Hi everyone!

This week we're covering what to focus on early in your career, tips for a better life and check out AI that creates images from text captions.

We'll also learn how to shed fears of self-promotion, how to cook and get a quick reminder on what a good apology entails.

Again, thanks for reading each week!

With gratitude,
Janel

Forget Passion, Focus On Surfing
Why it’s always better to work in a growing area early in your career:

• Learning: When a team is growing, there is a lot to do. This creates a steep & accelerated learning curve.
• Creativity: You don't need to inherit processes that are set in stone. You can shape the future of your role
• Exit opportunities: Gain access to a bigger option pool (skills, profile, and wealth)
• Growing Teammates: People who join rocketships are hungry people who want to grow. You can learn a lot from them, and vice versa, and you might find your next co-founder or investor.

Note that early areas always come with high risk. Make sure you're able to stomach that risk. It's not for everyone. It's funny how in business school they often teach us to go for the safe bets, when in actual fact, going surfing gives us the biggest upsides and learning opportunities.

100 Tips For A Better Life
Practical tips that will improve your life. My picks

• Reward yourself after completing challenges, even badly.
• Cultivate a reputation for being dependable. Good reputations are valuable because they’re rare (easily destroyed and hard to rebuild).
• Bad things happen dramatically (a pandemic). Good things happen gradually (malaria deaths dropping annually) and don’t feel like ‘news’. Endeavour to keep track of the good things to avoid an inaccurate and dismal view of the world.

The Coolest Things I Learned in 2020
David Perell shares a intriguing collection of things that he learned last year. Here's my favorite on how great conversations end:
"Words: You explore so many new ideas that you no longer have the language to say what you want to say.
Metaphysics: You debate your values and base-level assumptions because they determine your conclusions.
Humor: Your cheeks are sore, your eyes are watering, and your stomach hurts from laughing so hard.
Creativity: You leave the conversation excited about a new idea and inspired to start working on it."

DALL-E
OpenAI created DALL-E, a neural network that creates images from text captions. This opens up a new world of creativity. It's mind-blowing. Check out the images below.

Don’t Sell! Instead, Make Friends: How to Connect Authentically

How do you overcome the fear and self-doubt that gets in the way of effective self-promotion? By focusing on making friends and connecting with others authentically. Lead with your values.

Quick tips to reduce fear:

• Remember that you are not alone. Even the pros experience pressure.
• Don't fight your fear - get comfortable with it.
• Keep a record of all your successes (put it in a personal Wall of Love)

How To Cook (A guide for founders, and well, everyone)
A comprehensive roadmap on how to go from a cooking noob to a great home chef, by Tyler Tringas. He covers:

• Why you should cook
• Meta-tips for learning how to cook
• Essential cooking concepts
• Essential gear
  

The blog is laden with resources that even an intermediate cook would be pleased to receive! Great read.

How To Apologize
Quick sketchnote by Sylvia Duckworth detailing how a great apology should go.

1. Say what you're sorry for
2. Say why it was wrong
   
3. Accept full responsibility
4. Ask how to make amends
5. Commit to not doing it again
6. Ask for forgiveness
7. Thank them

Mockups Design -  If you need to create mockups for a product you're selling, download some free files here and make small tweaks to make your product look premium. Includes mockups for tees, mugs, software boxes and more.

Paste App - Beautiful tool to create quick, shareable presentations. A free PowerPoint competitor by WeTransfer.

Passion Economy Stack - The passion economy empowers anyone to monetize their unique skills. Two creators put together a curated collection of 130+ resources, which include articles, communities and people.

My Favorite Tools - A collection of my favorite tools & why I like them. I will update this whenever I find new tools.

In case you missed, it, I posted a tweet asking "What's the coolest new tool/software you discovered in 2020?" and received 300+ responses.

Creativerly - A weekly digest about creativity and productivity-boosting tools and resources, with useful insights and learnings from the fields of design + tech. I've highlighted Creativerly before, but had to share again as Creativerly just moved to a new home on Ghost. Plus I'm obsessed. 

Alternative Assets - There's a million newsletters about stocks and VC. Stefan's newsletter is about options that don't get talked about as much. Read about alternative assets like cars, farmland, and even newsletters!

Antiweather - Find out what the weather is like on the other side of the world. 

Dsxyliea - This website stimulates what it's like to have dyslexia.

Bilingual Baby Name Finder - Check out names in common between two languages to find one that works in both.