Info refinery #13: Don't disengage, maintain forward momentum
Hi, welcome. This week I have been thinking a lot about focus, distractions, and the power of mindfulness. Also, I bring a mix of things I learned and interesting stuff.
🧠 What’s on my mind
You- not other people, and not your technology - set the rules for engagement with your work environment.
Is true that many of us use the phone as a way to escape from work, tasks, etc. No wonder, apps give us exactly what our brain seeks for: an easy and frictionless way to instant consumption and new stuff all of the time.
However I don't believe this phenomenon is something new, the human brain is a train of constant thoughts, and distraction has always been existing, but is safe to say that technology has definitely made it easier to get distracted and more difficult to be focused
Lately, I have been thinking about how important mindfulness can be in making this easier, after all if you are able to be mindful of the friction when working (can be negative thoughts: "I don't know how to do this", being tired, can be an external distraction: phone notification) we are able to be in our thoughts the moment before we give up control. The book working clean suggests an interesting method, Slow-but-don't-stop technique:
Be mindful of when you give up control and when you feel like stopping, instead of distracting yourself, make your moves very slow. Maintain forward momentum, and give yourself more time to think and to be mindful of each action. Don't disengage.
🤯 What have I learned this week
Writing first company: A writing culture can help to reduce the meetings, working asynchronously (thus being perfect for remote workers across time zones) and to keep everybody on the same page. (link)
Twitter lists search: You can search twitter lists for specific terms by googling:
"term" site:twitter.com inurl:lists
Write to a short attention span: Start with the important bits, win listeners’ respect before you ask for the time. Be brief, be genuine. (link)
😮 Interesting things
Using physics to your advantage: (link for video)
Most of us are familiar with this high jump style, however it was only popularized in 1968 by engineer Dick Fosbury, which applied physics to think of a new way to win over his colleagues which were stronger, faster, and jumping much higher than him.
Before the preferred method looked like this:
Make it real: Patagonia is known for their different approach and distinct identity of their customers, so why not use that in their benefit.
GPT3: There has been a lot of talk about the new text generating algorithm by OpenAI, here is a great thread about the concepts.
🍴 Food for thought
"Sometimes it's the panic about the work that's in your way, not work itself"
Sam Henderson
📊 Visualization of the week
How a country is shaped when using different amounts of edges (link).
Thanks for reading, remember that you are free to contact me at any time if you have any feedback, a contribution to the newsletter or just want to talk, just email me.
Have a wonderful week.