#120: 🌎 6 Daily Routines for Peak Performance | Climate Hiring Playbook | $278B New Funding

Climate, Startups, Productivity, Leadership (2-min. read)

Aug 29, 2023

Good morning, folks.

In today’s 2-minute read, we’ll cover these 4 nuggets below — as delightful as fresh papaya for breakfast on a tropical island. 🌴

Climate Startups & Investment:

#1 — 📖 2023 Climate Hiring Playbook [Guide]
#2 — 💰 5 Reasons the Inflation Reduction Act is *Not* a Boondoggle

Productivity & Leadership:

#3 — 👍 5 Myths of Success (to Ignore)
#4 — 🌄 Daily Rituals for Peak Performance (Tim Ferriss, James Clear, et al.)

Onward and upward,

Chris

P.S. Want more? Read 115+ prior newsletter issues here.

#1 — 📖 2023 Climate Hiring Playbook [Guide]

Finding great talent is a topic frequently discussed among my climate CEO peer groups at Entrepreneurs for Impact.

Thankfully, our comrades at Climate People have written an action-oriented 19-page guide to help you hire new team members.

Below is the table of contents.

Check it out here.

#2 — 💰 5 Reasons the Inflation Reduction Act is Not a Boondoggle

Yesterday, I spoke to an audience of US military leaders about why sustainable infrastructure investing aligns with their priorities.

I was asked whether the IRA’s $370B for climate (infrastructure) solutions was a wise use of taxpayer dollars.

Luckily, my allies at RMI have answered that question here: “It’s the IRA’s First Birthday. Here Are Five Areas Where Progress Is Piling Up.”

They discuss progress in 5 buckets:

Manufacturing boom
Electrifying transportation
Greening buildings
Decarbonizing electricity
Transforming industry

Examples of financial returns on the IRA in the last 12 months include:

$278B announced in new private clean energy investments
Projects announced accounting for 170,000 new jobs
Announcements for 91 new battery manufacturing sites, 65 new or expanded EV manufacturing facilities, and 84 wind or solar manufacturing plants

In addition, “Goldman Sachs earlier this year upped their estimate of…

…public IRA investment over the next decade to be more than $1 trillion, with private sector spending potentially a multiple of that.”

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And we’re just in the first inning… ⚾

#3 — 👍 5 Myths of Success (to Ignore)

This slide deck from my friend Julia Collins, CEO of Planet FWD, separates fact from fiction regarding how we should* build careers of significance.

Here’s a summary:

Nice and successful people are incompatible.

Great CEOs can be kind, too.

You have to work yourself to the bone.

You serve no one if you’re burnt out.

To be successful, you must map out your career.

Great careers allow for detours and evolution, not a 50-year plan.

Real entrepreneurs quit their day jobs.

Most of us don’t have this luxury.

Leaders need to always have the answers.

The best leaders I know partner with mentors, coaches, advisors, and team members to arrive at better answers with collective input. “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

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If you’re an emerging professional or burned out in your current role, you’ll find this quick read refreshing and liberating.

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* My coach once reminded me it’s not healthy (or sanitary) to //should// on ourselves too often: “You should do this. You should not have done that.”

#4 — 🌄 6 Daily Rituals for Peak Performance (Tim Ferriss, etc.)

If you’re a productivity geek like me…

…then you’ll love reading about the daily schedules, nutritional tips, and exercises from optimizers like these folks:

Andrew Huberman — Stanford University professor, neuroscientist, and podcast host (top 0.01% most popular globally)
Tim Ferriss — Author, angel investor, and podcast host (top 0.01% most popular globally)
Andrew Wilkinson — CEO of Tiny, the “Warren Buffett of startups”
James Clear — Author of Atomic Habits, the #1 best-selling book on all of Amazon in 2021

Learn more about obscure habits and health hacks like these:

Breakfast of 8 eggs, including 4 whole eggs and 4 egg whites, with toast and butter
2 tablets of SlowMag (Magnesium) because it plays a crucial role in numerous enzymatic reactions in the body, from energy production to muscle function
I use David Allen’s GTD system for productivity and OmniFocus to manage tasks; this is the workflow I use
“If I meditate for 20 minutes in a day, I’m not meditating for those 20 minutes. I’m meditating for the other 23 hours and 40 minutes.”
All my sleep tips are here.

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Get all the details at routines.club.

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P.S. It’s impossible to follow all of these practices. Prepare to fail. But it’s worth trying a few.

📓 Two final notes

(1) Tell a friend about this newsletter

If you enjoyed this read, I’d be so thankful if you sent it to a friend or two (or 20). 🙏

Share Entrepreneurs for Impact

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(2) Fundraising for startups

If you want to learn how to raise capital for your climate tech startup, then join a short course I’m teaching in September and October. It’s taught live, online, with a cohort of peers.

Join the Course Waiting List

That’s all, y’all.

Make it a great week, because it’s usually a choice.

Cheers,