I randomly ran into ~real life~ NFT NYC alpha 👀
@lionsmilk_eth
is the first NFT café. Over this week, NFT holders get free coffee and anyone with an NFT get 15% off.
It’s a cool spot to meet crypto people!!
Just booked my flight!
I’m going to Amsterdam & Lisbon for free (thanks
@solana
) 🤯
Last year, I barely knew what Bitcoin was…a lot can happen in a year if you show up every day and share your work in public 🥂
Just gave a great speech about Illini Blockchain to 100+ people...
Seeing your work materialize into something you can see is one of the best feelings ever
Quote I like:
"Life is pure process. What a gift it is to experience this little sliver of it. I don’t need the next thing. I just need to slow down and savor this moment. Perhaps what I want, what I’ve always wanted, is already here; already mine."
-
@startingfromnix
Just had an all time weekend at
@entrpowerhour
’s 4th retreat.
They’ve got an absolutely stacked community of builders and I would’ve never gotten to meet them if I didn’t send
@bobby_housel
a DM.
Cheers to using social networks to actually meet people 🍻
On Monday, I interviewed
@cory
in front of ~60 people.
He gave tons of actionable advice for college kids breaking into tech/startups.
Here's a 5 min breakdown of everything we talked about:
Work & mental health are hard to balance.
My brother & I write a weekly newsletter as we figure it out to help other young ambitious ppl get the most out of life too!
Start learning with us 👇
We are live! I'm sharing weekly notes on everything from happiness to urban planning.
No fluff, just 3 minutes of curated finds.
Toss in your email if you want to go down some rabbit holes with me:
We are live! I'm sharing weekly notes on everything from happiness to urban planning.
No fluff, just 3 minutes of curated finds.
Toss in your email if you want to go down some rabbit holes with me:
I wrote an essay on how I'm trying to solve society's tribalism & depression through jam sessions.
I've hosted 18 of these curiosity-based hangouts so far and it may be the most impactful I've done!
Check out why they're so magical & important:
January 2024: no job or meaningful leads
March 2024: working 2 dream gigs (for
@matter
and
@julian
)
The catch? Never sent a resume, got a warm intro or interviewed. Hell, Julian even said I would "be more of a burden than a help"
Yet, here I am. See why:
I'm not sure there is a better feeling than the caffeine-induced afternoon euphoria filled with creating authentic work, going down fascinating rabbit holes, & connecting different ideas together.
If you optimize for anything in life, this state of "flow" is a good North Star.
Bro life is crazy…
Recently got another fellowship and am going to Silicon Valley from 1/8-1/15 for $200 🤯
Big shoutout to
@TECenter
for organizing it and letting me in 🥰
quote i like:
"Most people don’t get into business to change the world. They simply want to provide value, be compensated fairly for it, and do it on their own terms. And you definitely don’t need to invent the next breakthrough to do this."
-
@jakobgreenfeld
2nd UIUC entrepreneur hangout of the year in the books.
- 20 killers (creators, founders, hackers, etc)
- 3 hours (1 longer than expected)
- Only texted 24 hours beforehand
Will continue to send updates. Hmu if you want to get plugged in.
🧑🍳
@adnmurphy
So many students just fucking float by without ever trying stuff.
They don’t know what they like.
They don’t know what they’re good at.
They don’t know what it feels like to have true ownership over a project.
They don’t know how passionate you can be about something.
good friends consume together, great friends create together.
can be applied to any activity and is a good framework when trying to figure out fun stuff to do with people.
Over the past week, I talked to billionaire founders, Fortune 100 C-Suite executives, & creators of products we use every day.
Here's a sneak peak into the notes I took during out conversations:
I've started to become intentional about not listening to stimulating sounds like music or podcasts during the rest times during my day (ex: commute).
Allowing myself that cognitive breathing room enables a creative state where I can think clearly and purely.
Highly recommend.
Going down people rabbit holes is arguably more fun & useful than topic rabbit holes.
If they have quality thoughts, you'll find tons of great resources / other people to learn from.
@EricJorgenson
,
@eladgil
,
@naval
,
@mollyfmielke
, &
@awilkinson
are all great for tech / biz
After 7 awesome months, my dream internship internship is done.
Gonna cook up a fire blog post reflecting on the experience!
Thanks for taking a chance on me
@gautamka
@sameerskapur
@vishnuchakrobo
😘
Every time I come back to Europe, it astounds me how incredible the infrastructure is for young people to travel.
I cancelled my train 30 min before it left (got refunded), booked tomorrow's train for €11 (Budapest→Vienna), & got a 9.1/10 star hostel for €12.
Absolutely nuts
Absolute banger from
@eriktorenberg
:
We are trained to optimize for optionality from a young age:
“I don't know what I’m gonna do with my life so I’m gonna get a degree.”
“I don’t know what to do with this degree so I’m gonna get a grad degree."
There’s no such thing as creative people vs non-creative people.
Ideas, innovation, & progress is a direct product of the intensity & time you committed to something.
Obsession over everything (
@BenWilsonTweets
)
Have a personal issue you are trying to solve?
Tell GPT-3 to act like Socrates and start describing your issue & current approach to solving it.
It's really effective at driving toward the root of an issue and helping you figure out small steps to take to resolve it.
quote i like:
“If you’re confident enough in your ability to learn, you can get paid for something you’ve never done before. You can get paid for learning how to do it.”
-
@iamjasonlevin
If I'm spending ~90,000 hours working on a career, I want to know I spent it tackling problems that truly matter.
If you feel the same, I wrote this essay for you. It outlines 10 problems worth spending a career solving. Check it out:
29/ 🤝 Second prize in the DAO/Network State track goes to
@agoracourts
, an on-chain arbitration platform focused on allowing other protocols to integrate fully customizable disputes between any number of users.
Sophomore year I was cryptopilling everyone.
Junior year I was Twitterpilling everyone.
Senior year imma be Jiddu Krishnamurti-pilling everyone.
Might be the greatest thinker I've come across yet
The pee test - how to know when you are obsessed.
When you have to pee but don’t want to go to the bathroom because you just want one more second to work on that thing you are doing.
Find pee test activities and keep doing them.
It’s so sad to see how much people complain about life - especially Americans. They live in this state of disappointment & complacency.
I wish more people realized that this is the Golden Era of life.
Society is more fascinating, liberating, & democratized than ever before.
It’s selfish to be nice. It feels so damn good to be kind to people for no other reason.
I don’t think enough people realize that being kind is really good for yourself (not just the other person).
Learning hack:
if you want to read a book but don't have time, search up podcasts with the author. They are usually 1-2 hours and cover 80% of the insights you would get from the book.
quote i like:
"You can choose to be open and receptive, willing to suspend your disbelief and accept that there are things you don’t know about to be able to learn something new."
-
@brookeleblanc
3 ways I weave meaning into normal conversation:
1. Ask them about their childhood and how that molded them
2. Ask them about what got them into what they’re passionate about
3. Ask them their beliefs about subjects they seem to be interested in
My new favorite word - "sonder"
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness.
Now that
@ILL_Blockchain
recruiting is over and we have 15 killers, your boy is gonna rip some cold DMs/emails and see what cool opportunities pop up on the other side.
Will keep you updated
quote i like:
"The danger of pursuing many good projects is not having the time to pursue many great projects.
Therefore, a rule of thumb: Move slowly when choosing what to focus on. But move quickly once you've decided.
Move slow then fast."
-
@julian
it’s crazy that i can be a fly on the wall for 3 hours and listen + learn from people I could only dream of meeting
…and there are 100,000s of young &ambitious people just like me doing it too 🤯
gen Z is going to be the most innovative generation of all time 🔒
It’s amazing how few college kids try to befriend future versions of themselves (5-10 yrs old).
Similarly, how few find people / companies they want to work for and then help them with no expectation of anything in return.
The conversationalist jam sessions I have been hosting might become the best thing I’ve contributed to UIUC.
So many cool people in one room.
@Arel2Ron
just AI-pilled the shit out of me and a few other people. Our brains are still recovering.
I'm starting onboarding meetings for people in leadership positions in
@ILL_Blockchain
...
It's is crazy how much I have to write down to catch them up on what we/I've been doing.
Feeling proud of myself and incredibly excited to see the org grow with more empowered members :)
Reminder to self:
Difficult to attain does not equal valuable.
Just because something is hard to get, doesn’t mean it matters to you.
Yet, our brains are wired to think that rare things are also valuable (ex: nice car, cool network, lots of followers, prestigious job, etc)
Cars make so many people angry.
I wanna be part of the movement that makes US cities more walkable.
Let’s all fuck around for a couple of years and build companies that make it happen. What do ya say?
Quote I like:
"Instead of spending time 'getting in the mood to work'…just start working. Confront the work. People think they need perfect conditions to start, when in reality, starting is the perfect condition."
-
@AlexHormozi