steni

Slowly building a nervous system friendly life and tech stack

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

One of the worst lies you tell yourself: “I just need to gather more information.”

Carl Jung coined the archetype of Puer Aeternus (Latin for the "eternal boy") as an adult who lives in a constant state of boyhood, with a fear of commitment and an obsession with preparation for action that never comes.

The modern world has made it easier than ever to fall into the Puer Aeturnus trap. Information gathering has become sport. Research, studying, learning, planning. All of it jammed into neat little dopamine feedback loops that convince you that you're doing something productive and valuable.

You're just one piece of information away from the big breakthrough. You'll start the business when your business plan is perfected. You'll meet your partner when you've scrolled through another round of profiles. You'll get that dream job when you have one more degree in hand.

I've been there. I was Puer Aeternus. Until I realized that the world wasn't being run by a bunch of geniuses with 47 PhDs and 170 IQs. The world was being run by a bunch of normal people with abnormal bias for action.

The opportunity you seek is floating around at all times. But you have to take action to seize it. Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. Get your dopamine from action.

[Jon Brosio @jonbrosio]

The safest thing you can do is build something you own.

Not because it's guaranteed. but because it's the only path where the upside is uncapped and the risk is manageable through skill and iteration.

[steni @steni]

Erfaringer med å få Claude Code til å jobbe skikkelig i en produksjon-kodebase https://t.co/v86ZuAOyWr via @LinkedIn

[Stijn Noorman @stijnnoorman]

The goal should be to get paid to improve yourself.

I call this the Self-Improvement Business model.

• You solve your own problems
• You turn the solutions into assets
• You get paid to improve yourself and others

It's the most fulfilling business model in the world.

[theficouple @theficouple]

Reminder for all young parents:

You only get:
- 1 Summer with your baby
- 3 with your toddler
- 9 with your child
- 5 with your teenager

This time is precious. Don’t rush it.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

No serious nation in the history of warfare has spent fourteen months insulting its allies, siding with their common enemy, and then knocked on their door expecting them to rescue a catastrophe of its own making.

You abused the UK. Threatened Canada. Tried to grab Greenland. Called the EU an adversary. Praised Putin. Hosted Kremlin officials in the Capitol. Abandoned Ukraine. And did all of it loudly, proudly, and on camera.

And now you are surprised that nobody is returning your calls.
You want European boots on the ground? Start by explaining why America is more aligned with Moscow than with Brussels.
Take your time. We will wait.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Will Ahmed @willahmed]

You have no experience.
You’ve never started a company.
You’ve never had a full time job.
Nike is going to kill you.
You’re a kid.
You don’t have technical skills.
You shouldn’t build hardware.
Apple is going to kill you.
You can’t build hardware.
You can’t measure heart rate non-invasively.
Athletes don’t care about recovery.
Under Armour is going to kill you.
It won’t be accurate.
You don’t listen.
You’re an ineffective leader.
You can’t recruit great talent.
You’re going to have to pay every athlete.
You can’t measure sleep non-invasively.
It’s too expensive to research.
Athletes are a small market.
The product costs too much to make.
The product costs too much to sell.
Your valuation is too high.
Consumers aren’t going to want it.
Hardware is too hard.
You should measure steps.
Fitbit is going to kill you.
You can’t build a marketing engine.
You can’t raise enough money.
You need a real CEO.
Google is going to kill you.
You can’t be a subscription.
You can’t build a brand.
You can’t do consumer in Boston.
Your valuation is too high.
You shouldn’t make accessories.
You shouldn’t make apparel.
Lululemon is going to kill you.
You can’t predict Covid.
Stay in your niche.
You are going to run out of money.
You can’t build a health platform.
Amazon is going to kill you.
You can’t measure blood pressure.
You can’t get medical approvals.
The market is too small.
You don’t understand AI.
The market is too competitive.
It won’t work internationally.
The supply chain is too complicated.
You can’t build an AI.
You can’t raise enough money.
It’s too competitive.
Healthcare isn’t going to want it.
…

Just keep going ✌️

[Kieran Drew @ItsKieranDrew]

PLEASE:

Start writing online.

You are wasted on the sidelines. There are so many people who would love to hear from you, people with similar worldviews. People struggling with problems you’ve already solved.

A client I recently started working with had been watching people write online for a long time.

I helped her find her message, get going, and she began posting recently.

She was worried no one would care (or that she has nothing worth saying).

But within a month she has her first 200 subscribers.

And she just sent me this:

“I’ve been invited to a podcast. I've been invited to do an interview that's being written up, and then I've been invited to two live streams, which is awesome.”

Writing is a magnet for the audience, business, and life you want.

Hit publish.

[Yasmine Khosrowshahi @yasminekho]

In 2018, Stanford professor Matt Abrahams gave a masterclass on why most people fail to communicate well.

He broke down:

- The structure every message needs
- Why audiences stop listening
- The psychology of attention

15 lessons that'll make your communication unforgettable:

[Kieran Drew @ItsKieranDrew]

No one wants to admit it, but the magic pill to all of your problems is to spend more time in silence.

You don’t need more stuff, you need more space.

[Kalshi Finance @Kalshi_Finance]

Amazon just confirmed 16,000 layoffs but sources inside are telling me the real story is so much worse

Word from three different VPs: the 16K number is just "Phase One" - internal docs show another 14,000 cuts planned for Q2

A director in AWS walked me through their new "efficiency matrix" - entire teams being replaced by 2-3 senior engineers running Claude Sonnet workflows

The Alexa division got completely hollowed out. 847 engineers two months ago. 23 remaining after this week. All hardware development moved to a Bangalore team of 31 contractors with Cursor access

Here's the sick part: they're making the outgoing engineers document their entire decision-making process into "knowledge transfer sessions" that are being recorded and fed directly into training datasets

One L7 told me he spent his final two weeks creating detailed prompt libraries and workflow documentation. Thought he was being helpful for the transition

Turns out he was literally training the AI agent that replaced his entire org

The contractors offshore are using his exact prompts and shipping features 40% faster than his old team of 12 Americans ever did

Internal Slack shows leadership celebrating "operational excellence" while badges get deactivated in real-time

They're calling it "right-sizing for the AI era" in the all-hands

But the P&L sheets I'm seeing show $280M in salary savings this quarter alone

The knowledge extraction is complete

If you're still at Amazon and haven't started job hunting, you're already dead

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control:

TikTok
CBS
CNN
HBO
Discovery Channel
BET
Cartoon Network
Comedy Central
DC Studios
Fandango
Miramax
MTV
Nickelodeon
Paramount
PlutoTV
Showtime
TBS
The CW
TNT
Warner Bros.
And more

This is oligarchy.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

💯 "If you build it, they will come." :)
~Every business you go to is still so used to giving you instructions over legacy interfaces. They expect you to navigate to web pages, click buttons, they give out instructions for where to click and what to enter here or there. This suddenly feels rude - why are you telling me what to do? Please give me the thing I can copy paste to my agent.

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or “federalize” the coming Congressional elections.
https://t.co/ytG7oD6tal

[Jon Brosio @jonbrosio]

Your prospects aren't comparing you to your competitors.

They're comparing you to:

• Doing nothing
• The risk of failure
• The cost of change
• Figuring it out themselves

Your competition is inertia

[Andrew Gould @AndrewWriteCopy]

Dan Kennedy is an industry legend.

He’s maybe the most influential direct response guru of the last few decades.

He was my introduction to the world of marketing and copywriting.

And he remains my biggest influence.

So I’m sharing 10 of the most powerful marketing ideas I learned from Dan:

1) Your Real Business is Lead Generation and Sales Conversion

The single most important thing I've learned:

No matter what business you're in, your real business is lead generation and sales conversion.

As without leads and sales, you don't have a business.

2) Know Your Numbers

You've got to know your business's key metrics.

You need to know what's working and what's not working for you so you can make informed decisions.

At the very least you should know:

1) The cost of getting a customer.
2) And the value of that customer.

3) Sell To Want Not Need

You've got to sell what people want, not what they need.

This is a mistake I see all the time.

Just because someone doesn't have something - like a smart, new website - doesn't mean they want it.

It often means they're just not interested in it.

4) Guard Your Time

Time is your most valuable asset as unlike money you can never create more of it.

So treat it as such and guard it as best you can.

Don't fritter away your hours.

Have a time management system to ensure you get the most out of your days.

5) Focus On Your Headline

The headline is the most important copywriting element.

It's the ad for your ad.

If your headline fails, chances are your ad fails.

So you want to spend the most time on it.

Write multiple headlines, pick the best few, and then test them.

6) Understand Your Target Audience

A huge part of how well your copy does depends on how well you know your audience.

The better you know them, the better you can target your copy at them, and the better your sales.

Get to know them so well you could write a page in their diary.

7) Don’t Reinvent The Wheel

You don't need to write copy from scratch.

You can borrow everything from headline templates to body copy structures from decades worth of proven direct response marketing.

Use them as a starting point and then build on them.

8) Why You?

Why should a prospect buy from you and not your competition?

This is a key question you need to answer.

You always want to be looking for ways to differentiate yourself.

9) Don’t Assume

We all tend to assume we know things we really don’t.

And we're almost always wrong.

So don't assume you already know what does and doesn't work.

Don't let tradition or industry norms blind you.

Decide on data not on assumptions.

10) The Bigger Picture

Always look at the bigger picture.

Don't get too focused on the details of your copy.

Instead, look at your offer, who you're targeting, your upsells, your follow-up, etc.

These will make you more money than polishing your copy.

To sum up:

• Your real business is lead generation and sales conversion
• Always look at the bigger picture
• Understand your target audience
• Don't reinvent the wheel
• Focus on your headline
• Know your numbers
• Guard your time
• Don't assume
• Why you?

And if you found this useful:

Repost it to help your fellow persuasion professionals.

Make sure you’re following me @AndrewWriteCopy for more quality copywriting and marketing content.

And enjoy the rest of your day!

[Jon Brosio @jonbrosio]

The shift from struggling to thriving:

Struggling:
"How do I convince them to buy?"

Thriving:
"How do I attract people already ready to buy?"

One is persuasion
One is positioning

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Playing the long game gives you such an advantage over competitors. Hardly anyone else is doing it. They haven't chosen not to. They just haven't explicitly thought about the question, and the default is not to.

[Jon Brosio @jonbrosio]

Your audience wants you to sell to them.

But they want you to sell them what they actually want.

Make sure you know the difference.

[Lola 🥀⚘️ @LolaNeuroPhylo]

One thing I realized is that the most valuable move right now is learning new things.

Rewild your brain.

Trust the quiet intelligence already living in your body.

New neurons. Subtle feeling. Bit by bit.

Clarity & peace will come.