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Hi friends,

Greetings from Utrecht!

I spend every Wednesday with my daugher, and if I'm being completely honest, I've been so low energy lately that I've been phoning it in a bit. We'd spend most of the day hanging around the house or in the backyard reading books and making puzzles. Don't get me wrong, we' both have a great time just hanging out, but I wasn't exactly offering her new experiences. So two weeks ago I decided to liven things up a bit, and spend Wednesday mornings biking somewhere interesting in the Utrecht area, having a nice little coffee date with Maya, and then biking home for her afternoon nap. So far, we've explored Kasteel de Haar and Fort Maarssevee (pictured below), and tested the patience of two very nice waitresses with non-stop questions.

I recently finished reading Understanding Michael Porter, and it's driven home once more why Porter is such an essential author in the field of strategy. Many people are familiar with concepts like competitive advantage and his five forces analysis, but few are able to bring everything together into a great strategy. Seeing his concepts laid out so clearly was nothing short of inspiring. As inspiration is perishable, I decided that my next essay is going to be an overview of Porter's most useful concepts, and how you can use them to craft a strategic model for your company. Coming your way soon!

Here's what I want to share with you this week:

New book notes: I've uploaded my notes for The Book of Five Rings and Schopenhauer's Counsels and Maxims. Both are classics and well worth a read, but I wasn't blown away by the insights they contained. Check out my notes to see the bits I found most interesting.

The Best Bits

​More Dakka: Found via Michael Ashcroft, here's a thoughtprovoking essay discussing the idea that if something you're doing works, it's often worth it to do that thing even more, to see if it works even better.

​Nichecraft: The internet, and Twitter especially, is full of people telling you that the way to grow your business is to quickly grow your audience using a handful of the same tired old tricks. Rob Hardy is taking the opposite approach, advocating a slower, longer term path based on finding a niche that is truly passionate about your service or product. I'm currently following his (pay-what-you-want) course to see if this approach fits a B2B oriented business as well.

Win and help win: George Mack shared this snippet from an interview with Balaji Srinivasan, where he explains his life philosophy of "win and help win". He compares it here to progressive, conservative and libertarian ideologies. While this is definitely broad strokes territory, I thought the contrast was striking, and I've been thinking about how I can apply a "win and help win" mentality more to my own life.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn

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