I really like Twitter for the way it allows you to connect with thought leaders. I don’t particularly like being on Twitter or any social media service for an extended time each day. I decided to find a way to get a digest of tweets from some thought leaders in my inbox each morning. In this example I’m going to set up a digest of tweets from Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) and James Clear (@JamesClear).
One of the productivity changes I added to my phone recently is enabling color filters and an accessibility shortcut. Triple pressing the home button now turns my phone’s screen from color to black and white. Why do this? It turns out a lot of the visual fun of using a device is gone when there’s no color. Who knew? My screen time went down significantly after making this change. It’s easier to focus on the phone as a tool instead of the phone being a distraction.
…and I wouldn’t be brave enough to tell you if I didn’t. My first three months working at a tech company I was constantly looking up acronyms just so I could understand what people were discussing on the company chat. It felt silly to have to do that, but at least I was able to catch up quickly. Now that I have teenagers they will occasionally deign to translate their acronyms for me, the old guy.
One thing that always bothers me is when a coworker or friend starts a sentence with “I know you’re busy, but…” I’m never sure if this is a reflection on how I’m acting or how much I’m accomplishing. Acting busy is easy. You just need to appear stressed out. We all do this. As Seth Godin put it, “All you need to do to feel busy is to try to get two things done at once.
I feel extremely lucky to get to spend time with my family during the holidays. I am one of five brothers and three of us were able to come back to my parents’ home for Christmas along with our families. As kids we had personalities and interests that took us in different directions. We also have a pretty large age difference. (I’m the oldest and am almost 20 years older than my youngest brother.
We tend to think of crowds of people in different ways. Crowdsourcing can be good, but the wisdom of crowds generally isn’t. The things that “everybody thinks” can be very wrong. Groups of individuals, on the other hand, can have a powerful influence. We read reviews because sometimes we can find someone like us who can tell us their experience with a product or a store. Professional critics can lead us to try food, listen to music, and read books that we might never otherwise have given a second look.
I feel lucky that I’m wired to be a reader. From my childhood I spent lots of time reading books and it’s something that I still do. My mother used to kick me and my brother out of the house so we would stop reading so much. I wish I had to do that more often with my kids! In my career this has been so important. Each time I take on a new task or join a new team I assemble a reading list, plow through it, add new blogs to my daily feed, and within a short time I feel more comfortable with the basics of what I’ve been asked to do.
One of the hardest aspects of work for me is when I know I have a hard task to do. I’ve found some psychological trickery that works well on me that might be useful for you too. I’m a big fan of the Pomodoro Technique. There are lots of ways to implement it, but the basic premise is to work for 25 minutes, then take a five minute break. After four 25 minute work periods then take a longer break.
Recently I’ve been reading a lot about stoic philosophy and applications of stoicism. Ryan Holiday has some great books that are good primers on the philosophy and great springboards for applied stoicism. Today I read You Must Train the Coward Inside You to my boys. (It’s a short read if you are interested.) Here are two of my favorite quotes: Everyone has a breaking point. For most people, that point is very low, which is why many people never push themselves past their comfort zone.
Hello world!