Erik’s Newsletter: Directness, Speed, Leverage

🗓 Today at a Glance

• Quote: New comes from removing old

• Reading: Why your website should be under 14kB

• Podcast: Applied Intuition on being direct

• Tweet: How to never feel lazy

• Idea: Turn support chats into docs

💬 Quote I’m Pondering

"If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old." — Peter Drucker

Teams rarely lack ideas. They lack the courage to kill what no longer serves. Subtraction creates the room for something better to take root.

🧠 What I’m Thinking About

• You don’t need clever ideas. You need sharp questions. I’ve seen people move faster when you frame work as constraints.

• Directness is underrated. A blunt note saves three meetings and prevents politics from creeping in.

• I’m trying to think more in units: % gains, dollar impact, hours saved. Numbers kill story time.

• Guardrails matter more than detailed roadmaps. Once you set the rules of the game, local decisions get smarter.

• Choose markets that forgive mistakes. Good distribution rescues mediocre execution; the reverse almost never works.

📚 What I’m Reading

Why Your Website Should Be Under 14kB
//endtimes
Performance budgets are product strategy. Small payloads force focus, raise conversion, and lower infra costs while compounding SEO and reliability benefits.

🎧 Podcasts Worth Your Time

• Applied Intuition on Directness: Direct feedback shortens cycle time and reduces politics. Pair it with clear operating principles so bluntness lands as alignment, not surprise.

• Brett on Building What Matters: Strip everything that does not move a single core metric for a single user. The discipline is painful and profitable.

• Build What Actually Matters: The fastest path to product-market fit is fewer promises and more proof. Ship the narrowest loop that produces repeatable value.

🐦 Tweets That Made Me Stop and Think

• How to Never Feel Lazy: Define “done” as a tiny loop you can finish today. Momentum beats motivation when the unit of work is embarrassingly small.

• How to Disagree: State the steelman, name the crux, propose a test. Most fights vanish when you align on falsifiable claims and time boxes.

• Leverage: Real leverage is permissionless. Prefer tools and systems that compound without asking anyone for approval.

• Determine the Market You’re Playing In: Choose ponds where small absolute numbers still look big. Pricing power and distribution beat sophistication.

• Three Kinds of Tasks: If it does not compound or teach, it is maintenance. Either automate it or schedule it last.

🛠 Product I’m Loving

Wispr Flow: I use it for all dictation on both computer and iPhone. The accuracy and speed beat every built-in option. Considering using it to replace all my notetaking.

💡 Idea I Can’t Get Out of My Head

Support Chats into Living Docs: An AI agent that reads every support thread, clusters issues, drafts canonical fixes, and writes your docs and product copy. It closes the loop from pain to documentation.