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Hi! Welcome to The Friday Fix! You’re reading this because you probably stumbled upon this post somewhere on the internet instead of where it should be—in your inbox. But no worries; we can fix that.
Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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I have over ten years of work experience in healthcare, program management, and data analytics on two continents. So, I know a little about helping you work smarter
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I’ll occasionally make you laugh
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Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 If you’re new here, you may not have heard me lament that nothing works well in Uganda. But that statement is incomplete. Nothing works well in Uganda—except 4040!
4040 bridges education gaps in underserved communities. And as part of that work, they, sorry, we are fundraising to build a mobile library so that books can reach at least 1,000 underprivileged children in Uganda.
We’re inviting you to donate to our Little by Little Campaign. Between March 17–20, for every $50 donated, GlobalGiving will match by 50%.
But you can donate any amount. And, particularly if you’re in Uganda, you, your friends, colleagues, or family can use mobile money:
MTN: +256 776 840 407
Airtel: +256 757 140 407
Momo Code: 643158
[All registered under Forty Days Over Forty Smiles Foundation]
I don’t say “we” lightly. I’m connected to 4040 in every sense: I’ve seen the impact of their work, I call a lot of the folks there my friends, and I even volunteered there as a teacher back when I had hair, and no beard.
I hope you can join us in investing in the future. In planting trees whose shade we may not sit under.
TOGETHER WITH SUPERHUMAN AI
1,000+ Proven ChatGPT Prompts That Help You Work 10X Faster
ChatGPT is insanely powerful.
But most people waste 90% of its potential by using it like Google.
These 1,000+ proven ChatGPT prompts fix that and help you work 10X faster.
Sign up for Superhuman AI and get:
1,000+ ready-to-use prompts to solve problems in minutes instead of hours—tested & used by 1M+ professionals
Superhuman AI newsletter (3 min daily) so you keep learning new AI tools & tutorials to stay ahead in your career—the prompts are just the beginning
LIFE
Once bitten, go again
The other day, I made a friend in the gym who mentioned, unprovoked, that he was there to forget his recent breakup. And without further prompting from me, he added that he wanted the gym to “become his new babe.”
I told him this:
Let me tell you about muscles.
To perform any physical task, you need muscles. That’s why your body is full of them. Blinking? Muscles. Swallowing food? Muscles. Pooping? Muscles. Opening doors or jars? You get the drift.
But do you know how muscles grow?
To perform all those tasks, your muscles experience teeny-tiny tears that trigger your body’s immune response. You know, the one that caused that fever you got when you ate that food in the back of the fridge you weren’t sure about. But unlike other immune responses, muscles are special. The body sends tiny proteins called cytokines to repair the tears. Cytokines, full of generosity, come with a concert of other cells, including cells that produce new muscle fibres. The new muscle fibers fuse with your old fibers, causing the muscle, overall, to expand. The more the “tasks” (say, push-ups, for example), the more the tears, the more cytokines, the more trips to the mirror to inspect your progress. This cycle of damage and repair builds muscles, increasing their size, capacity to handle more weight, and the amount of attention you get from those you don’t want it from.
Have you ever gone to lift something with one hand, only to realize it was definitely a “two hands plus squat” job? That kind of task forces the body to summon more muscles and tears, allowing you to handle that task in the future. If an activity becomes routine, however, no new tears are required to complete it. That’s why you don’t get buff by sitting on your couch with a container of ice cream—might’ve worked the first time, but not the next one million times.
To build muscles progressively, you must embrace more pain and more tears by progressively lifting heavier weights.
But for you, small small heartbreak and you want to write off humanity entirely.
Nature is instructive here.
For many people, if you plot their lives on a graph, you can pinpoint specific inflections where things changed. A lost loved one. A broken heart. A failed business. Most of us absorb our losses and internalize them, turning them into a closed door, bolted shut with a skull and crossbones emblazoned at eye-level. You swear off relationships because of one heartbreak. You swear on your mother’s name you’ll never have a business partner again because you got fleeced by one.
But pain can be an opportunity to get stronger and take on greater challenges.
Many people even boast about how their trauma made them wiser. And sometimes they’re right. But often, trauma simply shrank their worldview. Their newfound wisdom is really a big umbrella, offering shelter from the sun or rain, but obscuring their wider field of vision.
Okay, I definitely didn’t tell my effusive gym friend all that.
I told him: don’t let pain win. Don’t let it shrink your world. Don’t let it dull your imagination. Don’t let it make you so mistrusting that you stop living. Instead, like a muscle, use it to get stronger, use it to do more.
TOGETHER WITH 1440 MEDIA
Daily news for curious minds.
Be the smartest person in the room. 1440 navigates 100+ sources to deliver a comprehensive, unbiased news roundup — politics, business, culture, and more — in a quick, 5-minute read. Completely free, completely factual.
THINGS
A quote
A life organized around the expectation of betrayal forecloses too much—including, eventually, the very capacity to be changed by other people—and we don’t want that for her.
A picture
For those of you who wanted to know what Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church looked like, here’s what I could I fit in my frame:
WORK
Will AI take your job?
I interrupt the regular programming on here to recommend you read this article.
PRODUCTS
A course
Sheets for People who Hate Sheets
This course is designed to take you from zero to good enough, even if the last time you opened a spreadsheet was by accident. We'll start with the basics—no judgment—and build from there.
A guide
How to learn Excel
If I had to learn Excel again, this is what I’d do.
FUN
The Friday Fix playlist
Your picks
> Corporate lingo to avoid (pretty much all of it)
> If your parent has an iPhone, this might help
> What if your physical book came with a soundtrack?
Have a great weekend,
— SO
