Check-In Round
“What’s a skill you wish you had?” (via @oneredcatmedia)
Hands down, programming. I follow indie software developers like celebrities. I love diving into new apps and trying to understand why app designers make the decisions they do. I keep toying with the idea of doing some kind of ultralearning project around teaching myself to code but I tend to talk myself out of it because of the opportunity costs.
I swam here a couple weeks ago. How neat is that?
Something To Chew On
I need to write a new issue of The Deliberate, but because I’ve “skipped” a couple weeks I feel like this one needs to be better than usual. That, of course, means I’m even less likely to sit down to do it. Which means I delay it longer which means it needs to be even better. Continue, ad infinitum until I die having never written anything ever again.
My shortcut to getting this thing out the door with as minimal existential angst as possible this week is to tell myself (and you), right now, that I’m fine with shipping a long list of links of great things I’ve read recently and calling it a day. If I decide to add a couple sentences of explanation or other rhetorical gravy, then hooray for all of us. If I don’t, at least I’ve cleared out the backlog and gave you some things to add to your reading queue.
Also, I need to finish writing this thing before I land and the flight from Orlando to DC isn’t that long.
What Has My Attention
Jia Tolentino’s advice for people who want to make a living from creative work
It’s rare that I read some piece of advice from a creative professional and get stopped in my tracks. I’ve heard almost everything already. Most of it has been filtered through countless layers of survivorship bias and tends to read a bit like a fortune cookie. Check out this advice, though, from Jia: “You can’t control anything about this industry. Whether you’ll get paid well, whether you’ll get paid, whether people will read you, what they’ll think when they do. But you can control the amount of pleasure you can generate for yourself in your work. You can make writing fun and hard for yourself so that even if nothing comes of it, it will be worthwhile to have done it. It has to be an end in itself.”
That’s something to aspire to. It has shades of my thinking from It’s Time for a Workism Reformation but written so much more succinctly and punchily (as you would expect from the author of The Land of the Large Adult Son). Obviously, I think this extends beyond writing or any other traditionally creative vocation. I strive for this in my consulting. I help my clients strive for this in whatever they do in their day-to-day work. I want to live in a world where we’re all trying to generate pleasure by doing the right thing and trying to skillfully navigate the world.
Think mystery, not mastery
“That’s why mystery is our friend. Mystery is the unknown. Mystery takes us to our edge. It’s at these outer limits where we grow and evolve. This is also the space where we find the confidence and faith in ourselves and our process. If we allow our true interests and curiosity to lead the way, we expand our boundaries through exploration, inquiry and experimentation.”
This short article really articulated something I’ve noticed in myself for a long time. I simultaneously crave the deep expertise of some kind of domain mastery while at the same time being enamored with the mystery of what else I could or should be doing at any moment. I need to get better at turning that curiosity back on itself and using it to delve deeper, rather than using it as an excuse to go wider.
How Christian Yelich turned himself into an MVP
I’ve been a casual, extremely casual, baseball fan for a long time but I’ve never played the game and I don’t really know the ins and outs of some of the finer details. But, for whatever reason, I found this article and it’s extremely detailed breakdown of how Christian Yelich completely redesigned his swing, both mentally and physically, utterly fascinating. For example, I never really thought about the sheer impossibility of hitting a major league pitch. From the pitcher releasing the ball to it reaching the front of the plate is about 400 milliseconds. We perceive the world about 80 milliseconds behind that. That leaves 300 milliseconds for a batter to do something. The final 150 milliseconds are too late to be useful. That means a hitter has about 150 milliseconds to recognize the pitch, determine its speed and spin, decide to swing, and then move his body through a sequence that hopefully connects the bat to the ball. That is bonkers. Anyway, beyond the geekery this article is an interesting look at the fickle reality of being elite at something as fickle as hitting a baseball and the nearly mystical relationship between an athlete’s mind and body.
A selection from Kourosh Dini
have an intellectual crush on Kourosh Dini. He wrote the weirdest but best book about productivity that I read many years ago. He’s some kind of productivity philosopher. Also, these three articles all came across my radar across the past few weeks: “As far as you can in the moment,” “Dealing with a system’s decay,” “Tired when wrapping up work.”
Do I have a nemesis?
I think Andrew Taggart might be my nemesis. At least, to the extent that one’s nemesis can be someone who doesn’t know you exist, who you think is incredibly smart, you’re pretty sure can run intellectual circles around you, and regularly makes you doubt everything you believe about everything. Why Meaningful Work Rests On Folly is his latest that makes me shake my fist in his general direction while simultaneously nodding along.
Ok, this plane is about to land so no more commentary — just links:
Closing Round
Working: Had a quick one night trip to Orlando where I deliberately didn’t pack any pants other than the ones I was wearing. Part exercise in packing minimalism, part exercise in hubris. I was victoriously stain-free, thus adding to my overconfidence and inevitable tragic downfall.
Eating: I’ve been collecting overripe bananas in the freezer for weeks. Finally reaped that reward into some banana bread (with the excellent last second addition of chocolate chips).
Playing: Nothing. But looking forward to the upcoming Apple Arcade service changing that soon.
Listening: Somehow Twitter sent me down a Yvette Young/Covet YouTube rabbit hole that I was in no hurry to exit. Definitely on heavy rotation now.
Reading: I’m on a Nassem Taleb kick recently because a couple of his books became available for borrowing at basically the same time on Libby. Nearly everything about his personality grates on me but I enjoyed Skin in the Game and Fooled by Randomness.
Until next time!
Your friend,
Sam
