🏴 On killers and poets, style, and reinvention. Ten Bullets.

To the obsessed,

Ten Bullets is back!

I took a three week hiatus. Sorry. As a gift, I finally put together all the ‘obsessioncore’ wallpapers I’ve posted in the last year.

Click here for a free Phone Wallpaper Pack (36)- from The World of Obsession. (laptop wallpapers coming soon)

Ten Bullets is back, every Saturday, forever.

In those three weeks- I didn’t sleep much. But I did do a few things:

1- Started daily YouTube videos (for my Obsession Year).

• Subscribe!

• The goal- document my obsession/growth as a writer, runner, and entrepreneur- in what will be the most insane year of my life.

• An extreme constraint like this- is exactly what I needed. Now that I’m about a month in, things get real. I can’t just post a video every day. I have to post a better video every day.

• The Obsession Year (one year of obsession can change your life) works because of iteration, not consistency.

• My three favorite episodes:

  • watch: how to be an artist/athlete/entrepreneur (and why the art needs to come first)

  • watch: how i got my obsession back (after a year of feeling lost)

  • watch: how to become obsessed (my obsession origin story)

2- Hit the peak of my marathon training (for Marathon II - Austin - 2/18/24).

• I’ve become fully obsessed with the sport

• Goal right now is to go from a 3:16:30 (Marathon I - Memphis - 12/3/23) to a <2:53/2:50, at 200lb

• Body/mind are adjusting to 55mi+ weeks. It’s a beautiful addiction.

3- Started a Run Cult in NYC. Check out the announcement here, and a reel here from our second cult gathering.

• If you’re a runner in New York, click here to apply.

• We run Mondays 7AM. Invitations are sent via text weekly.

• Only come if you’re obsessed.

Now, here are your weekly Ten Bullets. Ten ideas to help you build companies, make art, and find your obsession.

1. On artists + entrepreneurs (poets + killers):

“Most good copywriters fall into two categories: Poets and Killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers, as a means to an end. If you are both killer & poet? You get rich.”

— David Ogilvy (via Founders Podcast #310 - Walt Disney and Picasso)

2. On style:

3. On art and algorithms:

“Content is the commodification of creativity. It’s the piecemealing and packaging of art so that it can be delivered at regular intervals to satisfy the needs of the attention economy. In an era where media is forever abundant, content is what people create to show and remind others that they exist.

In my view, art and content are not synonymous. The purpose of art is to express oneself deeply, while the purpose of content is to garner attention quickly. Art follows a pace that is set internally, while content adheres to expectations that are set externally.

This is why frequency matters so much for anything that deems itself as content. Since the purpose of content is to prevent an audience from forgetting its creator, it is driven by fear rather than curiosity. That fear is what drives the pressure to publish something by predetermined deadlines. It’s what makes someone release something that they knew required more thought and energy. It’s what prioritizes ‘more’ over ‘better.’”

— Lawrence Yeo, Make Classics, Not Content

4. On obsession:

The goal is to combine your dream as a kid, your obsession as an adult, with something the world desperately needs. Everything is else is a distraction. The maze of figuring this out is the hard part, and the fun part.

— [Share on Twitter]

5. On most people:

— Bryce.VC, Most People Won’t (via @manasjsaloi)

6. On growing on social media:

Content is a game of exponential ladders.

You grow like crazy, then flatline, then grow, then flatline.

The only way- to find those exponential rollercoasters of growth- is to be willing to reinvent yourself overnight.

You have to give up short term engagement- as you create a new format- for long term growth. Creating new categories of content is the only way to engineer growth like that. And it is really, really hard. Which is why so few do it, and why almost no one does it more than once.

— [Share on Twitter]

7. On tides shifting:

Minimalism -> Maximalism
Optimization -> Misfit
Balance -> Obsession

All the tides are shifting

There are few builders already paying attention- and they have a massive head start

— [Share on Twitter]

If you get this, you get this. If you don’t, you don’t.

8. On revinention:

“Go ahead, switch the style up, and if they hate then let 'em hate and watch the money pile up."

— 50 Cent (via @Austen)

9. On rock bottom:

“This was my first apartment in NYC 30 years ago. It was 18 feet long and 10 feet wide. I shared it with a roommate. I paid roughly $375 a month. I slept in this crawl space for 2 years. The ceiling was 4 feet high. When you START WITH NOTHING. You STOP FOR NOTHING.”

— Jesse Itzler [IG]

10. On gifts:

“What you do at 13 is what you’ll do at 31.”

— Sahil Lavingia

If you do it right.

If you enjoyed this, forward it to an obsessed friend.

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