Don’t Be Afraid to Be the Exception… Life is About Being an Anomaly, Not Fitting In

10 thoughts, ideas & creative finds on unrushed luxury, slow progress, building remote empires and time freedom

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• The Rundown 1: What is Your Skill? What is Your Thing? What is it That You’d Do For Free?

• The Rundown 2: Your First Idea Doesn’t Have to Be the Winning One… But It Will Lead To It

• The Rundown 3: The Ideas That Continuously Enter Our Field Are Not By Accident, They Are Our Reminders

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Hey Everyone,

The Rundown — Here’s what I found over the course of this week that has helped me, inspired me or gave me some creative pushes…

1. "Luxury is feeling unrushed. It is designing a life that allows you to do what you want with high leverage, with many options, all while feeling unrushed” (- Tim Ferriss)
   
   Instead of being productive to get rich, try getting wealthy to buy back your time. Free time lets you go slow. Life goes from 8-bit clarity to 4K when you slow down. (found this great tweet from

   Tim Denning

   I once said, “you don’t need to do more… you often need to do less… but better. Eliminate everything that distracts you. Double down on everything that promotes you.” — If you take time to do only the things that matter… with quality, details and care… in an unrushed manner… you will experience the compound effect in a much shorter time period than you can imagine… but you need to focus your attention and intention on the right things without the distractions.

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2. “The smart people have already started figuring out that the Internet enables this… they’re starting to work more and more remotely, on their own schedule, on their own time and their own place, with their own friends in their own way.” (Naval Ravikant)

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3. “You increase your luck when you increase your surface area to receive it. — Consistently create and the luckier you’ll get.” — This comes from a piece I wrote online and a reminder that what you’re looking for is consistent iteration and growth. If you want to receive “luck,” put yourself and your work out there.
   
   Publish consistently and frequently and the people looking for you will find you…
   
   Publish consistently and frequently and the opportunities meant for you will be presented…
   
   Publish consistently and frequently and the table you’re looking to be at will ultimately be the one you’ve created whether you realize it or not.

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4. A full life goes fast… (Zach Pogrob) —

   

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5. On Time & Money — a few quotes from Morgan Housel’s book, Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness —
   1— “Independence, to me, doesn’t mean you’ll stop working. It means you only do the work you like with people you like at the times you want for as long as you want.”
   
   2— “Compounding works best when you can give a plan years or decades to grow. This is true for not only savings but careers and relationships. Endurance is key. And when you consider our tendency to change who we are over time, balance at every point in your life becomes a strategy to avoid future regret and encourage endurance.”
   
   3— “Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. You might think you want a fancy car or a nice watch. But what you probably want is respect and admiration. And you’re more likely to gain those things through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome.”
   

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6. “Your creativity is worth millions.” — A Substack article I did some time back reminding the importance of finding, cultivating and leveraging your creativity. I returned to this article this week after it received an uptick in traffic and thought to reshare it with the community. A few key features in there…
   
   1— You are the most powerful and creative operating system
   2— You need to learn how to earn with your mind not with your time
   3— Creativity, clarity and consistency put your worth on display
   

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7. On mastering your craft and allowing yourself to become great —

   

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8. “The process, not the product, should be your focus — for the process will inevitably create all the things you’ll deliver to the world… including the ones you never planned on.” (

   Matt Gottesman
   ) — I ended up podcasting on this topic this week.. the idea that the process is what brings you confidence, understanding, humility, wealth, time freedom, relationships, character building and more.
   
   Here’s a link to all platforms… the show itself is about 4 shows back.
   

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9. “No matter how much money you have, you're not wealthy with a calendar of unwanted obligations.” — Justin Welsh
   
   I’m a huge advocate of slow progress, quiet luxury, sustainable peace, intentional work, expansive relationships, deep work and an unrushed life… to me, this is wealth.

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10. Playlist — Smooth Jazz House ft. Lya Frank — A great playlist from @lyafrank on YouTube of Chill House to work to… great for creating, designing, writing, computer work.
    

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What is your time really worth to you?

I want you to really think about your time!

What do you really want to be doing with it?
How do you want to be living?
What do you want to do for work?
Who do you want to have around you?
What environments invigorate you?
What conversations are inspiring you daily?

With so much talk about wealth online, there needs to be more talk about various other ways to define it…

Wealth is up to you… that’s the beautiful part… you’re the responsible party and it’s up to you on how you create, build and expand your life without waiting for others to do it or define it for you…

but you have to do the work… and you should want to… because it’s your beautiful life.

If you need some help on this, I have some templates which you can find HERE

Go create!

Matt

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