Blog / Last Week
Last Week's Learnings
March 26, 2026 // 3 lessons learned last week.
1) If your circle is complacent, you will be complacent
"Show me your friends and I'll show you your future."
"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."
No matter how hard you think you work, there are people working harder. The key insight: find something you are genuinely passionate about, because dedication comes naturally when you care deeply about what you are doing.
Do not feel stuck in your current circle.
If you are not happy with what you are doing, get clear on what you want to be doing, then start building the skills that make that path real. It takes a lot of effort, but if you put in the work long enough, you eventually get lucky.
Luck is just the intersection of hard work and opportunity.
Action steps:
- Upgrade your circle: spend time online and in person in rooms where people are moving faster than you.
- Publish and contribute: share what you are building and learning on LinkedIn, X, and Substack. Aim to be useful.
- Reach out to one high-agency friend this week for lunch or coffee.
- Go to one new meetup: find an event on Luma and show up.
- Turn one new connection into a conversation (DM to quick call or coffee).
Start meeting more people and see what sticks.
2) Build a routine and an online presence
Having a routine and doing some of the same things consistently creates momentum. For me, the routine is simple: every week I hit my LinkedIn reps (reach out, comment, connect).
On X, I treat it like a running notebook. When I hear a useful idea from a book, podcast, or article, I post the insight or link if I think it will help someone else.
LinkedIn is more work mode: reflections on the industry, lessons from my career, and what I am building and learning.
Going forward, I want to publish longer-form more consistently, either on Substack or on my blog at masonearl.com. Over the past couple months I have been writing a lot more there, and it has been fun watching it turn into a real resource, almost like a personal Wikipedia.
I think having a personal site / landing page / portfolio, is only going to get more important. It is one of the best ways to express your creativity and interests to curious people.
It has never been easier to build: grab a domain on Squarespace or Cloudflare, ask Cursor to help with DNS, create a GitHub repo, and connect it to Vercel.
Why this matters: Consistency compounds. People cannot support what they do not see, and a steady stream of useful thoughts attracts opportunities without you forcing it.
3) Stay busy to shrink stress (and make the unknown feel normal)
I am guilty of getting anxious before flying sometimes. Lately I have found simple life hacks that shrink trip anxiety fast, and most of them are just momentum.
When my calendar is full of meetings, lunches, and dinners, the anxiety almost disappears. Being in motion makes the unknown feel familiar.
A few things that help:
- Stay moving: schedule one or two anchors each day (coffee, workout, dinner) so you are not stuck in your head.
- Fill dead zones: plan what you will do in airport, rides, or hotel downtime (walk, call a friend, read, write, lift).
- Plan one social anchor: one meetup, coffee, or dinner makes the whole trip feel more normal.
There is another layer to this: doing hard things on purpose (work, training, discomfort, difficult conversations) raises your stress capacity. It becomes proof that you can tolerate pain and keep moving.
What I noticed:
- Idle time tends to amplify anxiety.
- Forward momentum reduces overthinking.
- A simple agenda makes the trip feel less chaotic.
- Voluntary hardship builds a stack of evidence that you can handle the real thing.
Action steps:
- Fill your dead zones (mornings, afternoons, evenings) with one small plan.
- Plan one connection each week (event, meetup, coffee, dinner).
- Treat it like practice, not performance.
- Do not take it too seriously. Stay curious.