Introducing "The Stack"
A new weekend feature for subscribers where I'll share the coolest stuff I've been reading lately!
Happy weekend, friends!
I’m still working to build this newsletter out (thanks for your patience!), but one of the things I’m ready to introduce now is “The Stack”.
Every weekend I’ll share a few articles or hidden internet gems that caught my eye in recent weeks. While I plan to focus my regular programming on cool software, workflows, and productivity, I’ll use this segment to share what often amount to more mindfulness-focused content I’ve uncovered.
While I LOVE playing with new stuff to help me with my work, I also need to acknowledge how easy it is for these things to take over my life. If you’re anything like me, you have some crisis at least once a year where you just “HAVE” to find a new note-taking app 🫠
So this feature is actually super intentional. It’s a chance to keep me balanced in the kind of content I’m delivering, to keep us balanced in the culture we’re creating together, and it’s a chance to keep you balanced too if you need it.
And if you don’t need it then I think you’ll still really enjoy it - I’ve got some really great authors I want to introduce you to 🫶🏻
🥞
THIS WEEK’S FINDS
It’s Time to Dismantle the Technopoly
An article by Cal Newport
My Thoughts
Cal wrote So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work. If you haven’t read these yet, please stop reading this and go read those now.
Cal’s big thing is that the key to a killer career is FOCUS. Cut out distractions → do deep work → get really good at your craft → get noticed by folks that can see the difference in your quality of output → dictate the life you want. (That’s a crass summary, please read the books.)
This article is actually a follow-up to this 2016 article where he suggested that maybe social media wasn’t the best thing ever. It’s a little funny to look back on it now, but back then folks lost their shit at the notion. His point is that now our society is starting to realize, “Oh, hey. Maybe we should think for ourselves and not just assume all new technology is good for me.”
My Takeaways
Technology excites me. I love “the new”. But reading this is making me realize I want to ensure my life is not dictated by the latest shiny thing.
I’m asking myself,
How can I make it routine to conduct small experiments with new tools and toys instead of diving in head-first?
What’s my rubric for determining the “good” or the “bad” in the tech I do invest my time in?
Further Reading
Cal references You Are Not a Gadget and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier and I immediately bought them (hope to start them soon!). Jaron is known as the “grandfather of VR” and his website is so crappy that you just know he’s got to be a tech genius.
For further evidence of this crap/genius correlation, see Paul Graham’s site. He’s the co-founder of Y Combinator, started Hacker News, and is easily one of the most influential voices in tech today. Plus, his essays are worth their weight in gold.
Energy Makes Time
An article by Mandy Brown
So I honesty don’t know how I stumbled upon this little nugget, but fuck me if it hasn’t completely changed the way I think about…well, everything!
Just check out this quote 🤯
I feel like I’ve heard SO much about how time is our most precious resource because once it’s gone, it’s gone. But this article blew my mind with this concept that time isn’t linear. That’s probably not the scientifically accurate way of describing this idea, but realizing that time can slip through my fingers faster or slower depending on the energy I bring has really given me pause.
My Takeaways
I’ve really started intentionally exploring ways of harnessing time better. I’m asking myself, as Mandy does at the end of this piece, “How does doing what I need make time for everything else?”
Some of the things I’m trying:
Yoga
I’ve never tried this before and I am fantastically terrible at it, but I feel so relaxed and simultaneously alive when I’m done.Fiction reading
So I realized the other day that the last piece of fiction I read was back in college! Luckily, I had ChatGPT to graciously guide me 🤣
Further Reading
So I knew very little about Mandy even after reading this article for the first time, but her CV is crazy!
The thing that really got me excited about her experience though was when I realized she’s the co-founder of A Book Apart. I cut my teeth on web design stuff back in high school with their stuff and nearly worshipped their other co-founder, Jeffrey Zeldman. Jeffrey basically built the internet as we know it today.
She also runs A Working Library that is just a treasure trove of great reading, like this beautiful snippet:
“Technoableism is a belief in the power of technology that considers the elimination of disability a good thing, something we should strive for.” Ashley Shew’s brisk and funny treatise provides a clear framework for assessing and interrupting the ways that technology and ableism conspire against human flourishing. Shew centers the lived experience of disabled people (including herself) and is unflinching in her predictions for all our futures: not only is disability a natural and unavoidable part of our own small lives, it’s also the state of the planet we live in. Rather than trying to abolish disability—an impossibility—Shew argues that we need to adapt to live with and alongside it. And she shows how much richer our lives will be when we do.
That’s all for this weekend - I hope you all enjoy this as much I did in preparing it 😘
Also, if you ever want to get a sneak peak on future editions, I’m using Readwise Reader to power this and I put all my articles/highlights/notes in this feed for you all to access whenever you want!