The Gunn Show - 9.1.24
Labor Day Edition
Hey Everyone!
Happy Labor Day weekend, and cheers to the triumphant return of college football. It’s been a great weekend of watching one of the greatest sports that this nation has to offer and can’t wait for what’s ahead. Eyes out for the Vols putting together a special season - it was an exciting home opener in Knoxville and I can only hope it is a launching pad for what is to come. Big one ahead in Charlotte next week against NC State - looking forward to attending and let me know if you’ll be around!
Brooklyn and I are spending the weekend in Dallas with two of our favorites (cheers Sam and Emma!), so this is a shorter edition this week featuring shares > thoughts. Back with more regular programming next week, talk then!
- CG
Weekly Finds
Brutal Pieces of Advice - Sahil Bloom (~8 min)
My recommendation of the week - a high quality list of some hard truths. Three that hit me at the core:
Advice is overrated (and action is underrated).
External competitiveness is a curse, internal competitiveness is a blessing.
Reliability will take you much further than brilliance.
The Mantra of This AI Age: Don’t Repeat Yourself - Dan Shipper (~5 min)
An important contextual piece on the future implications of AI for the average person (re: you and me). The gist: AI models are very good at something that humans spend much too much time on: repetitive tasks. A good rule of thumb moving forward - if you find yourself repeating something over and over, it’s likely worth exploring if AI can help you automate it.
Choose Good Quests - Trae Stephens (~8 min)
One of the pieces that I find myself coming back to again and again. After reading a piece from Sahil on the value of missions in transforming your life, I found myself thinking deeply yet again on building a life oriented around ‘good quests’. I’m a believer that life is a video game and we are all players with different goals. The better aligned those goals are with something outside of ourselves, the better off I think will be. This is a great guide on how to think about designing a life of impact and the value that can come from doing so. Because, as the authors write, history is the record of top players completing good quests. Lets play good games, together.
Nicola Marasco on a Simple Daily Goal (~1 min)
A new and simple daily challenge that I’ve picked up: 4 sets up pushups to failure each day. A good amount of recent research on strength training has shown that the key for muscle growth is not necessarily weight nor ‘high volume’, but rather pushing your body to a point that it has not been to before. Specifically, pushing it to failure. Planning to test this out for 30 days and will report back. Anyone want to join?
Cultivating a Bias for Action - Shaan Puri (~ 2 min)
Loved this short piece from Shaan on the value of building a life that is optimized towards action. I find myself frequently falling into the traps of ‘planning’ or ‘thinking’, and this was a hard gut punch on why both of those states are often a waste of time. The tl;dr: action is a skill and we need to cultivate it. The next time you find yourself thinking, recognize that you’d likely be much better off doing.
