Hey friends.
Here are 3 dials in 3 minutes to help you make connections to yourself and the world around you.
😂 Excitement Dial
I played a small prank on the tailor this week when I picked up my pants.
“How’d they fit” she asked after I tried on the newly hemmed pants.
I replied with a grimacing face, “Really disappointing. They don’t fit at all and somehow there’s now a hole in the pants too.”
Then I paused to see how it landed…
Her jaw dropped as she placed her hand on her heart.
I couldn’t keep a straight face for much longer as I smiled and said “Just kidding, they’re great!”
We both had a good laugh (and I was glad I didn’t give her a heart attack).
TAKEAWAY:
Will this go down as my greatest prank of all time?
No way. (Not even close, your boy has pulled some pranks.)
BUT it did immediately change my own energy.
That morning, I was feeling stressed and in a bit of a rut. So when I tried on the pants, I almost immediately shut down the idea. Instead, I realized this:
Excitement is like a dial. We can turn it up or down. In this example, I cranked it up just one tiny notch, and quickly felt the benefits.
How can you amp up your own excitement this week just a notch?
🤔 Curiosity Dial
Another dial we can play with is our curiosity.
Artificial curiosity gets pushed onto you by feeds and comparisons to others.
Genuine curiosity gets pulled from inside you by your own natural wonder and marvel.
A tiny way to nurture genuine curiosity is by browsing WikiRoulette for just two minutes.
The site shows you random Wikipedia pages and all you have to do is follow your own curiosity path.
Random WikiRoulette page
Quick example and here’s where my head goes:
William Churchill → How many other kids did he have? Who is still alive? What else should I know about Churchill?
Oxford→ How old is Oxford, and how did it become/stay so prestigious?
And so on
Open a few new tabs and see where your curiosity goes.
Again, it’s just a small dial of curiosity, but tiny is better than zero.
Zooming out, it reinforces your own identity as someone who follows your own curiosity and excitement.
Check out WikiRoulette here and let me know what you find.
🎚️ Amp It Up
Billionaire Frank Slootman led 3 companies to IPO (Data Domain, ServiceNow, Snowflake) and distilled high-performance companies down to these “Amp It Up” principles:
Increase the Speed
Raise the Standards
Narrow the Focus
The same principles apply to other areas of our lives.
I naturally tended to “should” myself in many directions (e.g., I should be working, writing, etc.).
However, narrowing the focus (using my Q4 Goals Template), increases my standards and speed.
How will you AMP up your life?
Con gusto,
Mitchell
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