The Weekly Review: Vol VI Issue 11
TWR Vol VI Issue 11
Hello fellow humanoids!
We’re headed to the lake this weekend for some much needed time in the wilderness. And some even more needed time away from screens. If you’re enjoying some recreation and relaxations, hopefully you can find some good stuff to read in this issue. Enjoy!
==================================
Currently
Reading: I just finished Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. As with all of Cal’s books, it was an entertaining read. It didn’t leave me feeling super inspired to change — I’ve slowly removed myself from a lot of the issues the book covers. But I did appreciate the focus. He’s not outright pooh-poohing social media, phones, and everything tech. He’s simply advocating for using it with a very high degree of intention.
As I tend to be extremist and all-or-nothing in these kinds of things, I appreciated the approach he takes.
Newsletters I’m enjoying: In reading of another sort, I wanted to point out the two new newsletters I’ve really been enjoying. I’ve mentioned the first in the past: my pal Rian’s Elezea newsletter. I’m currently quite into reading about how to build good software products and his weekly newsletter is a great mix of that and how technology and life intertwine. He’s always making me wonder how he gets so much reading time.
The second is Normcore Tech by Vicki Boykis. It covers a lot of material that would not normally catch my attention, but she does an amazing job of pulling you in and helping you see the bigger picture. Here’s the pitch:
Are you tired of people yelling in 280 characters about data science, Javascript frameworks, or tech companies on Twitter? Tired of threads 1/37? Come here for a little more nuanced, civilized take of stuff that I just don’t have room to put on Twitter. Twitter is also Very Bad for Nuance, something I hope to cultivate here.
Data science and Javascript frameworks, wrapped up in a lovely package. I learn something new in every issue.
Drinking: white IPAs and hoppy Saisons, currently.
Watching: Stranger Things 3. No worries — spoilers not included. I’m only three episodes in, but I’m liking the season so far. More gross factor and the actors are feeling a little too old to put out the good feels of season 1 (adorable tweens so quickly turn into annoying teens), but the story is shaping up to be better than season 2.
==================================
Items of note
Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters
The Basecamp team has “published” another book and I like the look of this one. If you’re familiar with REWORK or Getting Real or one of their other books, you’ll notice this one is a little different.
First, it’s written by Ryan Singer instead of company owners Jason Fried and DHH. Second, it exists on the web instead of in paper or e-book form. At any rate, I’m already into it in just the first few chapters.
Ryan is able to articulate things well:
When shaping, we focus less on estimates and more on our appetite. Instead of asking how much time it will take to do some work, we ask: How much time do we want to spend? How much is this idea worth? This is the task of shaping: narrowing down the problem and designing the outline of a solution that fits within the constraints of our appetite.
I’m looking forward to learning from this one.
The Wildbit team focused on focus for the month of June. We went through the exercise of being super mindful of our time with the goal of getting in 4 very focused hours of work each day.
Before we started, I spent some time tweaking RescueTime so that it would automatically show my overall productivity and how much focus time I was getting. As part of that process, I subscribed to their email newsletter and quite enjoyed some of the articles they referred to. This was one of them.
In this piece, they outline the difference between internal and external distractions. The ones listed in the title above are the external, but it’s the internal issues that are hardest to overcome.
It’s not the chatter of people around us that is the most powerful distractor, but rather the chatter of our own minds.
This was good to read while I was going through the exercise of dumbing down my phone (more on that below). And while that exercise is focused on the removal of external input (email, social media, Slack etc), it results in making it harder for me to act on the inner impulse (I’m bored or unsure of how to move forward on the problem at hand).
How Notion Is Going After Atlassian and Why It Just Might Win
Hiten Shah has an interesting take on Notion, the darling do-everything SaaS app that everyone seems to love (for now). He covers a lot of the history of the product and stick-to-it-ness of founder Ivan Zhao. His conclusion is that they’re going to challenge some really big companies.
Notion’s journey as a product has been fascinating and instructive to entrepreneurs and founders of all types. However, the most fascinating aspect of Notion as both a product and a company has been how relentless Zhao and Last’s focus on their product has been, and the outsized impact this has had on perceptions of the product among the community.
We looked at using Notion several years back, but it never stuck. We ended up going with a mix of Basecamp 3 and Dropbox Paper, but have been watching Notion mature.
However, I have to tell you it’s one of those tools that does so many things, you wonder if it will do anything well. And when you open a new page, it’s overwhelming: where do you start?
I’m curious to see where this goes.
==================================
Quote of the week
You could read all the passages, give time to extensive journaling in meditation and prayer, work at length on memorizing Scripture, and easily move right into a day of walking in your own strength and not dying to selfish interests to anticipate and act to meet the needs of others.
David Mathis, Habits of Grace
A reminder that I need every day and one reason I’m trying to focus on intimacy over activity.
==================================
One month with a dumbed down phone
It’s been one month since I turned my phone into a device that, for the most part, does not give me any new content. No email, no social media, no RSS, and not even any work communication. A few people have asked how it’s going.
In a word, lovely. Absolutely lovely.
Since iOS debuted Screen Time, our family has reviewed the numbers for anyone who owns a device (4 out of 6 of us). I’ve been tracking this since October and we mostly use it for talking about screen usage and addiction, not telling our kids how they have to use their devices.
Looking at my own numbers since dumbing down, there is a small shift. The 4 weeks before starting this exercise, I was averaging 96 minutes of usage, 64 pickups, and 25 notifications per day. Since the change, the numbers have reduced to 83 minutes of usage, 44 pickups, and 17 notifications per day. Not a huge reduction at first glance.
But there is more to these numbers than what you see on the surface. First, those numbers are probably not that high compared to a lot of folks. Second, picking up my phone 20 less times in a day means there are 20 times when I choose to put my attention into something else. Last, my book reading comes into play. I tend to switch back and forth between paper and digital books and I happened to start a new digital book that bumped up my averages over the past couple of weeks.
And I’m definitely ok with reading books on my phone.
But the more important aspect of this entire exercise is not necessarily made obvious by the numbers. It’s the feeling. After the first week of getting used to the change, the compulsion to pick up the device to check something, anything, starts to fade. I’ve had plenty of moments where I realized I’m not sure where my phone is.
And so the number of pickups drops, yes. But the feeling of not needing to constantly find stimulus far outweighs the change in statistics. That change started to dribble into my work day. But the distractions are still present in that space (or habit field, as Jack Cheng called it) so I still have to fight the urge to shift screens and check something when I bump into uncertainty or switch between tasks.
So the changes are positive. But there is still room to grow.
Related, Isaac Smith posted an update about how his own experience has been going.
==================================
Navigating the summer break
Back to the topic of screens. When I get worried about the amount of screen time my kids have during their summer break, I just try to remember that I spent long hours reading Archie comics when I was young. It wasn’t a screen, but it wasn’t challenging literature and it definitely didn’t add much value to my life.
On days where all our kids are not at some summer camp, they’re awake for 13–14 hours at a minimum. If they spend 2–3 hours of that in front of a screen, is that really so terrible?
I do my best to remember that everything is a balance and the dose makes the poison. If you’re a parent wondering how to make it to the start of the school season, maybe this will help 😀