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A world inside a click
Gold Nuggets
The term gold nugget refers to something you discovered that benefitted you in some way.
I like to think of browsing the internet as constantly being on a search for gold nuggets. The goal is to read, watch and ultimately have something spark inside of you. That spark could be something that finally helps you understand a concept better, or it could be the discovery of something new that leads you to research and learn new things you otherwise never would have come across.
Finding gold nuggets eventually turns into a skill. You get better at knowing where to look. In my experience the best places are the comment sections of blogs, tweets, videos and other media.
Connectedness
I spend at least ten hours per week reading community posts on indiehackers, newsletters, blogs and tweets.
The more I read the more I notice the connectedness of things on the internet. In a strange way it's as if the internet is big, yet small at the same time.
As an example, a week ago I was searching for possible guests of the new JustDjango podcast. I started on indiehackers as I wanted to interview a handful of individuals using Django in their solo projects. I read a popular post that had about 60 comments of people listing their projects that were built with Django. I noted down seven projects who's creators I would continue researching.
A couple days later I was followed by someone on Twitter. Let's call him JAZZ.
JAZZ had a very eye-catching profile so I decided to take a look at what projects he was working on. One of the projects sounded very familiar. It happened to be a project I had seen weeks ago while just browsing the internet. That project also happens to be built with Django, and was listed in the 60 comments of the post I went through the previous week.
But it goes further.
One of JAZZ's other projects was a community for people wanting to get involved in climate change. The top liked post on that community was someone talking about their recent ProductHunt launch. After watching their promotion video I realised it was the same company I had seen in a documentary on Netflix one month earlier.
I wouldn't have found the climate change company - Climeworks - if I hadn't gone to JAZZ's second project.
I wouldn't have found JAZZ's second project if I hadn't taken a look at his personal website.
I wouldn't have found his personal website if I hadn't looked at his Twitter profile.
I wouldn't have looked at his Twitter profile if he hadn't followed me.
I think it's interesting to look at the effect of what happens when you click on a link and start going down the rabbit hole. You never know where you'll come out the other side.
If you enjoy finding gold nuggets, let me know on Twitter. Hopefully this post was a gold nugget too ;)