Why Not You?
A short recap of just some of the things I played with this week related to work, technology and wellness.
Work Stuff
I officially formed a consulting company with a 50:50 partner a few months ago. I’ve done a few entrepreneurial things in the past, mostly side projects, but this is the first earnest go. My former CTO connected me with a friend of his who has been running a successful tech consulting company for the past decade. I talked to him to hear what his journey was like and see what advice he has for someone just starting out. As we were finishing up, he said to me, “Look, I don’t know if you will be successful, but other people are doing it, so why not you?” Powerful words to internalize, not just as it relates to work but anything else in life where fear might hold us back.
Weekly meditation: if someone else can do something, why not YOU? In a partnership LLC, partners cannot pay themselves a salary and only receive profits of the business based on their ownership percentage. I’ve been researching to figure out how my partner and I might pay each other different amounts in any given year based on the work we each end up doing, and I finally found an article that explains guaranteed partner payments clearly.
Are you doing OKRs? Sooner Safer Happier published a free OKR template on Miro for anyone to use. I plan to use it!
Technology
Hard to talk about anything other than AI this week. My entire social feed has been nothing but ChatGPT . It’s one thing to marvel at all the screenshots of examples, it’s another to play with it yourself. Sign up and try it.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman interviewed by Reid Hoffman. Interesting Q&A which touched on some surprising tangents including family planning and universal basic income. Sam’s closing words about whether AI will be really great or really terrible for humanity: “You gotta plan for the worst. But you might as well emotionally feel like we’re going to get to the great future and play as hard as you can to get there… rather than act from a place of fear and despair.” Amen.
I’m still a heavy Twitter user, but I’m experimenting with 2 new social networks, both in beta. I’m enjoying Farcaster. Great onboarding experience using an ethereum wallet. Web3/startup/builder crowd but topics are much more diverse. I’m @adrienne if you’re there. I also joined Post this week. I had been 200k on the waitlist but only took a week. Here’s an invite if you want to try it. Unlike Farcaster I haven’t figure out who to follow or engage with yet. A lot of the posts in my default feed are politics (🚩🚩🚩), and it somehow feels more like a facebook alternative than twitter. 🤔I’m initially skeptical but I’ll stick around and experiment.
I recently updated my profile pics using free AI generated portraits from Vana. You can get one here: https://portrait.vana.com/. Some resemble me pretty closely, others not so much.
Interview with an FFMPEG enthusiast. I didn’t even know what FFMPEG was but now I sort of want to learn it. The other videos in his channel are just as funny. 🤣🤣🤣
Wellness
I preordered Peter Attia’s upcoming book: Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity. I’ve been working on my dead hang after hearing him talk about the importance of strength training for middle-aged women. 55 seconds was my max, but setting a goal of getting to 90 seconds before the book comes out. 🏋️♀️
A note to, and about, my subscribers:
To my first **4** subscribers: thank you for your encouragement. Two of you are from my DevOps community, two from the weird wilds of crypto/startup world. Three of you I’ve done zooms/video chats with. Two of you I’ve met IRL and attended a conference with. All 4 of you are on your own fascinating journeys. Whether I’ve known you for years or weeks, I’ve taken inspiration from each of you. As I shared last week, I don’t know exactly what I want to do with this substack but I’ll keep experimenting. I hope you hang out for as long as the journey intrigues you and unsubscribe when it no longer does.
Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️