Good Sunday 🌞!
First, 🙏🙏🙏I hope cases in India can drop soon! I cannot imagine what people are experiencing over there, but I know it must be horrifying. My friend, Preetam, created this page about the situation and how to help.
I just had my 2nd vaccine shot and was down for a day feeling unwell. Then I was having conversations with my cousins in Hong Kong, and we are all grateful yet frustrated about our lucky and privileged situation. I’ll share more below.
By the way, anything particular topic you want me to talk about? 🤚🤚🤚 Write me your suggestions.
This week let’s talk about:
- 😓 Not a lot of people want to take vaccines here
- 🤜🤛 One mindset that engineers my growth
- 🔧 Breakdown of my weekly routine in content production
- 🔎 Do you plan to create a community or cohort-based course?
😓 Not a lot of people want to take vaccines here
When we look at the situation in India and then look at what’s going on in Hong Kong, it is frustrating.
As a city of less than 8 million residents, we have 15 million doses ready. Yet up to this point, only 916k people (14%) took the 1st dose, and 497k people (7.6%) took both doses.
Why are people not taking the vaccines? I'm guessing:
- We have plenty of vaccine supplies, there is no rush!
- People are scared of the side effects
- We’re thinking about ourselves more than about “herd immunity”
😞 That reminds me that traditionally people in Hong Kong have a “follower” mindset. They’re never the 1st to try anything new, but when something is proven working, they’re always the 1st one taking advantage.
This applies to tech and innovation and everything else.
I can be honest with you. I don’t enjoy this mindset. Hence, I’m spending more time on the Internet than in my offline life. The world is too big to be a follower.
😱 This is not likely. But if the Hong Kong government announces a donation of doses to India, everyone will rush to schedule their vaccine shots. This is FOMO (fear of missing out) doing its job. When human faces scarcity, it forces us to take action.
I can't do anything about the vaccine situation here, but bringing the lesson back to #BuildingInPublic is what I can do. When we launch a new product, can we inject FOMO to urge people to take action?
💸 “Price will increase on May 15” “13 seats left at this price” These are all good techniques to leverage FOMO. Let me tell you a true story last week.
I learned that Typefully will roll out a paid plan and it started at $5/mo. I was going to sign up and somehow I forgot. When I checked, it was $7/mo! I missed out the $5. At that point, I didn’t even care and I subscribed at $7 because I didn’t want to pay $10 or 12 or 15.
A sense of scarcity and urgency can go a long way.
🤜🤛 One mindset that engineers my growth
I love to be in pain.
This sounds wrong, but I believe the only way to force myself to grow is to put myself into super uncomfortable situations.
When I face a critical decision, I always choose the one that makes me more uncomfortable. Because I know that no matter what happens, e.g. I fail badly, I’ll learn and grow a ton anyway.
🚀 Choosing the uncomfortable option always creates more growth.
If you want to grow, don’t be too easy on yourself.
🔧 Breakdown of my weekly routine in content production
Last week I shared a quick video on batchtasking, and a number of you want to know exactly how I split up my time to produce more content efficiently.
- Anytime: I have a page called “Content Library” in Notion. It has different sections like “Articles” “Videos” “Newsletters” and each has a table. I have it on mobile, and this is where I dump any ideas that randomly come into my mind throughout the week.
- Weekend (1-2h): I list down all the content I’ll produce next week and outline them. How many videos will I film? What will I talk about? What’s the topic for my article? What am I going to talk about in the next newsletter? How many tweet threads will I write? I have everything detailed out so I’ll be ready to go!
- Mon-Fri: I block out time (30m-2h each) for all sort of production. “Video Production” “Article Production” “Tweet Thread Production” “Newsletter Production”. Because I already have all the outlines ready, I just need to shoot the videos or let my writing fly. When I prepare the outline ahead of time, I trick my brain to see that "producing is easy", and I just do it.
It is all about finding a system that works for you. The hardest part for me is the desire to procrastinate, so I designed a way to reduce that feeling.
🔎 Do you plan to create a community or cohort-based course? I'm sharing what I've learned
These two are the hottest online products everyone wants to create in 2021. One is a great audience building method, and one is a scalable business model.
If you do have plans to start either one, I want to share what I’ve learned so far creating the Public Lab community and the #30DaysInPublic cohort-based challenge.
👉👉👉 How to Decide Starting a Community or a Cohort-based Course
💡 Inspirations
The Wright Brothers vs Startup Founders
The way of starting businesses really didn’t change that much. There are a ton of lessons we can learn from reading how the Wright brothers created the airplane. Bootstrapping, being ignored by everyone else, getting distracted … do they sound familiar?
Julie Zhuo: Why You Need to Ask
Even Julie Zhuo is scared of asking people for favors? What?! That’s the truth. We are all afraid of potential rejections and criticism.
One more thing I love in this tweet thread. She thought she is independent and self-made. She didn’t need someone to write a blurb for her new book to “add credibility”. But, is it true? Can we be self-made? Do we need other’s help?
This is what I talk about in Making Twitter Friends, here I’ll leave you to find out from Julie.