Few Interesting Things I read this week
Current Affairs
I’ll be working to educate myself, and break my own patterns of ignorance. This sense of urgency is, embarrassingly, new to me, so I have a lot to learn – which organizations to support, what books to read, what history to absorb, and who to listen to. I’m starting on that today. If you’re like me, I hope you’ll do the same.
Source: Signal v. Noise by @37svn
An Idea
- Best Ideas comes from simple things before our eyes
- History is underrated
- When measure becomes target, it ceases to be a measure
- Mastery in a craft means, you can explain it to a 10 yrs old in a way they can understand
Source: Raise the Bar by
Health
This is also the reason why it’s important that everyone wears a mask or other face covering when they are in a shared space. Unfortunately, I’m still seeing people at the supermarket with their mouths uncovered, potentially spreading the virus everywhere. Masks are such a simple, low cost intervention that can be implemented immediately using something as basic as a t-shirt or scarf. It’s not a perfect solution, but covering your mouth reduces both the radius of spread, and quantity of droplets emerging from your mouth. Again, even if we are only stopping 80% of the viral particles, that could be enough to save someone’s life. It’s confusing to me that we’ve implemented harsh and expensive lockdown measures, but have been slow to implement a basic mask mandate.
Source: Paul Buchheit by
Book Recommendation
Poor Charlie's Almanac has been on my reading list for the last couple of years. It took me a six-month sabbatical (and then some) to get through it. This is a testament to the information, lessons, references and stories from Charlie Munger. Fundamentally, this book is an encyclopedia of information on what it takes to be successful and to achieve greatness in what it is you want to do in life; all from a very successful and extremely well read (and connected) 90-ish year old billionaire!
Let's be clear, this is not a book that you can quickly skim through, but rather a book you spend quality time with every day; for a good couple of months. This way you're giving yourself the best change of retaining all of Charlie's tidbits of wisdom. One of the great things about this book is the plethora of quotes from successful entrepreneurs, historians, philosophers alike whose ideas and writings have survived the test of time.
Suffice to say, this is one of those books I'm going to re-read, reference and quote for the rest of my life. Well worth a purchase!
Three Key Takeaways from the book:1. Charlie knows no wise people who didn't read all the time. It is more than just reading though, one has to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people do not identify ideas, and if they do, they do not know what to do with them2. Diversification in investing is something that Charlie doesn't believe in. His recommendation is to choose three good company stocks and invest accordingly. Interesting approach given most financial advisors typically recommend the opposite3. Self-pity is always counter-productive, It's the wrong way to think. And when you avoid it you get a great advantage over everybody else or almost everybody else, because self-pity is a standard response. And you can train yourself out of it
Tool Recommendation
Chrome Browser Extension
Hi! Here's a brief tutorial about how to start using Quotebacks.
Quotebacks are like quote-retweets for any piece of writing on the internet, using simple web-native technology. here's what one looks like:
Source: Welcome to Quotebacks by Tom Critchlow and Toby Shorin