Lab Notes - April 30th, 2023

Hi Everyone,

Here is the latest edition of my weekly lab notes. Feel free to forward this along to friends.

Saying Yes More

We’ve all heard the saying, “you need to get better at saying no”, but I feel many times you need to say yes to more things. Let me explain.

Early in life or a career, saying ‘yes’ can provide valuable learning experiences you wouldn’t have had. It provides opportunities for growth, new perspectives and ways to experiment.

While I was transitioning into a software developer career, I said ‘yes’ to everything. I was able to learn quickly because I was able to experience more problems I needed to solve. Sometimes I wasn’t able to solve the problem, but still learned a ton.

Outside of learning and experiencing more, I met one of my best friends and frequent business partner.

The other side of this same coin, ‘no’ provides you the ability to focus and leverage opportunities. I’ve started to say ‘no’ more, but that’s where I am personally. And after a decade of saying ‘yes’.

Gauge where you are and lean into either. If you are exploring something new, saying ‘yes’ will provide valuable insights. But, if you currently have strong leverage opportunities, say ‘no’, and focus on those. There is a constant shift between saying ‘yes and no’. I reflect often on this and flip between the two in regards to the current direction I want to go.

YouTube Video of the Week

A video I want to highlight this week is one from James Quick on Cloudinary. I’ve heard of Cloudinary, but haven’t used the service. James changed my mind with his video, highlighting some awesome features. The main one I want to highlight is the ability to overlay additional images over the main image in addition to text. This is important to me because I am currently exploring a way to create dynamic social media content, where I can overlay some text and logo over an image. I was exploring some libraries and writing code to do this, but these aren’t great options at the moment. So, thanks to James’s video, I am going use Cloudinary to create this media.

Watch the video here: Is This A Better Way To Handle Images in Next.js?

Quote I’m Pondering

I was listening to a My First Million Podcast this week, and one part of the podcasts that stood out to me. I’ve been reflecting on it since.

This stood out to me because it highlights the need to act on what you are learning. Sam mentioned a narrator who read many books on self development and business, but wasn’t very successful himself. Sam found this odd, due to the amount of knowledge he was consuming from narrating the books he had.

I’ve 100% been there. I’ve consumed many books, but hadn’t really applied what I was learning. After a few reinforcing phrases from books and podcasts, I’ve really tried to apply one thing from content I am consuming.

If you only consume the information, you truly aren’t learning and allowing it to help you grow. The next book you read, try to apply one thing that stood out to you, then you will be learning.

Find the podcast here: My First Millions - David Senra

Margin Notes

• I will be pausing work on AtomLogs for the time being, this is because I said ‘yes’ to helping a friend I’ve done work with spin up a web app for his business.

• I’ve started exploring Audible and Speechify as a way to test if it will help me consume more content. Current question is how well I will take notes and comprehend the information.

AI Art of the Week