Dru's Notes

My first blog post took hours. Three months of daily posts later, I write, publish and move on. If you're anxious about something, the answer is usually more exposure.

Show Notes

My first blog post took hours. Three months of daily posts later, I write, publish and move on. If you're anxious about something, the answer is usually more exposure.

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Dru Riley
Founder of Trends.vc

What is Dru's Notes?

One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.

Fear (1) is (1) just (1) noise (1).

We think the cure for anxiety is to "calm down."
We try to breathe. We try to rationalize.
We try to game our psychology.

This is backwards.

Behavior is upstream of psychology.

If you are anxious about something, the answer is not less exposure.
It is more.

I had anxiety around "distribution"—scheduling posts and checking metrics.
It felt heavy.
The solution wasn't to meditate on it.
The solution was to increase the volume.

I bumped my output to 2-3-5 artifacts/day.
I stopped treating each one like a precious artifact.
I started treating them like reps in the gym.

You (1) are (1) scared (1) now (1).

If you do it once, it's an event.
If you do it 100 times, it's a habit.

Reps reduce anxiety.
Volume is the solvent for fear.

I'm feeling it again with launching. I want to ship a tool a day and announce it publicly. The idea of declaring "you'll get a tool from me each day" makes my stomach tighten. That tightness is the signal. The announcement itself is the rep. The first public declaration will feel heavy. By the tenth, it'll feel like breathing. Each uncomfortable share is an experiment. The discomfort is the experiment.