Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Wednesday edition of Faster Than Normal, exploring one short story about a person, a company, a high-performance tool, a trend I’m watching closely, and curated media to help you build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself.
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Today’s edition:
> Stories: Madonna & Old Navy
> High-performance: The map of productivity
> Insights: Best advice ever received
> Tactical: Reclaiming control of your schedule
> 1 Question: Habit stacking
Cheers,
Alex
P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. I respond to every email.
Quick one for anyone in AI (or trying to break in).
My friends at Athyna just launched an AI Job Board and it's actually different from the usual stuff.
Instead of you scrolling through hundreds of listings, it scans roles at frontier AI companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Midjourney, Google, Harvey) and matches them to your profile in the background. When something's a strong fit, it pings you.
If you're an AI researcher, ML engineer, prompt engineer, or building anything in AI right now, worth setting up a profile and letting it run.
Stories of Excellence
Person: Madonna
Madonna, born Madonna Louise Ciccone in 1958, is a pop culture icon who has reinvented herself countless times over her four-decade career. She moved to New York City in 1978 with just $35 in her pocket, determined to make it as a dancer. "I felt like a warrior plunging my way through the crowds to survive," she once said. Madonna's breakthrough came with her self-titled debut album in 1983, which spawned hits like "Holiday" and "Lucky Star." She pushed boundaries with provocative performances and lyrics, often courting controversy. "I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay," Madonna famously stated. Her influence extends beyond music to fashion, film, and business.
Key Lessons from Madonna:
On ambition: "I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay."
On reinvention: "No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you've come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself."
On self-belief: "A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want."
Old Navy was founded in 1994 by Mickey Drexler, then CEO of Gap Inc. The idea came during a Gap business trip to Paris, where Drexler noticed surplus stores selling affordable, stylish clothing. He saw an opportunity to create a new brand targeting budget-conscious families. Old Navy's first store opened in Colma, California, offering casual apparel at lower prices than Gap. The brand quickly gained popularity, reaching $1 billion in sales within four years. By 2000, Old Navy had expanded to over 500 stores. In 2012, Stefan Larsson became Old Navy's first external CEO, leading a turnaround that boosted sales from $6 billion to $8 billion by 2018. Today, Old Navy operates over 1,100 stores and generates around $8 billion in annual revenue.
Key Lessons from Old Navy:
On store design. Make shopping fun, not just functional. Old Navy stores featured quirky decor like old gas pumps and jukeboxes. This created a playful atmosphere that differentiated them from other budget retailers. Shopping became an experience, not just a transaction.
On product development. Speed beats perfection. Old Navy embraced a fast-fashion model before it was common. They prioritized getting new styles to market quickly over achieving design perfection. This allowed them to capitalize on trends faster than competitors.
If you work in AI, this is worth 30 seconds of your time.
Athyna just launched an AI Job Board that searches roles at frontier companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, ElevenLabs, Perplexity, Midjourney, Google, Harvey) and matches them to your profile. Strong matches come to you. No scrolling required.
Accelerants
High-performance tool
⎯
The Map Of Productivity
Insights
Neil Gaiman on the best advice he ever received:
"When I agreed to give this address, I started trying to think what the best advice I’d been given over the years was.
And it came from Stephen King twenty years ago, at the height of the success of Sandman. I was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. King had liked Sandman and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and he saw the madness, the long signing lines, all that, and his advice was this:
“This is really great. You should enjoy it.”
And I didn’t. Best advice I got that I ignored. Instead I worried about it. I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn’t a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn’t writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn’t stop and look around and go, this is really fun. I wish I’d enjoyed it more. It’s been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit I was on.
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places."
Tactical reads
⎯
> When reclaiming control of your schedule
Buy Back Your Time — Dan Mertell (Read it here)
> When delegating effectively to achieve more
Who Not How — Dan Sullivan (Read it here)
1 question
What can I do today to improve by 1%?
That’s all for today, folks. As always, please give me your feedback. Which section is your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Have a wonderful rest of week, all.
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