Founder coaching, silence & saying yes to a single moment

#02—what's alive this week

One thing I’m working on

I published my executive coaching page. This year, I want to work with more founders. I've been there and I know the exhilaration and the excitement. Building something new is deeply rewarding. But it’s also intense: burnout is rife, boundaries are porous and overwork is the norm. To this end, I made this page explaining the why and how of coaching for founders and execs. Get in contact if you’re curious.

One Substack to follow

My friend and secret Daoist master Steve is writing again at

steelweaver

. A previous contributor to Dark Mountain, this time he’s in Bali and making some noise about silence:

When we are forced, or force ourselves, to slow down, we do not merely become less agitated; we do not simply think the same thoughts, but slower. Instead, we discover that there is an opposition between hypercognition and feeling. Slowing down our thoughts increases the emotional affect we can experience across them; increases the ingress of the body and the heart into our ken; eventually allows us to begin to perceive the unstitched material between and around and behind the words we habitually think in.

One song on repeat

American Coffee by Jenny Hval. First heard in a hot yoga class. Having yoga teachers with great music tastes helps a lot.

One product that makes me happier

I recently paid for Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail. Superhuman was the new hotness for a while, but it’s way overpriced for me and I don’t want to be Superman; I just want to tend to email quickly and without distraction. Mimestream has great keyboard shortcuts, quick search, the ability to create filters and it’s very fast. The Inbox Zero confetti burst is a delightful piece of UX. Using a macOS app has the benefit of not having to open a browser each time you need to do email. Not having to face that endless row of tabs. Combine an email client with a decent read-it-later app, and you should be able to quit your browser daily. I now do this regularly and it brings me great joy.

One quote I was surprised to find attributed to Nietzsche

Suppose that we said yes to a single moment, then we have not only said yes to ourselves, but to the whole of existence. For nothing stands alone, either in ourselves or in things; and if our soul did but once vibrate and resound with a chord of happiness, then all of eternity was necessary to bring forth this one occurrence—and in this single moment when we said yes, all of eternity was embraced, redeemed, justified and affirmed.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power: Selections from the Notebooks of the 1880s (found via Wikipedia)

As always, I’ve updated my Recommended page.

Until next week,
—Dan