Hey Reader,

If I say something dumb, I'm probably still replaying it in my head 11 years later.

Just me?

It’s an exhausting feeling. You're not really solving anything, you're just reliving the moment over and over. And when you're building a business, there's always something new to add to the pile. After a while, it gets hard to tell which things actually need your attention and which ones you've just been dragging around.

Start by writing everything down. When a worry stays in your head, you feel it but you’re not really able to examine it as easily. Getting everything onto paper helps you take an objective look.

Here's the two-question filter I use for this:
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Question 1: Does this problem get better or worse with time?

When I was 19, I broke my retainer and went back to my orthodontist to get a new one. They brushed me off and told me it was fine. I was pretty upset. The broken retainer was poking holes in my mouth. Why wouldn't they look at it?

I held onto that anger for years.

Eventually I realized the problem wasn't just that my retainer was hurting me. With every passing month, my teeth shifted more and more. All of the work from braces was slowly undoing itself. My anger was justified, but sitting with it wasn't fixing anything.
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Question 2: Do I have any control over this?

With the retainer, the answer was yes. I could find a new orthodontist, get a new retainer, and solve the problem. So that's what I did.

Some worries don't hold up to this question though. If you're losing sleep over something you don’t actually control, knowing that may not make the feeling disappear. But it does tell you that spending mental energy on it won't change anything.

Go through your list and ask both questions for each item. What you're left with are the problems that are getting worse and that you can actually do something about. Pick one of those problems and take one solid step on it today.
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PODCAST

How Diary of a CEO Gained 14M Subscribers in 4 years

The Diary of a CEO grew to 14 million subscribers in four years. Grace Miller, Flight Story's Head of Failure and Experimentation, led that growth by running constant experiments across multiple shows, some that worked and some that didn't.

In this episode, we break down what those experiments looked like and what it takes to grow on YouTube.

We cover:

• The YouTube community posts growth hack everyone ignores
• The chapters strategy that give better retention
• Why focusing on output is better than obsessing over follower count

​​Watch or listen to episode »​​

ARTICLE

How this engineer found a tech job that actually works for working mothers

Aisha Ahmad is a software engineer and a mother who's carried a lot. She lost her husband to cancer, raised her son alone, eventually remarried, and relocated to California when her husband took a new job.

Finding a new role meant finding somewhere that could actually support her life alongside her work. This piece on the Kit blog follows her story from interview to first year.

She talks about the things that convinced her to say yes, including a flexible schedule where her team has her son's school pickup on the shared calendar.

​Read article »​

X POST

$150k revenue in 6 weeks… made by AI agent

Just last month, Nat Eliason was talking about how Felix, the agent he built, made $15k in two weeks.

Now, the total is $150k and climbing.

Nat says they may be "hitting the limits of what a Zero Human Company can do" and he's looking for a human cofounder for Felix.

Have a great week!

—Nathan