Boundless or Boundaries (Ricky Weekly #77)
Boundless or Boundaries (Ricky Weekly #77)
This is where I share 3 things every week with my friends and anyone else interested.
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A picture from my life:
I drove to Ragged Point for a wedding last weekend and got delayed on the way back by the Big Sur Marathon. Ended up cheering for the runners since I couldn’t go very fast anyway.
A thing on my mind:
Boundaries are important because when you communicate your boundaries, people learn how to work with you better. My default is to just be open to it all. Tell me your problems, give me your anxiety, etc. If it’s about the startup, every problem is my problem anyway. However, it’s not harmless even if I don’t like to admit it. I can buckle under the weight of it all, and that affects everyone. Squaring this with my desire to keep expanding my capacity is hard, or at least requires more nuance. I admire people who are tougher than me, but in reality, everyone experiences the world differently. What’s tough for you is not tough for me, and vice versa. I just need to get better at knowing how to operate and improve the best version of myself.
As part of building better emotional boundaries, I started playing pick-up basketball again on Fridays to feed my soul with two hours of pure flow. But after just a month into this new routine, I already have a decision to make. The Friday afternoon games are just challenging enough to put me in flow, but not enough to help me improve. Should I look for a more competitive time to play that could challenge me more? Or should I keep basketball purely a restorative hobby and not improve deliberately? Can I be okay with that? I think I have to be given my priorities, but it’s not pleasant to be so explicit about this decision, especially because I’ve tried to get good at it in the past. It’s like this newsletter. I don’t care about growing it or monetizing it even though many people have suggested that I try. It almost feels like I have to fight the world and myself to not grow. Maybe the way to be boundless is by mastering my boundaries, or maybe this is just me making excuses.
A piece of content I recommend:
Everything Everywhere All At Once
You have to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once and you have to watch it in theaters. Out of the 444 films I’ve rated on Letterboxd, I’ve given 20 of them 5 out of 5 stars, and this is one of them and probably the best movie ever. The Letterboxd community agrees, since it just became the highest rated film of all time on the site (surpassing Parasite and The Godfather).
I can’t describe the movie, but the directors had this to say about being the highest rated film of all time, “We would like to thank recency bias and just all the hardcore fans who are hyperbolically praising us, giving us five-star reviews.” That kind of self-effacing humor should get you to want to explore their work.
The directors are known as The Daniels, and I thought this was the first time I’ve watched their work. I was wrong. They made this 👇
Bonus read about my work:
Get in the flow: Flow Club is a virtual WeWork - Protocol
In the new workplace, all we want is a chance to Flow and grow - Computerworld
We started talking about Flow Club more publicly, and I was excited to read these two articles. We pitched the Protocol reporter, but the Computerworld piece was a complete surprise to us. I’m excited because while Flow Club is not hard to describe, it’s hard to get on an emotional level unless you experience it. The closest thing to experiencing it is through someone else’s first-hand account, so take a read if you’ve been curious. If you want to try it, use my invite to skip the waitlist.
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As always, you can find out what I’m thinking in more real-time on Twitter and my essays are on my website. My primary focus (and where I focus) is on Flow Club.