W.I.E.R.D - What I Enjoyed Reading & Discussing (week 8 2021)

Some great reads from the internet this week

Enough

Figuring out how much INCOME or WEALTH is enough to be happy is a much more difficult and personal question. Happiness is relative: what being happy is to you can be very different from what it is to me.

For us, having enough money—whether wealth or income—depends on how you value time. It’s about the freedom to make decisions that are most beneficial to our personal health, goals, and priorities. We don’t want to feel pressure to work simply to pay bills or stay afloat.

Would I look back and think: “I could have made an extra [$10K, $20K, $100K] if I just knuckled down!”. Or would I look back and wonder: “What happened to my family, my hobbies, …my life?”

Persuading the unpersuadable

The legend of Steve Jobs is that he transformed our lives with the strength of his convictions. The key to his greatness, the story goes, was his ability to bend the world to his vision. The reality is that much of Apple’s success came from his team’s pushing him to rethink his positions. If Jobs hadn’t surrounded himself with people who knew how to change his mind, he might not have changed the world.

Email Sucks

Email creates a tortuous cycle that increases the amount of work on our plate while simultaneously thwarting, through constant distraction, our ability to accomplish it effectively. We’re also, it turns out, really bad at communicating clearly through a purely written medium—all kinds of nuances are lost, especially sarcasm, which leads to frustrating misunderstandings and confused exchanges. But lurking beneath these surface depredations is a more fundamental concern. The sheer volume of communication generated by modern professional e-mail directly conflicts with our ancient social circuits. We’re miserable, in other words, because we’ve accidentally deployed a literally inhumane way to collaborate.

How to start a movement

Rat Race

It’s wild how many different activities I (you, we, us) juggle on a daily basis. Getting the kids up and dressed. Work. Podcasts. Blogging. Household finances. Spending time with my wife. YouTube Videos. Cooking. Checking in with friends and family. Cleaning the house. Work. Putting the kids to bed. TV/Netflix/sports/movies. Books.

I’m not saying our parents didn’t have plenty going on, but not like this. Right?

I feel mentally stimulated all day. Not a minute is wasted. But wait, are most of these minutes wasted? It feels like the days are quickly turning into years. Slow down, damnit!

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Thanks for reading through. Have a great week ahead. Cheers!