Sunday Seven No. 012
Leadership, Writing, and Irrational Fears
Hey Friends 👋🏼
I’m writing to you from our new home in Toronto where I moved into last week with my lovely girlfriend. It’s the third place we’ve lived together. After a marathon 14-hour move (with movers), we completely settled into our new place in a single day. This photo of my favorite corner of the house was taken just a few hours before we finished moving. It was taken from our new upstairs loft bedroom.
The move was part of a series of life changes we made to adjust to our new world. It’s a bit further north of the city but makes it much easier to beat traffic on quick weekend getaways. The home and neighbors make it feel like we’ve lived here forever.
But enough about me. Last week’s experimental themed newsletter all about rest and relaxation was well received — thanks to all of you who let me know how much you liked it. I’ll do it again occasionally. For this week we’re back to our regular medley.
Without further ado, let’s jump into it…
Last week’s email had a 60% open rate. The top links were daily journaling exercise Morning Pages and knowing the difference between Rest vs. Recovery.
No. 012
1️⃣ LEADERSHIP — 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership is near the top of the reading pile in the photo above. Here is a good summary by Alex Maccaw (@maccaw) who first put the book on my reading list.
Conscious Leadership is about being more interested in learning than being right. When our egos make us afraid to be wrong, that fear leads us to defend our ideas at all costs, and to work too hard to convince others that we are right—often with anger.
Conscious Leadership is about recognizing when these emotions have gripped our thought processes, releasing these emotions, and shifting back to a state of curiosity where we are receptive to all ideas and creativity, even if they seem to contradict our own.
2️⃣ WRITING — Becoming a better reader and writer have been central themes for me this year. Reading has made me a better writer, writing clarifies thinking, and clear thinking leads to better decisions. I’m revisiting a few of my favorite bookmarks on writing in the context of business. They include Paul Graham’s Writing, Briefly, Morgan Housel’s Why Everyone Should Write, and How Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazon's Competitive Advantage.
3️⃣ FOCUS — Endel is my new favorite audio tool to improve focus and productivity. I highly recommend signing up for the free 1-week trial for the full experience, but you can also try a sample here. I’ve shared similar productivity audio apps before including Brain.fm and Noisli. What Endel does differently is to customize sounds with a combination of data including the heart rate from your Apple Watch, time of day, the current weather, and your activity level to produce a truly unique sound. I’ve used it for deep work and reading so far and have found it highly effective.
4️⃣ FEAR — I’m willing to bet a lot of us don’t write out of irrational fears we’ve likely carried around since grade school. The truth is that unless you’re writing for a living, no one is grading your writing anymore. Nobody has to read your writing and grammar doesn’t matter when you’re writing for yourself — which is the best place to start. If you don’t like the way your writing sounds, you can always change it and none will be the wiser. And if you read it in a few years and cringe, that means you’ve grown as a person and a writer — well done.
Illustrator and comic artist Frans Krause (@deepdarkfears) brings our creepy, funny, and idiosyncratic fears to life in comic form. One of my irrational childhood fears was checking behind the shower curtain for a serial killer each time I went to the bathroom after watching the horror-movie Copycat. I just submitted that fear to Frans and hoping he’ll turn into a comic. You can anonymously submit your own fears here.
5️⃣ FASHION — Safe to say that we are mostly looking forward to turning the page on a wild year (PSA: there are still 179 days left). Fashion is inherently forward-looking and can provide optimism for the future. As the fashion world plans for Spring/Summer 2021, this video by Hermes is brilliantly shot and a good break from all things 2020. Thanks to Ben Sehl (@benjaminsehl) for putting this on my radar.
6️⃣ MUSIC — Toukan by Manoo, Raoul K., and Ahmed Sosso is high energy and thumping on repeat this week (YouTube, Spotify, Apple). Thanks to my wonderful girlfriend for finding the track.
7️⃣ QUOTE —
I think it's far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you're bad at writing and don't like to do it, you'll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated. - Paul Graham
Last Words
Thanks for reading. This newsletter is free, but a lot goes into researching and writing it each week. It’s now been 3-months into the experiment and I’d love to continue. To show your support, forward it to a friend you think will like it.
If you’re new to Sunday Seven you can read previous editions here and subscribe here.
Enjoy the week,
Yashar