Each week I’ll have a curated list of links from the latest tech to just interesting reads or videos, as well as updates on my own entrepreneurial endeavors. Thanks for joining on this journey!

Topics for this week:

• A Week of Recovery

• Webflow SEO

• Noah Kagan and Tim Ferriss

• Pain Management

• Imaginary Time

A Week of Recovery

A less dense update from me this week. Last week I had my wisdom teeth removed, and at 35 years old, it has been an adventure. The procedure was smooth and I was recovering nicely, but the pain slowly increased as time went on, which seems to be a result of over-reacting nerves trying to resettle, so this week has mostly been pain management and resting. But that didn’t slow me down from consuming too many podcasts and videos. In terms of my own work I did not get much accomplished, so I’ll just be covering what I consumed this week instead, some work related and some not. Enjoy!

Webflow SEO

SEO is something I understand in concept, but don’t have much practice in executing. I’ve travelled down the rabbit hole for a short amount of time and came up with what seem to be two solidly recommended Search Engine Optimization (SEO) resources to study up on. I’ll link them below.

One convenient tool I discovered a while ago when I first was researching Webflow was something called Semflow, a plugin for Webflow to optimize SEO. I haven’t sign up for it yet, so I can’t personally recommend it, but it seems like a convenient tool, and at $15 a month it’s not a huge commitment, so I’m looking forward to trying it out soon. SEO is a big part of getting your website found organically on the internet. Naturally it’s something I’ll want to offer as a feature of building Webflow sites for clients, and Semflow seems like a great way to lay a quick foundation. And ideally, by the end of the year I’ll have a more practical grasp of “how to SEO”.

Noah Kagan and Tim Ferriss

I have to admit, the world is smaller than it seems, or I’m too deep in the podcast world, because the connections never cease. I’ve watched a handful of Noah Kagan videos on YouTube, he has a great series where he walks around wealthy neighborhoods knocking on doors and asking people how they made money, and enjoyed his content here there. Then I saw Tim Ferriss was hosting a podcast with Noah. Come to find out they’ve known each other for more than a decade. Someday I’m going to draw a map of the podcast and YouTube network because it’s a fascinating ecosystem.

Noah and Tim’s conversation is dense with value, they both are very tactical so there’s some great advice for action items you can literally take right now. Noah talks about calling a close friend or family member, someone you feel comfortable with, and asking them to invest just $1 in you and your business idea in exchange for a seat on the board of investors. It’s an amazing hack with low barrier to entry that accomplishes a number of things:

• practicing asking for things in general

• get comfortable with asking for money

• verbalize your business to other people

• move one step toward starting your business

• use the moment of a quick win to motivate taking more action

And I’m sure there’s more than that, those were just top of mind. Something so simple yet surprisingly effective.

Admittedly, I haven’t finished this video since it’s 4 hours long, but I’m close! It’s super dense in some sections, worth taking some notes while watching or listening. Some parts are more surface level, but I’d highly recommend checking out the full conversation if you have the time!

Pain Management

Dr. Andrew Huberman had Dr. Sean Mackey, a pain management expert, on his podcast this week, which was rather timely since I’ve been managing pain all week. I’ve been rotating Tylenol and Ibuprofen and Dr. Mackey happened to mention the thresholds of no more than 1600 mg of Ibuprofen a day and 4000 mg of Tylenol a day which was quite helpful to know what amounts I can get away with - thanks, Doc!

A super interesting aside from their conversation was Dr. Mackey’s own pain management experience. He talked about how he had never had digestion problems, could eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted his whole life, until he had a particularly severe case of food poisoning. Afterward, he was experiencing chronic stomach pain for weeks on end, and couldn’t figure out the cause. During Covid, he indirectly limited his diet due to being primarily at home, eating the same things more frequently, and figured out that certain foods caused the pain, finally narrowing it down to onions being the trigger. Talking to another doctor, it sounds like this is quite common, that certain instances of food poisoning can result in people having a hyper sensitivity or allergy to a particular food. Amazing, and a little scary, how something seemingly commonplace like food poisoning can have such a lasting impact.

The full conversation is no less interesting and worth a listen:

Imaginary Time

And of course, in my slow, yet ever present quest to unravel the secrets of the universe, I have to have something math and physics related. Although I’m not sure how I got to this this week, most likely due to being hopped up on pain meds and wishing I could skip some time while I waited for the drugs to kick in again.

But I vaguely remember a snarky reference from Stephen Hawking about “wait until people hear about ‘imaginary time’”. I couldn’t find the quote exactly, I want to say it was at the end of one of his books, but I ended up reading Hawking’s 1996 presentation instead where he theorized the beginning of the universe, and consequently time, and how “imaginary time” played a roll in the early universe - I don’t completely understand, but I think imaginary time allowed for the brief period of rapid expansion or inflation that happened right after the Big Bang. (Inflation theory is also a wild concept, imagine shaking a soda bottle, taking the cap off, but instead of spraying everywhere, it turns into a handheld vacuum cleaner)

I’ve linked to imaginary numbers before, because I’ve only recently started to really understand them, but imaginary time is still a tough one. Humans perceive time in one direction, effectively “forward”, but mathematically time can flow in different directions. And imaginary numbers are really just a way to rotate something 90 degrees, so imaginary time is time that flows “sideways”.

I’m sure it will take quite a bit more regular time until we can completely understand and visual the concept, but a truly mind-bending idea nonetheless.

And that’s it for this week! Another newsletter with no AI for a change!

Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.

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