to family members about your medical history, and are fully equipped to have a conversation with your doctor.

You’re informed now and are trying to have agency over your own life.

The doctor walks into the room. You try to communicate some of what you’ve learned to him and ask informed questions to get a better understanding of your health.

What you expect is a rational back and forth with your doctor where you collaborate, but the doctor seems annoyed by your questions. You’re now eating into their time and they seem insulted that you think you have any say over what might be ailing you.

They dismiss you. You walk away defeated. You should come back when it’s more serious.

2 years later you come back with more severe symptoms.

"Huh, I guess you did have [insert disease], something that could have been easily mitigated with early intervention. Now excuse me, I’m late to see a patient in desperate need of gaslighting."

Imagine being on a high school debate team and when the moderator asks a question you just respond by showing your report card. I’m smarter and have more accolades and therefore am correct.

Ethos does not supersede logos.

The argument itself, the facts of the matter, and the underlying logic are what matters.

Ethos isn’t meaningless. It’s what gives opinions weight. Ethos is what keeps me listening. If you have your PHD on the topic at hand I’m going to listen for longer. I’m also going to deeply consider the contradictions between what you know and what I know, but your credentials are not carte blanche to make whatever point you want.

This is always true.

Even in situations where it is desperately obvious that one person knows what they are talking about and the other person doesn’t you still have to appeal to reason. If you are right, you do not have to reference your degree, occupation, or a class that you took because:

You will have more supporting data than the other guy: the guy who has no business arguing his point. This will be very obvious to any spectator of the argument.

In fact, dismissing someone who is wrong with an ethos argument is dangerous. You could easily disprove their point logically if you are correct but in sidestepping the facts of the argument you are lending legitimacy to the other person’s argument.

Woah, that doctor totally avoided that guy’s argument about vaccines. I’m interpreting that as defensiveness and now think that this idiot who never left his hometown and didn’t finish highschool has a point.

I completely understand the impulse to say “I know more than you, now shut up.” Arguing is tiring, and many of the debates that we have ad nauseum are exactly the same debates that are worth having.

But this is a mistake.

Win your fights with logic.

The best-case scenario is that you change someone’s mind and the world gets a little brighter. The worst-case scenario is that you understand your own argument a little better.

Oh yeah, and there’s always the chance that you’re wrong, but you probably hadn’t considered that huh?

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