09 Jun 2025 #misc
What does being wealthy truly mean?
Yesterday, before starting 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, I watched a YouTube interview with Yuval Noah Harari about that book. That was part of my new reading strategy. Authors often go on podcast tours to promote their books, sharing their insights and the intentions behind their books.
Towards the end, the interview closed with this unexpected idea:
“If you’re important, you don’t have a phone. If you work for somebody else, you have a phone”
That was shocking but eye-opening. The point isn’t about owning a phone per se but about having full control of our time. A phone means your boss might interrupt you with any apparent urgent issue.
That line hit really hard. It was only after a layoff that I realized I felt the pressure of always being available and responding to messages. I didn’t know how a salary had messed with my mind.
True wealth isn’t measured in currency, but in the ability to own our time. And I need to dump my phone.
08 Jun 2025 #misc
What started as mindless scrolling on Medium yesterday turned into a writing exercise.
I decided to stop scrolling like a zombie and pay attention to the headlines I found. Then to practice my headline-writing muscles, I took a closer look at some posts, rewriting their headlines for clarity and curiosity. I wanted to follow a top Medium writer’s formula for engaging headlines.
Here are 5 headlines I found and my own version of them:
1. “Rethinking the Value of Doing Nothing”
This was a short story about a random walk in the park. An old man sitting on the grass made the author reflect on rest and productivity.
My version: “An Old Man Sitting in the Park Changed My Mind About Productivity”
2. “My Experience With ChatGPT”
My first thought when I found this headline was: why should I care? Who are you? What did you use ChatGPT for? This post was from a writer who tried ChatGPT to speed up her writing process.
My version: “I Hired ChatGPT as My Writing Intern—Here’s What I Learned”
3. “7 Things That Show You’re Making Progress”
Making progress in what? A video game? Business? This was a post about small signs of progress when nothing else seems to be working.
My version: “7 True Signs You’re Making Progress in Life (Even When Nothing Seems to Work)”
4. “The Beautiful Habit I’ve Picked Up Lately”
This headline needs more specificity. A habit for what? Health? Business? A habit to achieve what? What makes it beautiful? This was a post about starting meaningful conversations.
My version: “This Simple Habit Has Taught Me More About Human Connection (Than Any Self-Help Book)”
This was a post dissecting an email with the classic fake job listing scam. Its headline could benefit from more drama.
My version: “Ignore These 7 Signs and Fall Prey to Email Scammers Offering You Fake Jobs”
Clear headlines are better than clever ones. “On writing” or “On the value of consistency” doesn’t say anything about what we’ll find inside. I declare myself guilty, too. A headline isn’t just a title, it’s a promise. Make it crystal clear because a vague headlines means no readers.
07 Jun 2025 #writing
The hardest part of being a new writer isn’t writing, but writing when nobody is reading.
For me, it took me years before I saw my first 1,000 blog visitors. And when I revived my LinkedIn account in 2024, it took me over a year for my first post to finally go “viral.”
Those first months feel like shouting into the void. No likes, no comments, no followers. Nothing.
But to see results, we have to push through that phase. Here are 5 actions to try to keep showing up in those hard moments:
#1. Have a clear goal (or an anti-goal). Sometimes knowing what you don’t want is more powerful than knowing what you do want. For most of us, it’s the side gig that keeps us from going back to corporate cubicle.
#2. Join a community or find a buddy. It’s easier to keep showing up when there’s someone walking the same path next to you. Someone who encourages you and gives genuine feedback.
#3. Develop a habit. Find a time and place to practice your craft. And make the commitment to show up, even if that means staring at a blank page. Write or create for yourself, go for volume, and focus on improving your craft.
#4. Celebrate every small victory. Screenshot every extra like or new follower and revisit them when you feel like breaking the chain.
#5. Find someone to make proud or jealous. Or to prove wrong. From the E-Myth Revisited, entrepreneurs aren’t the ones who start most businesses, but frustrated employees. Maybe to prove to their boss that they could create a better business, or to make an ex jealous. Sometimes, the best motivator is hearing “You can’t do it” and proving them wrong.
06 Jun 2025 #mondaylinks
Hey, there.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. Is AI really taking our jobs? Here’s a breakdown of papers and historical records to prove that the “AI taking jobs” hype is more a marketing strategy (12min) than anything else. There’s nothing to worry about (yet?) after all.
#2. There’s a difference between being helpful and being valued at work (4min). One of the two leads to stagnation in our careers.
#3. AI has made it easier to start coding or writing. The real differentiator isn’t technical skills, but judgment (3min). The real question is knowing what to build.
#4. Here’s a complete guide on prompt engineering (38min) tailored for software engineers, with good and bad examples of prompts. It looks more like a mini-course. Definitely something to keep returning every time we need to write a prompt for a coding task.
As a bonus, I found this absurd website with funny and absurd project ideas. I think I could use the Lucky Cat to bring more luck to my Gumroad store. That one isn’t so absurd.
And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about 7 strategies to stay sane in this AI-hype cycle (3min) and 12 nightmares every coder faces (3min).
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Join my course Mastering C# Unit Testing with Real-world Examples on Udemy and learn unit testing best practices to write readable and maintainable unit tests in C#…while refactoring real unit tests from my past projects.
See you next time,
Cesar
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05 Jun 2025 #writing
No headline, no readers. As simple as that.
A headline is your welcome sign. If you don’t have a good one, readers won’t stop by. And no matter how thoughtful the content is, a weak headline means they won’t click or read past the first line.
And the best way to learn how to write headlines? Steal from the best. Just like artists do.
Stealing some proven headline examples
I had already stolen headlines from a famous YouTuber.
But this time, I’m stealing Derek Hughes’ headlines, a top Medium writer with over 20,000 followers.
Here are the headlines of some of his most liked posts:
- 5 ways to gain an unfair advantage as a writer (no one tells you about)
- How to escape the life you have (the simplest habit that changed everything)
- How to write an article in 5 easy steps (that anyone can follow)
- This is why you’re losing readers (3 ways to keep them hooked)
- 4 killer openers that will hook your readers in seconds
Those headlines are irresistible. But there’s something behind them.
Each follows a simple formula:
Promise + outcome + emotion (curiosity/fear/desire)
Let’s dissect them:
- 5 ways to gain an unfair advantage as a writer (no one tells you about)
- Promise: “5 ways”
- Outcome: “gain an unfair advantage”
- Curiosity: “no one tells you about”
- How to escape the life you have (the simplest habit that changed everything)
- Promise: “the simplest habit”
- Outcome: “escape the life you hate”
- Curiosity: “changed everything”
You get the point.
It’s not a surprise why some of my best headlines worked. They promised some value with a bit of curiosity.
You only have a few seconds to hook readers. Start with a clear promise and outcome in your headlines. Don’t scare readers away with boring opening lines. Make your headlines impossible to ignore.