How to Master Decision-Making and Build a Lasting Legacy | David Elikwu | Glasp Talk #16

Last updated on Aug 30, 2024

This is the sixteenth session of Glasp Talk!

Glasp Talk delves deep into intimate interviews with luminaries from various fields, unraveling their genuine emotions, experiences, and the stories behind them.

Today's guest is David Elikwu, the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping over 30,000 people enhance their productivity, creativity, and decision-making. David is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Jendaya, an Africa-focused luxury fashion e-commerce platform. His career spans from managing marketing campaigns for giants like Amazon to negotiating billion-dollar deals in corporate law. David is a prolific learner and passionate writer, sharing his insights through his newsletter, podcast, and course.

In this interview, David discusses his journey, including his background in consulting, product strategy, and operations. He shares his experiences and motivations for writing, which began at a young age and was further honed during his corporate law career. He talks about his newsletter, The Knowledge, and its evolution from personal interests to a more structured format. He delves into his writing process, the tools he uses, and how he manages his ideas. David also explores the inflection points in his journey that led to significant growth in his audience and the business model he developed to sustain it. Join us as we dive into David Elikwu's fascinating career and valuable insights on productivity, creativity, and the power of writing.

Read the summary:

Transcripts

Glasp: Welcome back to another episode of Glasp Talk and today we are excited to have David Elikwu, the founder of The Knowledge, where he helps over 30,000 people enhance their productivity, creativity, and decision-making. He is also a co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Jenda, an African infrastructure e-commerce platform. David's journey spans from marketing campaigns for giants like Amazon to billion-dollar deals in corporate law. He is a prolific learner, passionate writer, and shares his insights through his newsletter, podcast, and course. With a background in consulting, product strategy, and operations, David's diverse experience makes him a powerhouse of knowledge and inspiration. In 2019, he was recognized as a Yahoo Finance Involve Top 50 Future Leader. Join us as we dig into his fascinating career and valuable insights. So, thank you for joining, David.

David: Thank you for having me and such a great introduction as well. Thank you.

Glasp: Yeah, first of all, I introduced you briefly, but could you introduce yourself to people who don't know you yet?

David: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think you actually did a fantastic job with the introduction, really. If there's any specific questions about my career background, I'm happy to answer. But in terms of right now, like you say, I write The Knowledge. I also teach a course on decision-making called Decision Hacker. So part of that is the online course, which is open to everyone. And then simultaneously, I also occasionally go and work with corporates and with startups and workshop on decision-making and things with them. I facilitate workshops and that kind of stuff.

Glasp: Cool, thank you. And you are writing every day. I know you started writing at five, but could you share why you started writing and why you love writing?

David: Yeah, sure. I think part of it has just been organic in terms of it might have started probably from reading. So I've always enjoyed reading. I remember when I first came to the UK from Nigeria and I remember starting to go to school here. Within my first week or so, I saw the school library. It's funny because now I realize that my school was actually really tiny compared to a lot of other people's schools, so I'm sure a lot of other people had much bigger libraries in their schools. But to me, the library that we had was massive and it was really incredible. From there, I just started reading loads of different books. I read fiction, I don't think there was really any non-fiction, but I read some fantasy books. I first got into Harry Potter, I read The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, a lot of those things. So I think a lot of my writing journey started then. Then in a corporate context, I think, again, it's just a function of sometimes you are just required to write and there's things that you need to write. As you do more of that, you start to improve and you get better at being able to present ideas clearly. Then I realized that, oh, actually, this seems to be a unique skill. This seems to be something that I am actually a lot better at than maybe some other people. I definitely got the sense of that when I was working in corporate law. I was in at a really big law firm for about four and a half to five years. During that time, very often what you get is you might see that sometimes the partners of law firms will write articles in industry magazines and newspapers. A lot of other places, what people might not know is that actually behind the scenes there's usually junior associates that do a lot of the early drafting. The partner will still come and polish things up and add their touches, but usually the starting point is getting some associates to draft stuff, do the research, pull things together. I started doing some of that for some different partners at the firm that I was at and people actually seemed to love my stuff, so much so that even when I would move to different teams, the people that I used to work with would still come and find me in the building and ask me to write more articles for them. So I think it really just started from there, which is like, oh, people are realizing that, hey, this is something that I'm really good at and they specifically want me to write stuff even if their name's going to be on it. Then actually I got a few opportunities where some partners would actually put my name alongside theirs. So I think I had an article that was in the Africa Global Finance Review. I'd written something for a partner or with the partner, but they also put my name on it and that's something that doesn't usually happen. That was a really good opportunity and I think from there then I just kind of built more momentum. Then I think leading from there to then writing The Knowledge again, I think it was a little bit organic. I started it in 2020 and the very first issue, you can go back and look at some of them, you will see that the first ten are completely random. Each one is almost on a completely different topic and it was very much the starting point of, hey, I'm just trying to share the things that I'm learning. I'm very much interested in learning. I like reading. I like gathering information from different places and I wanted somewhere that I could share that with friends and people around me. The audience of that just grew and I think there was probably a few inflection points where I had to figure out, okay, this thing is growing, what is it actually going to be or what should it be? The identity of The Knowledge kind of grew as the platform grew.

Glasp: I see. Could you share that inflection point? You mentioned a few points. Did you have a specific topic that went viral or a specific post? Could you share a bit about that?

David: Yeah, that's a good question actually. I'm trying to think now if there were specific posts. Early on, I think there were a few. I'm not sure if they specifically went viral, but the audience did seem to grow. Then there were a few people that I actually respected beyond the people I didn't necessarily know before. I'm not sure if you know of Thomas Frank, who is a productivity YouTuber. He had read something that I wrote and shared it with his audience. Then also Paul Jarvis, if you've heard of him, he wrote a great book called, I'm trying to remember the name, I think it's like One Person Business or something like that. He's written a great book, but also he's been a startup founder as well. He wrote a newsletter that I read at the time and he also shared something that I'd written with his audience. So suddenly, I think with each of those overnight, suddenly you get a few hundred extra subscribers and then it's like, oh, okay, I need to figure out what I'm going to be writing about. Then kind of the identity of the platform changed slightly from being extremely personal and just being about all of my personal interests to being a tiny bit more corporate. But I think hopefully we've come full circle a bit where, okay, fine, we went a bit more corporate and now I've kind of brought it back to being slightly more personal, where I'm still sharing things that are personally interesting to me and not just being like a faceless corporation type of thing.

Glasp: I see. You mentioned you have a website and I think Substack you're using. Did you try other platforms like Medium and so on? Did you try other platforms or did you stick with Substack?

David: Yeah, that's a great question because I'm no longer on Substack. I left Substack a few years ago actually, but I did start on Substack. I had thought about a few different platforms at the time, but what was very unique about Substack specifically when I started, this is right at the beginning of 2020, and that is actually quite early. I think this is before most people were on Substack. At least as far as I know, I think most people that have Substacks now made them after that time because I think I probably started the account where I'd signed up in 2019, but I hadn't started sending anything until 2020. There was still a little bit of discovery of trying to find the best platform and Substack was just really good because they made the writing part easy. You didn't have to design a website, you didn't have to do anything else, you could just write and that's all I needed to do. So it was really a good starting point for that. But then as we grew, and maybe this is another one of those inflection points, I think we got to a point where, at the time, again because this is quite early in Substack's journey, you couldn't have your own domain. So obviously as we're starting to grow, then I'm realizing, oh, I'm publishing all this stuff, but I have no ownership of it actually. It's a Substack branded website, there's nothing that I own here, there's no SEO because it all actually goes to Substack and it just happens to have my name on it. So it was actually in 2021, I think, probably November 2021, that I decided, okay, I want to have my own website that has my own domain that I have some control over and I can get some SEO and that kind of stuff. So we moved from Substack to Ghost and there was a bit of a weird transition period that has now I think finally ended where moving from Ghost, initially I think we did everything through Ghost. So we had the website that was hosted on Ghost as a CMS, but then, also I sent the emails through Ghost. Substack used to be free and Ghost you have to pay. Again, we had another inflection point when we finally hit 1,000 subscribers. For a few months, we kept hitting 1,000 subscribers, and I kept unsubscribing people because once you hit a thousand, you have to start paying even more, and I didn't want to start paying more. So I would just be unsubscribing people manually every few days or every few weeks. Eventually, I just accepted it and said, okay, we need to grow, so I paid the extra amount and then we grew beyond a thousand. At that time, I also had been signed up for ConvertKit, and I was starting to send some of the emails with ConvertKit, but I was still hosting the website. As we grew, even going from 1,000 subscribers to 2,000 subscribers, again, that's another point where you have to start paying more. But because I'm split across two platforms, you have to start paying more on two platforms. So again, I was like, wow, that's going to be expensive. I eventually moved from hosting on Ghost to being self-hosted. I actually still pay a platform to host it, but it's at least a lot cheaper than hosting it directly with Ghost. Then everything else is on ConvertKit. I would say, funny enough, I feel like I'm going back to your question about inflection points again as I think about it. There was another inflection point probably within the last year or two where we then started growing extremely quickly, probably from the beginning of last year, where we went from about two and a half thousand subscribers to I want to say about 20,000 or 25,000 quite quickly, just within six or seven months. Each month, it kind of doubled. So we went from like 2,300 something like that to like 4,000, then 8,000. As we went through each point, obviously the amount you pay goes up as well, so my costs grew massively. I think we grew faster than I had anticipated. So that was also another inflection point where I had to think about, okay, I wasn't really prepared for this to become a business, but it kind of has to be because now all the costs have gone up quite dramatically because we have a really big audience now. So now I need to figure out, okay, what's a business model that is going to allow me to keep running this sustainably? Maybe we need to get some ads, maybe we need to work with some partners, and so that's when I kind of had to build a business around the platform.

Glasp: I see, interesting. When it was growing so rapidly, how many newsletters were you publishing monthly or weekly at that point?

David: Yes, at that point. This is I think when I decided to make the change to, I was now running three newsletters all under The Knowledge. So I had one weekly, the main one called Revelations, and then I had one fortnightly on Tuesdays called Brainwave, and then one fortnightly on Saturdays called Wayfinder. So Revelations was mostly about creativity and productivity, Brainwave was about business, technology, philosophy, psychology, that kind of stuff, and then the Saturday one was about decision-making, that's Wayfinder. So I had sat down, I think also I had quit my job somewhere around this time, and so it was all quite intentional. I wanted to take this seriously and actually try to grow it. I think in December, so this is probably maybe December 2022, I had taken some time that month to prepare for, from January. So the first of those newsletters, I think actually I sent on New Year's Eve, so the 24th of December, and then starting from January, we had all new content, all new newsletters, loads of other new stuff. So I think that's when we started to see the serious growth because I went back and I rewrote a lot of previous stuff and I wrote a bunch of new stuff, and I intentionally kind of tried to prepare for that growth, but we still grew more than I would have expected anyway.

Glasp: Oh yeah, that's really good. I like the name of the newsletter, The Knowledge. I read a short description, but why did you name it that? Could you tell our audience?

David: Yeah, sure. So funny enough, I realized a little while after starting it that there's also someone else, Shane Parrish, that has a blog called Farnam Street and a podcast called The Knowledge Project. Sometimes people think, oh, is that where I got the inspiration from? It had nothing to do with that. I didn't even know that existed. The inspiration came from, I'm a Londoner, I live in London, and there is a famous, at least if you're here, a famous test that's taken by taxi drivers. So we call them cabbies, and taxi drivers in London have to take a test that's called The Knowledge. It's set up in some books, they're called Blue Books, and so they study these tests and basically they have to memorize I think about 22,000 roads and streets in London. So that's their preparation for this test, so that's called The Knowledge. I think the inspiration was that I wanted this newsletter to be about helping people to navigate the world and to navigate life. So it was about trying to build like a digital map in a way that helps people navigate the world.

Glasp: I see, interesting. Yeah, I know the test, the taxi exam. So yeah, it was shown in Japanese TV or English TV, I forgot, but I remember it. This is out of the topic, but does the test still exist in London? Because people can see some smartphones. But is it needed? Just curious.

David: Yeah, so I think it is. It does still exist, but it is a lot more difficult, especially now that people use Uber and stuff. But if you get into a black cab in London, they should typically, especially if you get into a traditional black cab, they might not use a GPS at all because they should have memorized most of the roads in London. Or at least in like central London. If they're going further out, then they'll probably use a GPS.

Glasp: I see, it's so interesting. Maybe they are protecting taxi drivers or like, you know, it's a tradition. But yeah, I don't know, but it's interesting that the system still exists. Yeah, I love it, and it's great if you get into a cab. It's fun, they know where to go and where it is. So yeah, something.

David: I see.

Glasp: Yeah, you're writing a lot of articles on The Knowledge. Where do your ideas come from?

David: Yeah, so I'd say it's a mix. A lot of it comes from reading, kind of what I alluded to before. I think probably 70% of it comes, oh actually no, more or less. It could be 50%, 50% to 70% comes from reading. And what that means is a lot of it might be reading other people's blogs, it could be reading books, it could be reading things people say on Twitter. But the reason I would say it's not 100% is I think the other 50% to 30% comes from, for me, it's actually just walking. So I just walk around. But for you or for someone else, it could be something else. But I think that it requires this time for intentional thought. And I actually need to spend some time thinking about the ideas. And when I think about them, then I think the way that I write typically, or ideally, it's not really one to one. It's not, oh, I read this idea, so I'm going to write about it. It's usually I have come across two or three ideas and I've been able to connect them. And now there is something that I can write about that's actually different from each of those three, but is connected in a way. And so then I can end up writing something that feels new or that feels interesting. And there's a place that it comes from, it has some lineage, but I get to write something fresh and something that's exciting and interesting to me.

Glasp: Interesting. So yeah, reading, and so while you are working, those ideas are synthesized or connected, then you can think of some good ideas to write and connect them, right?

David: Yeah, exactly. And one thing that I would mention as well is a lot of that, I store a lot of ideas in Notion. Maybe I'll start using Glasp for a lot of those things. So far for a lot of my notes, I would just save them in Notion. And I think, so I was doing a workshop actually recently, and I was teaching some people how I do some of this in Notion. And I think to summarize it, the point is that I very rarely, especially writing three different newsletters or maybe even writing more stuff, even before I started doing that, when I was just writing one, I used to find it so difficult. And I think what unlocked that for me is that I stopped trying to write one newsletter. And because that created a lot of pressure for me to try and sit down and write a few thousand words just on one thing. And so now, anytime I have an idea, I'll just start making some notes and none of them will be finished. But every time I come across something else that maybe is interesting or connected, then I can go back and I can add some more. And then when I need to publish something, so the main one is on Thursdays, I can just go back and look through all of my notes and I can see which idea has the most stuff and then I can just quickly turn that into a finalized idea instead of writing each thing from scratch. And I think doing things that way is really interesting because a great example is right now I'm actually working on a book. And I can tell you more about that if you're interested. But what has been great about the process is I'm probably getting close to halfway through or like a third of the way through. But that first third was so easy because, well, half of it was easy because I've written so much in the past. And actually, there's a lot of notes and things that I've already published, but there's also a lot of stuff I haven't published. But as I start to think about the things that I want to cover, I can just go and grab some parts from different notes. Oh, there's this idea I wrote about here, there's this thing I remember seeing here. But because I brought it all into one place, then it's very easy for me to be able to navigate and use that to create something new.

Glasp: I see. But I assume you have, I don't know, hundreds or thousands of ideas in Notion. And when you search for the old notes, you know, because it's thousands, and when you search, so many ideas hit. And I wonder how to manage those ideas.

David: Yeah, that's exactly the reason I use Notion, actually, because Notion's search usually is quite good. So yeah, I think I checked today, I probably have about 1,400 notes or so, at least the main ones. And then another thing I do, actually, is, so I have, in Notion, I have two databases. One is notes and one is links. So anytime I find something that's interesting, it could be about anything, I will save it in the links database and I'll save the full text. So I have the whole thing saved somewhere there. And then in the other database, I have my own notes, which is a separate thing. But anytime I have an idea, then I can write about it. And then what that means is when I search, I'm seeing both the things I've written about in the past and also things I've just come across. Some of them I haven't actually read, you know, sometimes you come across something, I don't have time to read it right now, but I'll just save it anyway because I look, I scan it, and I see that it's good and I'll save it. So then I can just come across that and it saves me, I don't have to go to Google because I kind of have my own library of stuff that I can go and look at. And if I'm interested in a particular idea, I can just search for that and I can say, oh, actually, I have quite a few notes that link to this thing. And maybe there's one or two pages that I visited before that also talk about this thing, and I can kind of start pulling some ideas together.

Glasp: I see. I think now Notion has Notion AI and also people use ChatGPT and so on in their writing process for some people. Do you use any other AI tools in your writing process or as a brainstorm partner or ideation?

David: Yeah, that's a really great question. So I've been on a bit of a journey with this. I would say I'm a big champion of AI and, you know, I definitely advocate for it and I use it in lots of other areas. Sometimes I've resisted using it in my writing or as a writing aid. I wouldn't really use it to write, but so I don't use Notion AI. I haven't found it to be super useful, at least when I've used it. I've used it in some use cases to do like automatic tagging and things like that, but not necessarily for writing in Notion. Maybe I just need to figure out how best to use it, but I haven't used that. I have used ChatGPT and where I will use that typically or in the past is sometimes I have been struggling with an idea and I just have a bunch of different notes on this idea, but they're not very well organized. And so one thing that is really good for is I can just throw lots of things in there from my notes and I just tell it to, you know, structure it in a well-structured way so that I can see actually everything that's there. And that's useful because then that gives me a starting point for me to be able to write something better. So I would say that's one way I've used it in the past. One thing I've actually just started using it for now in the book that I'm writing, and again, I think this is where I say I wrestled with it for most of the writing process up until probably just two days ago, I hadn't used any AI. I was just writing it myself. Every chapter, I was just writing. And then I think once I got past the point where I already had previous notes that I could rely on and I was having to write new things from scratch, there were some things I had ideas for, but it wasn't super crystallized. And I actually use Claude for that and not ChatGPT. The reason is because Claude, in my experience, the writing quality is a bit better. And what that means is it can write in my voice a little bit better. And so I didn't necessarily use it to write things in my voice. And I usually think the first output of whatever you get from AI is not that great, but it is good as a thought partner. And so instead of me sitting down and spending two hours just thinking really hard about this thing I want to write about, I've already got a few paragraphs of vague notes of this is kind of what I'm thinking about. And I can put that in there and I can say, you know, what do you think the core thesis of this is? And then it can give me like a condensed version of the thing that I'm thinking about. And then we can just go back and forth as I explore my own idea a bit better. So that's mostly the main way that I've used it, just as a thought partner, where in the past I'd have to go and bug my friends and say, hey, do you want to come take a look at this and give me some feedback? And then I make some changes and I have to go send it to them again. So instead of annoying my friends, I just have something that I can just continually send updates to and I'll just copy-paste the new thing that I wrote. And I say, hey, you know, what do you think of this? Or, you know, what should I change? Things like that.

Glasp: Yeah, totally makes sense. And yeah, I do that too. And yeah, I love it that way. And also, you know, when you write something and you're ready to publish something, you know, this is like a common forever question to writers maybe, but, you know, you need to decide at some point, oh, we should publish this. But, you know, people love editing all the time, editing, editing, then something, maybe there might be a better way to rephrase this or whatever. And what's your editing process and how do you decide, oh, this is okay to publish, ready to publish?

David: This is a great question. I wonder if I'm the best person to answer this. I think I'm the best person to answer this for a particular type of person. And the reason I say that is because I wonder if maybe I would have more viral posts if I sat down for longer and spent a lot more time editing stuff and making things longer. But that's not really what I care for. I care about getting the ideas out there. And so very often, there are times, there are posts on my site that I just wrote one time. I was sitting on the train, I wrote it on my phone just because I had the idea and I typed it out in Notion and I take a screenshot and I post it on Twitter and some people like it. And then I just copy the whole thing from Twitter and I just put it on my blog and I publish it. And so then zero editing. So some things are like that. Some other things are a bit more like the process that I shared where it's kind of built up over time. But again, I'm not really coming back and editing. Like as soon as I'm just accumulating the ideas and the thoughts and then I'm cleaning it up, I'm adding some analogies or, you know, stories, things like that. And usually I publish quite quickly. That's typically my approach. Now, what I would say is there's a slight difference between the newsletter and the blog in terms of how I publish. For the newsletter, generally, I really don't care. I mean, I care a lot, but I care enough to just try and write the first draft as good as possible, but then I'm just going to hit publish. I can always just go back and check it and edit it later. And I think maybe that's one way I think differently from some people where they'll spend a really long time publishing it, polishing it. They'll get loads of other people to check it, etc. There's been only a few times that I've got people to check things before I publish it. And that's usually where maybe there's a personal angle or there's something I'm not sure about how it might come across to other people. So I'll ask some friends to check it. But usually I just hit publish and I can always go back and edit it later. That's how I think about it. But that editing is usually for typos, I think. Yeah, sometimes you just hit and you write a great post and it's fantastic. Sometimes you miss. But the other thing I would say, and this is still on the publishing online part, is that at least in my experience, I would prioritize being prolific over being perfect. So what you might find is I will write three posts about the same thing. Not all at the same time, but let's say in the last year or so, I've had three attempts of, oh, this thought has come to my mind. It's really interesting. And I'll just write something about it. And each one is slightly different and they might be coming from different angles. But the very first time I wrote about something, it may not have been that great. But the second or third time I write about that same thing, I think it will be great. And I think the thing about the internet that most people, I think, take for granted is that people underestimate how much rubbish is online. The internet is full of just millions of rubbish articles. So it's okay if I publish something and it sucks and no one wants to read it. Do you know what? No one's going to read it. No one will actually even know that it exists. So if I write something and it's bad, no one will ever see it. If I write something and it's good, then people will see it. So all I have to do is just keep publishing stuff until I write something good enough that lots of people see it. So that's what I would say with the online stuff. With the offline stuff, this is a little bit of a secret thing. It might take a bit long to explain, but the way that I run my newsletter now is that for most of the newsletters, they are at least half pre-written. And so it runs in a sequence and I still write new newsletters every week, but the newsletter, let's say you sign up for my main Thursday newsletter today, the post that you get, like the whole newsletter, half of it will be brand new as of this week. And that's usually like the updates and, oh, here's my latest podcast and here's what's happening here. Here's what's happening there. Those things are new, but the main post I've already written it. And in fact, that main post I wrote that a few years ago. But because it's now a sequence, so if, so this week we're recording this on Friday. Yesterday, the people that were subscribed to my newsletter two or three years ago got a brand new article that I just wrote and published this week. The people that subscribed one week after them got the thing that I just wrote last week. And so that's a sequence that goes all the way back. So if you subscribe right now, you're going to get something that I wrote a while ago. And the aim of that, and this will maybe lead to something we can discuss later, but the aim of that is technically I could die tomorrow and you will still get emails from me for at least the next four years. There will be some parts that, okay, won't have been updated, but at least the main post I know will always be there. But to go back to your question about the editing, the thing that I think I would say with that is that I'm still not lazy about that. So just because it's a, that main article is a sequence in that way, that doesn't mean I never go back and update it. In fact, I do that almost every month, maybe every month or two, I will go back through every single email and I'll update them. So actually the version of that email that you get if you subscribe now is much better than the version of that email that someone got a year ago. And it might actually be completely different. It's still about the same thing, but I'm going to keep coming back and improving it so that hopefully you get the very best version of that thing.

Glasp: That's so smart. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So it's kind of like a different perspective or different point of question, but what is the internal driver for writing? Or at what moments do you find it the most enjoyable or interesting?

David: Yeah, that's a great question. I would probably say, I think it's when I'm having the idea. I think that's the exciting part is I'm having this idea. It's either some things that I've just pulled together or, yeah, I think very, very often it happens while I'm walking. I say that quite a lot, but genuinely that probably is when it's happening. Sometimes I might be listening to a podcast while I'm walking, but otherwise I'm just like trying to wrestle with some ideas. I could be on the train, I could be anywhere, but I'm actively working. So I'm not working, but I'm working and I'm just trying to pull some things together and I'm trying to think, you know, what does this mean and where does this go? And so that's one version of it. Another version of it is sometimes what I like to do is I listen to a lot of podcasts that are about like history or about facts and have lots of weird or interesting facts. And then I try and take those things and I think, how could that apply to a regular person's life? And how can I make that something about productivity or business or technology? Or, you know, like what does that mean if I put that in a different context? So a really good example that is a very recent example, and I don't think I've actually written about it yet, but I read a book, I think it might have even been last year now, called Flatland. You may not have heard of it. It's not like one of these popular books that loads of people recommend. It was written a very long time ago. But most people read that book and they think it's about physics or about science. And the idea of the book is essentially, it's like a story about a world that is two-dimensional and the main character is two-dimensional. And so every, the whole world is like points and lines because you're not seeing the world in three dimensions. So different types of people just are different shapes, but all of those shapes are only two-dimensional. And then one day he has a almost magical experience where suddenly he gets to see the world in three dimensions and realizes how different the world is, etc. So that story was told, or at least how people typically think of it is in terms of like physics and, oh, this is great for being able to understand some physics or some science or things like that. But I read that and I was like, wow, like think about how that applies in a business context. This is a really great way to explain how e-commerce works, for example, as an industry. So typically people think about business and they think about offline business. Most people live in Flatland, right? You think about your local businesses, what businesses exist around you. You have like your local plumber, you have your local hardware shop. How much money could you make? It depends where you live because that is the geography that your business exists within. So if there's not really a market where you are, then it's not viable. You can't make a lot of money. Now the magic of the internet is that it takes you from this two-dimensional world into a three-dimensional space because now you're not constrained to your local geography. You actually can stack the geographies of lots of different places in the world, anywhere where people are interested in the same thing. And so now that's why you can see online people can build these businesses. Like you see some people that have e-commerce businesses that make seven, eight, nine figures and loads of people can do that. And you think, whoa, surely some of them are lying, but they don't have to be because you can use the internet to find in a thousand different places in the world, all the people that like this very strange niche thing. If you were constrained, if you were like in the 2D world where you had to be in a particular geography, this business would not work. It wouldn't be viable. But with the internet, suddenly you can actually reach lots of people. And so you're kind of in a 3D space. So again, that's like a random kind of idea where, hey, I read this book that's about something completely different. But in my mind, I can say, hey, actually I can see how this applies in a different context. Another example is, funnily enough, I think I've mentioned this on my podcast before and I still haven't written about it. But I've mentioned it in some keynotes and stuff that I've done. But I read something a while ago about snails. And I don't know how interesting this will be to you, but so I'm not sure if you know about snails and why snails have like the little snail trails, the little trail of mucus that they leave behind them. So that is actually very metabolically expensive. They use about 60% of their energy just making that little trail behind them. And that's pretty much all they do. And so they make that as they go. And that's actually how they walk or how they move around. They kind of lay that trail and then they can move on it. But the problem is each snail makes its own trail. And so they're all using so much of their energy making their own trails to move around. But they could, each snail could move about 50% faster if they just followed the other snails. So if one snail went and made a trail and the other snail followed behind it, it could move, you know, 50% faster. But they don't. They all do it their own way and everyone spends a lot of time and energy just doing it themselves. There are only two types of snails that make, that follow other snails' trails. And I'll ask you this question. Do you have any idea what those two types of snails have in common?

Glasp: I have no idea.

David: Yeah, okay, no pressure. So one is the African land snail and the other is the rosy wolf snail. And they are both cannibals. So the only types of snails that have realized, I could move so much faster if I just followed other people instead of trying to do everything myself, are the ones that are trying to eat them. And so you think about that in the context of animal life and all of that. But what does that mean for us and how I think that is useful or applicable is the idea that actually very similarly when people build startups or when people are doing creative work, doing writing, it's very easy to think, oh, I should just go off in a cave and just do this by myself and I'm going to do everything from scratch. But everyone could actually go so much faster if we just learned to collaborate a little bit more. And if each person, instead of deciding, oh, I need to build a whole different startup that does the exact same thing, like what if we just collaborated in a way? And, you know, what if I can share some resources with you, you share some resources with me? We all get to move faster as a result. And so, yeah, that's the idea that kind of comes from that.

Glasp: I see. So basically you love learning and you write for yourself, right? Because some writers want to express their ideas and they like to see readers' lives changing, something like that. Some people, I mean, some writers are very glad when they surprise the audience or something like that. But yeah, I can tell that you love learning and just writing for yourself.

David: Yeah, I think that's true. It's quite selfish, but I do think a big part of it is just writing for myself, following what I'm interested in.

Glasp: Yeah, I mean, I think it's the best way to contribute to the world in the long run because people, some people are forcing other people to do things for a public purpose or public something. But if they are, if they are asking something that they really don't want to do, that's a waste of time. So some people need to do it for sure. But eventually, following curiosity or following what they want to do will find out, will make a better impact in the long run. So no matter if the things are not valuable, but in the long term, it's going to be a masterpiece. It's going to be big breakthrough in the future.

David: Yeah, exactly.

Glasp: Being selfish means being altruistic in the future, I think. Yeah, this is my opinion, but yeah.

David: Yeah, and it helps you develop your own ideas a lot further. And the other thing I might mention, this is a bit of a writing tool that I use sometimes, is I do, I mean, actually, I think a lot of people talk about it now, but there's two versions of it. So you might hear some people talk about this idea of copywriting, which is you take some piece of work that someone's already written that is good and you just write it out word for word. And by doing that, you get a better sense of how they write and what went into that. And you can get a feel for the rhythm of how they wrote certain things, how they use short sentences, how they use long sentences. And so you kind of get to embody them a little bit as you write out what they wrote. So that's one thing that I think can be good and a lot of people should try. There's another version of that, which is more what I do, which is particularly with nonfiction, with fiction, I do that a lot. So I have loads of books here and I'll just take some books and that helps me to develop my writing. But with nonfiction, I sometimes will look at people like Paul Graham. Paul Graham writes lots of great essays and I'm very surprised that more people don't do this. I think very often what I see is that Paul Graham will write an essay and lots of people will come online and they will just repost his same essay or they might write something similar. But I think what I don't see enough or what I would love to see more is more people responding to his ideas and not just writing about what he wrote about, but write what you think about what they wrote about. And so I do that quite a lot where I will listen to someone and I would think, do I agree? And I don't have to agree. And if I disagree, then I will write my own thing. And so very often there are things that I've written and it's actually just because I heard someone say something and I disagree. And I'm just going to write my own post. I'm not going to necessarily say, hey, this is me being disagreeing with this other person, but I think you can just do that. And so going back to, I'll say two things, going back to the Paul Graham example, the way that I like to do that is it's a combination of the copywriting thing and also what I've just said. And I will just go through something that he's written sentence by sentence and I will try and write it in an even simpler way. So I think that's already useful by itself. It's very hard to do that with Paul because he writes very simply and that's why it's a bit of a challenge. But the other part of it is then I am kind of being inquisitive about each sentence. So every time he writes something, I look at that sentence and I say, is that true? Is it really true? Because sometimes he will make a claim and he's connecting, oh, you know, he's set up that claim and he's made a claim. Like, what if he's wrong? Or what if I think differently? And I haven't read the rest of the post and I think that's important. But I just read that thing and I respond to it and then I keep reading and see if, did he deal with my response? Did he deal with this exception that I think I found? And if he hasn't, then I know this is something else I can go write about because he didn't cover that in his piece. And I know that I came to that idea by myself. And so I would just go through it and it's almost like having a conversation. And you know, they say something, I think, what does that mean for me? And so there's a few other ways I do that. Sometimes I do it when I'm listening to a podcast. So sometimes they will ask the guest a question. And from what they ask, I would just start thinking about how I would answer that. Or if the guest starts speaking, as soon as they mention an idea, I don't wait for them to finish explaining it. I will just pause it and I will just write what I think about that idea. And very often, and this has happened quite a few times, the thing I would think when I hear someone say a phrase is actually different from what they're about to say. But it's now led me to come up with something different, which is cool. And so I get to have my own original idea, even though it kind of links back to an idea that they inspired, but it wasn't actually what they were going to say. And then the blog version of that that I also do is I find some people that write similar headings. Like I write my headings a particular way. I would say it's a little bit similar to Seth Godin. I've seen writes his headings the same way. Morgan Housel, I think, writes his headings the same way. They're not like SEO titles. They're just titles that are whatever you want them to be. And they're usually quite short. So that's why I say they're similar. But what that means is you can just look at the title. Just go to, I think Morgan Housel's essays are all on Collaborative Fund.co. I think that's the website. Don't click on any of them. Just look at the title and write whatever that inspires you to write. Just look at the title and write your own post based on that core idea. And usually it will take you in a completely different direction. But then you at least get your own bit of inspiration. And then for fun, you can come back and see, oh, what did they have to say about that idea? And I think that way you can have a bit of dialogue with some other people where it's still collaborative and you still learn from other people. But then at the same time, you still get to have your own original ideas.

Glasp: I see. I think it's a really interesting way to interact with content and also practice your thinking and thought process. And then I think, you know, you do active reading or critical reading and also, you know, guess what they write, you know, something like, what would you write, you know, with that title, you know, how would you answer that certain point or something? Yeah, that's a really interesting approach. Have you been doing this, I mean, since you were a kid or did you start doing this practice or, you know, thinking like at some point and how did you acquire this skill?

David: Yeah, that's a great question. I think more of it has come recently, probably in the last few years, especially. I think it actually just comes with volume. So the more you write, the more you kind of have to develop your writing. And so I think the more that I've written, like in the last few years, I've written more than I've written probably in the last however many years combined, because I'm not sure how many posts I've written this year, but I think last year or the year before, I probably wrote 200 and something posts. So I would just write lots of stuff. And that's the funny thing. Like I was mentioning when I was working on this book, I don't even remember where some of these things are. I just remember I've written something about this before. Then I have to go figure out where did I put that thing? Is it in my Notion? I don't know. Is it in a notebook? Maybe it's there. Is it in a post? Maybe it's there. Is it in a newsletter? So I have to go search in ConvertKit and try and figure out if that's where it is, that I've written something. But I think just writing that amount of volume does push you a bit in that direction. And then I think especially now when loads of people are trying to write, I would say, I think especially now that my platform is growing, I don't know if it's about the platform, but it's more that I get to interact with a lot of other interesting people whose ideas I admire. And in order to push myself and to push the way that I think about ideas, I have to find new ways of processing things. Because otherwise, I think it can be very easy to fall into the trap of just copying. And a lot of people, they don't know they're copying, but they are. Just because they're mostly consuming ideas. By the time you've consumed an idea five times, you will write about it and think it's a new idea. But actually, it's coming from all these different places. So that's why a lot of the things I was mentioning are actually things where I will start consuming, but then I'll stop. And I'll only consume enough that just inspires me to think of something else. And then I have the freedom to go off and think about my own thing. And I will still come back and listen. But then I can make sure that I preserve some of the originality of the thought. And that thought might not be the final thought. It might still later be combined with a few different things. But I think that's just a way to preserve being an original thinker. Maybe you don't have to start there. Maybe for some people, it's better to start just by copying or not copying exactly, but emulating someone that you appreciate. And looking at what someone's written and trying to write your own version of that thing. I think that's okay. But then the more you write, you want to be able to have your own original ideas and think of things in original ways. One last thing I'll say, I don't want to keep rambling with my responses, but I was thinking about it earlier today. And there's someone I had in mind in particular when I was saying this. I won't mention their name here, but I will just mention the general trap I think people fall into, especially with things like mental models. And it applies to mental models, it applies to other types of things. There are a lot of things which are basically just what I would call abstractions. These are tools or things that you can use to navigate the world, or a name that represents a body of thought. So for example, you might say confirmation bias. That's an abstraction. That's not really, like, it's a phrase that represents an idea. The problem is most people only navigate the world through abstractions. So they only navigate using the phrase confirmation bias, and they are navigating based on these different phrases instead of navigating with the underlying idea. And I think what you really want to develop and be able to do is to kind of go a layer below the abstraction. So the core idea. And then you will realize that actually a lot of these different things that seem disconnected, maybe they are connected. And then you can rebuild your own abstraction somewhere else or in a slightly different way. But that comes from understanding and interacting with the core idea. So every time you come across something that you find interesting, I think it's just developing this sense of asking deeper questions and trying to understand, okay, this person said something. I respect that person. That doesn't mean it's true. Like, what's the underlying truth here? What does that actually mean? Under what conditions would this be true? Under what conditions would it not be true? And so you just try and investigate the idea by itself. And when you get to the core of it, then you have like a core nugget of, oh, like, this is the fundamental truth. In this context, this is how it works. But actually, in this context, it would probably work differently. And then that opens up your mind to think about things in different ways.

Glasp: I see. Yeah, really interesting. And I don't know if this is related to that part, but, you know, I remember I read the research paper or someone's blog that, you know, the more you read, the less you share. And the less you read and the more you share. The more you share meaning people sharing articles on Twitter, X, or somewhere. But, you know, those people usually, you know, according to their research, you know, they don't read the full context. But, you know, people who read the whole content, you know, they don't share because they understand in themselves. You know, I somehow, yeah, that idea came back to me.

David: Yeah, I agree. And also something I mention in the course that I teach called Decision Hacker is this idea that there are levels of abstractions. And I think that's another key point. So it's that there's not just one level of abstraction. So for example, you mentioned a study, and I'm not referring to you here, but this is a pattern that I see very often. So the core truth is not the study. The core truth is the data of the research. Now, what happens is, so imagine that's like layer one is you have data, right? A research study abstracts that data into a representation that is shareable. But you already lose a bit of the fidelity. You lose some of the nuance of the original data just because sometimes different researchers, they might have a bit of bias. They already have something that they know they want to write, and so they interpret the data in a particular way. So there's one layer of someone’s interpretation that you have to go through. The problem is, and that's just the research study layer. Most people don't even read the study. You go up one layer from there, and what happens is someone's writing a book, and they go and collect lots of different studies, and they put them in their book. Or actually, no, in between that, what you will probably have is a research paper, or you have like a scientific publication. And in that publication, what are they doing? They're going and gathering various studies, but those publications can be biased. Sometimes there are studies they want to publish, there are studies they don't want to publish. Those studies still exist, they still got done, they're still the data, but they have a, you know, their own lens of viewing the world. And so that now becomes the second layer of abstracting the original data. Then someone writes a book, and they write this book, and they reference the publication, which, you know, is based on the original study, which is based on the data. So that's now like a third layer of abstraction. And then someone reads the book and mentions it on a podcast. And so then what you have is like someone hears someone mention something on a podcast, and that podcaster read it in a book, and that book was based on the study. So you're now like six or seven layers separated from the original truth. And if you only deal on that layer, then you can only appreciate how far away you might be from the actual truth. Because at some point in that chain, you know, a lot of detail might have been lost. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a really good example of this. The Dunning-Kruger effect doesn't mean what most people think it means, but it's kind of ironic that because it doesn't mean what people think it means, it's actually become the misrepresentation, if that makes sense. Like, the definition of it that exists now does represent something that exists. But what it doesn't represent is what is in the original study. It's actually something separate. Like, it's no longer describing what was in the study, but it is now good at describing something else. And so that's just the kind of thing that exists in the world. So that's something I would encourage a lot of people to do, is just try and go back. So going to what you were saying, like, try and read. If someone says something that you find interesting, go and try and figure out what did they read to think of that thing. I'll give you one more example. And I know I'm rambling a little bit here. But there's a really great phrase that James Clear uses in Atomic Habits. And I'm forgetting what the phrase is, but there's a phrase that he used in that book. And I've heard other people talk about that phrase, or maybe they have their own version of that phrase. And it's very funny realizing now, in retrospect, that, okay, James Clear got that idea from reading someone else's book. And that person's book came from this old Roman guy. So it's like, oh, there's a lineage of this idea. And most people, the version of it that they connect to, I know where that came from. But I also know that that wasn't the original idea. The original idea is actually slightly different. But, you know, along the line, it kind of became this other thing. And that is the thing most people reference. And so they take away this idea. But actually, if you kind of trace back and you think, okay, where does that person get their ideas from? What does that person read? Then maybe it can lead you to thinking about something else that you might not have realized or you might not have thought of if you're only starting at that top layer.

Glasp: Yeah. And also, another famous quote, you know, stay hungry, stay foolish. You know, people quote Steve Jobs for that quote. But, you know, it came, actually originally came from someone else. But people say, oh, it's said by Steve Jobs. And yeah, similar to that. Yeah, I see.

David: Yeah, exactly. That's a perfect example. I think another one that I think of often is when people talk about like alpha males and this idea of, oh, this person's the alpha. Like, okay, that idea came from a guy that was, I think he was writing about wolves. And it doesn't even mean what people think it means. And it also has nothing to do with humans. Like that idea has never been applied to human beings ever. So it's not even applicable. But then on top of that, it also doesn't mean what people think it means, even when it is being applied to wolves. So it's just funny how, you know, someone writes a phrase about an idea and it kind of takes on a life and becomes something else. And people don't really appreciate like what that thing originally was. And there's loads of examples like this. I'm trying to think of any that come to mind. The Bechdel test. Have you heard of that?

Glasp: No.

David: Okay, so sometimes people reference something called the Bechdel test and they mention it in terms of filmmaking. So you will see a film and if there are not, and the Bechdel test is essentially whether or not there are, I think there's like three criteria. It's like you have more than one woman and those two women interact with each other. And the interaction that they have is not about another man. So it's like a three step test to figure out, okay, is this like a sexist film or something that I'm watching? But the joke is that the Bechdel test is named after this woman. That was her surname, Alison Bechdel. She was like a cartoonist. And it actually just comes from like this old lesbian comic thing. But she just wrote it as a joke in her little cartoon strip. And now it's something that people talk about. They don't even know whose name they're referencing. Like people just say, oh, this is the test. But they don't realize like where that came from. It was someone actually just making a joke a really long time ago. And okay, maybe it's useful in a way now, but it's, yeah, again, one of these things that people don't realize actually comes from something else.

Glasp: I see. Interesting. The same time, you know, yeah, really interesting conversation. And at the same time, you mentioned, you know, there are many layers, you know, people's interpretation and information we are consuming. And at the same time, as you mentioned, you know, sometimes we misunderstand concepts. But at the same time, that is kind of our creativity, right? And some people misunderstand the concept. That's why they came up with something interesting, new ideas because of, you know, thanks to the creativity. And yeah, there are some pros and cons. And yeah, that's, yeah.

David: Yeah, that's interesting.

Glasp: Another topic, I think. Yeah.

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another point. So sometimes it is, you know, that misconception can lead to you thinking of something new. I would say also sometimes intentionally, kind of like what I was describing before, you can just think about how something might apply differently. I would say I was just thinking now about another class of thing, slightly similar, but slightly different, where this type of thing comes up. And you can tell me if you're no longer finding this interesting, because I'm now going off on a different tangent. But there are also a class of things that exist or are true, but only at one point in time. And what is interesting about that is that very often you are born at one point in time and you look at the world and everything there is to understand about the world. And it's very easy to assume that how things are is how they always were. And this is like, one, oh, there's a reason why things are like this now. And two, this is the fact. Like how the world looks to me now is factual. But for example, you might know that Santa Claus doesn't wear green, except he used to wear green. Like we think when we think of Santa Claus, Santa Claus wears red. Santa Claus did not always wear red. Santa Claus used to wear green and that changed over time. Another example that was quite funny that I came across, because I was reading an old book, and I think this is where it gave me the idea. So this was an old book. It might have been How to Win Friends and Influence People or something like that. One of those types of books. But in the book, they make a statement of fact that they believe to be true about the world. And they said something like, oh, you know, everyone knows that when people propose, no one gets down on one knee anymore like our parents used to do, because no, you know, no one does that. And it's funny because that's exactly what people do now. But at that point in time, the thing that was true is that people no longer did that because they actually used to do that, you know, two generations ago. And so again, it's one of these funny things that if you were just born at this point in time, you would assume that, oh, this is how people do things, or this is how they always did things. But actually the thing that was true to someone else that was born at a different point in time is almost the complete opposite. Like they're talking about the same thing, right? You talking about the same Santa Claus. The reason I mentioned the green Santa Claus thing is again, because I was reading, it was an old Sherlock Holmes book. And you know, Sherlock's just talking and he sees Santa Claus, Santa Claus is wearing green. And I'm thinking, hold on, Santa Claus doesn't wear green, Santa Claus wears red. But again, like it's only because I live in a different point in time. And I think there's a lot of things like that are like that. Sometimes that applies to science, where there are some points in time where there's something we believe to be true based on the current science, and that science is later proven wrong. But if everyone still keeps going to read that same book, then nobody actually realizes that the new science is very different. And so again, it's another one of these interesting things where sometimes our ideas about the world, if we don't go and try to investigate things properly, we can easily be misled very unintentionally just because of the way that the world changes and the way the information changes.

Glasp: Yeah, interesting topic and conversation. Thanks.

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Glasp: Anyway, so, you know, you already shared a little bit, but our audience is aspiring writers and learners and so on. Do you have some advice for them? And this is the second last question, by the way. So, general advice for writing or general advice for learning?

David: Yeah, okay. General advice for learning, I would say very similar to what I said before is just develop a habit of questioning things. And don't question things, you know, just to be obnoxious, but question things so that you can learn. And I think that's the best way to really learn things. And I think truly, and I think that is also then becomes a habit for writing, you know, just thinking about the things that you don't know or things you don't know well enough. So for example, a few months ago, I was on a holiday with some family in Florida and we were going on this little like a boat ride where they have alligators. And I was just looking down at the water and I just thought, I probably don't know enough about fluid dynamics. And you know, when you look at, okay, this lily pad that's floating on the water, okay, there's a certain number of things I understand about the difference between why there's enough surface tension that keeps some things above the water, but there are some things that can kind of come up through the water. There are some things that, you know, you can drop into the water and they sink, you know, there's loads of different properties of water. And just being able to look at that and instead of just thinking, oh, that looks pretty, but being able to think, hmm, how much do I really know about how that works? And what things do I know and what things don't I know? And that might prompt me to go and think and go to a research and go and figure out, like, what do I not fully understand here? And just developing that kind of internal stillness, I think, is probably a really great tool, both for learning and for writing. Another example I can think of was, this was sometime last year, again, I was just going off for a walk and I was walking and I think at one point I just noticed something very slight and I didn't know what it was. And I kind of took a step back and retraced my steps a little bit. And it looked like there was smoke coming out of some bushes. And my first thought was, you know, maybe did someone have a cigarette and they threw it into the bush? But what I realized just by kind of standing there studying it was that the sun was out, but it was raining earlier. And what that meant is that behind this row of bushes was a wooden fence. So what was actually happening is that the sun was now shining bright enough that water vapor was evaporating from the fence and it kind of created like a little artifact in the air. And okay, that sounds like a random silly thing, but even just from being able to see that it gave me an idea of something I could write about, which is this idea that there are some things that are only possible to see if you take the slowest possible mode of transport. Because I was walking, I was actually on my way to the gym and I could have taken the train and it would have been 10 minutes and I could have been at my destination. But I decided to walk. The walk is actually a lot longer. It takes 40 minutes. But because I walked, I got to see this thing. And so it gave me this idea that actually, you know, the speed at which you travel through the world changes the way that you see the world. And again, it's just something to think about. So I think if you can develop that kind of inquisitiveness, it allows you to see things that you otherwise might not have seen. So that's an idea for learning, I would say. And for writing, I think that also applies to writing. The other thing I would say with writing is similar to some of the things I've shared before. Don't be hesitant just to share things. Things happen to the world. The truth is, you know, if you have an idea of writing a newsletter, for example, 98% of every email sent is spam. Okay, it doesn't even go into people's inboxes. Most emails are spam. That's like a real statistic that most emails are spam. On YouTube, I think it's something like 9% of all, oh, sorry, it's the opposite. So 91% of everyone on YouTube, they don't even have an account. They are just on YouTube. Like they don't even have a channel. Okay, let alone making videos. Only 1% of people actually make videos. So the vast majority, if you're worried, oh my gosh, is it too late to start a YouTube channel or whatever? Like most people, they don't even have an account to post videos on. So don't worry about it, right? If you make a video and it's really bad, no one is ever going to see it. It would just be lost forever. If you write a blog post and it's really not good, no one's ever going to see it. So there's nothing to worry about. You might as well just write it. And in fact, you write it and then think about it for a few more months while you go off and do other things and then have another crack at it. Write it again and write about a similar thing. And eventually you will write something that is great and that people love and that people will share. So yeah, those are my thoughts.

Glasp: Yeah, I love it. And yeah, that's really encouraging to overcome the fear of publishing or something. Yeah, thanks. And as Glasp is a platform where people share what they are reading, learning, and as a digital legacy, do you have some thoughts, you know, what kind of, we want to ask, you know, what kind of legacy or impact do you want to leave behind for the future generations, if you have any?

David: Okay. Yeah, this is a great question and I actually do have one. And it might sound slightly egotistical for me to have one, but I do. And it links to something I told you guys before. Now, I haven't actually said this anywhere publicly before, but I recently mentioned it. I was doing a workshop privately with a group of people and I mentioned it for the first time. So I will tell you as an exclusive. So I mentioned before that the way that I write my newsletter is that a lot of them, I am always writing new stuff, but I structure it in a way that at least the main post is sequenced so that when you start, you start with like a post that I wrote a long time ago. And so that there will always be stuff for you to read. So right now, if you sign up for my newsletter today and I die tomorrow, you will still be getting emails from me for at least the next four years. However, I'm not going to stop writing my newsletter today. I'm still going to be writing my newsletter every week for at least hopefully another 40 years. So I don't know if either of you are into sci-fi or have ever read the book Foundation by Isaac Asimov or the trilogy Foundation. Okay, so you might be familiar with the idea of like a Seldon crisis. Okay, so this was actually one of the ideas I had in the back of my mind when I was starting my newsletter and it took a little while for some of these things to come into fruition. But the idea is, so explaining what Seldon crises are in the book Foundation, there was a mathematician called Harry Seldon and he was, he developed a unique type of mathematics. I think it was called psychohistory where he was able to predict things that would happen very far off into the future. And so what he did was he made all these predictions and kind of set things into motion. So what happened is years and years after he had already died, sometimes at people's lives, there would come a point where they were in a particular crisis and just almost as if by magic, a projection would appear from Harry Seldon that he'd already prepared years before that could actually help them out of a tough situation. And so he'd already taken the time to prepare all this stuff in advance because he predicted that one day people are going to need this bit of information. And just at the right time, they get that information and it helps them to navigate something in their lives. And so that's kind of the idea that I had for The Knowledge at the same time, which is, and it might sound, you know, a little bit lofty and ambitious, but I just love the idea that, hey, if I can dedicate my life to doing this kind of work, then it would be incredible if 50, 100 years, okay, maybe not 100 years, but years and years after I have gone, that someone could subscribe to my newsletter as long as someone continues to pay the hosting fees. But someone could subscribe to my newsletter and they could actually go their entire lives and they will get my, they will get my newsletter longer than even I'm alive. But not just that, but at different points in their life, they might come into some kind of crisis or some kind of difficult situation that they need to be able to navigate. And at just the right time, they might receive something that I've written a long time ago now that can help them to successfully navigate this kind of situation. So I think that is sounds very ambitious, but that's the aim. And I think it's very easily achievable. All I have to do is keep writing. I'm on a pretty good track. If I write a few posts a week for the next few decades, then I think it's easily possible that I could, I could pass away and actually, you know, someone could subscribe to my newsletter the next day. And for the rest of their lives, they could be getting emails from me, even when I'm not here. And the point is not about them getting emails from me, but the point is, if I can spend enough time thinking about deep things, lasting things, you know, real fundamental truths about the world and how to navigate, then the world and how to navigate it, then there will always be lessons or things, things that they might find useful from what I've written. Because I'm not just writing about the Trump election or, you know, someone's presidency or, you know, things that are about right now, but I'm trying to write about the way that we learn and the way that we interact with each other and things that are hopefully a bit more lasting. So yeah, that's the aim or the ambition.

Glasp: Yeah, I dearly love it. Yeah. Content you so and so yeah, over time. Yeah, that's really, impressive. And yeah, thank you so much for joining today. And we really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much.

David: No problem. Thank you for having me.

Glasp: Thank you so much.

Read the summary:

Transcripts

Follow David Elikwu on social:

Ready to highlight and find good content?