TTT 15: Content Flywheel
Hi friends,
இரவு வணக்கம் (iravu vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening from New York City!
Thing I did
I wrote a Twitter thread that went viral!
It was based on the blog post I shared in my newsletter last week - “How To Ask for A Raise”.
I used to think that you should never repeat yourself online. However, that’s the best way to iterate on your ideas. It’s how people grow audiences.
I learned this from Chris Wong and Louie’s Newsletter LaunchPad course.
They call it the “Content Flywheel”.
When you first share your ideas, you want to do it in a safe place - like your newsletter. The folks who read your newsletter have opted-in.
Therefore, by definition… they fuck with you.
Their feedback via replies help you to iterate and graduate the idea to a public channel (Chris and Louie call this “Idea Public Offering”) - like Twitter.
I love that feeling in your brain when you implement a thing you just learned about.
So satisfying.
Tweet I loved
In 2019, in the waning days of Jet Engineering, I was moving our Adtech systems from .NET Framework on Windows to .NET Core on Linux.
This enabled our programs to run on Linux.
We could reduce the cost of running out programs by 66%. Linux doesn’t have a licensing fee, unlike Windows.
Since .NET Core was a new runtime, many of the tools in the development chain had weird bugs. We had a file with a massive inline string that represented a document for one of our tests.
The code-editing application (Rider from JetBrains) I was using to edit the test files kept crashing on start. At first, I felt out of my depth. How could I, a newbie to .NET core, overcome this foundational issue?
Luckily, I was working with a .NET Core expert (Enrico Sada) at the time based out of Milan, Italy. His advice was exactly what Julia is describing in this tweet. You can check out the tiny program here - repo.
Since I could open the test file in another code-editing app, I was able to isolate the issue to Rider.
If I hadn’t created the tiny program, it would be much harder for team at Rider to validate their fix worked for their next release.
Thought I had
I was anxious to review the recordings from my Tamil and Spanish classes.
It’s overwhelming to figure out what to focus on; vocab, grammar, highlights, lowlights, lessons learned - I was in too deep.
I spoke to one of my Spanish teachers, Jaspe, about this feeling I had. She gave me this awesome advice. Just focus on imitating her.
She revealed to me that she’s not as fluent in English as she appears.
She has always focused on imitating the hand movements, facial expressions, and phrases just as a native English speaker would do. She even gave me the impression she was just as fluent in English as she is in Spanish. She fooled me good and English is my first language.
It gives “fake it til you make it” yet another badge of honor.
I'd love to hear any feelings you felt while reading this and until next time - be easy.
Love,
Janahan
P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to forward this email to your people or share this link. It'll encourage me to keep writing!