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- š± New favorite web tool
š± New favorite web tool
Learn: Astronaut Lessons, Chrome Extension, Amazon Prime
Read: 3 min
Hola from Buenos Aires,
3 goodies, 3 minutes. Letās go.
š§āš All The Buzz
Buzz Lightyear Aldrin was the second person to walk the moon.
A few days ago, on his 93rd birthday, he married his 63-year-old now-wife. (so the same man who once was on the moon, is now OVER the moon. Go Buzz!)
But thereās a deeper lesson tucked in this āheroāsā journey.
After returning to earth in 1969, Buzz went on a 9-year alcohol bender, dissolved his marriage of 21 years, and ended his military career on bad terms. Yikes.
How did this happen?
His perspective switched from approaching (forward-looking) to avoiding (stuck in the past).
Buzz said this himself, āThe transition from āastronaut preparing to accomplish the next big thingā to āastronaut telling about the last big thingā did not come easily to me.ā
In other words, he had nothing more to look forward to. He peaked at 39 years old.
Psychologist Benjamin Hardy argues we should never be the āformer" anything. This is a status trap (job title, income level, relationship, etc) where our motivation slips from approach-oriented to avoid-oriented, and we plateau.
āRather than approaching a new and expansive future self, your primary concern becomes to maintain or protect your current status or identity by avoiding failure. Youāll stop being courageous. Youāll plateau, and the energy and zest that was your growing personality fizzles out into something far less inspiring.ā
Consider for yourself, are you approaching or avoiding?
š§° Glasp
Glasp is a social highlighter app and free chrome extension. And much more.
Not only can you highlight and save articles, but you can also grab YouTube video transcripts (time-stamped too).
Even better, you can just copy the video transcript (one click) and paste it into chatGPT for a quick summary.
You can see all my highlights here: glasp.co/#/Mitchell
Check out the Chrome extension here. They also have great customer service (aka founder replies to all support tickets).
š¦ Amazon Prime Origin
Back in the day, Amazon had a secret project they called Futurama which eventually became Amazon Prime.
But the interesting part is how it started in the early 2000ās.
An engineer brought up how it was āannoyingly complex, both on the backend and to shoppersā to set up their $25 minimum for free shipping back then.
So he proposed this to the group, āWouldnāt it be great if customers just gave us a chunk of change at the beginning of the year and we calculated zero for their shipping charges the rest of that year?ā
Bezos liked it.
But it took a LONG time for Prime to become what is today. It wasnāt until they added Video that it really started to explode.
Funny I just assumed Prime always worked and people always loved it. Turns out, that wasn't the case. It was actually a BIG gamble.
I found this article jam-packed with interesting nuggets about the origin of Amazon Prime.
Or you can check out my glasp highlights here.
Mucho amor,
Mitchell
Ps. New hat