Hey there,

I've been meaning to send this newsletter for a few weeks, but I never sat down to do it. I'll get to why a little later.

The Friends Newsletter

I tried multiple times to come up with a template for this newsletter. I've spent hours in my head debating the meaning of "learn then apply" vs. "learn through action". But I changed my mind once I saw Nick Gray's newsletter.

Nick Gray is an entrepreneur who sends out a monthly newsletter that he calls his "Friend's Newsletter". He obviously has people subscribing to it now through his website, but he started by just adding people's emails that he'd meet in his day-to-day as a way to keep them updated in what he had going on.

So I'm similarly going to use this newsletter as an opportunity to update you, my friend, on what's going on.

Think of it kinda like a written form of a catch up over coffee or drinks.

Updates

• I got engaged and am now in the process of planning my Fall 2023 wedding. I'm using this time to actively find opportunities in the Malayalee Christian Wedding space that can turn into the business model for manthrakodi.com

• I created a template for my "projects" on the Learn Through Action website. It'll now be easier for me to keep a live log of my active projects and document what I've accomplished for each.

• I've been learning about the process of doing a 1031 Exchange as a way for my parents to buy their eventual retirement home. It's been interesting to learn about the different tax implications as I prep to start renting my condo in the Winter.

• I've created a plan for a synchronous virtual learning initiative for my church so ministries of the church can learn together despite not having resources in their local areas to teach.

Areas for Improvement

As I mentioned in the beginning, I've been meaning to send this newsletter for a few weeks. I've had things to say but never took the time to actually write.

There are two major problems that are related.

1) I become overwhelmed at how many things I need to figure out.

What projects I should work on. The format of this newsletter. What topics I should write about. How the website should look.

Thinking of one thing leads to a flood of "could-do's" in my head.

A lot of these things can be figured out later, but they are enough of an excuse to stop me from getting started, which leads to...

2) I can easily distract myself to avoid doing that hard work.

I'm almost afraid to sit down at my computer to do work because I know that my habits will kick me over to YouTube, or games, or shows, or any thing except the work I'm supposed to do.

What I'm doing to solve this is reading Deep Work and rereading Indistractable. I believe the action items of these books will help me design my environment to reduce distractions.

Thank you for reading and until next time!

Aswin