Issue #17

Hey friends 👋🏽,

Welcome back to Thought Caffeine, a weekly newsletter where I share my favourite discoveries during the week.

I took a trip home last Tuesday to spend some time with the family and surprise my girlfriend – made possible by online psychiatry rounds. I'm taking a short pause from writing and spending my days reading The Kite Runner and doing my daily flashcards.

📊 Notes from Eric Ries' Lean Startup

The LEAN business-creating framework:

• Build: create the MVP (minimum viable product)
• Measure: release your MVP and start measuring through appropriate and meaningful metrics
• Learn: learn from customer feedback and develop your business around it.

Measure using two fundamental metrics:

• Value: how we are keeping our current/regular customers
• Growth: how we are attracting and converting new customers

Know that if things go south, you always have the option to pivot. This concept is analogous to a complete product makeover.

Some useful questions to ask ourselves:

• What products do customers really want?
• How will our business grow?
• Who is our customer?
• Which customers should we listen to and which should we ignore?

🐦 Tweet I've been pondering

🙂 Other things I've been enjoying

1. Book: Choose Yourself by James Altucher. James has this ability to speak with a sense of radical candour, making readers feel like they're having a one-on-one with him. His list of no-nonsense advice about life and business strikes perfectly with the current economic climate.
2. Home cooking: Since I came home, I've been indulging in all my favourite home foods and mentally it's been very pleasurable.
3. Film: The Foreigner. A well-rounded action flick that didn't rely on cliché narratives and expensive franchises. It's one of the better action films I've seen of late.
4. Songs: Dreams by grentperez. He's got this soothing voice that I've found pairs well with my study and reading sessions.

✍️ Article: What the Pandemic Has Taught Me About Friendship

In last year's annual review, I realise that I've only started spending more time with my friends after the pandemic began. It appears I've been taking them for granted, prioritising work & productivity above all else.

David Perell's article further inspired me to re-orient myself with long-term friendship goals. Cultivating friendships require active commitment and investment, it's not something that one earns without effort.

Click here to read more

📖 Quote of the Week

"Our best ideas rarely come alive in busyness. They spring to life in calm and aimless contemplation. In beer mode, you find inspiration. And in coffee mode, you harvest that inspiration. If you only spend time in coffee mode, you’ll shut yourself off to transformative ideas because the fruits of genius are sown with the seeds of beer mode wanderings."

From Beer Mode and Coffee Mode (Article) by David Perell. Resurfaced via Readwise.

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Hope you have a great week! 📺

John