digital sanctum: issue # 14

A mind is a terrible thing to waste

Welcome to my newsletter. Where 100,000s of people benefit from high-quality content, I am just kidding. I'm waiting to break a 100 subscribed here. starting one literally after sitting on the bench for 25 years!

It's never too late to start. I hope you enjoy the newsletter.

Love & Laughter.

Faisal

Quote: Schadenfreude will leave you with nothing.
The Twitter Thread Mania.
The 40s, 50s, and 60s.
Documentary: The Third Industrial Revolution.
Notion: The game-changer in knowledge management.
Consistency & Time: How they beat everyone
Someone to Follow?

Quote

There is this quote in my native language Urdu, let me write the quote, and then I will translate it (as best as I can):

Khali haath rah jate hain wo log, jo dusron ki khushiyan cheen lete hai

Loosely translated, it means that people who snatch other people's happiness are left empty-handed.

You will be left with nothing if you derive pleasure from other people's misfortune.

PS: I don't know the author. If you do, please let me know.

Twitter Thread Mania

It has been said many times that the world's university is now Twitter. Overstated as that may be, it does hold a lot of merits. Why? Let me explain.

If you want to read War & Peace, set a year aside. It is a thick, challenging, and long (over 1,200 pages) work of classical literature to read. It is mandatory reading in so many colleges. What is the easy way out? Well, if you're in college, the answer is Cliff Notes. For those who do not know, Cliff Notes are the abridged version of the original. It condenses the work down to a few dozen pages.

With the way social media is, our attention span is meager. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok have rewired our brains to think is short learning faps. Finding bite-sized pieces of information is now a great way to learn. For example, someone could do a few tweets letting others know of a great book they read. You would be inclined to check it out. The same goes for a movie or a song. If you learn or like something from the snippet, you read the book, watch the film, or listen to the music.

People on the various social media platforms do the same by providing rich learning experiences. They do this in the form of Twitter Threads.

Twitter threads provide a great learning experience. If you like something, just like you did with the book, film, or music tweet, you go check it out.

With millions of tweets being sent out every day, it is almost impossible for someone to be on top of the best Twitter threads. Luckily, you can simply follow some of the leading thought leaders, influencers, and subject matter experts in the fields you are interested in and sit and wait. Usually, they will put out some great threads that are the equivalent of handing out gold nuggets of knowledge.

Alternatively, you can also learn how Twitter's advanced search works. Here is a great thread on the subject and it will also help you experience what a Twitter thread is.

The most powerful feature that Twitter has:

Advanced search

Until recently I hadn't even heard of it, but now I use it all the time.

Here are 6 twitter advanced search features that will revolutionise the way you search for what to read: 🧵👇
— Tessa Davis (@TessaRDavis) April 8, 2022

Be on the lookout for specialists who scour the Twitterverse for you and bring you the best threads. One such person I follow is Blake Burge. He has a newsletter called While You Were Away where he shares some great Twitter threads.

As my daughter says ngl (for boomers and Gen X, it stands for not gonna lie). I have learned more from Twitter threads than I have from other sources. Almost didn't feel like sharing this hidden secret. Go check it out. You are going to be amazed at what you will run into.

Discover a meaningful, useful, website, every single day.

The 40s, 50s, and 60s.

I am not talking about the era, but rather people in the age ranges of the 40s to 60s. Most people at this age, do not have enough savings to last them through the later years. Most of them also (wrongly) think, that it is too late to save up for retirement, or make an ancillary income.

Almost all the make an income for yourself (sans real-estate) that I see online, are targeting the younger population. No one is actively targeting those in the 40s, 50s, and 60s years of age market segment on setting up their own gig/freelancing business.

So much potential for freelancing, starting a small business, making money from a part-time hobby, or learning a new (easy) skill they always wanted to learn.

Well, the way I look at it, the 40s/50s/60s are a much richer environment. The 20s/30s are low-hanging fruit so to speak, but low-ticket items. The 40s-to-60s group segment is mature, have the money, and is looking for non-bullsh*t methods. Seasoned, hence they require a different genre of products.

Here are five pragmatic tips for marketing to the 40s-thru-60s:

They have the money to invest in themselves. They have the money for the course or whatever it is you are selling to them. Just don't be selling snake oil. They are not fools. They've been through an economic up/down cycle or two. So they are very selective about where they invest to learn.
They are not interested in get-rich-quick schemes. They understand what it means to work the hard way. The old-fashioned way. Meaningless 12 pages long landing pages are not for them. Granted some are gullible, but most are not.
Whatever you are selling to them, it has to make sense to them, i.e. should resonate with their age, capabilities, learning time, family life, ability to deliver results, and actually be something from which they can derive an income.
Prerequisites have to be low. If you are going to have them learn a programming language or two, have $3,000 worth of equipment prior to starting out, or have taken a series of prior courses before, this will not work. It has to be a genuinely smooth process for them to change their lives.
Offer something for free. Like genuinely for free. I'm not talking about a PDF or a slide or a 10-minute course. Offer them tools to see what they can build and get the spark inside of them ignited.

"GDP is slowing... all over the world... everywhere..."

There are movies you watch again and again. Why? Because there is an emotional connection with them. They bring out so many good things in you when you watch them.

For me, it is this documentary. If it were up to me, I'd be shouting from the rooftops asking people to watch it again and again. So many lessons.

Whatever is happening in the world today, this talk by Jeremy Rifkin needs to be heard again and again. So many answers. So many directions. So much hope.

Notion: The game-changing app for knowledge management.

It has been a few months since I started using Notion. I cannot tell you how cool of a product it is to manage all that is in your head.

I wrote an earlier blog post on how Notion can change your life. So much more has come out of Notion that it is worth looking into. Web hosts for notion have propped up, and Notion itself has acquired companies like automate and cron. It is super easy to get started in Notion and you will be happy to see your life getting organized. There is a phenomenon called Second Brain that is also taking over the interwebs and is tightly linked with Notion. I will do a very detailed newsletter on Notion and why I think you should opt for it.

Consistency & Time: How they beat everyone.

Humanity is really good at figuring things out. What works and what does not work. Give it time, and through trial and error, sure enough, we will document, that (A) works and (B) does not work.

A little before the start of the pandemic, I had been thinking of expanding out to other business areas. I started studying all the great creators on the interwebs. Folks whose methods or line of business is what I want to jump in. After nearly two years of reading through 10,000s of tweets and 10,000s of lines of newsletters and posts, one this super evident. To be successful in this game, two traits were common amongst all of the creators:

Consistency - show up every, single, day! No exemptions and put in the hard work.
Time (or Longevity) - You cannot be beaten in the long game. You stay consistent for a long time, and the probability of success is very high. You cannot short-circuit time. This means, there is no amount of money you can spend to speed time up to be equivalent to someone else who has put years of effort into the game.

Whatever you are going to do, be consistent and go in for the long game. You are bound to win.

Someone to follow?

In every newsletter, I will be recommending someone I think you should follow.

This time around, I think you need to follow Justin Welsh (Twitter / Website).

His newsletter is gold, and he genuinely shares some amazing content. Absolutely a must-follow.

Get Better Outcomes

If you haven't heard, Faizan Siddiqi and I host a weekly Twitterspaces that is specifically aimed at Pakistan to enable people to change their lives and build up a sustainable income, where we try to enable folks to learn the E.I.D. Method (EID = Earn In Dollars).

You can get the Twitterspaces link here and also from our Website: https://getbetteroutcomes.xyz

Potpourri

Till next time.

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