Showing Your Work, a Real-World "HER" & My Final Digital Diet Update #5
What I Learned at School this Week
Boo! 👻
I am not going to be covering any of the upcoming election. So, if you’re looking for coverage on that, please check the news. I like looking at CNN and Fox News back-to-back. Regardless of what “side” you’re on, I highly recommend it.
Okay, let’s get into a few (non-political) things that I learned this week.
Be Prolific!
There’s a story worth reading. You may have heard it before. But if not, here is the gist:
An art teacher splits their class in half. They told one half of the students that they’d be graded based on a single piece of work, and the other half that they would be graded on the quantity of work produced.
The half that was being graded on quantity ended up producing higher quality pieces.
By iterating and learning from their mistakes they actually ended up producing better work than the students that only had to produce one piece.
Quantity leads to quality.
People often ask why I write this little Newsletter. Frankly, I ask myself. And the reasons I come back to are simple: to practice and get better at thinking/writing/learning/sharing, and to simply Keep Going.
For me — and I’ve heard others confirm this theory — I can’t just consume and produce. I also have to share. Because without sharing, you don’t get the feedback loops which teach you how to improve. Where to focus. What to cut. What to double-down on.
Here’s how I visualize my current feedback loop:
Show Your Work!
Here’s a more succinct (and pretty) version of the above:
[Created by Austin Kleon]
Side note: sometimes I think the goal of this Newsletter is to sell as many Austin Kleon books as possible (I’m joking). But I do talk about his work a lot. He’s an artist. And my writing here is mostly about productivity, stocks, and whatever else happens to float across my laptop screen throughout the week — topics typically very unrelated to “art.”
However, his work still seems to resonate with me.
—> He published an incredible article today: When I share, I learn.
It rides the coat-tails of his second book: Show Your Work! And ties in really well with this concept I’ve been learning about lately.
In the article, he interviews YouTuber, Ali Abduul. Ali says in the interview that he gets way better results with his YouTube videos when he titles them, “How I Remember Everything I Read,” instead of “How to Remember Everything You Read.” There’s something about using the first-person pronoun that opens things up, lets him speak from his own experience, and lets viewers feel like they can take what they need and do their own thing.
Even if you’re only on “rung #6” out of 100, on your proverbial ladder, you can still teach the person who is only on “rung #2.”
The two biggest things I took away from this interview:
Show your work.
Be humble.
Digital Diet Update #5
I plan to take some time in the next week to do a full post-mortem of this month’s digital diet. I’m writing this to hold myself accountable. :)
This week, my biggest takeaway is something that my friends and I talk about often, across many different topics:
Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
- Saint Augustine
Time limits on my phone with certain apps can work. But I always seem to find another app to browse (waste time) for 30 minutes a day… I’m looking at you Craig!
This week, I had to resort back to deleting the apps on my phone where I spend time. Rip the bandaid.
Yesterday, when I was taking a quick work break, I sat down on the couch, opened my phone, checked Robinhood and Coinbase for maybe 90 seconds, then realized I had no other apps to check on my phone. I giggled out loud, knowing that my unfortunately re-wired brain was looking for dopamine. Addict, I told myself.
Then, I got up and went for a 10 minute walk. Obviously that was a better choice, in hindsight. But in the moment, there’s no way I ever would have done that, had those apps still been on my phone.
Lastly, I came across The Thrive App this week. I’m excited to give it a try. It’s made by Arianna Huffington. Think of it as Apple’s “Screen Time” but on steroids. And the thing I’m most excited about, and what I think is the future: asynchronous communication + lets the other person know ("auto-reply") that it’s happening.
The Thrive App helps you recalibrate your relationship with technology by giving you the tools to take a break from your phone to do whatever it is that makes you more human. When you put your phone into “Thrive Mode” it limits all notifications, calls and texts except for those from people you’ve specified on your VIP List.
And it’s also bi-directional. So if you’re in Thrive Mode for the next hour, and I text you, I’ll get a text back that you’re in Thrive Mode until 11 a.m., which creates a new kind of FOMO, because it makes me wonder, “What’s she doing while she’s disconnecting? What am I missing out on?”
ICYMI
🌎 The World’s Biggest IPO, Ever
Ant Financial, the Chinese financial technology giant that is listing in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, is set to raise $34.5 billion on Nov 6th. That will make it the world’s largest-ever initial public offering, overtaking the oil company that currently holds the record: Saudi Aramco who raised $29.4 billion in January. Here’s a long analysis, if you’re interested: What You Need To Know About The Ant Financial IPO.
🌙 Water Found on the Moon
NASA has discovered water on the sunlit surface of the moon. Everyone seems to be looking at Musk to take advantage.
Conspiracy theory lovers: check out this video of former USAF Sargent, Karl Wolfe who was in the Air Force for 4 and a half years beginning in January 1964.
He had a top secret crypto clearance, and while working at an NSA facility he was shown photographs taken by the Lunar Orbiter of the moon that showed detailed artificial structures. These photos were taken prior to the Apollo landing in 1969.
📉Market Dips as Pending US Election Looms, and Covid Cases Spike
Markets took a serious plunge this week, with all three major stock indexes falling more than 4%.
France and Germany are calling their citizens back into lockdown as COVID-19 cases continue to surge.
🤖 Replika.ai Creates the Real Life HER
It’s an AI chatbot with the sole purpose of becoming your friend. The more you talk with it, the more it becomes like you. Creating a replica of you. We all want to live forever, even children accomplish this to an extent, IMHO. This seems to be one more way technologists are trying to accomplish eternal living.
The story is a fascinating. The Russian founder built it because she lost her best friend in a tragic accident, and wanted to re-build him so that she could still interact with him.
Scroll 19 minutes into the podcast below — they do a great job describing it.
Also, this entire episode is gold. It’s with Josh Elman who was the growth person early days at LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Robinhood. Pretty nice track record. Now he’s an investor (how cliche).
🎥 Vimeo adds asynchronous video
Competing with the likes of Loom, Cloudapp. I can’t say I saw this coming, but I like it!
A quote I’m chewing on…
Vision is the bottleneck of talent.
Most talent is wasted because people do not clearly know what they want. It’s not a lack of effort, but a lack of direction.
There are many capable people in the world, but relatively few that focus on what matters.
- James Clear (author of Atomic Habits)
How did you feel about this week’s post?
(All feedback is 100% anonymous)
That’s all for this week folks. Happy Halloween! 🎃
Stay safe out there,
Brendan J Short