# DeveloPassion's Newsletter 83 - Calm business Hello everyone! I’m [Sébastien Dubois](https://dsebastien.net), your host. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for DeveloPassion’s Newsletter. Thank you for being here with me ✨ If you enjoy this, please forward it to your friends 👍. If this email was forwarded to you, then don’t forget to subscribe and become a supporter. You can also follow me on [X](https://x.com/dSebastien), [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/dsebastien.net), and [Mastodon](https://pkm.social/@dsebastien). ![[DeveloPassion's Newsletter Logo.png|DeveloPassion's Newsletter logo: lightbulb sprouting colorful idea nodes]] ## Welcome Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩 This week, I finally received the parts for my new computer. It took me a few hours to assemble everything. The last time I built a new computer was in 2013, but I still know how to do it :) It took me a lot longer than I expected to install and configure everything. As a developer, I need a ton of tools. And as a crafter, I need specific tools configured in *very* specific ways. I’ll publish an article about my setup. As a few of you were curious, here are the specs of my new toy: - CPU: [Intel Core i9-12900K](https://amzn.to/3eIC4Bg) - CPU cooler: [Noctua NH-D15](https://amzn.to/3eyy32a) - Graphics card: [MSI GeForce RTX 3080 12GB](https://amzn.to/3DnxDWO) - Motherboard: [Asus Rog Maximus Hero](https://amzn.to/3QEIYoz) - RAM: [Corsair Vengeance DDR5 5600 32GB (2x16)](https://amzn.to/3RTP2Lr) - Disk: [Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD](https://amzn.to/3La3hZR) - Power supply: [Corsair RM850x](https://amzn.to/3TWZ5k2) - Case: [be quiet! Pure Base 500DX](https://amzn.to/3d5VNuc) - Additional fans: [2x Corsair ML-140](https://amzn.to/3d5hWJl) It’s a solid machine, and I’m delighted with the results so far. Today I’ve installed [stable-diffusion](https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion) and started exploring its possibilities. More on that soon! I’ve also spent some time exploring the switch from Bash to ZSH (finally!), discovered [WSLg](https://github.com/microsoft/wslg) (so cool!), had fun with [winget](https://winget.run/), and had fun acting like a tech nerd again for a few days. Good times 😂 ![[DeveloPassion's Newsletter 83 - Calm business - placing gpu.png]] Caption: Placing the CPU cooler is always the most stressful part ![[DeveloPassion's Newsletter 83 - Calm business - cpu cooler.png]] Caption: The CPU cooler is HUGE ![[DeveloPassion's Newsletter 83 - Calm business - cable mgmt.png]] Caption: The cable management is not ideal, but I'll improve that later ![[DeveloPassion's Newsletter 83 - Calm business - done.png]] Caption: Good to go! Alright, let's gooooo 🚀 ## Calm business Most of the time, when I read about business & entrepreneurship in the news and on various Websites, I feel sad. All I can see is “startup”, “growth”, “funding”, “seed”, “series A/B/C”, etc. Money money money, popularity, fame, glory, … As if that was the only possible path. At some point in my life, I was almost lured in by the appeal of money and funding. I fancied building startups, raising tons of money, hiring people, and building large engineering teams. Unicorns! I was lucky enough to [fail](https://www.dsebastien.net/blog//2021-01-04-20-months-in-2k-hours-spent-and-200k-lost-a-story-about-resilience-and-the-sunk-cost-fallacy) “early enough”. It was a tough pill to swallow at the time, but I’m now grateful to have avoided the worst. Even though I love team dynamics, leading projects, and creating cool things, I’ve come to realize that the “grow fast or die hard” model is simply not something I’m interested in. I’m not saying it’s inherently bad or useless, but I’m not interested in playing that kind of game. I’m not interested in making millions, growing fast, building a billion-dollar company, or making “a dent in the universe”. I’m simply not interested in sacrificing my lifestyle on the altar of status games. Money is only useful up until a certain point. And fame doesn’t bring nearly as much joy as a simple smile on the face of my kids can. I do want to build a business. I do want customers. I do want them to get value and be happy with my products. I want to offer them win-win deals and help them grow. I want to make the world a better place. The thing is that change, progress, and success don’t have to be earth-shattering to be valuable and meaningful. Changing one life is enough. Having enough money not to worry too much about it is enough. Going slow is also fine. Sometimes, less is more. Have you noticed how quickly tunnel vision sets in and prevents you from enjoying the journey? If not, then try driving 500KM straight and tell me how much you enjoyed the view. Businesses work the same way. The faster you grow and the bigger you get, the less time and energy you have to actually enjoy the ride. I don’t want that. I don’t want to run a business that forces me to live a life I’m not interested in. I have a family, habits, and passions that bring me joy. I’ve experienced burnout more than once in my life, and now know what to avoid. I know how important balance is to live a sane and happy life. I’m running a slow business, and couldn’t be happier about it. It doesn’t pay all the bills or my mortgage, but it helps me support my lifestyle and gives me the freedom to explore my creativity. I write books, articles, newsletters, create digital products, experiment with flywheels, and have enough ideas to keep me busy for a lifetime. For instance, I’ve decided to create a [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz0x-VJhvKwV-PK3E_i5G1w), and am now learning a ton about what matters, audio and video recording, editing, etc. Tons of fun for a lifelong learner like me! And I’m just getting started! The coolest part is that this path doesn’t force me to make choices I don’t want to make. Instead of going all in, I can make [small and riskless bets](https://www.dsebastien.net/tag/newsletter/issues/developassion-s-newsletter-small-and-riskless-bets-846960), and experiment my way to success. My progress is slow but steady. Ultimately, my goal is for this business to pay the bills and let me put all my energy into it, but that will take some more time. That’s okay. Meanwhile, I can be there for my kids. I can drive them to school in the morning, pick them up, drive them to their activities, etc. I can take breaks whenever I want, go for a walk or watch one more episode of The Office or Friends. I can take a nap if I feel tired, and stop working at noon if I don’t feel productive. Of course, I can’t do this all the time, otherwise, I’ll lose hard-earned trust and momentum. It’s not about building passive sources of income, but rather life-friendly ones. Working hard is okay only if it doesn’t prevent you from living your best life I could double the money I make by going back to work full-time as an employee. I could make even more by working full-time as a freelancer. I could pitch some of my ideas to investors and raise money. But to do any of that, I would have to sacrifice my most precious resource: my time. Instead, I choose to take the quiet path. With a slow business, I trade time for money. I trade accelerated growth for peace of mind. I trade stress for joy. I trade speed for pleasure. There’s something to be said about slowing down, whether that is for the environment, relationships, sex, or business. The coolest part is that a calm business can actually be very successful with minimal overhead. It just takes dedication and a bit of patience 🌱 What about you? How calm do you want your business to be? ## The Lab 🧪 This week, the new PC and the kids kept me much busier than I expected, so I didn’t manage to publish the YouTube video I planned to prepare. I continued preparing though and watched a few interesting tutorials about the important keys for YouTube: titles, descriptions, thumbnails, and editing. I have a ton more to learn, but it’s quite fun so far. I’ve also received the [light](https://amzn.to/3DgcLRm) and [softbox](https://amzn.to/3RZ9M3W) I ordered. The studio is now fully ready 🎉. Now I have no excuse but to move forward! ## Recent articles No new articles this week ## Quotes of the week - [[If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress]] - [[Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things]] ## Tips of the week LINK: [Best Exercises for Overall Health & Longevity | Dr. Peter Attia & Dr. Andrew Huberman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN0pRAqiUJU) Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman discuss the best exercises for health and longevity. ## How cool is that?! LINK: [GitHub - cmdr2/stable-diffusion-ui: A simple 1-click way to install and use Stable Diffusion on your own computer. Provides a browser UI for generating images from text prompts and images. Just enter your text prompt, and see the generated image.](https://github.com/cmdr2/stable-diffusion-ui) Artificial Intelligence (AI) art is currently all the rage, but most AI image generators run in the cloud. Stable Diffusion is different — you can run it on your very own PC and generate as many images as you want. Here’s how you can install and use Stable Diffusion on Windows. LINK: [How to Run Stable Diffusion on Your PC to Generate AI Images](https://www.howtogeek.com/830179/how-to-run-stable-diffusion-on-your-pc-to-generate-ai-images/) LINK: [Installation · sd-webui/stable-diffusion-webui Wiki · GitHub](https://github.com/sd-webui/stable-diffusion-webui/wiki/Installation) ## Thinking and learning links of the week LINK: [Purring Is a Love Language No Human Can Speak - The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/09/why-cats-purr-vocalization-science/671358/) LINK: [The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT): Most Ingenious Algorithm Ever?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7apO7q16V0) LINK: [PKM Weekly Sept 11 2022 – Issue 035 – Curtis McHale](https://curtismchale.ca/2022/09/11/pkm-weekly-sept-11-2022-issue-035/) LINK: [PKM Weekly September 4 2022 – Issue 034 – Curtis McHale](https://curtismchale.ca/2022/09/04/pkm-weekly-september-4-2022-issue-034/) ## Tech links of the week Put simply, hydration is overhead because it duplicates work. Resumability focuses on transferring all of the information (the WHERE and WHAT) from the server to the client. LINK: [JavaScript Hydration Is a Workaround, Not a Solution - The New Stack](https://thenewstack.io/javascript-hydration-is-a-workaround-not-a-solution/) Searching, discovering and installing winget packages made effortless without any third-party programs LINK: [winget.run | Finding winget packages made simple.](https://winget.run/) An easy to use editor for crontab schedules. LINK: [Crontab.guru - The cron schedule expression editor](https://crontab.guru/) Block spying and tracking on Windows. Contribute to crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker development by creating an account on GitHub. LINK: [GitHub - crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker: Block spying and tracking on Windows](https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker/) Manage your dotfiles across multiple machines, securely. LINK: [chezmoi - chezmoi](https://www.chezmoi.io/) If Product Hunt had a newsletter baby that hated fluff, spam, and incremental product updates. LINK: [Newsletter with the best digital products launched each week, without the fluff.](https://lesshunt.com/) LINK: [Unleash: The Largest Open-Source Feature Flagging & Toggle Management](https://www.getunleash.io/) ## Indie Hacking and bootstrapping LINK: [Tony Dinh on how he runs 3 profitable projects simultaneously](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/tony-dinh-on-how-he-runs-3-profitable-projects-simultaneously-879035fb2e) > How to build a $1,300/month side business for $19. > > Here's the entire 17-step business plan for you: > > 1. Clean up your Twitter profile to reflect what you do for people. > — Justin Welsh (@thejustinwelsh) [September 6, 2022](https://x.com/thejustinwelsh/status/1567196732173213701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Twemex is a browser extension for Twitter that guides you effortlessly to the best content. LINK: [Get more insight from Twitter](https://twemex.app/) LINK: [Making $4.5k/MRR with side projects while working full-time](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/making-4-5k-mrr-with-side-projects-while-working-full-time-4e43969050?utm_campaign=digest-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emails) LINK: [John Carmack on avoiding distractions | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32583257) LINK: - [[10 Essential Knowledge Management Methods Every Professional Should Master (Article)]] - https://www.dsebastien.net/10-essential-knowledge-management-methods-every-professional-should-master/-every-professional-should-master// LINK: - [[Why Obsidian is All You Need - From Simple Notes to Complete Productivity (Article)]] - https://www.dsebastien.net/why-obsidian-is-all-you-need-from-simple-notes-to-complete-productivity// LINK: - [[The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Obsidian (Article)]] - https://www.dsebastien.net/the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-obsidian// LINK: - [[Knowii Community]] - https://www.store.dsebastien.net//product/knowii-community ## Related - [[Calm businesses are a viable path]]