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David Cain of the excellent blog Raptitude is tracking his calorific intake for a month because he’s put on a little weight (The Covid Nineteen Pounds) when homebound:

My next official experiment is to track caloric intake for a month. I predict less overall intake, but I’m not setting a target, only tracking. I want to know:

-What I actually consume in a day

-Where the costliest habits are

-What’s worth consuming and what’s not

I’ll report daily intake each day of the whole month, and any weight change that occurs.

The working hypothesis is “What gets measured gets managed” — that simply charting the behavior will shape it in sustainable ways, whereas striving probably won’t.

The important bit is why he’s doing this:

As long as I’m tracking the numbers, however, I can’t escape the awareness that my choice will turn a 2200-calorie day into a 3500-calorie day, and I’ll have to ledger these figures.

Suddenly, no part of me entirely wants this “treat.” I can see the needless cost I’m about to incur, and it no longer feels like something worth rationalizing. The desires themselves have shifted, with no moralizing and little willpower involved

David’s tracking of calories is similar to my tracking of my water intake for the next 250 days, although unlike David I have a consumption goal.

I have always been a measure-to-improve approach especially given that I’ve managed consumer products for most of my career, but lately I have begun applying it daily life.

I’m considering a separate web property to catalogue people using the Internet to dramatically improve their lives, though not limited to fitness. By Internet I mean both software like MyFitnessPal and Strava, to iOS Shortcuts as well as connected consumer hardware like wearables, 3D printers and devices like the Raspberry Pi.

In my opinion, the most important bit from this article “I quit my job at the start of the pandemic to launch a company. Here’s what I’ve learned in the first 90 days.‘

You are most powerful when your identity is tied to your own name.

You know when you’re at a party, and someone asks you, “So, what do you do?” And then you respond with your most impressive identity. Like most people, my identity was always wrapped around something external. I was a “student,” a “college newspaper editor,” and later, a “journalist.”

And for the last five years, “Polina Marinova, writer and editor at Fortune magazine” sounded pretty damn good. But I wasn’t in control of that identity. If I ever got fired, there goes my entire self-worth — and losing that is a recipe for psychological disaster. The best thing I did for myself is start The Profile in 2017 because it gave me another identity — one that allowed me to be 100% myself.

Start a newsletter, a passion project, or a new venture that lets you tie your identity to something that actually matters — your own name. Nothing is more liberating.

While we have talked before about owning your identity, this goes hand in hand – an identity that is one’s own.

Back in January we discussed Twitter threads being used as mini-blog posts. Later, when I reflected on how I planned to consumer Twitter (and Reddit) going forward, I had said

… people’s use of Twitter has changed in the last year. The cumulative effect of the doubling of character limits, the ease of creating Twitter threads, the grouped display of conversations and Twitter’s own quality-filtering is that there are interesting, valuable discussions on Twitter itself…

Earlier I came across this full-fledged 29-tweet threaditcle on the oat milk producer Oatly.

1/ Oatly doesn’t think like the rest. They’ve been around for 20 years as a Swedish company fighting for attention. Last week, the oat milk company raised $200mm at a $2bn valuation. This is a lesson on creativity and how @oatly turns disadvantages into massive opportunities.

— Kevin Lee (@kevinleeme) July 24, 2020

Not only can tweets display text and linebreaks like they always have but now, just like on Medium or WordPress, tweets support multiple images, links, embedded media like video, all with rich previews. Unlike other publishing media, tweets also support calling out other people via @ replies. And although they can be viewed as a single unit, each tweet – inherently – supports its own set of breakoff conversations that can cross-reference each other [1]. Each tweet can also be retweeted, creating other conversations with the retweet as the parent. This sort of native emergent remixing is just fascinating.

Having said this, there doesn’t exist today a frictionless, natural way to view these conversations. The comments on a single tweet are still displayed primarily linearly, when in reality they’re like a tree. i’m not suprised to see this today:

I wish Twitter had a “follow conversation” option.

— Mark Johnson (@wmdmark) July 26, 2020

The service Threader today creates a single chronological view of twitter threads, but I’d like to see it extend that capability to conversations, since increasingly that is where the value lies.

[1] Medium used to have permalinks to each paragraph. I can’t find them anymore. Perhaps they are only available when logged-in as a reader, and I do not have a Medium account. Dave Winer’s blog also has such permalinks.

Continuing for a day more with the topic of Fitbit: many analytics that go beyond the basic visualization that is displayed in the app or is available for download on the web dashboard, is only available via a paid subscription, which Fitbit calls Premium. We talked about Premium a little in the context of discovery vs curation.

To give you an example, this is the sleep phase chart in the company’s app for a single night’s sleep:

From the Fitbit site, you can export your sleep data. But my data for the week only includes summaries on this sort (data hidden)

So clearly Fitbit has access to much more granular data to generate that chart than is required to generate that table. However, that access is only available via the Fitbit API. For instance here is the API documentation page for sleep data.

This endpoint supports two kinds of sleep data:

stages : Levels data is returned with 30-second granularity. ‘Sleep Stages’ levels include deep, light, rem, and wake.

classic : Levels data returned with 60-second granularity. ‘Sleep Pattern’ levels include asleep, restless, and awake.

If you write your own software, you can authenticate to and download your own data at down to thirty second granularity. For the example in the chart above, that’s 1024 data points, each stating the timestamp and which stage of sleep I was in. This is extremely valuable (and not to mention my own data recorded by a device i have paid for!) I support Fitbit’s decision to restrict analytics such as sleep score to premium users – this is Fitbit’s IP and its prerogative. However, it does need to make its users’ raw data available for download much more widely. It should not require technical expertise.

This article describes an example of a person downloading and charting his own heart rate data from Fitbit. I intend to teach myself to download and process my own data. In fact, I am going to explore if I can use iOS shortcuts and the actions that Data Jar makes available to Shortcuts to process JSON data – and Charty to plot graphs. We will revisit this some time.

From the last post:

For the last few days, after noticing the pattern and having done this reading-up [on the purpose of REM
sleep], I’ve become even more conscious about limiting information exposure.

I should have mentioned that there is some limited material available on the possible effects of excessive REM sleep. From Fitbit’s own blog:

Consistently getting too much REM could also create problems. “If you go too much over 25 percent of REM, it might cause too much brain activation, which can leave you angry and irritable and can even potentially exacerbate depression and anxiety symptoms,” says Grandner.

From S+, the sleep aid device and tracking service:

Stress, on the other hand, can extend REM sleep beyond normal levels. Too much REM sleep can actually leave you feeling tired the next day.

So (a) if my share of REM sleep is definitely over normal, putting me at risk for stress, tiredness, irritability and even depression, and if REM seems to have to do with processing the information gathered during the day, it follows that one way of testing this link is to limit information exposure. We have already seen my reflections on the 30 day Reddit and Twitter isolation I tried over the end of June and most of this month. I had said that I would continue to consume Reddit and Twitter in a time-boxed manner, deliberately. That limits causal attention capture.

The other thing I have already begun doing is simply saying no to viewing and reading links and videos that friends and family send me, typically over Whatsapp, unless they’re in an area of interest. Even then I’ll probably queue them in my read later list. If the person that shared asks if I had seen what they had shared, my answer is no.

This may seem excessive and anti-social (and obviously I have been told so), but the cumulative effect of this casual consumption is quite high. I appreciate that someone chose to share something interesting with me, but the cost for me (or anyone) to consume is much more than the cost of tapping share and send. A side effect is that when I do end up viewing or reading those few items that I queue, I can write back to the sharer about it, often leading to a short but usually interesting conversation.

I am not yet a fan of wearables. I’m excited about their ability to provide granular feedback about or health but I remain skpetical about how the manufacturers of consumer wearables will treat data. Data custody is one of the themes we have explored regularly on this site. However, I have been wearing my Fitbit wristband for the last few weeks for help in establishing a minimal level of movement during the day, especially as outdoor movement has been minimal.

The sleep stats are particularly interesting to me. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that my REM sleep had been typically more than even the higher end of what Fitbit considers a normal range for men of my age.

Sometimes that extra REM sleep comes at the cost of light sleep, which from what I understand is not that much of an issue, but sometimes at the cost of deep sleep. This could be a problem.

Now the exact role played by each sleep phase is not yet well understood as of this writing. Most experiments involve depriving humans or other animals of particular kinds of sleep and then observing the impact on particular kinds of cognitive tasks. Regardless, this is what some sources state about the role of REM sleep:

Naiman describes the brain during REM sleep as a sort of “second gut” that digests all of the information gathered that day. “Everything we see, every conversation we have, is chewed on and swallowed and filtered through while we dream, and either excreted or assimilated,” he says.

Several studies in recent years have suggested thatREM sleep can affect how accurately people can read emotions and process external stimuli. Walker’s research, for example, has demonstrated that people who achieved REM sleep during a nap were better able to judge facial expressions afterward than those who’d napped without reaching REM. (source)

Francis Crick (of DNA fame) and Grahame Mitchison suggested that dreams act as an “unlearning” mechanism, whereby certain modes of neural activity are erased by random activation of cortical connections… Michel Jouvet proposed that dreaming reinforces behaviors not commonly encountered during the awake state (aggression, fearful situations) by rehearsing them while dreaming. Yet another hypothesis is that REM sleep and dreams are involved in the transfer of memories between the hippocampus and neocortex. (source)

In plain terms it appears to be about processing information gathered during the day – although perhaps this will be proven incorrectly later. This is not surprising given that the day job is information-heavy, that I read constantly about the topics that make it to this site, and a book or two a month.

For the last few days, after noticing the pattern and having done this reading-up, I’ve become even more conscious about limiting information exposure.

Last week I learnt that the Linkedin account of the writer and investor Aniruddha Malpani had been suspended (the term Linkedin used was permanently restricted). The cause ostensibly seems to be his constant criticism of a couple of online education companies in India. I haven’t read his writing and therefore have no opinion about it. This post about something we have explored for a while now, control over access to your followers, given that your audience is now your capital.

Dr. Malpani has in effect lost his LinkedIn audience. He has a substantial Twitter presence as well, which is where he seems to have shifted his writing. But he has as much control over his Twitter account as his Linkedin one – he’s simply hoping that the former is more tolerant.

The one place he has been able to express his thoughts on the Linkedin suspension is on his own website where he has been writing for about eleven years. He also has a newsletter. It’s not clear what service his newsletter uses (I’m not signed up to it) but it might make sense to use a self-hosted one like the ancient PHPlist. One hopes that he treats his newsletter and his website (via RSS) as canonical.

This tweet in response to the news says it as well as anyone could.

Own your audience – via email – only viable way to build a brand & business.

If you rent your audience from another platform, you’re a serf – a tenant farmer, with no long term assets..

cc: @vivekk

— Prasanna K (@prasanna_says) July 22, 2020

As we saw Gary Vaynerchuk say in his book Crush it!, your blog is your home; treat social media as your vacation homes.

Also see: Building a censorship-resistant website.

Speaking of writing. I am a big fan of the Morning Brew newsletter which describes itself as “a newsletter-first media company that offers young professionals engaging, entertaining business news.” I don’t recall how I discovered it, I have been subscribed to it for about a year now. I had logged that just a couple of weeks ago it introduced me to

• The concept of Linear Commerce, which led to a 4-part post series on the topic.
• The book Doughnut Economics, which I have now queued near the top in my reading list.
• This huge trove of investment resources.

The newsletter has become a huge business, which the founder says is 5 years old, 45 employees, 2 million subscribers and will bring in USD 20 million in revenue in 2020.

It’s one of the newsletters I highly recommend; do check it out. PS if you’re in Asia it’s going to be an evening brew.

A co-worker recently mentioned that they have a paid subscription to a video-based fitness coaching service that they’ve been using during this current work-from-home phase.

Another colleague remarked that that was pointless given the sheer volume of free content on YouTube from professionals and amateurs alike.

The reply was that that was exactly the point – too many options. Plus, no information on what was safe, what was appropriate for them, and what progress/results they should expect.

This is the difference between discovery and curation.

We have talked before about how discovery of newsletters today is an unsolved problem and therefore an opportunity. For content of this kind, discovery is not a problem. Google does an excellent job surfacing YouTube videos for search terms related to health and fitness. YouTube itself aggressively recommends videos related to the one you’re watching.

But curation adds trust. It adds relevance. And it is this that people will pay for.

For all of Fitbit’s problems losing market share to the Apple Watch, it understands this difference, and monetises accordingly. Fitbit has a top-level community tab in its app where you can discover the experiences, practices and routines of a large number (millions!) of people and engage with them.

But it also has a top ‘Premium’ tab that has

Ergo, curated, structured fitness and wellness services that include the following:

Workout plans from Fitbit plus videos from DailyBurn, Popsugar, barre3 …follow step-by-step programs to help you eat well, sleep better and move more… get a personal Wellness Report of your Fitbit stats to share with your healthcare professional… receive personalized insights about your sleep and follow guided programs to help you get better rest…

Fitbit believes that the opportunity costs in terms of time and health is high enough for people who want outside help with their health to pay for such a service.

It’s the same with investment advisors. Discovery of books, twitter threads, blog posts and videos about my philosophies, strategies and tactics of investing is not a problem. But creating, executing and re-adjusting a personal investing plan is difficult to construct from this information, unless you are a professional.

For many years now we have seen a continuing explosion of content created on the internet driven by the success of services built around discovery – search, browse, recommend – such as Facebook and Google. This content has almost universally been monetised via low-cost ads, a few cents per click, incentivising quantity not quality.

We have now begun to see a willingness to pay good money to curators of content in an infinite number of internet-based niches. I am excited about this coming explosion.

(Part 3)

Another perspective on leveraging one’s direct relationship with an audience is the idea of Linear Commerce:

Law of Linear Commerce: the lines of demarcation between media and commerce are fading. For the brands that are most suited to the modern retail economy: media and commerce operations work to optimize for audience and sales conversion. This is the efficient path for sustained growth, retention, and profitability.

– On Linear Commerce, Web Smith.

Smith, quoted on another site:

The Law of Linear Commerce is the prioritization of audience. Product manufacturers typically seek to outsource demand generation. Brands, that are ahead of the curve, emphasize their audience’s growth as much as they do their physical product’s development. Likewise, digital media publishers that follow linear commerce principles prioritize organic and loyal audience growth over SEO or PPC-driven commodity clicks.

Smith uses this graphic to describe the ongoing evolution from the current norm of buying audiences to the other extreme, media-first commerce:

One of the examples of a Level 5 company Smith describes is Glossier, a cosmetics company.

The best practical example of the Version 5 launch plan was Emily Weiss’ go-to-market strategy. Into the Gloss began as the primary sales driver for Glossier’s line of makeup and accessories. A newly minted unicorn, Glossier.com‘s 2.6 million monthly visitors now arrive from a sustainable blend of customer acquisition methods: organic traffic through Into The Gloss and Instagram, paid search, Facebook / Instagram advertising, and a quiet affiliate deal with BuzzFeed. Here is Emily Weiss on Glossier’s growth:

We are building an entirely new kind of beauty company: one that owns the distribution channel and makes customers our stakeholders. By connecting directly with consumers, Glossier has access to endless inspiration for new products.

This other site has yet another example:

Nelk started as a prank channel on YouTube. Over the years, they’ve evolved into more of a lifestyle vlogging channel…

When they drop a new line of products, it’s always limited and it always sells out. Usually within minutes. They tie their product drops seamlessly with the antics, catch phrases, etc. from their vlogs. These all become products sold on http://fullsend.com. They started with clothing, but have expanded—bottle openers, flags—you name it. 

That is the low hanging fruit. Nelk didn’t stop there. They’ve excellently tied their content roadmap directly to the future products they sell. Here’s an example 👇

A year ago or so, a fitness-focused Youtuber, Bradley Martin, started showing up in their weekly videos. Bradley became a staple in many Nelk vlogs. And so the Nelk crew started working out and talking about fitness regularly. Fitness became a core part of their vlogs. This wasn’t random. It was a well-thought out plan that deeply connected their content to commerce strategy. Yesterday they launched http://fullsendsupps.com— branded line of fitness supplements. Guess what? It fully sold out. In less than 1 day!

You can see how this goes well beyond simply being an influencer with a following that features sponsored products.

A Level 5 Linear Commerce company is a combination of a full-fledged media brand that has a fan following in its own right whose content is closely tied to the roadmap of that brand’s own products. The roadmap itself is influenced by the audience’s desires, forming a virtuous cycle.