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Re-reading Paul Graham’s long essay How to Make Wealth (hint: via a “startup”), it’s impressive how fully relevant it still is, 20 years after its publication, even though so many things have changed. The ongoing relevance suggests that Paul hit some fundamental, lasting truths about how wealth has been created in the West for centuries. If you haven’t read it yet, give it a try!
Billionaire activist investor Bill Ackman gave a fantastic new interview on Lex Fridman’s show. He has an enormous talent for explaining investments and the various market mechanics for laypeople and, perhaps more importantly, he’s honest.
For example, he details how he nearly went bankrupt at the height of his investing career. The whole interview covers many topics, including non-investment ones. However, all of them seem to share a central theme: the quality of governance. The conversation presents a simple, eloquent way how Bill puts complex things into neat explanations.
Legendary music producer Rick Rubin, who also wrote a bestseller on creativity, has been recording a podcast called Tetragrammaton for a year now, which has gained attention for its fascinating guests and discussions.
One notable guest was Steven Pressfield, the world-renowned author of The War of Art, Turning Pro, and other influential books for creatives. He discussed his approach to work and creative process, his reading habits, and his reasons for not reading much fiction.
A recent article on the Useme blog discusses the benefits and mechanics of using Wise and PayPal for international money transfers, offering a good comparison of the two platforms from the perspective of freelancers operating in the international market.
"Go freelance and make deals with clients from around the world, they said. But did anyone tell you how to handle international money transfers and stay afloat with unprofitable exchange rates?"
The text addresses exchange rates, highlighting how both services offer more favorable rates than many traditional banks, and covers transaction fees, accessibility, and security measures.
"Are You in the Ballpark?" asks Mark McGuinness in his recent video, providing an excellent look at self-evaluation and coping with rejection, not just for creators but for independent professionals in general.
"If you are in the ballpark as a creative, it means your work is good enough to be worthy of serious consideration. But getting there doesn't guarantee you're going to win the game," says Mark, using the baseball analogy.
"Do to-do lists help you plan your day? Or do they increase your stress as they do for me?" Tom Baranek asks in the introduction to his article How I learned to plan better.
In the text, Tom describes his personal experience and the path to creating the Nautilus — an innovative extension to Roam Research for better time management, which we mentioned in our news recently.
As Tom writes, this concept may be of interest to you even if you don't use Roam yourself. It's a more general concept than just a platform-specific solution.
"I’ve tried millions of apps, but their tasks always look one like the other — one task, one line. To-do lists are just unintuitive and useless for getting the bigger picture."
The Freelance Magic article provides good and lesser-known strategies for finding clients, especially for freelancers who want to operate in the international market. Methods such as networking in industry-specific Slack channels aim to open new avenues for freelancers to secure meaningful and lucrative projects by leveraging digital tools and platforms.
Tiago Forte, a recognized expert on personal productivity and author of Building a Second Brain, has published a review of Google NotebookLM, which is a new, potentially revolutionary software that allows you to write using AI analysis of the resources you upload. This could be a useful tool for anyone who writes, whether it be articles or books. Tiago, in this video review, demonstrates relevant use cases and provides interesting insights into how such technology can work.
"In this video, I'll show you what NotebookLM is, how it works, and how you can get started using what I believe is the best software ever created for leveraging AI in creative work."
The 2023 edition of British IPSE Self-Employed Landscape Report reveals that professionals aged 50-59 represent the largest and fastest-growing age group among UK freelancers, with almost 1.2 million people, marking a seven percent increase from the previous year.
Research indicates that older professionals are increasingly turning to freelancing as their best option. This shift is supported by a confidence in their self-starting capabilities, increasing longevity of self-employed businesses and readiness for freelance work, highlighting a significant transformation in the sector's skill profile and pointing towards a broader reevaluation of employment and self-employment dynamics among experienced professionals.
You can read more findings from the report here.
Here’s the newest English interview on freelance business with Robert Vlach hosted by Georgi Nenov and The Superhuman Podcast during Robert’s December 2023 book tour in Sofia, organized by Locus Publishing.