Discovering Deep Work and Europe’s Timeless Charm

Hey,

I raced down Kurfürstendamm at 20 km/h on a Bold e-scooter to the Stue Hotel this Sunday morning to write to you.

📸 Photo of the Week

Two ideas

1. Today, I decided to dedicate Tuesdays and Thursdays to the maker’s schedule and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to the manager’s schedule. This should give me at least four 3-4 hour blocks of deep work per week, time where I can make and create to move my company forward.
   
   I noticed how a 15-minute meeting in the middle of a 4-hour deep work block can completely derail me, but I didn’t act on it decisively. Just knowing that a meeting is coming up in 80 minutes already distracts me. This video by Alex Hormozi inspired me to act now.
   
   If you are not familiar with the idea yet, read this five-minutes essay by Paul Graham.

2. Recently I came across the idea that Americans view Europe as a museum. It bothered me.
   
   However, this morning I read a short story by Theodor Fontane from 1884: “Unser altes Europa hat den Charakter einer Reisesehenswürdigkeit angenommen wie Troja, wie Mykene, wie die Pyramiden, und man bewundert, von Station zu Station, alte Schlösser und alte Kirchen, alte Waffen und alte Bilder und schließlich auch alte Menschen.” I realized Americans have looked at Europe as a museum for more than 100 years. The idea is not new.
   
   It makes me think about how we can keep our history while also creating new things for future generations to use, change, or improve.

Three cool links

1. Casey Handmer’s post this week, “The solar industrial revolution is the biggest investment opportunity in history” - mind-boggling, cool charts, and inspiring.

2. My all-time favourite tweetstorm by Naval Ravikant “How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):” - one of my favourite ideas from it: “You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.” - I wonder what exciting areas this applies to today?

3. Michael Saylor (the Bitcoin dude and CEO of MicroStrategy) in a 2012 interview made a spot-on prediction on the value of Apple and why he doesn’t believe prices will come down. That one aged really well.

Last week’s historic Salesforce link did not work, so here is a screenshot in case you wondered how Salesforce.com looked on November 28, 1999 (their launch year):

Personal note

Just hit reply if you have any ideas or if something resonated with you from this week’s newsletter. I’ll be sure to read and respond.

Thanks for reading.

Catch you next Sunday!

Best,
Dennis