Learn: Reminder app, Pressure vs Stress, Kanye West

Read: 3 mins

Greetings from Rio, 

Here are 3 goodies to feed your intellectual (and emotional) curiosities. 

📱Reminder

You know that question we all ask each other but never really answer? (“How are you doing?”)

Well, what if we…*actually* answered it? At least for ourselves. 

Crazy I know. But my relationship coach/therapist made me aware of this simple reminder trick. 

I have it set at 3pm daily for a quick check-in to see how AM I doing? 

Even just a 10-second check-in to connect with how I'm feeling has been surprisingly useful.

🤯 Pressure vs Stress

Tim Grover (MJ and Kobe Bryant’s former trainer) says pressure is a privilege. If you’re in a pressure situation it means someone believes in you. 

But stress is different. 

“Stress is just pressure you refuse to deal with. You have to deal with pressure on a daily basis."

Lesson: Add pressure, don’t let it convert into stress. 

While this is clearly an oversimplification, it's been helpful for me to differentiate the two. For example, I send this weekly newsletter every Sunday (pressure). But found that when I wait until Saturdays to write them, it adds unnecessary stress. So recently set a rule to always schedule before Saturday. Which I think means I'm basically like Kobe and MJ?

🎤 The Old Kanye

Say what you want about the new Kanye (personally, I miss the old Kanye…), but his come up story was wild. I loved 2 lessons in particular.

Lesson #1: Start where you are

Before he was a rapper, Kanye was a producer making beats. 

Before he was a good producer making beats, he was a bad producer making beats. But he put in the work. 

"Lock yourself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers." - Kanye’s verse on Spaceships

He didn’t go from a bad producer directly to a 4x platinum rapper. 

He started where he was and traded up the chain. 

Lesson #2: Add pressure

When things weren't working out in Chicago he packed and moved to New Jersey to be closer to the hip-hop action in NYC. 

“Jay-Z showed up to the same studio. Liked 'Heart of the City' took it to New York to Roc A Fella’s offices, and decided to let young Kanye produce 5 songs for Blueprint.” 

Working under Jay-Z and many others in the rap scene was the pressure Kanye needed to break through (the wire). 

Con mucho gusto, 

Mitchell aka “pressure pusher”

Ps. Zoom interviews