The Internet rewards unique people.

Find your unique combination of skills, interests, and personality traits.

I call this a Personal Monopoly.

Become the only person in the world who does what you do.

Then, tell the world by sharing your knowledge.

Thanks to @Calalouf for her beautiful drawings.

As you build your Personal Monopoly, don’t just focus on yourself.

Focus on what the world wants too.

Think like an investor.

Find a small and growing market that only a few people write about. Then, learn everything you can about it, and share the best of what you learn.

A Personal Monopoly is a unique intersection of skills, knowledge, and personality that nobody else can compete with.

Personal monopolies aren't found — they're made.

Global markets increase the upside of having a Personal Monopoly, but also make it harder to create one.

The process of building a Personal Monopoly is the process of becoming yourself.

The sweet spot is finding an idea that looks specific to others, but still diverse enough to express the many shades of who you are, where you excel, and what you want to achieve.

One of the weirdest things about modern urbanism is that we build the opposite of what we like.

We adore Europe’s narrow streets, but build skyscraper-lined cities with six-lane roads and sterile shopping malls, that are impossible to walk.

Right now, I’m living in a suburb of Austin, Texas. I don’t have a car so I’m entirely dependent on delivery workers and my roommates (who have cars) if I want to go anywhere.

Tires, not feet, are the engines of practical reality which makes you feel powerless as a meager human.

American society is entirely oriented around the car.

I saw this when I registered to vote last week. To prove identity, the form asked for my driver’s license, not my passport. That’s not necessarily a problem, but it reveals how we serve cars instead of making them serve us.

I’m increasingly convinced that avoiding scale is a recipe for happiness.

Keep a small group of close friends, work with a small team of people, and avoid big companies (yes, there is nuance here).

Economically, the notion is absurd. Emotionally, it increasingly feels true.

Back to cities, I’ve always liked this cartoon about how much space we allocate for cars instead of people.

Technology should serve us, but sometimes, it feels like we forget that and start serving technology.

(h/t @JWellsCFO)

We live in "The Instagram Age."

Kasarda's Law of Connectivity: "Every technology that circumvents distance electronically will increase our desire to travel it ourselves.

Interacting with people, places or products ONLINE makes us want to see them OFFLINE.

📸

Drake said it best.

✈️

Instagram turns reality into a STAGE.

Big marketing opportunity for restaurants and retail stores.

Step 1: Find empty wall space

Step 2: Paint a colorful mural

Step 3: Hire security guards to manage the insane foot traffic.

Murals make ordinary places extraordinary.

🖌️

Imitate, then Innovate is my motto for improving at any skill.

Thread:

It’s counterintuitive, but the more we imitate others, the faster we can discover our unique style.

Modern creators do the opposite though.

They stubbornly insist on originality, which they hold as their highest virtue — even when it comes at the expense of quality.

What does productive imitation look like?

Look at Quentin Tarantino. When people think of him, they see a singular talent for making original movies.

But he's famous for building upon scenes from other movies, and once said: “I steal from every single movie ever made.”

From Tarantino, we learn that creators consume art differently from consumers.

Directors watch movies not just to be entertained, but also to see how they’re made.

Watching helps them develop their own mental Pinterest board of ideas to borrow and build upon in their own work.

George Lucas is another productive imitator.

To create Star Wars, he built upon the teachings of Joseph Cambell. In order to align the story with motifs that’d reverberated through so many human cultures, Lucas re-wrote his draft of Star Wars to align it with Cambell’s work.