Seeing That Frees, Building Resilience, & Facebook’s Capitulation

Happy Sunday!

This week we launched a new mini-series from founder and coach Jason Shen called Rethinking Resilience. It’s all about cultivating the tools and skills to create more resilience in challenging times—something we’re sure that we all could use a little bit more of.

You can read the first piece of the series, How to Cultivate Resilience, or click “Follow” below to make sure you get future editions:

In addition to Rethinking Resilience, this week we also published words on why Facebook is surrendering its trillion-dollar advantage, and a book review of one of the most consciousness-expanding books we’ve ever encountered. Plus, we have a reflection on what it means to fight, and lessons learned from the last few years in crypto.

Let’s dive in! 

Editor's Note: This week in the United States, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling guaranteeing the constitutional right to abortion. If you feel called to support abortion access, please see a list of places to donate here.

The Best Book I Read This Year

The way Dan sees it, there are two kinds of books about meditation: first, there are the serious tomes caught up in philosophizing about the meaning of life and suffering and detachment; and then there are the pragmatic books that hook you with a promise of what meditation can do for you—reduced stress! increased focus! etc. 

Books that combine the depth and wisdom of the first set with the results-driven sensibility of the second are vanishingly rare. But recently Dan has been reading just such a book: Seeing That Frees. As the title of the post suggests, it’s the best book Dan has read this year—and in this post, he explains why. 

Read.

Facebook’s Capitulation

Over the past two decades (yes, it has been that long), Facebook has ridden to the top of the social media stratosphere on the strength of one killer feature: the social graph. But according to documents leaked from inside Meta, the company is in the process of turning its back on the whole concept of the social graph to chase after a different vision entirely. 

In this paid edition of Napkin Math, Evan asks the question: What forces could drive the largest social network on Earth to abandon the very thing that built it into the trillion-dollar behemoth it is today? We’ll give you a hint: the answer has to do with a little company called TikTok. 

Read.

How to Cultivate Resilience: A Four-Part Framework

Jason Shen knows a thing or two about facing adversity. As a former elite athlete, a three-time startup founder, and now an executive coach, he’s seen his fair share of tough times spanning everything from injury to lawsuits to bankruptcy—and it’s left him fascinated by the ways people face tough times, and then bounce back. 

In this first edition of our new mini-series Rethinking Resilience, Jason debunks three myths about resilience, and lays out his framework for cultivating a more resilient mindset. As he explains, it comes down to cultivating four key skills: respond, restore, rebuild, and reflect. 

Read.

Are We Really Addicted? 

A few weeks back, Evan wrote that it seems like the entire economy is geared toward driving users further and further into addiction. As it happens, there’s no one who’s done more thinking on this very subject than Nir Eyal. 

The author of Hooked and Indistractable, Nir has spent years studying how businesses can build habit-forming products—and how individuals can take control of their attention back from those same products. Let’s just say he has some thoughts about Evan’s thesis—and he shares those thoughts with Evan in this interview. 

Read.

My Crypto Investing Mistakes and Lessons (‘20-’22)

For all those playing along at home, the last few months in crypto have been a bit trying, to say the least. As the wild ride of the bull market comes to a halt, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on just what exactly happened over the past year and a half. Hindsight is, of course, 20/20, and Nat sees room for improvement in his crypto game. In this post, he’s owning up to the mistakes he’s made—and laying out the lessons he’s learned along the way. 

Read.

Fighting

Fighting is a part of the human experience, and it’s certainly part of the startup experience. In this meditative post, Interintellect founder Anna Gát reflects on the role that fighting has played in her own life: as a founder, as a woman, and as a human. “I have fought and have been fought with in my life, I have been fought, and so have you. It is war and peace, always, through and through.” 

Read.

A Few More Recommendations

Fail Porn & Cope Culture | Nick deWilde 

What is it about us humans that makes us love a disaster so much? Startups going out of business, investors making bad investments, influencers losing influence—we can’t get enough. In this essay, Invisible College co-founder Nick deWilde takes a stab at getting to the bottom of why—and what to do about it. 

Mapquest and Other Internet Zombies | On Tech 

Remember MapQuest? Go.com? Ask Jeeves? For most of us, these names evoke a bygone era of tech—an era before some people reading this were born. But as Shira Ovide lays out in this post, the past may not be as dead as we think. 

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That’s all for this week!