This is the Monday Medley, a newsletter that goes out, you guessed it, every Monday. I republish it here for sharing and referencing, but if you'd like to sign up you can do so right here:
Happy Monday!
Lots of exciting things this week...
New Article: I published a 3,000+ word guide to Roam, why I'm loving it, how I'm using it, and why I think it's a better Personal Knowledge Management tool than Evernote, Notion, etc.
New Interview: I was also on the Mixergy "Startup Stories" podcast with Andrew Warner. We talked about growing Growth Machine, Cup & Leaf, getting started in SEO, all kinds of fun things.
We're Hiring! Speaking of Growth Machine, we're hiring a Strategic Account Planner to lead some of our client projects. You'll be in charge of $1M+ ARR in client projects, and get to affect the SEO strategy at companies ranging from YC startups to Fortune 500 brands while working with a great team from wherever you want.
Alright, on to the Medley!
🙇♂️ Researchers at Columbia and UT Austin recently found that mother's obesity is linked to a lag in development and IQ for boys, but not girls. It wasn't a huge study, only 368 mothers, but it is interesting to think about how health and the hormonal effects of health may affect child development.
🥦 I recently bought an Air Fryer after hearing good things from a few friends about theirs, and I have to say it is phenomenal for quickly cooking vegetables. If you want a good recipe: cut some brussels sprouts in half, cover them in olive oil, salt, lime juice, and Yellowbird Seranno hot sauce, and cook them at 400 for 7 minutes. Insanely good.
🛵 Segway is developing new "transportation pods," supposedly to replace some of the motorized scooters you see people using currently, and they look suspiciously like the people movers in WALL-E.
🏍 NIU just announced these really slick electric motorcycles and three-wheelers. I'm particularly interested in the self-balancing, self-driving motorcycle idea. It'd be wild to see a self-driving motorcycle going down the street to go pick someone up.
🗣 We've started working on an outbound sales process at Growth Machine, and have been using Growbots to help facilitate it. It is phenomenal at making prospecting and initial outreach really easy, I'd highly recommend it.
📝 Another tool I recently discovered that I'm loving: Drafts. It's a Mac / iPhone app that makes it super easy to jot down ideas. It pops up to a place to write much faster than any other app, and then you can easily copy the text out of it to where you need it later. Great for jotting down ideas on the go and uploading them to Roam later.
🌍 Contrary to the idea that you have to work on something that "changes the world," this is a good essay on "The Metagame." One line I liked:
"...your work doesn’t need to be sacred for it to matter. The sport of building something and beating competitors and working with great people is sufficient reward."
🍔 I also enjoyed this short piece on why you should be like In-n-Out. From the article:
"More businesses need to be like Chick-fil-A and In-n-Out. The menu is simple, the service is excellent, and the quality is high... The lesson is clear: do less, do it well, and be consistent."
🧠 And it's a tad late to share this, but I liked Tiago Forte's article on "creating re-usable components" instead of setting New Years Resolutions. The idea of constantly creating things you can re-use later is a big force multiplier if you do any kind of knowledge work.
📚 I knew the Michelin tire company created the Michelin guide to get people to drive more, but I didn't know the beer company Guinness created the Guinness Book of World Records to help settle bar disputes.
🖊 You've probably heard the folk lore story about American's spending $1M on a "space pen" to write in zero gravity, while the Soviets just used a pencil. Turns out it's (mostly) bullshit. Pencils don't work well in space because the graphite in the tip breaks off and floats around and tears up the air filters. So yeah, space pen was a good idea.
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And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way! I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.
Have a great week,
Nat