The Weekly Review: Vol VI Issue 5
Hello friends,
If you haven’t heard from me for a while, it’s all my fault. I made the move to Buttondown several weeks back, but made a rookie mistake in the process. I sent out the first couple of newsletters using my iCloud email as the From address. That’s a no–no in terms of email deliverability.
So many of you likely have one of these issues sitting in your spam folder:
My apologies for the mistake. We’re now back to our regular flow and apart from the very low open rates, Buttondown has been a pleasure to use.
The entire experience was appropriately timed to coincide with spring. Up in these parts, once the melt begins in earnest, we enter into an odd time of the year. There’s a lot of sunny days, which everyone enjoys. But to get to true spring, there’s a long period of gross.
Due to all the sand used to provide traction on our roads and parking lots for six months, February, March, and April can be quite unattractive. As the warmer temps melt the snow, this leaves behind dirty snow, slush, mud, and eventually, just dirt. And 5–6 months worth of your dog’s business all over your yard. As things start to dry out, we then have a lot of dirt and sand all over the place, which results in dust and poor air conditions.
All that to say, we enter into a long period of anticipation that lasts several weeks.
But warm breezes and green things growing are on the other side, so you feel an odd mix of optimism and fatigue.
The view from a recent run
How does this relate to my newsletter? I’ve had a long period of transition myself this winter. Both my site and newsletter are on different hosts, and while readers don’t see much of this (hopefully), it’s a lot of extra (sometimes tedious) work to go through in order to enjoy the benefits.
But better things, good things, are on the other side.
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Items of note
I can’t recall how I came across this article. But it sure got me thinking long and hard about my set up for storing notes and information related to all the things I do. Andre Chaperon absolutely nailed the description of a problem I still experience from time to time:
The inefficiencies of a system (or lack of a system) don’t become apparent until we need to retrieve the information we’ve previously been exposed to; information we’ve already deemed important. … and then can’t find the info or recall where you saw it.
Despite efforts to ensure this doesn’t happen, I still find myself having these moments. And so this article inspired me.
In short, Chaperon is making a case for the Zettelkasten method of notekeeping. And he goes into great detail about the entire system and how one can implement it digitally. And while he ends up in a different place than I picture, it sounds fantastic. I can picture this set up with Sublime Text. But I feel like it makes the most sense to use Ulysses in this fashion.
My issue on this topic is that the Zettelkasten method feels a little like overkill for me. I could make better use of keywords (tags) and smart filters in Ulysses to ensure I can find the things I need.
However, if one was to implement the Zettelkasten system, I recommend reading why one would want to use it. In his post Create a Zettelkasten to Improve Thinking and Writing, Christian Tietze from Zettelkasten.de goes into detail on the benefits of this method. At its heart, he talks about how taking notes is good for a knowledge worker; the Zettelkasten method is the method to do so that allows related notes to be more interconnected.
Doing it right, you can move way beyond input/output-based note-taking. You can interact with and communicate with your system of notes. As holds true for every communication, you’ll learn something new when you interact with your Zettelkasten.
Anyway, as you can see, I’m a little infatuated with this idea right now.
The Ultimate 30-Minute Tabata Workout Routine You Need To Try!
This was new to me, but the Tabata method of training is an interesting concept. If you’re like me and have never heard of this, here’s the gist:
The Tabata training method involves exercising at full effort for 20 seconds, recovering for 10 seconds, then repeating the cycle for eight times for four minutes. The high-intensity burst is performed at or near maximal effort while the recovery period is usually at 50 percent of maximum capacity.
As a runner, this technique is similar to other tempo or pace focused work. But what is unique here is the short timeframe. Izumi Tabata conducted experiments and came up with this method. It showed that people benefited most from this high intensity, intermittent training.
But the surprising aspect was how little they had to work overall. The group showing the most benefit using this technique totalled 120 minutes of high-intensity exercise over 6 weeks. The control group totalled 1,800 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise over the same time period.
Those are amazing results. It reminds me a little of Cal Newport’s focus on deliberate practice: total time is not as important as how you spend it.
Kano Model — Ways to use it and NOT use it
Here’s another method named after its Japanese inventor. But this one has nothing to do with physical fitness: it’s a product development framework that helps teams prioritize what product ideas or features they should work on next.
It provides techniques to help us understand customers’ perspectives on product features by assessing two measures for each feature: the satisfaction and sentiment. The responses to these two measures will fall into one of the five categories: Attractive, Performance, Indifferent, Must-Be, Undesired.
My colleague Rian Van Der Merwe has written about this method a lot over the last seven years. This particular article goes into detail on how to use the method, but also includes a lot of other good resources within. I recommend it if you’re into this type of thing.
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Quote of the week
The heightened state brought on by a book—in which one is “actively present at every moment, scripting and constructing”—is what readers seek, Birkerts argues: “They want plot and character, sure, but what they really want is a vehicle that will bear them off to the reading state.” This state is threatened by the ever-sprawling internet—can the book’s promise of deeper presence entice us away from the instant gratification of likes and shares?
Mairead Small Staid, Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction
That last line is a question I ponder a lot.
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Footsteps
If there is anything that has become more clear as I get older, it’s that there are no sure things when it comes to raising children. In fact, they rarely follow in the path of their parents. Nothing brings this reality home more than parenting teens.
As young parents, we suffer in one sense as all humans do: we idealize the future. When we picture our infants or toddlers 20–30 years down the road, we tend to view them (and their decisions) in the rosiest color. But reality rarely matches that vision. They will make mistakes; some by accident, others purposefully. They will hurt themselves, they will hurt others. They will think differently from their parents.
Just as we did.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. All kids have to find their own way. But as Christian parents, it can be very hard to consider the possibilities of our children not sharing the faith we have in Christ Jesus. We want what’s best for them, as most every parent does, and we believe that comes when they put their faith in God and his plan for salvation.
Being open with you, I struggle with how to think about this topic correctly. I believe faith is a gift and it is God’s work to help someone see their need for him. Or, as Jesus puts it in John 6:44:
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
And yet I see a lot of emphasis in the Scriptures about my role as a parent. None illustrates the spirit of it than Deut 6:6–9:
These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, and you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up. You should tie them as a reminder on your forearm and fasten them as symbols on your forehead. Inscribe them on the doorframes of your houses and gates.
My wife and I are not going through anything harder than most believing parents go through. We’ve never wanted our kids to just go with the flow around them, to be cultural Christians.
But it is hard — damn hard — to watch your children be exposed to the thinking of the kingdom of this present darkness and to encourage them to make up their own minds about what’s important and what’s true. It brings a lot of conversations and late nights and repeating specific truths over and over.
But this is our mission field for this stage of life. I don’t know if they’ll respond to the Gospel. I don’t even know if I’m ever presenting it right on any given day. But I keep taking the promises I see in his word, store them up in my heart, then (try to) pray with faith.