I made a live action video!

Hey y’all, There was no newsletter last week because I was busy preparing for a trip to Boise, Idaho to make a video. I can't say what the video was or who it was for quite yet, but I went to Boise and me and my old business partner, Steve, gathered a crew of people, including a professional actor, a video guy, and an audio guy. And we made a video! It should be coming out in the next couple of weeks. I will, of course, link it here when it comes out. This was a super fun and new experience for me. It wasn't a screen recording! It was a live action video! Turns out I'm not an actor, but I still did my best. You can hear a little bit more about this in [this week's episode of Mostly Technical](https://mostlytechnical.com/episodes/96-no-more-amateur-hour#t=6m58s). I can see myself doing it again. I don't know how exactly to find more gigs like this… but once this video comes out, I’ll update the TryHard Studios homepage to showcase some of these videos just in case anyone else wants me to do some for them. --- ### Thoughts from the week Every now and then I have the thought “what if I logged off forever?” What if I was just unreachable? It's a very enticing idea! I think the real thing that I need to do is better control my relationship with the internet and not to do something as drastic as log off forever. Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed by the amount of input that I'm allowing. So, as you'll read below in a couple of different tweets, I have started to limit my screen time and frankly, my time on the internet. I really want to pivot more towards “leading a quiet life and working with my hands,” which is another Bible reference for those keeping track at home. I am on a mission to increase my discipline and my willpower because I feel like those things are very much lacking in me right now, to my detriment. I sat down recently and did a little exercise of writing out when I feel best and when I feel worst. I feel best is after I've been very responsible, after I've responded to all the emails and the DMs, after I've done all the admin work. That's when I feel like, hey, this has been a pretty good day! The problem is I never ever want to do any of that stuff. Often I will come in and start working on something that is “fun,” which still needs to be done, but it's more fun, like doing some sort of programming. And then the end of the day comes and I haven't done the crappy stuff that I don't want to do! I feel like the whole day was a waste! Even though I got some stuff done, I avoided all the crappy work and ended the day feeling icky. I don't like that! I'm trying to reframe my approach to work and do the stuff that I don't want to do first. And then everything else after that is just bonus. --- 🎬 **YouTube** **Sharding Postgres without extensions with PgDog founder, Lev Kokotov** I chat with Lev Kokotov to talk about building PgDog, an open-source sharding solution for Postgres that sits outside the database. Lev shares the journey from creating PgCat to launching PgDog through YC, the technical challenges of sharding, and why he believes scaling Postgres shouldn’t require extensions or rewrites. [Watch](https://youtu.be/1Rch9qEJUcY) or [listen](https://databaseschool.com/episodes/sharding-postgres-without-extensions-with-pgdog-founder-lev-kokotov) to this latest Database School episode! **🎙️ Podcast Appearances** **Motivational Tape - Hey Fellas, Aaron's got a message for you!** I talked with Page Harriman on I Don't Know Anything with Paige Harriman about trying hard to be a good husband and good father. You can listen to it [here](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4I0aUKvqhazN31n60wPzEg?si=1e5dc1031655470f&nd=1&dlsi=093872af42324cd6). --- ### Things I found this week *Just a heads up that each Twitter/X screenshot has a link to the original post if you want to go follow the account.* [](https://x.com/FriedKielbasa/status/1957121240411332735) I haven't stopped using Twitter altogether, but I have been using my [Brick](https://getbrick.app/)[ ](getbrick.app)device a lot more often this week and I am finding similar effects. It seems like time passes more slowly and I'm more present. I’ll continue to brick my phone as much as possible and I am using a focus app on my desktop too because I feel like my attention span and memory have really gone downhill in the past several years. More on that below. --- [](https://x.com/volantleander/status/1957176293776314395) Here's your random helping of art for this week! I think I need to start going to antique stores and thrift stores and looking for stuff like this in person. --- [](https://x.com/hanslorei/status/1957411997848314246) A while back I built a [shedquarters](https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/1333866090573811723) in my backyard. But now that I have the [studio apartment](https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/1745185336769093799), I don't really need a shed quarters. At some point it would be pretty awesome to have a garden house, and one as beautiful as any of these. --- [](https://x.com/wottavm/status/1957501480786968899) This was kind of surreal to me! Wouter made a mug with many of my common sayings and some of my blog posts titles on it. This is very interesting to me because I primarily see myself as a technologist, whether a software developer or an educator or whatever, but it seems like the thing that resonates most with other people is the softer side of things. The inspiration, personal development, that sort of stuff. It's a very interesting position to be in where I see myself as one thing, but what people are constantly talking to me about is something else. And frankly, I kind of like it that way! Programming has always been a means to an end for me, but never the most important thing, so I'm glad that the other stuff is resonating. --- [](https://x.com/Gentleman_Ways/status/1958481837983944898) One of my absolute favorite poems ever. My favorite rendition of it is obviously from the movie Interstellar. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3\_nprPycZow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_nprPycZow) Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Don’t give up! Don’t give in! This one is originally about old age, but I think it can apply to middle age as well. Don't get comfortable. There's something you want to do or to have done, then you have to muster an enormous amount of activation energy and force of will to make it happen. --- [](https://x.com/zfellows/status/1959398580797505898) This aligns with something that I have said for a long time, which is “no excuse is better than no excuse.” Meaning that regardless of how good your excuse for not doing something is, it's always better to not have an excuse at all! It doesn't matter if there was traffic. It doesn't matter if you had to stop and get gas. It doesn't matter if the refs weren't fair. All that matters is: did you get the job done? Did you win? Nobody cares how hard you work. They just care if the job gets done. When it comes to work, in my life, nobody cares if I've got a bunch of little kids that makes it hard to find time to work. Nobody cares if it's been a stressful week and I don't want to record a video or put out a newsletter. Nobody cares! We all know somebody that constantly has a pretty good excuse for not doing things. But we all prefer the person who does the things anyway. --- [](https://x.com/FoundersPodcast/status/1959612192405520451) This reminds me of Seinfeld's method for writing jokes, which is to write a joke every single day. Just spend time writing every single day. It doesn’t even have to be good! It just has to be done. It seems like the Greats put a huge amount of emphasis on preparation or practice or just doing the work. You can read stories about Kobe Bryant doing the same thing. They're at practice before everyone else. They're at practice after everyone else. This is something that I'm constantly trying to balance because I do have to be out there talking about the stuff I make because that's a lot of marketing! Me telling people that I have a thing! But sometimes I can over rotate and end up just talking about things more than quietly diligently working on things. My current focus is trying to come up with better routines for myself to keep me on track and create a content production factory in and of myself. Right now it's too haphazard and that leads me to feel like I'm being reactionary and I don't like it. It makes me feel bad! My focus is to reclaim my day, reclaim my practice hours, build my diligence. This is part of why I've started blocking Twitter so much more, as you read above, and trying to be very ruthless about my time management. --- [](https://x.com/johnloeber/status/1960416905598263379) I wrote an article a little while back called "[Become Known for a Thing](https://aaronfrancis.com/2025/become-known-for-a-thing-5738e314)" and it's this exact strategy. If you just become the guy for something, when something comes up or becomes popular or comes around, then everyone will be thinking of you and contacting you. --- [](https://x.com/MikaelEllingson/status/1960825148447318211) This is me, for sure. I would much rather trust people and get burned than go through life never trusting anyone and protect myself from a few bad actors. This tweet here is in response to a tweet that says "normalize trusting people. We should make fun of liars and the father of lies instead." I cosign that. --- ### Let's close the loop I send out all this random stuff every week and I often get great replies from people that know a lot more about the thing that I sent, or know about something related. This section is for the things that y'all send that are related to previous issues! (I’m still working on getting the previous issues online, so bear with me there) A few weeks ago, [we talked about attention vs. trust-attracting content](https://app.bentonow.com/share/eB0AGV1rrzKVwq). Maeesha Biswas sent this article, [How to make people give a damn](https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/how-to-make-people-give-a-damn-92e3af37926932ef), that phrased the same challenge with the question: "do you want to make something people look at, or something they return to?". What a powerful question to ask yourself! Two weeks ago, I shared a tweet from Jeff Bezos’ final shareholder letter. Greg Sullivan sent an [interesting article]() that shared a similar sentiment: “To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” --- If you’ve been enjoying the newsletter and think a friend may enjoy reading it each week too, please forward it to them! They can sign up to receive it weekly here: . That’s it for this week! I enjoy reading all of your replies, so if you see something interesting or just have a thought you want to share, please hit reply and let me know. Talk soon, Aaron {{ ENV.unsubscribe\_personal | default: visitor.unsubscribe\_url | hyperlink: "Click here to unsubscribe." }}