Johann Van Tonder

@jvt

20 years in ecommerce, now CEO of a CRO agency. Probably doing analysis in R or building stuff with AI. Or walking on the beach. Yeah, probably that.

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If you want to do anything big, get used to people questioning your choices. Delusional conviction Delusional optimism It won't look "normal" to most, and it shouldn't.

Dr. Julie Gurner x.com

Motivation and Inspo

“What works is being different. Don’t try to be liked. Find out how you’re different. Then be that. That’s where the power is. That’s what’s new. That’s what’s wanted.” - @davetrott

Content

A great way to get out of your head and into your world is to do a task you can actually finish.

Jon Acuff • Soundtracks

Motivation and Productivity

goatherders on May 23, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask HN: How do you brand yourself as a freelancer?

Yes, there are tons of resources but I'll try to offer some simple tips.

1. Sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated as to be impossible or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading and building sales... See more

ycombinator.com • Yes, there are tons of resources but I'll try to offer some simple tips.

Inspo

Many founders, out of their fear of things slowing down, are missing the opportunities that [slowing down] affords them.

Amy Buechler, Founder Coach at YC

Startup Advice and Slow Productivity

“A more practical answer is that it’s a file. This right here is a large language model, called Vicuna 7B. It’s a 4.2 gigabyte file on my computer. If you open the file, it’s just numbers. These things are giant binary blobs of numbers…”
Simon Willison, attempting to explain LLM

AI skepticism and

George Mack on how your personal brand is defined not by how similar you are to the tribe, but what eccentricities make you stand out from it:

"Only the irrational behaviour survives - If you study the biographies of the greats or attend the funerals of people you care about — the normal rational behavior is never mentioned. Instead, it’s filled

Inspo

Painter and visual artist Chuck Close on inspiration:

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are... See more

Superhuman

Productivity and

Thinking clearly is a conscious act that writers must force on themselves, as if they were working on any other project that requires logic: … doing an algebra problem.

Good writing doesn’t come naturally, though most people seem to think it does.

On Writing Well, William Zinsser

Writing