Reading & Thoughts from May

May 29, 2019

erik's newsletter

Issue #8 // May 29, 2019
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“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

#READING

I Can't Do Anything for Fun Anymore; Every Hobby Is an Attempt to Make Money (2 min read)
//bennettnotes
I fall into this trap all of the time…

> I did all those things simply because I enjoyed doing them.
When we start to measure everything in terms of time versus return, we get sucked into into a place of hate. Money isn’t the key to happiness, and most things you used to do for fun that now make money aren’t fun anymore. It’s a job.

This is exactly the reason I’ve picked up side projects such as this newsletter which I have no intention of monetizing—I enjoy doing it.

Career advice I wish I’d been given when I was young (15 min read)
//8000hours
There is some great career advice in this post, the following are some of the key advice I recommend.
> #3 Crowdsource your career decisions.
No one person has the answer, they might be making the decision in the room, but it is the combination of many others. I’ve started crowdsourcing many of my decisions to those around me to see how they would handle it. Be sure to get these decisions from a non-biased sample.
> #5 Assign a high value to productivity over your whole lifespan.
One of my favorite things to reason about is productivity, because any time I can save more time results in a longer and happier life for myself. Convenience is a subset of productivity, how can you make everything around you more convenient?
> #9 Reflect seriously on what problem to prioritize solving.
What do you want to do with this life? What problem are you the one to solve? There are a lot of problems out there, what is your priority?
> #10 Work to solve problems that aren’t popular.
Sexy problems inherently have lots of competition, it’s easy to tell your family what you do then. You will likely have a bigger impact on the problems that aren’t super popular.

You should have a personal web site (10 min read)
//markchristian
I’ve been thinking about this one a lot recently. I have a personal website, but it doesn’t really reflect who I am. Everyone now has an identity online. Social media giants rule the world, but everyone conforms to the norm. If you really want to establish a true identity for yourself, you should have a personal website—I personally use a self-hosted Wordpress site, but there are many alternatives such as Squarespace, Weebly, and many more.

The Brain Needs Animal Fat (20 min read)
//psychologytoday
> DHA is critical to the development of the human cortex—the part of the brain responsible for higher-order thinking. Without DHA, the highly sophisticated connections necessary for sustained attention, decision-making, and complex problem-solving do not form properly.
I honestly didn't know that DHA was this important to the human brain, but thinking back, it makes sense. I've gone on stints where I would replace animal-based meat with plant-based alternatives, and I didn't feel as sharp.
To be clear, I do eat a lot of animal-based food (and food in general), but I wish there were more (and cheaper) plant-based alternatives.
> Plant foods contain absolutely no DHA. For those who choose vegan diets, it is important to know that plant foods contain no DHA.
If we’re going to move toward plant-based products we are going to need to innovate properly in the supplement category, there are currently no viable solutions for DHA in plant-based alternatives.
> we don't know if we can access the DHA within edible algae without special extraction methods

If we move somehow do fix the DHA problem, how are we going to make it cheaper? Right now, plant-based foods generally have a shorter shelf-life and cost more. Will economies of scale kick in? Are we going to be able to convince everyone to move to plant-based diets? Will there be any adverse side affects we experience? I'm very excited to see the future of lab and plant-based foods.

Steve Jobs had a simple, harsh-sounding theory about what separates great leaders from all the rest (7 min read)
This is one of my favorite stories/quotes from Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs told employees a short story when they were promoted to vice president at Apple. Jobs would tell the VP that if the garbage in his office was not being emptied, Jobs would naturally demand an explanation from the janitor.

"Well, the lock on the door was changed,' the janitor could reasonably respond. "And I couldn't get a key."
The janitor's response is reasonable. It's an understandable excuse. The janitor can't do his job without a key. As a janitor, he's allowed to have excuses.

"When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering."

"In other words,' (Jobs continued,) "when the employee becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say."

#PODCASTS

Kevin Systrom (founder of Instagram)
//thetimferrissshow

When skimming books you should read the last paragraph of every chapter to get a summary of the chapter, and then you can focus on the key learnings while reading the chapter
We work hard and get things done
Getting things Done by David Allen
The Gold — business book about Supply Chain Management
Love the thing you’re (outcome) shooting for

Ramit Sethi, I Will Teach You How to Be Rich
The Tim Ferriss Show
Noah Kagan Presents
I love personal finance, so naturally, I listened to 2 podcasts on Ramit Sethi

Money Dials — what do you love to spend money on?
What are you status symbols?
How do you allocate your money?
Automating your finances

Amazing Show Notes with Links from Tim Ferriss

#RANDOM

20 Ideas That Changed My Life
//safalniveshak

You can achieve anything if you focus on 1 thing
//theladders

Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
//hackernews

Confidence: 2 Reasons Most People Don’t Have It
//medium

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