Hey Reader,
On Monday last week I carried my jury summons into the county courthouse along with 200 other people. Unsure if I'd be dismissed in a few hours or have my next week+ upended.
Through pure chance I ended up in the 15% of people in that room placed on a jury. Out of about 60 people called for each case there are only 12 jurors and 2 alternates.
We were assigned a felony sexual assault case that lasted a week and a half, including 11 hours of deliberations over 2 days. Ultimately we found the defendant guilty on 3 counts and were undecided on the final count (the jury was split 6/6 and in criminal cases the jury has to be unanimous to reach a verdict on a count).
While the experience was challenging, very emotionally draining and disrupted more than a week of work, I'm really glad I went through it. It was interesting to have a first hand look and it left me with a lot more faith in our justice system.
If you get the chance, I highly recommend serving on a jury (not that you really have a say in the matter).
—
In last week's newsletter I shared why Figma won and said this week I'd write about applying those principles to
...then jury duty happened. So that will be another week away, but I've still got some good stuff for you today:
We knew increased interest rates and insanely high prices would result in a decrease in prices, but this is really fast. Though to be clear, we're still at averages above last year.
Boise, where I live, was one of the hottest markets and the prices needed to come down in order to stay anywhere close to wages.
"The last productivity app you'll ever need"
Have you maxed out your productivity tools and are tired of them not helping you?
Traditional tools are simply glorified todo-lists. What you really need is an assistant that will help you focus, prioritize the right tasks, and manage your day.
Sunsama will help you pull tasks from your calendar, email, and other tools into one focused dashboard, it automatically nudges you to plan your
days intentionally and end work on time. You can see daily and weekly analytics of how you spent your time and improve your productivity gains over time.
You can try it free for 14 days, no card needed.
This blog post from Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, talks about how the quality of your life is shaped by who you want to impress. I loved it.
We just released a new feature for account notifications in ConvertKit. By default we've turned on a weekly summary, but you can also turn on notifications for every new subscriber or every new purchase. That means you don't need to use Zapier for notifications anymore.
Have a great week,
Nathan
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Hey Reader, What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? You’ve probably seen some version of this question before. It’s a good one, though sometimes the answer isn’t immediately obvious. That’s why I like Graham Weaver’s 8 questions for what to do with your life. Graham founded the private equity firm Alpine Investors, and he teaches at Stanford. In Chapter 2 of my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth, I credit him with a principle he shared with his MBA students called "worse first",...
Hey Reader, If I could solve only one thing in my business, that would have the biggest impact, what would that be? This is the question every great entrepreneur obsesses over. Rather than trying to do everything at once, you look for the bottleneck and focus on solving that. There’s a book called The Goal by an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s a 1984 business novel that business systems nerds love. However if you’re not a business systems nerd you probably… won’t love it. It’s...
Hey Reader, Have you ever spent money on something and immediately felt guilty afterward? Will Guidara spends his money foolishly on purpose. And he thinks you should too. He once bought an entire barrel of whiskey and put it in his basement. He also put a skee-ball machine in the office. Is he going to get a monetary return on either of these things? No. But that’s kind of the point. He calls it the 95/5 rule: Manage your money and time like a maniac 95% of the time (no expense is too...