I started my personal newsletter, “Writing to Wisdom”, to reflect on my thoughts once a week. My original intention was, as the name suggests, to become wiser through writing. My original idea was: “wisdom is built through reflection, and reflection happens through the active processing of thoughts, also known as writing.”

So for about half a year, I pretty consistently spent 2-3 hours every Sunday morning writing down my newsletter of the week. Some better, some worse.

But then, in the middle of 2023, I stopped.

Why did I stop?

It wasn’t an active decision. Looking back, if I had to tell this story about myself, I’d say I stopped writing in my spare time because I started to make a living from writing for other people. Writing for myself didn’t pay me, so I deprioritized it.

To some degree, that may have been a good decision at the moment. I was trying to get Letter Leverage (my writing agency) off the ground with my then-Co-Founder, and I needed to focus.

But as I reflect upon it right now, it feels like a mistake.

Writing to reflect is kind of like resting your mind. The paradox is that the more you exercise, the more your body needs to rest to perform at its highest level. In the same way, the more you experience, the more you need to reflect to derive insights and maintain clarity.

I felt a sense of synchronicity 2 hours ago, when I listened to Dan Garner (a fitness coach) utter the same idea that led me to start writing 4 years ago. Paraphrasing:

“There’s a difference between someone who’s experienced and someone who’s wise. An experienced person may have lived that day a thousand times. But they only become wise if they combine their experience with reflection to draw lessons from it. We’ve all seen a person who’s made the same mistake 10 years in a row. They’re experienced, not wise.”

What nobody told me about entrepreneurship is that clarity is the most important asset you can have, because it allows you to see clearly what to work on, with whom to work on it, and how to do it. More importantly, a lesson I’ve learned is that nobody wants to lead themselves, because if they did, they’d have to think through every decision they make. Even scarier, they’d face 100% accountability for the mistakes they made. When I was still in school, I dreamt of the freedom to “design my own day” and “be free to do whatever I want”. I’ve been there for 2 years now, and it’s hard, because when you have the freedom to do anything you want, you’re always questioning whether you did the right thing. It’s just like the digital nomad paradox - digital nomads can live anywhere, but that makes it tough for them to commit to living somewhere, because they’re juggling a dozen trade-offs at any given moment.

Written reflection keeps you sane in two ways. First, it helps you add structure to your thoughts. I read a quote recently which was something in the likes of “if you’re not putting your thoughts on paper, you’re just fake thinking”, and I think there’s something to that. Second, it creates a historical track record for your decisions and self-actualization. I’m happy I documented my decision to start my own firm (my intention was “entrepreneurship is gamified self-development”, and I was right about that!), just as I’m happy I documented my decisions to go to college (it would be fun) and dropping out of college (it wasn’t fun) just 3 months later.

Two or so months ago, I spoke with Mark MacLeod, who was the first CFO at Shopify. He’s coached VC-backed founders for 20+ years through uncertain times, and now runs his own community, Limitless.ceo, which I’m a part of (and strongly recommend).

He was asking me how I’m feeling at the moment. I told him about my business accelerating to the moon, how there was opportunity around me everywhere, and all the things I was about to do. He gave me a piece of advice that felt counterintuitive at the time, but that I’ve been grateful for since:

“When everything around you is speeding up, you need to slow down. When you’re getting pulled into all directions, you need to find strong footing and ground yourself.”

It took me a few weeks to understand his message.

The big irony of entrepreneurship is that you need to care a LOT about your company to grow it, but you also need to be detached from it to make sound decisions. I used to be completely attached. To this day, my iPhone home screen has the iMessage app removed from it. It’s because 3 years ago, I’d fear seeing that small white number of messages increase and know a client texted me during the weekend. It would completely pull me out of my peace and put me into fight-or-flight mode.

When business is volatile, you need grounding around yourself. Whether that’s relationships, exercise, a hobby, or something else. The reason why is twofold. First, when your business is going through hell, you want to have things to remind you that “it’s just business”. Second, when your business is skyrocketing, you need things to remind yourself that “it’s just business.” The second one is arguably more important; deriving dopamine only from business growth or big deals is one of the surest ways to alienate yourself from everyone who isn’t a founder and guarantee misery. Reflection, breathwork, and writing pull us out of the day-to-day to remember the bigger picture. And I have yet to see a founder burn out who had their family, social life, and physical health together.

That’s why I’m returning to Writing to Wisdom. Because it’ll force me to reflect in public once a week. Because it’ll leave a trail for me to understand the person I’ve become in 3 years. Because it’ll allow me to understand myself better.

Time to pick up the pen again

Nils

Right now, I'm sitting at a Starbucks at Calgary Airport, Canada, dual-wielding a black coffee with a chai latte. I never drink chai. In fact, I even have a bad habit of looking down at people who drink sugary milk drinks. They just taste too sweet and contain a bunch of sh*t. Yet here I am, sipping a chai latte.

Why? Well, perhaps I only drink it today because I’m fried. Tired brains crave sugar. Yes, that must be it. After 2 weeks in the U.S. and Canada with 5-6 hours a day of sleep, I’m not in my best mental shape. But it’s been a hell of a ride, I can tell you that!

If I’m honest with you, I don’t have any intention for writing this letter.

It’s been over a year since my last “Writing to Wisdom” edition. Perhaps, I’m only writing this to procrastinate. Perhaps, I’m only writing because I’m bored. Or, perhaps, I’m writing this now because there’s something that needs to be written.

Writing used to be my therapy. Now, it’s my work.

Last year, my girlfriend and I spent 3 months living in a co-living space in Porto. We wanted to go to Portugal last minute, so it was the only spot we found. The room was so tiny that we had our dinner dates on the concrete floor. I loved it.

One day, I had a conversation with Juan, our reception guy.

Juan told me he used to be a photographer for fun. For years, he took images for the sake of taking images. But then, he got so good that people paid him to take photos. The second he got paid, Juan told me, he stopped enjoying taking photos. “I made good money, but the passion was gone.” Ever since, he made a rule for himself to never accept money for photos again.

Back then, I didn’t think much of our conversation.

Yet it popped into my mind now, 13 months later, on the other side of the globe.

3 years ago, I wrote on the internet because it was fun. Then, I got so good that my friend Marvin hired me to write LinkedIn posts for $15 a pop, an opportunity I’m forever grateful for. Then, I set sail on my solo writing journey. Today, people pay me thousands of dollars for my writing.

But throughout this journey, I stopped writing for myself.

I abandoned Writing to Wisdom. I wrote for others. I served my readers. I stopped writing about random sh*t I found interesting because it didn’t serve my business.

And where did I end up? In confusion.

Over the past 2-3 months, I’ve felt unclear on my purpose. I can’t help but think about a Napoleon Hill quote my friend Connor told me about:

*imagine a sophisticated bearded man reading*

“Purpose is the Devil’s greatest enemy”

(paraphrasing, but sounds like something Napoleon Hill would say!)

On the contrary, purposelessness IS the Devil.

I can’t forget the quote because I find it to be true. When you don’t know what you want out of life, you set yourself up for disappointment. You don’t know what a “great life” means to you so you never feel fulfilled. You don’t know your purpose, so you constantly doubt if you’re doing the right thing. That’s how I feel.

I’m not sad. In fact, I’m very happy. On paper, I’ve had an incredible year.

I:

• Lowered my resting heart rate to 44 and ran my first marathon

• Made more money in a month than I made in the entirety of 2022

• Spent more quality time with family and my partner than the years before

• Traveled the world while working, from Mexico City to Sedona to Kelowna

• Met, talked, and learned from incredible 6-, 7-, 8-, 9- and 10-figure founders

• Took a shot with one of my internet “idols” and slept in the basement of another

Like seriously, I’m f*cking blessed. I feel like the luckiest person on Earth. There’s no other way to look at it.

But despite living 2021 Nils’ dream life, I feel like something is missing.

Why?

Is it because…

…I started going to college 3 months ago and realized it’s not really what I wanted?

…I’ve written on the Internet for 3 years and don’t really know where I want to go?

…I don’t listen to a priming Tony Robbins meditation every morning?

I don’t know.

And that’s the problem.

I haven’t engaged enough in Pathfinding Practices.

Pathfinding Practices are behaviors that make you aware of:

1. Where you are

2. Where you want to go

3. How you get to where you want as fast as possible

Think of these practices as a GPS for your purpose.

They help you get to where you want to be as fast as possible. Sure, you don’t need them to get to great destinations. But without them, you’re just running around with no intention. You might end up at a beautiful mountain creek or a trashy Irish bar in Kelowna. The point is -

Without a GPS, you’re leaving your destination up to chance.

Pathfinding Practices are rituals that actively confront you with your life situation, such as:

• Therapy

• Journaling

• Meditation

• Group Coaching

• Deep conversations with loved ones

I actively discern them from other spiritual rituals like yoga, breathwork, and time in nature. That’s because they don’t always include pondering life questions.

If you feel lost, like me, re-integrate Pathfinding Practices into your life.

Consistency matters more than intensity. I used to think meditating 5 minutes a day was a weird habit. A habit personal development rookies just do to keep a streak and pat each other on the shoulder. That belief probably comes from all the people I’ve met who have fancy morning routines but don’t achieve sh*t.

But now, I’ve changed my mind to a more nuanced position.

Yes, journaling or meditating 5 minutes here or there doesn’t change your life. But the habit does. Even 5 minutes of self-aware reflection gives you the 80/20 results of feeling purpose in your life.

That’s all for today.

Nils

Hope you’re well.

I’m writing today’s edition back in my Swedish bedroom, enjoying my regular cup of black coffee and feeling the soreness of yesterday’s leg day.

I got important news for you:

From next week, Writing to Wisdom will be called “Solopreneur Systems”, and shift focus to how I’m building my one-person business using AI, systems, and writing.

Why?

Because it’s more aligned with my business goals right now to write about my subject-matter expertise than writing philosophical business pieces.

I’ll still give you business advice. I’ll still tell stories. And I’ll still make jokes.

…but all in a more refined matter.

I think you’ll like it.

In either case, let’s dive into today’s story:

Last week was my happiest week of 2023.

For the first time this year, I felt completely happy about the present.

I didn’t beat myself up for not working enough. I didn’t go to bed thinking about tomorrow’s work tasks. I didn’t stress my days but took my time to meet friends and work out.

And to my surprise…

…this week also felt like one of the most productive ones this year.

I felt happy about the status quo. Had energy all-day. Randomly laughed while taking walks. Felt deeply in love with my family, friends, and girlfriend.

That’s happiness for me.

This led me to the question…

Why was I so happy?

I’d worked just as much as during other weeks.

I’d slept just as much (or even less) than other weeks.

I’d eaten just as much delicious peanut butter oatmeal as during other weeks.

So…

What happened?

After pondering about it…

…I realised that I finally didn’t feel like I was in such a f*cking hurry anymore.

Ever since becoming a solopreneur, I’d felt an inner urgency to succeed FAST.

Get clients. Deliver well. Grow my business.

I’d expected to drive the road of business as fast as if it was driving a Mercedes on the Autobahn…

…but in reality, this road was a bumpy dirt road, and I was driving an Opel.

My expectations made me feel unhappy about the process.

Until two weeks ago.

During my mastermind in Barcelona, I had the time to reflect.

I realised that if I just hit the gym, wrote, did outreach, and ate well during the days, I’d be fine.

And I changed my mantra to: “I prioritize long term over short term”.

(the previous one was “Everything’s fine as long as I have black coffee, oatmeal, and hummus”)

Last week, this mindset shift started to show.

I felt:

• Less needy

• Fewer desires

• More present

And I didn’t judge myself as much anymore.

I felt as if my life and work were more detached than they’d ever been since going solo.

Which brings me to today’s lesson:

Detachment is the precursor of happiness

Detachment is the opposite of attachment.

If you’re emotionally attached to something, your happiness depends on it.

If you’re detached, your happiness is intrinsic.

In my case, I’d made myself happier by detaching my self-worth from my feelings and work progress.

Detachment leads to rationality.

Rationality leads to better long term choices.

Better long term choices led to higher quality of life.

And higher quality of life correlates with higher perceived happiness.

So, if you recognise any of the feelings I discussed today…

…try to detach yourself from your work, and start enjoying life again.

See you next week,

Nils

Hope you’re well.

I’m writing today’s edition from Erchy’s, a cozy coffee shop in Berlin with great coffee beans and a white interior full of green plants.

I arrived in Berlin last Wednesday to visit a childhood friend of mine, and we spent 4 awesome days together.

They all followed the same pattern:

1. Get out of bed

2. BIIG oatmeal breakfast

3. Work 2-3 hours

4. Lunch

5. Work 2 hours

6. Table tennis

7. Gym

8. Sauna until we got dizzy

9. Ice shower

10. Posing in the gym mirror

11. Eat dinner

12. Play Donkey Kong video games + look at Mike O’Hearn memes

(in case you don’t know Mike O’Hearn:)

But back to the topic:

These 4 days, I re-learned a vital business lesson that I want to share with you.

As you may know…

Business is often called “the game”.

Just like in other games, business involves competition between companies.

There are winners and losers, and strategies must be employed to succeed.

And there are rules.

In one way or another, we’re all playing the game of business.

But far from all people have the endurance required to win.

99% quit before they win.

So since starting my own business in February, I’ve pondered about one question:

How do I make the game of business fun to play for me?

Because if we enjoy a game, we keep playing it until we win.

Back to Berlin.

During the evenings, my friend and I played the old Wii game Donkey Kong Country Returns: Tropical Freeze - a video game that’s basically about monkeys jumping through levels, collecting bananas and fighting against walruses.

The game is extremely challenging & frustrating to play.

Hidden obstacles, hard levels, and unbeatable enemies make you want to quit all the time.

But because they are so hard, it feels so f*cking rewarding to beat the levels, and we kept playing.

This got me thinking…

How could I make business feel as fun & rewarding as the Donkey Kong games?

Sure, my day-to-day business isn’t as spectacular as a video game.

I got no monkeys to control, no bananas to eat, no walruses to beat.

Yet, I found 3 lessons from the game that I’m applying to my business:

1. Divide goals into smaller levels

In business, I find myself working on the same things over & over again, with no end in sight.

Working with content, I’m never done.

I can always write 1 more thread, 1 more tweet, 1 more LinkedIn post.

Because I didn’t define an and, it felt like a never-ending battle that I’m set to lose at some point.

In Donkey Kong, the worlds consist of multiple levels that are hard, but manageable, to beat.

I’m applying this principle to my content creation by batching content into 1-month blocks, and rewarding myself after writing 1 month of content.

And in general, I’m more keen to divide my business goals into smaller, achievable sub-actions.

2. Have a reward schedule

Donkey Kong, casinos, and video games in general keep us hooked by rewarding us inconsistently.

They reward just enough to keep us playing.

When you have your own business, it’s your responsibility to reward yourself.

I’ve paired rewards of varying sizes to my new business goals.

3. Be frustrated about that you’re not winning.

Ultimately, Donkey Kong is such an addicting game because you get frustrated by not winning, and you channel this energy into persistence.

I wasn’t aware of this before, and channeled my business frustration into procrastination or bad habits.

I’m now trying to change my self-talk in a way that makes me focus this energy at working on the goals instead of avoiding them.

Wrap up

I hope that my experience provided you with some value this week, friend.

To be honest, I gotta run now, so I don’t have time to end this letter with a laid-back joke as usual.

But take care, and crush it this week!

All the best,

Nils

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Red lights flash into your eyes. Sweat runs down your forehead. Your chest pounds to the rhythm of the DJ’s funky electronic music.

Ahhh. Amazing.

But you danced a little too much…

…so you go over to the bar to cool your head down a bit.

You go over to one of those massive cans of water with ice cubes they have at clubs, pour it into your mug, and chug it as if there was no tomorrow.

Another one. And another one.

You never learn, do you?

Because now you’re cooled down…

...but your belly feels so full of water that you just know that you won’t be able to more an inch without vomiting up the 3 liters of water you just drank and the two black bean burritos you ate for dinner.

You’re forced to take a break.

So you lean against the bar counter.

And in (serious) lack of alternatives, you start to look at your surroundings at the club.

Right to your left…

…you spot two identical tall, blond, brown-eyed men.

They’re twins. Probably.

And just as any other man hanging around at clubs at 2am…

…they’re single and, as my biology teacher would put it, looking for opportunities to increase their fitness.

To put it in a language you can understand:

They’re horny as f*ck.

At least the left twin.

With initiative in his eyes, he walks past you to a beautiful blonde girl standing to your right and asks her:

“Do you want to go on a date with me?”

“No.”

(not gonna lie, this girl had some balls to say that right into his face!)

So you watch the guy approach another girl.

“Do you want to go on a date with me?”

“No”

So he walks up to another girl.

Yet another “no”.

You watch the man continuing to walk up to 2, 3, 5, 10, 15 (!) other girls. But all reject him.

Yet, he doesn’t give up.

At this point, you know he’s either:

A) Really brave

B) Really horny

C) Really high on ecstasy

And at his 18th attempt, he finally get’s a “yes” from a girl.

Respect.

Now, you look back at the other twin brother, who still stands to your left.

It’s apparent that he adopted a different evolutionary strategy.

Instead of approaching 15 different girls like his brother, he’s been standing there talking to 3 girls about how their life’s going.

He asks smart questions.

He tells the girls about his lifestyle.

And he listens to them when they talk.

Suddenly, one of the three girls walks up to him and says:

“I think you’re a really caring and nice guy. Would you take me on a date tomorrow?”

The twin, who obviously didn’t expect this, answers with a half-confident, half-nervous “yes”.

He got himself a date.

But let’s leave the club for a second.

Why did I tell you all of this?

As you know, friend, my stories ALWAYS contain one business lesson.

This story illustrates the difference between demand capture and demand generation - a key marketing concept any business must understand.

See, studies show that only 1-3% of the total market of any product is actively buying.

Demand capture is selling to the 1-3% of the market that’s ready to buy NOW.

You capture existing demand for your product.

Examples of demand capture are sales, Search Engine Marketing, and paid advertising.

Demand generation means educating the remaining 97-99% of the market that aren’t ready to buy now.

You generate new demand for your product by making more people aware of the fact that they need it.

Examples of demand generation are social media content, blogs, or podcasts.

-

The first twin in the club was all about demand capture.

He ran around and asked girls to go on a date with him, so he only “converted” girls who were actively looking for a date.

The second twin in the club was all about demand generation.

He helped and educated the 3 girls he spoke with, until one girl became interested in him & asked him on a date.

The top 0,1% of companies do demand generation

Most companies try to capture existing demand rather than educating people and create demand.

This is a HUGE missed opportunity because they’re only selling to 3% of their market.

Also, this makes the 3% of the market ultra-competitive.

It’s a race to the bottom.

Now, here’s where it get’s exciting for you…

There’s a big opportunity in creating educative content for the 97% who aren’t ready to buy yet.

Because when they are ready to buy, they will turn to their trusted educator (you).

This is what the top 0,1% of businesses do today.

And while this approach is getting more & more popular, you’re still early.

How to write content to generate demand rather than capturing demand:

1. Don’t talk about the mechanism, talk about the outcome

If you sell ghostwriting, don’t write about the benefits of having a ghostwriter.

90% don’t even know what a ghostwriter is.

Instead, write about the benefits of having a large social following (outcome), and then mention as a side note that ghostwriting (mechanism) is the best way to build a following and that you offer ghostwriting.

2. Write for beginners

My friend Josh once wrote a legendary tweet:

When you write too specialised content, you’re showing authority to 1-3% of your most educated audience.

While authority content has its place, you want to post content that educates people with little to no understanding of the problem they have.

Look at the pyramid - 60% of your audience isn’t even aware that they have a problem.

(and 60% of your potential dating partners aren’t aware how hot you are, friend)

So, to summarise:

• Top 0,1% businesses create and capture demand for their business by creating educational content for their market.

• The rest of the companies have tough demand-capturing fights about the 1-3% of your market that’s ready to buy. A race to the bottom.

• Join the elite companies by educating your audience on the problems they have, the solutions they need, and they will pay you at the end.

Now, I’m out to generate some demand,

Nils

PS. If you want to get more done in less time, enroll in my free educational email course, Solopreneur Supercharge. It’ll teach you how to use AI & automations to get more done & earn more $$$ next month.

Hope you’re doing well.

I’m writing today’s edition from a Sandwich place in Barcelona with industrial walls, wooden interior, and 3 handsome men sitting next to me.

But last Wednesday, I was still in Stockholm.

I cooked my poké bowl for lunch while listening to Lex Friedman’s podcast with Sam Altman.

In case you don’t know Sam:

He’s the CEO of OpenAI, extremely smart, overwhelmingly wealth, and loves to watch “The Bachelor”.

What?! We’re trusting a fan of The Bachelor to build the most important technology of our lifetime?!

…

Well, in either case, Friedman referenced Altman’s blog as one of the best resources on the internet for startup.

So I gave it a visit and read his essay “How to become successful” three times.

One part stuck out to me while reading:

“You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the 99th percentile requires both”

I wrote down the quote in my workbook.

But it wasn’t before my plane to Barcelona reached cruising attitude at 7:30am one day later that I started to reflect.

10,000 meters up in the sky, I grabbed my journal.

I thought:

I’m a big fan of working smart.

But I don’t want to work hard though.

But why?

Journaling about it, I realised “hard work” resembled stressed and overworked middle-aged parents working 10-12 hours a day for me.

This hasn’t annoyed me before.

Not everyone has to be a hard worked.

But reading Sam Altman’s blog reminded me of something:

Believing “hard work is bad” doesn’t help me in any way, because I’ll need to work hard to achieve my goals in either case.

So I attempted to redefine the term:

My old belief:

“Bad” hard work = Working many hours and neglecting other areas of your life, working hard for the sake of working hard, or working hard to cope with problems

My new belief:

“Good” hard work = Leaning into discomfort to get to where you want to be as fast as possible, without compromising other life priorities

The old definition of hard work caused me stress.

The new one felt sustainable.

Later, I landed in Barcelona and met up with 4 friends from the Twitter business space.

All of them have online businesses, are into personal development, and love to eat steak.

At the time of writing, I’ve spent 3 days with these amigos.

And I realised we all share 2 superpowers:

1. Unlimited steak-eating abilities

We went to an all-you-can-eat restaurant and literally ate so many steaks that they had to take it off the menu.

2. We’re able to re-label things

Label-ing something means assigning it a (positive or negative) meaning.

Whenever you say something is “good” or “bad”, you oversimplify it.

We do this all the time to make sense of our world.

Not doing so would drain our mental energy 24/7.

But extensive labeling without questioning leads to a reality without nuance, which leads to unhappiness.

Because 99% of things are situational.

Hard work isn’t good or bad - it’s just hard work. It’s neutral.

But I had labeled “hard work” as a BAD thing.

This made me overly averse against it.

And it gave me the limiting belief that: “All hard work is bad”.

What’s the point of me telling you this?

You and I have 100s if not 1000s of hidden labels and beliefs that are making us feel unhappy, limiting our opportunities, and narrowing our worldview.

The next time you catch yourself thinking “X is bad” or “X is good”:

Pause.

Make yourself aware of why you believe that it’s bad or good.

And be able to let go of this label and see things as you are.

I’m convinced this will make you a happier and more successful person.

See you next week,

Nils

Now, here’s the lesson:

Hope this finds you well.

I’m writing today’s edition from Gateau, a Swedish coffee shop chain with brags about its delicious but ridiculously overpriced French pastries.

Why I’m sitting here?

Well, luckily, my girlfriend works here…

…and love to I capitalise $$$$ on her 50% staff discount.

So I got myself a cup of black coffee to write this.

In either case…

Today, I’ll tell you the little-known reason why we procrastinate (and how to overcome procrastination).

Let’s dive right in:

Last Saturday, I rose out of my bed with energy

“Today’s the day I’ll write my 2nd educational email course”

- I thought.

So I got out of my bed.

But then…

Ouch! What the f*ck was that?!

I felt deep pain in my inner hip.

And against what any naughty-minded readers might expect…

…this inner hip pain wasn’t caused by a little-too-intense bedtime cardio session the day earlier.

In fact, I’d felt this pain every day for over 4 months now.

I knew it was because I sat too much and didn’t mobilise my hips.

(which I don’t understand because I tend to mobilise my hips, if you know what I mean)

To solve this urgent pain, I pulled up 5 different physiotherapist Youtube videos.

And I followed Tom Cruise’s reincarnation’s instructions for 30 minutes

Done.

Hip pain relieved.

“Now, I’ll write my 2nd educational email course”

- I thought.

But first, I went upstairs to make myself my morning oats, usually the Peanut Sigma recipe.

While eating the oats, I started to read The Economist.

40 minutes passed.

I put away my oat bowl & thought:

“Now, I’ll write my 2nd educational email course”

So I went down to my room.

But first…

…let’s check if any of my cold outreaches responded.

So I went on Twitter.

Turns out, none had responded.

So I took one quick look on the timeline…

…and then I was stuck.

I do not kid you when I say that, in the next 60 minutes, I learned everything there is to learn about glucose monitoring.

1 glucose monitor costs $30-50.

It has a small needle that goes into the blood stream.

Glucose monitors last 10-14 days depending on the model.

Stable glucose / blood sugar levels are heavily beneficial for longevity.

And you attach a glucose monitor with some weird device.

Attaching it doesn’t hurt. Just pinch.

But let’s get back to the topic.

Procrastination.

After scrolling the timeline, my dopamine was so depleted that I wasn’t motivated to do anything.

I should’ve started working on my email course…

…but I went to Youtube.

And I kid you not - the first video on my timeline was:

I was SPOOKED but couldn’t resist watching it.

Suddenly everything made sense to me…

We don’t procrastinate because we are lazy.

Rather, we procrastinate because a task causes us conscious or subconscious stress.

We’re afraid of doing it.

And to cope with that…

…our brain triggers a fight-flight-freeze response.

Procrastination means we flee from the task at hand to avoid short-term stress.

This isn’t a character trait, it’s a natural stress response.

Then, it hit me:

I was procrastinating because writing an entire educational email course (around 5 days) seemed like an impossible task.

I was afraid of writing the course.

I was afraid of failing to write it.

I was afraid of writing it & producing trash.

But how would I overcome this fear and re-program my mind to stop procrastinating?

My first impulse was to discipline myself.

That’s what everyone on Twitter says.

“Just do it bro”

But…

…according to research mentioned in the video, that’s not a good approach.

Being hard with ourselves & doing the task forcefully layers more negative emotions to the task, making it even harder to execute.

Also, you won’t enjoy the work.

So friend, don’t do that.

Instead, the best strategy to overcome procrastination is to do 2 things:

1. Acknowledge and address the negative emotions

For example, you could journal about the feelings a task provokes in you.

That way, you detach the negative emotions from the task.

(shoutout to Marvin for helping me realise the power of detachment)

2. Break down the task into smaller, doable goals

Writing 1 email course, an ebook, or a 7 posts sounds like a bunch.

But writing 1 email, 800 words, or 1 post seems doable.

I just gotta to that simple task 7 times.

Set small achievable sub-goals to beat procrastination.

So, next time you come catch yourself procrastinating:

Grab a journal.

Write down your feelings about the task.

Divide the task into smaller subtasks.

And then just do it, friend.

With that said, I wish you a successful week.

All the best,

Nils

PS. If you want to get more done in less time, enroll in my free educational email course, Solopreneur Supercharge. It’ll teach you how to use AI & automations to get more done & earn more $$$ next month.

Subscribe now

Good to see you again.

Today, I’m writing to you from a coffee shop right in front of the majestic building of Stockholm’s School of Economics. I’m sipping on my black coffee with deep techno in my ears.

In other words, perfect writing conditions.

Question:

Do you think competition is good?

It’s something I’ve thought about a long time…

On one hand, competition’s great for customers, because it presses the price low and keeps the quality high.

But, competition s*cks for you as a company.

You loose your pricing power.

If you were the only person in the world offering your service, you would have complete power over the price.

No competitors.

Maximum $$$.

We’ll get to why this matters later…

…but first, another question for you:

Have you ever dated someone?

Because I want to let you in on the dating life of a friend of mine…

For simplicity, let’s call him Viktor.

3 weeks ago, he started to meet an interesting girl.

So far, they have been on three dates, which, at least in Viktor’s eyes, have gone quite well:

On the first date, Viktor took the girl to an intimate cocktail bar in central Stockholm. Great.

On the second date, Viktor surprised the girl by booking a table at a cozy Italian restaurant in Stockholm’s old town. Amazing.

Because Vitkor paid for both dates (he’s a baller), the girl invited him to eat at her place for a 3rd date.

She cooked great food and surprised Viktor by inviting him to a unique bar afterwards. Superb.

That was last Friday…

But I didn’t hear about it until today, on Sunday, when Viktor called me to ask for advice:

“Yo Nils.

Everything is good at the moment, but I feel like her and I are going down a vicious cycle.

Because every new date tops the previous one, it gets harder to harder to overdeliver.

But I really want to impress her…

Do you know a cozy spot in Stockholm I could take her?”

For context:

If you’ve dated yourself, you know the feeling:

If you make it past the 2nd date, you’re kinda interested in the person, but still have your guard raised.

You like them and you don’t want to f*ck it up.

So you try to impress them…

You take them on romantic dates.

You buy them flowers.

You show them your hard-earned 129 Twitter followers. (please don’t)

As you build trust with them, you’re in a constant emotional rollercoaster between trying to be cautiously optimistic and trying to not get attached.

Viktor was at this stage…

…and he wanted to exceed ever-increasing date expectations.

But after such a superb third date, that’s hard.

So I told him to change the playing field:

“Don’t take her to another dinner date.

Go for a brunch and walk or something. Instead of going to dinner dates that get more and more exclusive and pricey and competitive...

...create a new date category which she can’t compare with the previous ones”

Now, friend…

Do you see the business analogy yet?

Just as with Viktor’s dinner dates…

When your business joins an existing category, you’re subject to comparison.

Customers compare you with your competitors.

And that’s terrible for you…

…because you loose all your pricing power. Remember?

There’s always gonna be someone who can deliver your service at a cheaper price than you.

It’s a race to the bottom that MELTS away your margins.

Instead…

You must be like Viktor.

Just as Viktor changed the date setting to avoid comparison…

…you must create your own category.

Having your own category means being the ONLY provider of something.

When you join an existing category, customers will think about you as “one of many”.

A commodity.

But when you create a new category for yourself, customers look at you as “the only one”.

A premium good.

(equally true for dating, btw)

And creating your own category is all about positioning and framing yourself.

Look at the difference between:

1. “I’m a ghostwriter”

and

1. “I ghostwrite educational email courses for seed stage and series A AI-driven SaaS startups”

Only a year ago, I thought it was smarter to be 1) than 2).

I was afraid that getting too specific would make me miss out on clients.

But two weeks ago, I dared to change my bio to option 2.

Because when you try to talk to everybody, you talk to nobody.

Also…

If I’m just a “ghostwriter”, people can go into my DMs, ask me for my price, and leave me for a cheaper option.

They can go to someone else - I got little pricing power.

But if I’m an “educational email course ghostwriter for seed stage and series A AI-driven SaaS startups”…

…there’s nowhere to go for my target audience.

Like seriously. There is no second option.

Where the f*ck are they gonna go?

In other words, I can charge a premium because I created and own my category and there’s no competitor to compare me to.

How to create your category:

You create your category by specificity.

Who, exactly, do you serve?

What, exactly, do you talk about?

Why, exactly, do you talk about what you talk about?

How, exactly, do you serve?

When you stack these qualifiers on top of each other, you get so specific that you're the only person in the world with that niche.

Then, you have your own category. (tada)

And just like Viktor, you won’t have any competition, so you’re more likely to be successful.

(If Viktor fails his 4th date, I might have to delete this)

That’s all for today, friend!

Hope you have a great week,

Nils

PS. As I promised you last week, I launched my first FREE educational email course, Solopreneur Supercharge, last Wednesday.

It helps you as a Solopreneur to take back control of your time with AI, no-code automations, and task prioritisation.

Check it out

Hope this find you well.

I’m writing today’s edition from a cozy Swedish coffee shop with 300ml of black coffee in my hand, Deep Techno in my ears, and a middle aged couple intensely making out right up my face.

With that said, I wanted to share a lesson with you today.

And it’s not about why you shouldn’t make out in cafés…

(That goes without saying - it’s because you might disturb small children and newsletter writers)

It’s about what you work on.

Two days ago…

…I sat and worked from my favourite Espresso House coffee shop in central Stockholm.

For any Americans reading this:

Espresso House is like the Swedish Starbucks, but without overpriced lattes.

Because they’re affordable & offer free WiFi, Espresso House cafés attract many budget remote workers.

I’m one of them.

In either case, as I sat there and wrote my first educational email course for solopreneurs (which I’ll release this week), a massive man walked into the café.

This man looked like a living image of a classic 1970s American corporate CEO:

He was a white man in his fifties, wearing a grey suit with a red tie and a white shirt, and he carried a big, black leather suitcase with him.

His dark-grey, well-groomed hair blended in well with his suit.

And he was a GIANT.

I do not kid you when I say that this man must’ve been over 195cm (6 ‘ 4) tall.

All in all, he was one of those people that give you the impression that they’re important.

After a second of astonishment, I went back to writing my email.

But after only a minute…

The giant sat down right next to me.

Slowly, he began unpacking his working setup from the leather suitcase.

First, a laptop.

Second, a mouse.

Third, a second screen for his laptop.

Fourth, a portable keyboard.

Wow.

“This isn’t only the biggest man I’ve ever seen in a café, he’s also has the biggest portable setup I’ve ever seen at a café”

As he started up his ASUS laptop, I started to make up theories in my mind about who this man was:

Was he going to host a billionaire expo from the café?

Was he a business angel about to talk to his portfolio companies?

My excitement grew further when the man opened up Youtube & put on a particular Techno live set by what appeared to be his favourite artist.

“Wow, he really has a working ritual”, I thought.

With precision, he adjusted the size of the Youtube tab so that it took up EXACTLY a quarter of his second screen.

To finish up his setup, the giant pulled up an empty Excel sheet on his laptop, and a text document on the right screen.

Now, he was ready to dig into life-changing DEEP WORK…

…or at least, so I thought.

The giant started to copy the text from the text document and pasted it into the excel sheet word by word.

He did so for about 2 hours, then took his things, and left.

…

The English language lacks words to express the disappointment I felt in that moment.

Sweden’s most influential man after the prime minister and the founder of IKEA spent 2 hours copy-pasting text into an Excel sheet.

Excuse my Swedish but…

What the fuck?

But this reminded me of something important…

What you work on is 1000 times more important than how you work on it.

These days, it’s easy to get caught up in the “best” morning routines, the quirkiest productivity hacks, and the optimal work setup.

I’m writing this letter to remind you:

Don’t forget that 1 step into the right direction brings you closer to the end location than 1,000 steps into the opposite one.

If you feel hurried, take a break.

Ask yourself:

What’s the MOST important right now?

And work towards that one thing only.

Another way you can use this in your day-to-day business:

Whenever an opportunity comes up, rate it from 1-10.

If it scores any lower than 9, don’t take it.

Our schedules and lives tend to get clogged up with endless things to do because we don’t say no to mediocre opportunities.

This makes us feel hurried, busy, and unproductive at the same time.

With that said, friend…

I’m confident you can avoid the “busy-trap” better than Sweden’s most important man, if you just take 10 minutes NOW to think about what’s really important right now.

And if you need anyone to guide you, I’m always up for a chat.

Appreciate you,

Nils

To be frank,

I’m writing this email as a band-aid solution, one day late for the usual publication.

I was planning to start the year with my most extensive guide yet…

But then Substack told me:

And this was when I was only 40% done.

Apparently, Substack doesn’t want me to write long tutorials here.

I guess I’ll have to switch back to OnlyFans…

Jokes aside, while this sucks now, I’ll make sure to record a video instead until next week.

What I learned:

I underestimated the differences between communication mediums

I originally planned to make this post a guide about creating LinkedIn carousels.

It was a specific guide with:

• Step-by-step instructions

• Screenshots of me

• Examples

Writing it was tiresome.

But I didn’t give up until Substack told me the email would be cut off due to the file size.

I realised:

I’d been trying to play soccer with a bowling ball.

(That’s possible, but much harder, and barely enjoyable!)

I tried to turn the carousel guide into a newsletter just to publish a newsletter, not because the newsletter was the best medium to share the guide.

This ended up not working.

Next time, I would approach it from the reader’s end:

“How would I prefer to consume this information, and how can I create it the fastest?”

But I didn’t end my reflection there.

The best mediums for sharing information

All mediums have their advantages and disadvantages.

The three main ones:

Text:

Text excels at rapid distribution and conciseness.

Because it’s consumed at the reader’s own pace, it empowers them to think more.

Text is supreme for: idea validation, sharing aspirational thoughts, general guides, ultra-concise information.

I’d recommend text for:

• Validating ideas

• Sharing dense, thought-provoking information

Video:

The easiest to consume.

Because you’re occupying multiple senses of the watcher, video is the most engaging medium.

It’s supreme for building trust, conveying complex ideas and actionable, specific step-by-step guides.

I’d recommend video for:

• Specific guides

• Sharing your own reflections to build trust

Audio:

The most comfortable to consume.

Audio is great for building trust with your audience, while formats like podcasts allow for in-depth conversations.

It’s a worse version of video in every aspect except for one:

Ease of consumption.

Audio can be listened to while multitasking.

It excels at middle-bandwidth content that makes the listener think.

I’d recommend audio for:

• Daily updates that are consumed on-the-go

• Broader strategy advise / guides

• Conversations

(But use video where you can)

So….

If you’re sharing thoughts: Write

If you’re sharing guides: Visualise

If you’re sharing interactions: Talk

Debrief

That’s it for today, fellow writer!

I’m making this promise to you though:

The content of this newsletter will level up - and I’m excited to have you along!

At the end of 2023 I want to:

• Work less than 5 hours a day.

• Have created an income myself to travel the world while following my curiosities.

If that sounds like something you want to achieve too, I won’t disappoint you.

See you next week!

Nils

As you read this, you might be headed to work.

While I don’t know your occupation, my analytics suggest that you are quite likely to work with influencing other human’s decisions.

You might be a:

• Writer

• Leader

• Marketer

• Salesperson

This gives me a reason to think that you benefit from understanding how humans make decisions.

Now, as you read this, you will likely think:

”Thank you for your concern, Nils, but I’ve read Robert Cialdini’s books, I subscribe to Alex Hormozi’s YouTube channel, and I watched The Psychology of Human Misjudgement by Charlie Munger. I’m quite familiar with human behaviour.”

I know, I know.

These books are great - but we’ve all read them.

And while the great sales psychology books give us actionable insights on human decision-making, they tend to overemphasise the conscious mind’s importance.

The unconscious is forgotten.

So, when I started to read Subliminal last week…

…I was fascinated by how the unconscious affects our decisions.

Today’s newsletter will be about enriching your knowledge on how the unconscious affects our decisions more than we think.

I’ll tell about that you in a second - but first:

The regular introduction.

I’m writing this edition while listening to Deep Techno from Spånga Konditori, my local coffee shop.

I’ve now reached the familiarity level 5.

I can order a coffee saying: “I’d like the usual, please”

Nice.

Now, let’s dive in:

What is the unconscious?

A common misconception is that our unconscious consists of thoughts we repress from our conscious mind because it shows our “deepest desires” (which we don’t want to admit to ourselves).

It originates from Freud who, as my psychologist mom often jokes about, explained everything with a penis.

But the last 20 years’ research paint a different image:

The unconscious is unaccessible due to the brain’s structure, not because we actively repress it.

“…many unconscious processes can never be directly revealed through the kind of self-reflection encouraged by therapy, because they transpire in ares of the brain not open to the conscious mind”

This implies:

Regardless of how much we reflect, we can not uncover many of our motivations for an action.

Do you feel sceptic towards the statement I just made?

That’s normal.

The participants of unconscious studies keep on denying that any unconscious factors influenced them, even when these factors were pointed out.

This fascinates me.

As the rational beings we think we are, shouldn’t we accept this as a fact?

Apparently not.

Humans are averse to the idea that unconscious forces rule their judgement and behaviour.

You don’t know yourself as well as you think

Another idea you’re inclined to be sceptical of is that you don’t know yourself as well as you think.

Most of us are strongly confident in our mental theories about ourselves.

However, how often have we tested them, like on a scientific level?

Zero.

You have conscious explanations for everything you do, even if it’s unconsciously motivated.

This doesn’t mean all explanations are wrong.

But it means that we have a reason to be sceptical.

Yet, if I ask you:

Why do you prefer Cola over Pepsi?

You’d say: ”It tastes better”

But in reality, Pepsi tastes better (!?).

The Pepsi Paradox

Since the age of the dinosaurs, Cola and Pepsi are battling over who’s the best at making coke.

Pepsi often brags with having won the taste test, which it consistently does.

However, most people still prefer Cola:

The Pepsi paradox is that Pepsi beats Cola in blind taste tests, but Cola beats Pepsi when the participants know what they are drinking.

Brand affection changes our experience.

What wine do you prefer, fellow writer?

The unconscious shapes our experiences in more ways:

For a study, researchers served prospects two glasses of wine and asked them to rate the quality of each.

One was filled with a $10 wine

The other was filled with a $90 wine.

As you might expect, they rated the glass with the $90 wine better than the $10 one.

But here comes the twist:

Both glasses were filled with the same wine.

The higher price tag made the same wine taste better.

Both subjectively, but also scientifically speaking:

The measured brain activity in the orbifrontal cortex, the “pleasure center”, was higher with the $90 wine.

What does this mean?

How your unconscious changes your experience

We think that our experience of a product is based solely on its quality.

When in reality, our experience of product is created in our mind from an array of factors such as:

• Marketing

• Branding

• Price

I can’t say it better than the author:

“Both direct, explicit aspects of life (the drink, in this case), and indirect, implicit aspects (the price or brand) conspire to create our mental experience (the taste). The key word here is “create”. Our brains are not simply recording a taste or other experience, they are creating it.” - Leonard Mlodinow

Wind-down

As you might be able to tell, I’m still early in discovering this field - this edition might come off a bit chaotic, like a carpenter apprentice who hammers their first nail.

But my main takeaways so far are:

• I underestimated the unconscious importance

• We create conscious explanations to unconscious decisions

• Self-reflection helps me become more self-aware, but some parts of the unconscious are inaccessible due to the brain's structure

• People who want to influence should learn more about the unconscious

Fellow writer,

Thank you for reading this.

Have a great Monday.

Best,

Nils

I hope you are having a mindful Monday.

I’m writing today’s edition on a Sunday afternoon from a loud - but cozy - café…

…spectating how it gets a bit darker outside with every word I write.

After finishing this letter, even a -20 degree snowstorm wouldn’t be able to stop me from treating myself a lussebulle (saffron bun).

In other words, I’m living a classic 3rd advent in Sweden.

Today’s edition will be about behavioural psychology.

I’ll tell you the story of how I realised that content creators are taking over my thoughts, what I learned from that, and what my impl

Meeting Kieran Drew in a supermarket

2 days ago…

…I met Kieran Drew in a supermarket.

He wore a Cyberpunk-like trenchcoat, dark trousers, and black boots.

After approaching him with my “fan boy caution”, Kieran was nice enough to talk with me about content creation, how life’s going, and how to use the rule of one.

Then, I woke up.

…

It was one of those dreams that feel so real that it takes you about a minute to get back to reality.

And this was not the first time:

A month ago, I had a dream where I walked through a Tatooine-like market in a desert, with a LinkedIn post by Matt Barker on a billboard.

In another dream, I took up my mobile phone and read a LinkedIn post by Marvin Sanginés (who, to be fair, also is a great friend of mine, but still).

I feel intimidated.

And fascinated.

How could Kieran, whom I’ve never met, become so significant for me that he appeared in a dream of mine?

The mind-blowing extent to which online creators affect us

I don’t know, since we don’t understand yet how our dreams are made.

But here’s what I’ve noticed:

1. I trust creators with my investments

   The last year, I’ve only bought information products recommended or created by creators I follow.

2. I trust creators with giving me valuable information

   When I need information about how to do anything, I don’t google - I browse my favorite Twitter creators

3. I trust creators to feed me with ideas

   I can trace back 95%+ of all content ideas I have written to content pieces by digital creators I follow

4. I trust creators with telling me what’s possible

   A year ago, I couldn’t have dreamed of making a living off writing online. Now, I have an abundance mindset and look with optimism at my opportunities. Creators have shifted my mindset.

The keyword:

Trust.

In an age of information overflow blurring our reality, we need lighthouses we trust in leading us through the darkness.

We trust them because (we feel as if) they know something we don’t.

These information lighthouses possess incredible power over our:

• Desires

• Thoughts

• Decisions

• Behaviour

Examples I see with myself:

Dickie Bush made me desire to spend as many minutes as possible during workdays.

Kieran Drew’s rule of one has affected many of my own content ideas.

Sahil Bloom’s content has motivated me to reflect more.

Why regulating your content consumption changes your life more than you think

Creators are so important to use because we have reasons to trust them:

• We’ve tried and succeeded using methods we got from them

• They supply us with valuable information every day

• They have social proof from their followers

And truth is:

We are on social media because we want new information.

We crave advice from trusted sources.

A sense of direction.

We want to trust because we want to be reassured in what we do.

Depending on whom we decide to trust, this has a positive or negative effect on your life.

A common example:

Some Instagram fitness influencers that make teenage girls desire an unhealthily slim body, while some help them build a good relationship with their body.

Tiny difference, enormous impact on these girls’ mental health.

The same is true for your content.

Because our information consumption defines our…

• Desires

• Thoughts

• Decisions

• Behaviour

You become what you consume.

This is why you need to be cautious with whom you trust to change your mind.

Why do you need an information diet?

An information diet regulates what information you allow yourself to take in.

Why you need one?

Your attention is limited.

Yet, every day, you are bombarded with limitless information.

Information which, as we earlier discovered, has the power to change your desires, thoughts, and behaviours.

And the more information you consume, the less clarity of thought you have:

(Worth to note: I disagree with Sahil on turning of the news, I wrote an article about it here that he actually ended up liking!)

Worse to come, most of the information is low-quality and curated by social media algorithms.

To say it with an analogy:

The world is throwing information fast food food at you.

There’s nothing wrong with some BigMac’s.

But I prefer whole foods:

High-quality information from select sources.

How to create an information diet to set yourself up for success

Just as with a normal diet, the ideal information diet varies from person to person.

So rather than telling you WHAT to do…

…I’d like to give you a few tools and suggestions, my fellow writer.

Here’s how do a digital information diet:

0. Pick 2-10 creators you want to be influenced by

Decide on what lifestyle you want to emulate, scan for a select few creators that have it, and follow them relentlessly.

Of course, I need to be one of them.

1. Avoid algorithm-feeds at any cost

The moment you let the algorithm decide, you loose your own power.

Exception:

If you want to grow your social media accounts by commenting under random people’s posts, please do.

But block time separately to go after your information diet.

2. Use Twitter lists (tutorial)

Twitter lists allow you to create feeds with only creators you select.

I have one list for every topic you are interested in with 2-5 top creators.

Sadly, I don’t know of any tools that curate other social media feeds just yet…

3. Notifications-only on LinkedIn

I’ve tried to apply an information diet to LinkedIn by only reading posts from my notifications, which has worked decently.

How to do it:

• Hit the bell for your favorite creators

• Add a Feed Blocker to your browser to don’t fall into the main feed

4. Follow newsletters

Newsletters are long-form and information-dense.

If your favorite creator has a newsletter, follow it.

Tip:

Create a new email account exclusively for reading newsletters, and you’ll have an inbox to read every morning.

5. Consider intermittent-information-fasting

Set aside time to mindfully consume information daily or weekly.

If you want to go HARD…

…Download Cold Turkey and block social media websites whenever you don’t need them.

Wrap-up

As you know now:

Creators affect us deeply.

They can even appear in our dreams.

To become the person you want, get fed information only by the people you aspire to be like.

I’d be curious to know:

Which are your 2-10 creators that you will follow from now on?

Appreciate you,

Nils

PS.

What did you think of today’s edition? How can I improve the next one?

Hope this finds you inspired.

I’m writing today’s edition from another coffee shop in Sweden, with a beautiful view over 3 things I love:

• My newsletter on my Macbook

• My inspiring and supportive girlfriend

• 250ml of Colombian Christmas brew black filter coffee

This letter will be all about creating a LOT of content in not so much time.

7 LinkedIn posts in 90 minutes (≈ 13 minutes a post !), to be exact.

As a wise man once told me:

“The good thing about personal branding:

You grow if you stay consistent.

The bad thing about personal branding:

You grow if you stay consistent.” - Nils Liedlich, 300 AD.

With that said, I’m writing this post to scratch your and my itch of struggling with consistency.

As proof of work, I will post all these the next week

A small disclaimer: I’m a seasoned writer, so I guess this would take most people 30-50% more time - however, that’s still quite fast!

Let’s Dive in:

1. Get inspiration (10 min)

Set a 10-min timer and head to your natural sources of inspiration.

Mine:

• Twitter feed / Twemex

• Notes

• LinkedIn saved posts

Take notes really quick while skimming through your inspiration.

2. Write 15 headlines (10 min)

After you have inspired yourself…

Open your preferred writing software, set a 10-min timer, and start typing out 10-15 headlines.

I tried to fit most of my inspiration notes into these headline templates:

1. How I [SPECIFIC, DESIRED OUTCOME] in [RELATIVELY SHORT TIME]

2. Save yourself [SPECIFIC TIME / MONEY] [DOING WHAT] and steal my [SYSTEM NAME]

3. (This is) how I get [SPECIFIC DESIRED OUTCOME] in [SHORT PERIOD OF TIME]:

4. [NUMBER][RESOURCES] to [DESIRED OUTCOME] (steal these):

5. My [NUMBER] biggest struggles as a [ROLE] were:

6. [NUMBER] steps to [DESIRED OUTCOME] ([IN SHORT TIME]):

7. Everybody thinks [MAINSTREAM OPINION] , but I think [COUNTERINTUITIVE OPINION]

8. How to [do something desired by audience] without [pain]

How it went for me:

3. Choose 7 headlines (2 min)

Pick the seven headlines which you feel will be the easiest to write.

Don’t overcomplicate it, just go with your gut.

4. Write down 3-5 bullet points for each (10 min)

Now, it’s time to nit down your core ideas for every post.

It’s vital that you set yourself a 10-min timer yet again to make sure that you work effectively.

Smartly, if I may say so myself, I did this approach to a post summing up this very approach that you are reading right now.

5. Turn them into posts (60min)

Write the headline in AuthoredIn first.

Afterwards, edit the post in Hemingway to opt for readability

It really is this simple.

I set a 60-min timer to make sure I stay on track with all this.

Is this really feasible?

My dear reader, I apologise for making this edition so actionable and fast.

One reader has told me that it’s easy to see if I wrote a text in a rush or not.

In either case, I actually succeeded to write 5 LinkedIn posts in 40 minutes, and was later distracted by private stuff… (it be like that sometimes)

To prove that this approach worked for me, I will post these 7 posts I wrote today on LinkedIn this week:

1. How I write 7 LinkedIn posts in 90 minutes:

2. Save yourself 1 hour / day writing LinkedIn posts and steal my 13-minutes-a-post method:

3. LinkedIn becomes 10x better when you stop trying to make sales and start trying to enjoy writing

4. How to write a LinkedIn posts without spending 90 minutes overediting it

5. How to teach a tech person copywriting in 3 steps:

6. The helpful assumption for me as a copywriter:

7. Alex Hormozi is a famous entrepreneur and is worth over $100 million.

Also, I recorded a video of my screen doing all this, and I will publish this in the future with commentary.

Takeaway

I’m actually blown away by the fact that this approach worked for me.

I wrote the title of this newsletter before trying the approach, and didn’t know it was actually feasible to write good LinkedIn posts in 13 min per post.

I’ll make sure to perfect this approach and turn it into a better guide in the future.

Have a nice Monday,

Nils

Hi fellow writer,

I hope you’re having a peaceful first advent.

I’m writing today’s edition from a coffee shop with a view of the local Spånga center and pensioners headed to buy saffron cinnamon buns (coziness 6/10).

Everything’s coloured concrete grey or snow white - I couldn’t come up with a better place for listening to Deep Techno.

Originally, I desired to make this letter about creating ultra-helpful content in abundance.

But, I felt more like writing about philosophy today.

So, expect some food for thought this week, and a golden resource for writing systems next week.

This week’s topic might be a bit controversial, so I want to add a disclaimer:

What I’m about to cover isn’t aimed to be true for everyone living on earth, but rather targeted at highly ambitious individuals in the startup environment that have financial safety (don’t live month-to-month).

We’re in constant pursuit of something.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we humans are in constant pursue of something.

There’s always something we WANT.

No matter how big and meaningful achievements we make, we are always up for a new desire.

Even the craziest goals, which we work decennia to achieve, only satisfy us temporarily.

Without a pursuit or desire, we feel purposeless.

I accredit much of our success as a species to this attribute.

But it endangers our happiness and judgement in the modern age.

Taking on new desires and pursuits make us treat life like a finite game, despite it being an infinite one (Simon Sinek explaining the difference).

Thing is, the game of life is never beaten - we keep on taking on new desires, pursuits, and set new goals. Even the BIGGEST goals will only put you a bit ahead. You’re never “done”.

That’s why it is dangerous to make one goal THE GOAL for your existence.

We tend to overemphasise how impactful reaching one goal will be for our life

“When I have X, Y will be solved”

The problem is, more often than not, we make misjudgements.

There’s a cognitive bias that makes us likely to believe in the option which is more beneficial / convenient for us.

I couldn’t remember its name, so let’s explain this with an example:

Say you ask a person WHY they believe in Karma, and they tell you:

”I like the thought of Karma since I simply believe the universe is just. It’s only natural that good actions attract good action. If it wouldn’t be that way, it would make no difference if I act good or bad, and that would be a terrible world. I would not want to live in such a world”

Now, wouldn’t that be a convenient conclusion to draw?

Regardless if you believe in Karma or not:

This is a flawed argument, because it’s not built on logic reasoning, but on what truth would be most convenient (“I want to live in a just world where the GOOD win”).

Now, this was a long-winded way to explain that we tend to make similar misjudgements with our pursuits and goals.

We make ourselves believe that achieving our one goal will solve EVERYTHING, because we would like it to be that way.

This leads us to creating beliefs/assumptions that will make most of us unhappy.

“I just need to earn more money”

The most common one, that I’m myself guilty of:

“If I would earn X amount of money, I would be able to do A, B, and C, and I’d be fulfilled happy”

This is a terrible belief to have, because it by definition constrains you - by making A, B, and C products of X, you stop looking for other ways to reach them.

This makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You begin by chasing money, and once you reach your goal of, say, $20.000 / month (if ever), you shift focus to getting into shape, spend time with your loved ones, and eating healthy.

A selected few might reach their income threshold and make the leap.

However, earning money often becomes a vicious cycle of dissatisfaction and greed.

We often forget:

Money is a store of value, thus can never be more than a means to an end.

When we reach our original target income after 3 years of hard work, we tell ourselves:

“This is not enough yet, I can actually earn twice as much if I keep working at this”

But unless we are in the clear of what we REALLY want, we’ll never be content with the money we earn, since we think our internal problem of lacking purpose will be solved by earning more money, an external solution.

It won’t work.

You don’t need more money

What if you, from the beginning, wouldn’t made money (a means to an end) the solution, and focused your efforts on the desired outcomes right away?

I think you’d be happier and reach your ideal lifestyle faster.

What do you REALLY need?

$400 extra in your bank account every month, or 5 more hours to spend with your family, on your body, or meditating every week?

I would take the 5 extra hours.

By focusing on our innate wants and needs first and money second, we are free:er in our choices.

How often do you really need more money, in either way?

Most quality of life issues can be solved by spending more time instead of money.

But we tend to try to solve them with money instead.

Some examples:

• We buy Athletic Greens and supplements for $300 a month instead of taking time to put together and cook our own lunches using whole foods.

• We go on expensive 2-week vacations to spend time with our beloved ones once a year instead of taking a pay cut, work less every week, and spend more quality time with family at home.

• We work over-hours at our companies to gain prestige instead of sacrificing some social status for more time for other activities.

These are trade-offs, and it’s up for every one of us to decide how we want to live our life.

But remember:

You have a choice.

And I believe (& sincerely hope!) that this is no news to you.

The reason I’m still sending this letter your way is because we often forget this and go into tunnel vision when we’ve set a big goal.

I want to remind you:

Why are you doing this, and will pursuing this thing really bring you the outcome you want? Is there another way to reach your desired outcome?

This might make you unhappy at first, but…

When you go to the root of your existence and question WHY you do what you do, you might end up feeling purposeless.

You might feel as if you are guilty of overemphasising the impact reaching one goal will make your you.

You might feel as if you are enchained by your own beliefs.

You might feel as if you’re back to square zero.

You might feel stupid.

I’ve been there.

But after a minimal identity crisis, you are back on track, and you realise that this insight is GREAT for you.

You don’t need more money to get what you want.

This will make you feel free, since you’ll be able to re-focus your efforts to what really matters.

You’ll tell your boss you rather want to reduce your hours by 5% a week than getting a 5% raise.

You’ll stop chasing “shiny objects” for money.

When you realise that most of what you want is within reach for you today, you stop agonising about how you can earn more money tomorrow, and start looking for opportunities to be happy today.

One question to ask yourself after this edition

How would you live your life if…

…you’d have $1,000,000?

…you’d have $10,000,000?

…you’d have $100,000,000?

…money was not an issue?

Write down your answers - they will give you an idea of what your “ideal life” looks like.

Then, use this as a navigator for your decisions. I want X life, will this decision move me closer or further away from it?

Keep this heuristic and you’ll stay on track for your best life - but reflect on the earlier mentioned questions often, since the answers might change.

Life’s an infinite game.

Winding down

Ouf, this might’ve been a long and heavy letter.

I’m shouting out my own thoughts to your mind.

If this resonated with you, please let me know in the comments, or by replying to this email.

Wishing you a great week,

Nils

I am writing today's edition while walking through snowy Stockholm, using speech to text while trying my best to not slip on the ice.

I always tell writers:

“Write your hooks as slippery as a Swedish sidewalk in November!”

Regardless, I’m happy you found your way here yet again.

This post will be all about a process you can use to become reader-centric.

Now, you might be thinking - why should I care?

The easiest way to grow a following is by understanding what the reader wants and giving it to them every day.

And the easiest way to get clients is by understanding what they need, show that you understand them, and help them do what they want to do.

It’s all about them.

Problem is, 90% of brands and writers talk about themselves.

They think:

“What do I want to write about?”

Instead of:

“How can I help my reader?”

Today, I will help you to help your readers/customers, and grow along the way.

Important note: this only works if you are talking to your readers / customers already.

If that’s not the case, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

Drop this newsletter, run out of the building and talk to your customers - else, I can’t help you.

Introducing the updated Four Forces Diagram

To help your readers, you need to understand them, and to understand them, you need to be aware of their situation.

For that, the updated Four Forces Diagram is the best resource.

The original Four Forces Diagram was invented by ghostwriter JK Molina, who went from $250 to $100,000 MRR in 2 years.

Molina says your content should address your customers:

• Dreams
• Fears
• Frustrations
• Wants

This way, you show that you understand them, and this establishes trust.

I personally found this framework incredibly useful when writing my content, and made my own changes to it.

I added a “prio” tab after every feeling to rank the importance of the feeling, since not all Dreams, Fears, Frustrations, and Wants are equally important.

How to use the Four Forces Diagram:

Here’s a link to the Excel sheet so you can copy it.

It will take you only 60 minutes to fill out properly, and you can use it to inform your content for over a year (of course, it should still be revisited and perfected over time).

I broke down how to use it in this video:

https://www.loom.com/share/95336330c9de47dd8353a63003afb7dc

How this helps you grow your audience:

Again:

The easiest way to grow a following is by understanding what the reader wants and giving it to them every day.

And the easiest way to get clients is by understanding what they need, show that you understand them, and help them do what they want to do.

With LinkedIn tracking the amount of people who saved your posts to their bookmarks, I believe educative content will be EVEN stronger in the future.

Subscribe now

What about personal stories and showing expertise?

The most common objection people hold against being reader-centric is:

“But how will I prove my expertise if I don’t talk about myself?”

Being helpful to the reader is the ultimate way to show subject matter expertise, since it requires you to know both your subject AND your customer.

Trust me on this.

Thank you + a small ask

I hate to admit it, but today, I’m in a bit of a hurry.

So I apologise for this abrupt ending - hope this was valuable to you regardless.

Wishing you a great week,

Nils

It’s good to see you again.

I’m writing today’s edition while enjoying a cup of tea whose name I’m unable to pronounce while listening to deep techno (sorry, Hans Zimmer fans).

Last week, I did perhaps the silliest thing I’ve done as a writer, when I walked into a stationary shop to find the ultimate pen.

It was stupid.

While I scrutinised over 30 pens, I must’ve looked like a 17th-century British aristocrat inspecting various kinds of tea.

In either case, I just as I found my best pen (Unipin Fineline 0,1mm) for writing in my journal…

…Richard van der Blom found the best practices to use the LinkedIn algorithm to your advantage.

One week ago, his company published the Algorithm Research 2022, where they break down everything that’s changed on LinkedIn the last year.

The 57 pages of pure gold (and ill-plugged advertisements) a great read.

That is, if you have 60 minutes spare.

Except…

IN OUR INDUSTRY, TIME IS MONEY

So, without further redo & silly jokes from my side, let me break down the main insights, and, more importantly, the exact changes you could make to your content to perform better on LinkedIn in 2023.

8 key insights in 60 seconds

1. Likes don’t matter, really.

If someone likes your post, you are 30% likelier to appear in their feed, whereas if they comment, you are 70-80% likelier to appear in their feed. If they DM you, that’s 85%!

2. Hidden metrics matter.

If people save a post from you, your content will be prioritised in their feed. Also, one “see more” click will boost your post’s reach 4x more than a like.

3. Posts grow in 2 phases

The first 90 minutes of engagement determine how much your post will grow the first 8 hours. The engagement you receive after 90 minutes & before 8 hours determines the post’s reach the next few days.

For every comment you get, the reach of your post increases by 4% in your network, and by 3% in the commenter’s network.

4. Format matters a LOT

The same content could perform vastly different in a document format (2.2 to 3.4x more reach) than an article format (0,1x-0,2x of average reach).

Here’s the breakdown illustrated: (grey = margin of error)

5. Creator mode ON

Creator mode users receive 15%-35% more reach (though it wasn’t specified if this is causation or simply correlation). Also, a small “follow” button bumps up next to your name on all posts. The featured section is powerful.

6. Negative engagement

Just as positive engagement boosts your growth, some actions slow down your growth on LinkedIn. When people:

• Unfollow you

• Report / block you

• Disconnect with you

• Remove a mention you made

So, stay nice! (Or just never connect with people you don’t like)

7. Only the first engagement action counts.

This was the most mind-bogging to me. If you like my post, and immediately after comment on it, the latter hardly has any influence anymore. Combine this with the earlier facts on what engagement matters. If you want to support a creator, don’t like - comment.

8. LinkedIn remembers

“The Algorithm remembers the relevance (by engagement, dwell time and clicks) of your last 10 - 15 posts. Publishing multiple posts in a row with poor engagement rates, makes LinkedIn reduces the reach of the next Post.”

8 steps to take action on these insights

1. Optimise for comments, not likes.

When looking into your analytics to optimise your content, don’t look primarily at views & likes. Look at the posts with the highest comment-per-impression ratio (and a decent amount of views).

This will help you create content that people really care about.

Also, entice longer comments, as comments shorter than 12 words have half the impact on reach.

Ask real questions, be curious & open.

2. Learn to write better hooks and focus on educative content.

I don’t have data on this but I personally save 99% of my bookmarks because they are educative. Educative content is saved more. To get more “see more” clicks and overall reach, improve your hooks. I use AuthoredIn (free and not affiliated) to optimise my hook preview.

3. Engage, wait, engage

For maximum reach:

• Reply to all comments the first hour after posting = 20% more reach

• Every “comment on comment” between 1-24 hours after posting will give up to 10% extra reach

• Reply to comments 4-8 hours after posting

4. Use document posts / carousels whenever you have time

Even if they take twice as long to create, they can be up to 3 times as effective.

In document posts, include images of yourself.

5. Put that Creator mode on

Do I have to say anything more?

6. If you really want to support a creator, comment first, then like.

I have yet to crack the code of how I get my followers to NOT like my content first, but I will share my insights with you whenever I can.

If you’re reading this and want to support me, please DON’T like my LinkedIn stuff… Comment instead :D

7. Stay consistent - don’t exhaust yourself

Posting multiple times a day WILL increase your maximum reach but lower reach per post.

With that said, if you don’t have great content in abundance, don’t post twice a day.

8. Quality over quantity

Don’t post “just to post”. As the algorithm remembers your performance, putting out sh*tty posts to fill the void will hurt the reach of your great ones.

What my gut tells me about LinkedIn in 2023

That was the analytical & heavy stuff up there.

Basically:

• Learn how to write hooks

• Solve a painful problem

• Engage with your audience

• Stay consistent

• Know your reader

• Don’t take yourself too seriously

And you will win on LinkedIn in 2023.

Anything I forgot to add?

Wishing you an awesome week, fellow writer.

Feedback to the edition is, as always, appreciated!

Best,

Nils

__

PS. I’m launching a swipe file with the top 10 posts of LinkedIn’s top 50 creators soon. If you want early access, reply to this email with “Swipe File”

Subscribe now

I’m writing today’s letter from my Swedish bedroom with piano music in my ears.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term:

Today’s edition will be all about how to create curated content.

I’ve paid $1000+ this year to be part of writing communities, but found no resource breaking content curation down from beginning to end - so I decided to write one myself.

So I spent 10 hours studying how the world’s best curate content.

Turns out, writing curated post is simple - if you know these 5 things:

What is curated content?

Curated content means that, instead of creating something yourself from scratch, you consume someone else’s content, and put takeaways together for your reader.

This could be:

1. Summarising information for the reader (Key takeaways from a speech/book/any other resource)

2. Selecting information for the reader (Which books to read, what podcasts to listen to, which creators to follow)

Remember this:

With curated content, you create value for your reader by saving them the effort & time of finding information.

To create curated content, you need to consume content first.

What’s unique about curated content is that it allows you to borrow credibility from someone else.

And credibility matters A LOT.

Example:

Who would you rather learn about copywriting from?

a) 19-year-old-wannabe-LinkedIn-creator Nils

OR

b) Gary Halbert, legendary copywriter whose sales letter created over $1,000,000,000 in revenue

(Apparently, you chose a), otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this…)

Where I’m getting at:

Your readers won’t read your writing unless they trust the source.

As a newbie writer with no niche-authority, you can borrow credibility from expert's by writing about their ideas or referring to their content.

Who should write curated posts?

Anyone benefits from creating curated content.

But the less credibility you have yourself, the more powerful curated content is for you.

If you’re a newbie in your niche, the easiest way to grow to your first 1000 followers on any platform is without a doubt curated content.

(This insight led me to adapt my own LinkedIn strategy - expect more curated posts in the future!)

Which people to curate content from

The credibility of your writing is equal to the perceived credibility of the expert you’re curating from.

Thus, only curate content from people with high niche-authority. The higher, the better.

I say perceived credibility because few names are so well-known that everyone recognises them (Steve Jobs, Amazon, Beyonce).

If their names aren’t world-famous, add an explanation in the hook of why they are credible.

Here’s an example of when I curated JK Molina’s Four Forces Diagram:

(Post performed really well, by the way, with 6X more impressions than my follower number.)

Another one:

See how Dickie explains directly who Gary Halbert is and why he’s credible?

(I know the hook is compelling AF - but please don’t leave the newsletter yet. I’ll link to Halbert’s letters in the end of this edition.)

In 99% of cases, numbers to the job of establishing credibility, because they are tangible and easy to compare for our brain (see what I did with the sentence?).

Ways to establish credibility with numbers:

• Amount of sales / revenue generated in $

• Experience level in years (I’ve worked 40+ years in sales)

• High habit streaks in days (I’ve written for 500 days in a row…)

The other 1% of credibility is established with stunning facts - like how everyone who’s reading “48 Laws of Power” tells you that it’s forbidden in prisons.

That must mean something, right?

Now that we know why we should create curated content, and how to establish credibility, let’s look at how to actually write one:

How to create curated content in 4 steps

1) Consume content that you enjoy.

Having a habit of high-quality content consumption is a prerequisite for content curation.

The better stuff you read, the better stuff you write.

Look for content that:

a) Interests you

b) Is in your niche

c) Comes from a credible person

If the resource checks these three marks, it is:

• Relevant for your reader

• Fun to consume for you

• Credible enough for curation

Read books from famous people, tweets from experts, or listen to podcasts by thought leaders.

Subscribe now

As a general rule of thumb, the longer time it takes for you to consume the content and create your writing piece, the higher perceived value it will have.

But, you can also make just a short piece of information seem really valuable - if you use a good hook, like Connor did:

(The actual resource was a 10th of this newsletter’s length, but got him 50+ followers)

How to systematize this:

Carefully pick a handful of creators that fill all criteria & curate their content over and over again.

That way, you don’t have to go through the length process of finding new resources.

2) Take extensive notes while you consume it

While you are consuming the content, make sure to take high quality notes.

Some ways to do this in a systematized way:

• Keep physical notebook close to hand

• Take notes in Notion

• Use Naval’s reading technique

• Use Snipd to take notes while listening to podcasts

Regardless of how you do this, I recommend you to create a knowledge base where you put all your notes, so you can snowball your curation process, by re-using old notes & combining them with new ones.

Use a note-taking app like Notion (my choice), Roam, or Obsidian for this.

3) Write the hook

With your notes at hand, you have to decide what content piece you will curate out of them.

The easiest way to do this is by writing the hook first.

This seemed hard to me at first, until I came up with these three questions:

1. What benefit(s) are these notes unlocking for me

2. How does it unlock these?

3. Why is this source credible, again?

Answer these & write down the answers, then plug them into your hook template:

[CREDIBLE SOURCE] [WHY THEY ARE CREDIBLE]

[STATE THE BENEFIT]

[HOW IT’S UNLOCKED]:

Example:

I took notes on Shaan Puri’s Kick Off document.

1. What’s the benefit:

Stop wasting time with kick offs.

2. How it’s unlocked:

By providing a clear 4-step framework that works in any occasion.

3. Credibility:

Shaan Puri has done hundreds of kick offs, as he’s invested in 100+ companies as an angel investor.

With this information, a hook for a curated resource might sound something like:

As an angel investor, Shaan Puri attended hundreds of kick offs.

He used the same process to prepare for every single one of them.

Steal his 4-step kick off document:

Example 2:

I listened to 500+ hours of copywriting podcasts

1. What’s the benefit:

Learn which copywriting podcasts to listen to

2. How it’s unlocked:

I tell the reader which episodes to listen to

3. Credibility:

I listened to 500+ hours of podcasts

Hook:

Over the last year, I listened to 500+ hours of copywriting podcasts.

Sadly, most of them were a waste of time.

Here are the 10 worth listening to:

4) Create the content

With the notes at hand, the hook figured out, it’s time for your to put the content into action.

Start by writing the hook, then fill in the lines.

Some formats you can use:

• Listicles

• How-to-guide

• Process explained

Organise your notes and fill in any gaps by going back to the original resource.

And voilá!

You got your first piece of curated content.

Wrap up

I hope this letter was useful to you, as it took me about 3 hours to write.

As always, I appreciate if you give me feedback to this edition.

What what especially useful to you, and what can I improve?

Have a great start of the week,

Nils

Share Writing to wisdom

I'm outlining today's episode while walking around in the small Swedish neighbourhood of Bromsten, with my eyes squinting into the sun, my body feeling relaxed after a good night sleep, and my ears listening to the silence of a Sunday morning.

As some of you may have noticed, I re-named my publication, originally called The Triple T newsletter, to Writing to Wisdom.

And because I cringe at writers that make bold statements (the WHAT) without backing it up with their thinking behind it (the WHY, I feel like I owe you an explanation to why writing makes you wiser.

Because understanding the WHY is tenfold more valuable than knowing the WHAT.

With that said, today’s edition will be different - it will be heavy, philosophical thinking, rather than my usual actionable explanations.

Thus, I want to make an ask from you:

Please resist the urge of skimming, and either take 10 minutes to read this fully, or don’t read it at all.

Anything in between will be a waste of time for you.

Let’s dive in:

How does writing make you wiser?

First, I want to clarify that I don’t believe that writing per se you a wiser person.

Someone can write a lot without being wise.

However, I do believe that writing is the ultimate medium of reflection, and that that makes it a superpower for becoming wiser.

But before we get to that…

What is wisdom ACTUALLY?

We can’t talk about wisdom without first defining it.

Wisdom is understanding.

Understanding yourself: self-awareness.

Understanding other people: empathy & compassion.

Understanding the world: knowledge & mental models

If wisdom means understanding, we become wiser if we improve our ability to understand.

How to understand

My mental paradigm of understanding is divided into three parts:

1. Gathering

2. Processing

3. Restructuring

We need to open to take in information so that we can reflect on it-

We need systems to process this information.

And we need to restructure our identity to solidify these wisdom gains.

1. Gathering - the ability and openness to take in information.

To gather information, expose yourself to a variety of experiences and be open to learn from them.

The more challenging and varying the experiences, the higher quality information you gather.

The more open-minded you are, the more information you can gather, because you don’t have limiting paradigms and beliefs that narrow your information intake.

Optional anecdote:

(I learnt that the information quality is proportional to the variety and difficulty of experiences when I was 12. I’d just returned to Sweden after 8 years as an expat. There, some people told me that I was mature and smart for my age, and almost everyone who said that argued it must be because I “experienced more” due to my expat years. I always answered: “I haven’t experienced MORE than other 12 year olds - we are the same age. If you think I am smart for my age, I think it is because I’ve lived through a larger variety of experiences than other 12 year olds.”)

2. Processing - the ability to reflect on the information you gathered

To be able to make use of the information we gathered, we need to process it.

Processing information means cutting the excess and distilling our insights through reflection.

It’s the brain’s equivalent of when I upload a large image file to compresspng.com so that it fits into this newsletter.

We process because the brain’s memory is limited - it can’t afford to store all our unique experiences forever, so we turn them into tangible insights instead.

3. Restructure - the ability to change yourself

The world is complex.

To make it easier to comprehend, our mind automatically creates paradigms, rules of thumb, decision-making razors, simplifications, and assumptions.

The last step of understanding is to internalise the insights we got from our reflection, so that we can re-use them for future occasions.

If we do this continuously, we strengthen our mental toolkit and become better at understanding everything - we become wiser.

Writing helps you to process information

Writing is relevant for the second step in this process.

It helps you to become better at reflection.

So explain what I mean, we have to go one level deeper, and define reflection first.

(This article is really becoming a philosophy book, when the definitions of the used words make up 85% of the words).

What is reflection?

Reflection means that you let an experience “bounce” against yourself by thinking about it, and thus arrive at insights/conclusions.

Depending on our identity, we draw different conclusions from the same experience.

The easiest way for me to explain it was through a visual:

⬆️ Depending on how our identity is shaped, the reflection differs.

It is essential to understand that, to reflect, we need to re-iterate the experience.

Otherwise, we don’t reflect, we just mirror.

Side note: as you might be able to tell, I'm a proponent of first clarifying the definition of any word I use in my philosophical rants - this is to ensure we are on common ground, because we all have different definitions of words.

How to reflect

Reflection is an ongoing process where we clarify information again and again until we arrive at a maximum idea-to-word ratio.

Thus, we need to do it repeatedly.

You can reflect with an intellectual sparring partner or by yourself.

Reflecting with others is great for challenging your own beliefs and should be done as often as possible.

However, we rarely have access to an intellectual sparring partner.

Thus, to become wise, we also have to reflect for ourselves by reiterating our experiences.

Sure, you can reflect in a voice memo, in a video, or while taking a walk.

But writing is the ultimate medium for reflection.

How writing makes you wiser

The written medium is uniquely easy to edit.

With the strike of a pen, you can cut excess and re-structure information.

In other words, writing is the fastest way to distill your learnings through editing..

Since the limiting factor for wisdom isn't the amount of information we take in, but the quality of conclusions we derive from it, the skill of editing is a superpower if you want to become wiser.

By practicing writing and editing, you practice reflection, which in turn makes you better at distilling the information you gather, and more efficient at restructuring yourself.

Ultimately, this means writing makes you better at understanding - it makes you wiser.

What this means for you

Puh. This was exhausting to write.

Even after 3,5 hours of writing and editing this, I’m still not content with this piece. I guess I’l have to reflect and reiterate…

Jokes aside, this was my effort to explain to you why writing is an important habit to make you a wiser person.

I sincerely hope that this letter could make an impact on one person who read it, and now has a deeper motivation to start a daily writing habit.

This might be the deepest letter ever, and if you read to this point, I’m sure it will be important for another person, too.

See you next week,

Nils

PS. as always, feedback is appreciated!

Hope you’re having a nice start to your week.

I’m writing today’s edition from my IKEA desk in my mellow Swedish bedroom (not IKEA worthy, but still cozy), admittedly smelling like a Danish cheese after doing my workout, writing my text while I’m waiting for the sauna to heat.

Upon Werner’s request, this letter will be all about how to overcome the intimidating blank page.

Let’s dive in:

(In this text, I will use the terms “writers’ block” and “the blank page’s intimidation” interchangeably, even though I realise they are different - please have hindsight.)

The blank page scares you because you’re afraid to fail

I’m convinced that we fail to overcome the blank page out of fear of failure, which causes us overly judge our writing and keeps us from getting into flow.

At first, it might sound like a helpful mechanism for keeping our writing quality high.

But:

Psychology shows we are terrible at predicting anything but the short-term future.

And we are even worse at evaluating whether other people will like our writing or not.

In other words, giving in to the blank page kills your writing productivity AND your creativity.

Creativity precedes novelty.

So, if we don’t dare to try something new with our writing, how are we supposed to be creative?

Stop judging - start writing

Overcoming the blank page isn’t as hard as it often seems:

To overcome the blank page, acknowledge that the sentences that come up in your head aren’t objectively bad - your subjective mind is just irrationally criticising them.

1. With that awareness, set a timer on 45 minutes where you only can write - you’re forbidden to edit or delete words.

2. Allow yourself to write, which will feel uncomfortable at first, because you’re still judging yourself. But don’t give up - continue and put every thought of yours onto that page.

3. Eventually, you get into flow and your sentences improve.

4. After your timer is off, go over your text. You’re now allowed to delete all junk (finally).

When you write enough sentences, some will inevitably be good.

By going for quantity first, you can later increase the quality by cutting bad sentences.

But it’s easier to remove bad sentences than to write good new ones - so only start editing once you got more than enough RAW text to work with.

By the way: overcoming the blank page gets easier with every repetition.

Writer’s block probably won’t go away entirely

Writer’s block is not a bug, but a feature of being a writer.

Funnily, I experienced writers’ block writing this very newsletter about overcoming writers’ block.

I noticed a new phenomenon which I’ll call “mini-writer’s block”.

It’s when you finish a paragraph or sentence and don’t know what to write next.

I overcame it by just writing & not judging my text.

TL;DR

We are intimidated of the blank page because we are afraid of being judged by others, so we choose to be overly judging with ourselves.

If you experience writers’ block, stop judging yourself and start getting that text out - write for 45 minutes without editing.

When the timer’s out, cut the junk and work with the rest.

Overcoming the blank page gets easier with every repetition.

Debrief

Update: the Triple T newsletter is now called Writing to Wisdom, because I felt as if the previous format constrained my creativity.

Tweets & Threads can be great supplements for a thought, but not always.

As I use writing as a way to improve my thinking and develop myself, I first named the publication Writing Wisdom - but later realised that adding a “to” would make it more accurate.

I’ll send it every Monday morning at 7:00am CET.

Thank you for reading today’s edition.

If this wasn’t helpful to you, I appreciate your feedback, as always!

See you next Monday,

Nils

(If you want me to cover a specific topic - perhaps something you’ve been struggling with yourself as a writer or thinker, feel free to reply to this email with your idea.)

Hope you are feeling peaceful this Thursday.

I’m drafted today’s edition from Café Camaleon in Berlin with cozy Spanish music in my ears & tasty double espresso in my mouth.

You might also notice that our dear newsletter layout has changed - we’re now on Substack!

Good news for you, if I may say so- you can share my previous letters with your friends (and revise them yourself, if you want) here.

(Although, having the first send-out delayed by 4 days due to technical errors was admittedly underwhelming.)

Today, I will break down how to write a world-class LinkedIn about section from scratch.

I didn’t find any great Threads or Tweets on the topic, so I added a PNG freebie for you instead.

Let’s dive in:

One Thought - Writing a dope LinkedIn about section

The low level of about sections on LinkedIn continues to surprise me.

95% of the profiles I visit either list up their life story & achievements, tell you what they sell, or plainly make a philosophical statement.

I honestly couldn’t care less if someone used an inspirational excerpt from a Ryan Holiday book in their about section…

 …if that wouldn’t make this person miss out on connections, deals, money, and friends.

Ultimately, your profile’s job is to turn one-time content readers to recurring fans of your brand.

After the visitor has read your tagline, looked at your banner, and skimmed your related section, you’re about to close them as connections in your about section.

That’s where they make the decision of following you or quitting your page.

If your about section is trash, less visitors will convert to followers & connections, and you might never see them again.

That’s why it is important.

The role of the LinkedIn about section, in my eyes, is to give your visitor a brief answer to one question:

Why should I want to have you at my side?

Depending on where you are in your professional journey, the answer to that question will vary.

First of all, it helps a lot to be a decent human being and being nice to people.

If you’re just starting out, people won’t follow you for your expertise.

Instead, they will follow you because they like & believe in you you - so give them a reason to root for you.

If you are an expert, people will want to have you at their side because you have something they don’t:

Knowledge in an area of expertise that they want to learn more about.

If you fit into this category, you should emphasise the knowledge-benefit of following you.

To make this easier for you, I wrote a 5-step guide for writing a world-class about section.

The 5-step LinkedIn about blueprint

1) The lean-in / first 2 sentences

This might be the most important step in this guide, because if your lean-in doesn’t grab the visitors’ attention, the rest of your about section won’t ever get in front of their eyes.

It’s the HOOK of your story.

Going through hook best practices would blow the scope of this newsletter, but to sum it up in one sentence:

Make an intriguing, weird, or surprising statement without giving away the whole story.

(Marked as yellow in the attached image)

2) Your story

Tell the story of how you got to where you are today.

This is the WHY behind what you do today.

Again, sadly I can’t make tell you everything I know about storytelling in this format, but a few tips:

• Write as if you’d tell the story at a fireplace

• Stay unpredictable & pivot often

• Ask questions to the reader

• Be as specific as possible

• Use humor

Beginner: tell the story of why you are starting out. 

Expert: tell the story of how you became an expert at it.

(Marked green in the image)

3) What you do today

A short description of what you do today, tying together the previous story.

Beginner: “I’m getting into…”

Expert: “[YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION]”

Reiterating this after your story will make your reader understand why you’re doing what you are doing, which makes you more relatable & likeable for them.

Which one would you rather follow?

a) A personal trainer who sells diet programs for obese people?

or

b) A personal trainer who sells diet programs for obese people because they themselves were obese for a long time, changed their diet, saw an improvement in life quality, and now wants to help others in the same situation?

Same offer, different why.

It makes all the difference.

(Marked pink in the image)

4) The CTA

After you’ve told your visitor your story, value proposition, and what you do today, it’s time to call them to action.

Think about:

What’s the ideal action I want a profile visitor to take?

Beginner: “Let’s connect” < (say it in a creative way, if possible)

Expert: “If you want to learn more about [WHAT YOU DO], send me a DM”

Why the CTA though, isn’t it too pushy?

It isn’t.

A foundational principle of copywriting is that readers don’t take action unless you ask them to.

(Marked purple in the image)

5) PS-section to get personal

This is a hidden gem I learned from my dear friend Marvin Sangines.

Anyone who reads to the bottom of your about section already likes you, at least somewhat.

I mean, they just spent 3 minutes of their life just to learn more about YOU!

Now, the PS is where you can add some personality (and, if you dare, humor) to your profile.

Write 2-3 sentences about what you do everyday & what your hobbies are, in a relaxed tone.

This will make it easier to start a conversation with you & get your reader even more familiar with you.

Example:

“PS: Outside of LinkedIn, you can find me wandering around in Stockholm. I’m interested in health (anything from fitness to longevity), foreign policy, psychology, and soccer. I strongly identify as a drinker of black coffee and I think it’s a crime to put sugar in your espresso (if you do, please don’t connect with me).”

(Marked blue in the image)

The example PNG

Wrap up

Thank you for reading today’s edition.

If this was helpful to you, I appreciate your feedback, as always!

See you next Sunday,

Nils