Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
>4.2K subscribers
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There is an old saying that if you can find something you love to do, you’ll never work a day in your life. But this is probably bad advice.
Here is a simple graph, from Seth Godin, to help explain:
The problem with fun things (y-axis) is that they’re fun. So lots of people want to do them. And if there’s a small or no market for said fun thing, then it’s probably a hobby. (Hobbies are still important.)
Sometimes you can be fortunate where something that previously had no market eventually has a big market. Take, for example, tinkering with computers in the early days.
This is what Chris Dixon was getting at when he said that what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.
But if this doesn’t happen or if a big market already exists — and you do want to be successful at something fun — it’ll likely follow a power law.
Meaning, you’ll need to be the very best in the world and it’s almost certainly going to be a “slog”. (Bottom right quadrant.) One example of this would be the phenomenon of “starchitects.”
And that’s pretty much it for the fun stuff. The rest of this graph is for things that are difficult, which means that 3 out of these 4 quadrants are difficult and/or a slog.
This is not nearly as much fun as not ever working.
There is an old saying that if you can find something you love to do, you’ll never work a day in your life. But this is probably bad advice.
Here is a simple graph, from Seth Godin, to help explain:
The problem with fun things (y-axis) is that they’re fun. So lots of people want to do them. And if there’s a small or no market for said fun thing, then it’s probably a hobby. (Hobbies are still important.)
Sometimes you can be fortunate where something that previously had no market eventually has a big market. Take, for example, tinkering with computers in the early days.
This is what Chris Dixon was getting at when he said that what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.
But if this doesn’t happen or if a big market already exists — and you do want to be successful at something fun — it’ll likely follow a power law.
Meaning, you’ll need to be the very best in the world and it’s almost certainly going to be a “slog”. (Bottom right quadrant.) One example of this would be the phenomenon of “starchitects.”
And that’s pretty much it for the fun stuff. The rest of this graph is for things that are difficult, which means that 3 out of these 4 quadrants are difficult and/or a slog.
This is not nearly as much fun as not ever working.
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