The Minimum Viable Method

Hey everyone,

Welcome to your Sunday Space, where I distil the best ideas, resources and principles on the internet for you to mull over.

It’s Build Weekend, so I’m going full steam ahead on building the foundation of my MVP. I’m incredibly excited to share it with you all in the next week.

But for now, let’s get into our Sunday Space.

I always want to improve, so I’d love to hear your feedback. If you have any thoughts, reach out on X or vote in the poll at the bottom of this email.

IDEAS
The Minimum Viable Method

The best way that I’ve found to build habits and achieve my goals is to vastly reduce the friction in taking action.

The way to do this is to take a “Minimum Viable” approach to whatever action or outcome you’re working towards.

The concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was popularised in Eric Ries's book, The Lean Startup.

His proposed method for building startups blew up as it flew in the face of conventional thinking around how to start companies at the time.

His principle hinges on the concept of shipping incredibly fast — getting a product (no matter how unfinished) in front of users early, iterating on feedback gained and relaunching constantly.

This concept doesn’t just apply to building startups, it applies to everything we do. It is the key to building lasting habits to get you where you want to go.

Here are two simple examples:

• Want to build a newsletter or writing habit? What is the minimum viable amount of publishing you can do every week that is easy to start and ingrains the habit?

• Want to get fit? What is the minimum viable number of pushups you can do each day to get stronger?

Overall, the key is to minimise the time taken to start (friction) and maximise the length of time over which you can perform the action (consistency).

RESOURCES
What I Consumed this Week…

…From around the web

Elon Musk’s Neuralink implants brain chip in first human

Just after writing about how 2024 could be a boon for biotech, the first human patient received a Neuralink device implant this week and is “recovering well.”

Elon Musk said that “initial results show promising neuron spike detection”, which is promising for the chip’s integration into the patient’s brain.

The brain-computer interface era has officially begun, and I think it will get wild from here.

Would you get one of these things implanted in your brain? Let me know in the feedback form at the bottom of this post.

Vision Pro headset is Apple’s next Mac and TV combined

The Apple Vision Pro, the company’s landmark “spatial computing” headset, went on sale to the public this weekend.

While it was another landmark product launch for the company that invented the way to do product launches, many say it lacked the usual finesse that Apple brings to these moments.

Personally, I am convinced virtual and augmented reality and immersive spatial computing are the future.

However, the killer form factor has to be lightweight glasses that look cool, have full-stack AI integrations and have as good passthrough as the Vision Pro. Before that, the keyboard and mouse become tough competitors to beat.

For now, though, we have the Vision Pro, which has delivered another bit of Apple magic to the public, albeit with some dour reviews.

AI Prompt Engineering Isn’t the Future

For those of you, like me, who have ChatGPT integrated as a copilot into all of your workflows, this is an interesting read about reframing your prompting.

Instead of focusing on the perfect prompt to get the model to say what you want it to say, focus on the problems you’re facing and get it to solve them systematically.

An effective method I’ve found to achieve great results is to use “Chain of Thought Prompting”, where you get ChatGPT to break a big problem into its requisite parts and solve them individually.

Give it a whirl, and let me know how it goes.

…From X

…From YouTube

TOOLS
Notion

Notion is my second brain, personal operating system and content catalogue.

It’s the engine driving my efforts with this newsletter and my No-Code/AI product development—from brainstorming ideas and writing drafts to hosting databases and coding.

With their community-driven templates for your personal or professional goals, Notion is the canvas for your ideas to come to life.

The icing on the cake is that the Notion team ships—their AI features give your workspace intelligence and will, in turn, allow you and your team to ship faster.

If you want to 100x your productivity, give Notion a try today*

THOUGHTS
Quote I’m pondering

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Thanks for reading,

— Luca