Hello from my home office and welcome to Work Less Issue 47.
It has been a while since my previous email. In the past few weeks, I spent most of my time on AppSumo's and Wolo Yoga's projects.
I also attended the Underdog Conference hosted by DailyCMO (shoutout to Rueben Ch'ng) in Kuala Lumpur. Meeting people in tech, digital marketing, and ecommerce here in Malaysia was cool.
Meanwhile, I published three new book notes:
You don’t have to believe your thoughts
If you’re like me, these thoughts shouldn’t sound strange.
"I'm not good enough."
"I'm tired and unmotivated."
"I'm lazy."
"I'm going broke if I don't work harder."
"I'm going to be happy once I make X amount of money."
Like any other thoughts, some of them could be true. Most of them are not.
You don’t need to believe, listen, and react to all of them. Pick those that serve you and ignore those that don’t.
The Dunbar’s number
I always want to build new relationships and stay connected with people I already know. A problem I kept stumbled across:
"How many people should I stay in touch with?"
According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the number of friends and relationships the average person can retain is 150.
Apparently, we can break that numbers down further:
- Five loved ones in your tightest circle
- 15 good friends
- 50 friends
- 150 meaningful relationships
- 500 acquaintances
- 1,500 people you can recognize
Source: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships
How to make more while doing less
There are only two ways to make more money while doing less.
The first way is by making the most out of your time. To get there, you want to remove distractions, stay focused, and optimize for efficiency.
The second way is by increasing the value of your time. Compared to the first way, increasing how much your time is worth is more challenging—and thus, has a higher upside. You can get there by:
- Picking the right—higher-value—things to work on.
- Stacking your skills to solve bigger problems.
- Acquire leverage (Based on The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, they are capital, labor, code, and media).
