Hey there, happy Monday! Hope you have an awesome week.
"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act."
- Tara Ploughman
Enjoy the newsletter.
Articles to Read.
Remember the ‘10,000 Hours’ Rule for Success? Forget About It
Are you a generalist or a specialist? Do you strive for breadth or depth in your career, in your life? After all, you can’t have both. Your time on earth is finite, as are your energy and attention.
Folk wisdom holds the trade-off between breadth and depth to be a cruel one: “jack-of-all-trades, master of none,” and so forth. And a lot of thinking in current pop-psychology agrees. To attain genuine excellence in any area — sports, music, science, whatever — you have to specialize, and specialize early: That’s the message. If you don’t, others will have a head start on you in the 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” supposedly necessary for breakout achievement.
But this message is perversely wrong — so David Epstein seeks to persuade us in “Range.” Becoming a champion, a virtuoso or a Nobel laureate does not require early and narrow specialization. Quite the contrary in many cases. Breadth is the ally of depth, not its enemy. In the most rewarding domains of life, generalists are better positioned than specialists to excel.
—
Master Architect Whose Buildings Dazzled the World, Dies at 102
“If there’s one thing I know I didn’t do wrong, it’s the Louvre,” he said.
—
Draymond Green’s Epic Speech on Greatness (1 minute 30 seconds)
—
Always In - Wireless headphones are augmented reality devices
I still remember the first time I saw someone order at a coffee shop without removing their AirPods. I’d seen people with regular headphones do this many times before, of course, but they had just seemed obviously rude. Strangely, this person didn’t.
AirPods foster a different approach to detachment: Rather than mute the surrounding world altogether, they visually signal the wearer’s choice to perpetually relegate the immediate environment to the background. The white earbuds create what Kantrowitz calls the AirPod Barrier, a soft but recognizable obstacle to interpersonal interaction not unlike that of phone usage. While staring at a phone suggests that attitude indirectly, AirPods formalize it, expressing potential distractedness in a more sustained and effortless manner. You don’t have to look down at a screen to convey that your mind might be elsewhere — that you are dividing your attention between your physical surroundings and other kinds of interactions, hearing other voices. AirPods efficiently communicate your refusal to pretend to be “fully present.” AirPods, then, express a more complete embrace of our simultaneous existence in physical and digital space, taking for granted that we’re frequently splitting our mental energy between the two.
—
If you are used to driving on interstate highways and freeways in the US, you need to know about the differences between US traffic laws and those in Germany and Europe. When driving in Germany, you need to drive like a German – at least like the good German drivers. This is a guide to the rules of the Autobahn.
—
When Grown-Ups Get Caught in Teens’ AirDrop Crossfire
It works like this: Once there’s a critical mass of people around, usually enough so that it’s not immediately clear who an AirDrop came from, teens start dropping photos, memes, selfies, and more to every open phone around. Teenagers will usually change the names of their iPhone to something anonymous or funny to compound the joke. “I used to have the name ‘Momo Challenge’ for my phone,” says Ryan, a 17-year-old in California who, like all teenagers interviewed for this story, is referred to by a pseudonym. “Sometimes I’ll do my country name from Model UN, or something related to the situation I’m in. I used to have it named Donald Trump, then I’d send crazy-liberal memes.”
—
China Has Whole Towns Focused Entirely on Making Electric Cars
The amount of investment committed to developing these electric vehicle towns is a staggering 209 billion yuan -- equal to about $30 billion -- so far, according to Bloomberg calculations based on public announcements.
“Most of those EV towns will fail,’’ said John Zeng, managing director of LMC Automotive Shanghai. “This wave of electric-vehicle building will come to a life-or-death moment. When EV carmakers are being squeezed, the ‘EV Town’ bubble will burst.’’
┄
More to Check Out:
- Burnout is Now an Official Medical Condition
- Learning from Remote Work
- The Zero Rupee Note
- Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa
- Why aren’t more companies remote-first?
My Update.
This past week has been a rollercoaster - hectically moving to a new city (San Francisco), finding a place to live (signed a lease!), shopping for furniture, essentials, etc. Super excited for what is next…things are getting interesting (so much ahead).
What are you working on lately? Where are you located? Hit reply to this email and let me know.
Thanks so much for reading! Find me on twitter : )