Author: neil

Nearly a year into my feedreader experiment, has the friction I added to my reading workflow has done anything to my habits?

I’m feeling that I’ve read much less.

The friction – I have to click on a button to open up Feedbro – has meant I don’t click on it often. The computer I use, a work one, has restrictions on automatically opening tabs, so that option is also out for me.

With just this in place, I have 74 starred items on my list. Finding them is hard in context. They’re not available on other devices, so when I do want to share things with people (very often), I’m struggling to find out where they are so end up doing  a search and wasting far more time.

The lack of a curated list available means I am now reading stuff that is utterly banal (news media/reddit) when the opportunity to read exists.

I think it’s back to feedly for now. But in the meanwhile, I’m also keeping an eye on Matter  to integrate the other feeds.

To be continued…

 

A day of routine health tests to round out the year that is 2021.

The experience of having blood drawn out of me, although painless, always seems to be a bit more challenging every time I’ve had that done the last few times.

Today was not much different. The clinician who tried to do so this morning “struggled to find a vein”. When she did, she was able to draw only a tiny bit, so had to fish around until she filled a vial. The second vial only had air drawn into it (is that even possible? I wouldn’t have thought so if I hadn’t seen it myself) – and so tried a few more times. I’m not sure she got enough but she told me “that should be enough for this particular test” and I was out of there.  I had to do it again this afternoon, and it was the same story with a different technician at a different clinic.

I had a bunch of other tests and an appointment with the GP too. Today helped me figure out at least two of my next 100 days habits: Eating better and exercising consistently, in addition to the daily walks.

I’m going to try out some vocal exercises tonight, despite the cough. Getting back into warm-up routine and just doing it is important.

The mercury hit 35+C for two days in a row, and it has taken its toll on energy. Exhaustion brought on both by the heat and the christmas baking that I’ve been helping my wife with.

In the midst of all that, I had a hare-brained idea to fix the slow macbook pro laptop with a OS reinstall. Ha. Should have known better. It has been an exercise in patience, and I’m at the point where I want to throw it against a wall.

I need to tidy up my mental state of affairs. The cough has returned, the frustration of not getting through things is causing more angst. I’ve not done much writing – calligraphy or otherwise – and the vocal training is not even a thought at this point.  I have done little if any reading.

Tomorrow, I begin with tests, and that will start the ball rolling.

If this post sounds all over the place, it’s probably because it is. I’m okay with it. Tomorrow will be another day.

Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements are simple:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions.
4. Always Do Your Best.

Identity – another simple word that has complex implications on how we live out our lives. Reflecting on my hours long effort last night to send out that list to just 10 people because I made a promise, I recognise that success in the things that truly matter to me have come by because of living up to my word.   There are times, more often that I admit, that I don’t live up to my word for reasons beyond my control.  Yet I am trusted.  By my peers, my family, my friends.

For what it’s worth, I don’t quite know the reason for this meandering post.  Many conversations in the last few days have made me wonder about – and be grateful for – the trust that others have reposed in me.  My daughter writes about her struggle to find her identity, and I tell her often that I still am searching for mine.  I think it’s okay: we start by focusing on who we wish to become, as James Clear so well puts it in “Identity based habits”

I’m going to read through my journals over the next few days and assess the anecdotes against Ruiz’s four agreements. I’m sure there’s much that’s revealing.

I  spent the entire train trip and now a fair bit of time writing up a list of things I thought were worth sharing with my colleagues.  A day spent in the office to farewell a colleague left little time to write today so this list will have to do.

Tech Strategy/Big Ideas

Ben Thompson, Stratechery: A recent one that questions Twitter’s business model while it has a change in its CEO. I have come to the realisation that few people who work at a corporate can truly explain what the business model is, regardless of their hierarchy in the organisation.

Benedict Evans:  Browse through any of his highly opinionated presentations, and despite how much I dislike his Twitter style, I found his perspectives always challenge and expand my world.

Inspiration/Ethics in Tech

Doug Engelbart now deceased – most famously known as the inventor of the mouse, I’ve been a huge fan of his writing and ideas that still have barely been scratched – take for example this 2002 talk called “Improving our Ability to Improve”.

Aaron Swartz now deceased. Known as the Internet’s Own Boy until he died by his own hand at the age of 26, Aaron has probably had something to do with the tools you and I now use. I do regard him as  a prodigy, and maybe an idealist. I find his principled stand against the publishing industry which landed him in hot water quite inspiring. I won’t link to a single article from him but this eulogy from one of his mentors Larry Lessig, (who I should also list here but won’t) is worth a listen.

dana boyd – she writes her name in small case – is a technology & media researcher at Microsoft.  A recent article “Behind every algorithm, there be politics”

Kevin Kelly – The cofounder of WIRED magazine, KK spends much time on pursuits that I can’t even categorize – which is one reason he ranks highly in my  reading list. I discovered recently (to my total surprise) that he is also involved with the Long Now Foundation with Stewart Brand (another person will likely make it into my list soon), a veritable goldmine of long-form, long-term talks. Eric Ries ,the author of Lean Startup, was a speaker in 2019, about building a new form of Stock Exchanges in the US.  But back to Kelly, here’s a bet he had with a Luddite-loving doomsdayer 25 years ago, & it’s outcome.

Marketing Tech

Doc Searls, one of the co-authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto – a series of 95 theses about the Internet worth revisiting, Searls is an advertising guru who has turned his attention to the “intention economy”. A prolific writer and speaker, his ability to synthesize (for me) complex ideas into inspiring ideals is a huge draw.

Prof Scott Galloway: A recent entrant into my reading list, I’ve beginning to see why some of my favourite authors like his discipline of writing. Here’s one about BNPL (buy now pay later companies)

Math

Numberphile YT channel – hours of fun learning about things. James Grimes hosts fun people like this one by Hannah Fry about how railway timetables are created.

3Blue1Brown: YT channel – I love Grant Sanderson’s skill in explaining complex concepts effectively- one so beautifully demonstrated when Covid started last year and a simulation

AI/ML/Visualisation

Andrew Ng (Andrew Ng (@AndrewYNg) / Twitter) is inspiring, a visionary, and a brilliant explainer of all things AI & ML, their practical limitations and opportunities. His weekly newsletter The Batch is one to subscribe to, for wonderful coverage (& great dad jokes since Andrew had a baby J). Particularly so if you are considering or introducing AI/ML in your own area. Leaders particularly would do well to listen to the experience that Andrew commands. A course I’d highly recommend, even if you’re a ML/AI practitioner, is this free one title AI for everyone on Coursera, a company incidentally co-founded by Andrew Ng. It is a no-nonsense primer to the world, accessible even if you’re not a practitioner.

I started reading Jack Clark (Jack Clark (@jackclarkSF) / Twitter)’s blog ImportAI for the futuristic stories he writes in them. Inspired by real events, Jack’s imagination and writing skills are captivating, and I’ve come to appreciate both his optimism and cautions about AI.  A slightly older one but one that was vivid is in ImportAI 231 (scroll right down to the end)

Nathan Yao (Nathan Yau (@flowingdata) / Twitter) brings statistics to life and data stories through visualisations. See this one visualising age of workers and the jobs they are employed in.

Investments

Prof Aswath Damodaran (Aswath Damodaran (@AswathDamodaran) / Twitter) makes this cut in the hope that it inspires you to think about companies and valuation and your own personal investment philosophies.  He teaches his students to think, really think, about how companies are valued. I fell in love with his Talks at Google titled “The Value of Stories in Business”.  Substance over form on his website, but don’t let that stop you from digging into his lectures that he freely posts on his YouTube channel.

Observation & Attention

Rob Walker (Rob Walker (@notrobwalker) / Twitter) is the author of “The Art of Noticing”.  He was an accidental find for me when lockdowns started last year, & I found it overwhelming to deal with everything. Mediation helped of course,  as did some of the simple pleasures that Rob encouraged his design students to do long before the pandemic even began. Learning to notice has helped me have better conversations with people.  His weekly newsletter is brimful of ideas to use either for personal application, for team activities, or for simply becoming a better listener.

Authors of great sense-making help:

• Robert Fulghum. He’s had a wonderfully long & varied life and career, a fantastic eye for the world around him, & the ability to distil the quintessence from the madness. This should be  a sample enough
• Robert Caro, Working. The one book that has had the most influence on my approach to my own work.
• Call me a nerd, but I read a book titled “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler (see this review by Shane Parrish of Farnam St Blog). And in hindsight it was the first thing I should have done when I learnt how to read.
• Seth Godin’s blog.  Not everyone likes his style of writing instantly but I say persevere.  A. & I did this workshop  together at the beginning of 2020. I  rank it as one of the 3 best things I’ve done in my life, besides the woman I married, & the next on the list.
• Dr. Barbara Oakley, Learning How to Learn on Coursera.  I listen to the content of this course once every year or so (& now with my kids too) to be reminded of the gold that Dr. Barb shares. It was a proud moment for me when she accepted my invite to share her insights with us just before the Datathon in 2019, when I discovered she was holidaying in Australia. She’s also the one person on this list that I have actually met in person and grown to become friends with.

 

Not earth-shattering news but I slept well last night. The medication was effective at suppressing the cough, and I’m still only at day 1. Tests start on day 7 to discover root cause.

A revealing moment as I was making coffee just then was how I processed the improvement.  I have long standing plans for the next 3 days meeting people I care about and who care about me. In the last 72 hours or so I wasn’t sure I was going to keep those commitments, so I let them know I wasn’t.

This morning, feeling rested (& seeming fit), I began wondering if I could keep them after all.  I continued to extrapolate – if I’m already feeling better on day 1, and the symptoms disappear, do I really need to do the tests?

The kettle was boiling, and I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. Of course not doing the tests is entirely the wrong thing to do. Merely because the symptoms have been subdued with drugs whose names sound like the mafia (Panafcortelone, really!) doesn’t explain why I keep having these episodes every so often, and that lays me low for weeks at a time every two years or so.

Short-term day-dreaming taking over long-term decisions.

The better thing to do is to try to get to the cause, even though it is expensive, takes time, and requires effort. Of course I will. I’ve learnt that expensive lesson in the last 3 decades of my life.

My reflection from this anecdote: daydream all you want, but remember to take time to think through decisions about the most important things. It’s not usually life and death.

And if it is, I’ll know, and decide accordingly.

The coffee tasted so much better too 🙂

It’s a liberating feeling to know I can express how I truly feel about the people I work with, to their face.  And to know that they’ll return the favour.

I remember reading Ray Dalio’s Principles and the concept of radical candor as a management principle. It takes a certain strength of character and a humility of mind to both speak so and to listen to it. And I’m grateful for the group of humans – I will call them friends rather than colleagues – that I get to spend my days with.

I truly love working with them because they see the world differently to how I do, yet want to create a future that I want too. We discuss, argue, oppose, interject, play devil’s advocate, and a thousand other things but I’ve discovered over time that we never question intent. We share our individual challenges, and potential ways around them. We ask for help. We treat each other with respect, and people around us too.  We know we don’t know most things, so we continue to have fun while we get mud on our faces and learn.

Knowing someone’s got your back, and that they’ll call out your bullshit to your face without trampling your identity, is a wonderful sense.  It might last only as only as this group is together, but we’ve learnt how to create this from scratch.  Several times over.

That I think is worth celebrating.