Excursions

I have heard many good things about Derek Siver’s new book “How To Live” from a few people I trust. So, it was instinctive of me to purchase the book the moment I saw Derek announce it is launched. I had missed purchasing this when Derek shared a preview link — no idea why.

Anyway, I am excited to read this, both as a reader and as a writer.

The Atlantic is right, the Internet isn’t dead. It is just crowded with more people who aren’t living — literally and metaphorically. There are still people active on the Internet, they will keep it thriving. Let the non-living bots crowd the space, take over the corners that have been deserted. The folks with life will keep the oasis of the Internet busy, colourful.

Some newsletters are just too long for my liking. I can read long ones if they are genuine essays, someone sharing what they are or have gone through. Some life experiences. Or something of interest for them. But when you curate, and still have hoards of links to some external content, I am not in. In short, long texts are fine for me. Not 100s of links.

When you say you curate, you should curate. Not include link to everything that you and your friends read.

I am on a video call, setting a Windows laptop for one of my cousins. I am sure she is confident that she can set up her laptop — but family wants me to be there. So, here I am for her moral support, which I am sure she didn’t ask for.

I published a few thoughts on busyness. Over the years, I’ve realized that my mind has become a pool of copious ideas from varied fields. It is like an open pond, extremely prone to ripples from externalities, big and small. I allow that no more.

Be natural, flaunt your multiple shades. It is the contrast that makes us interesting. Even royal gold needs a contrasting shade on the side to be an ornament. Otherwise on its own, it is just a brick.

Over the years, I have realized that my mind is a pool of copious ideas from varied fields. It is like an open pond, extremely prone to ripples from externalities, big and small. There was a time when I picked every idea up and started working on it. I would spend weeks on these side projects. Soon, there would be a new one vying for my attention and I would hop onto the new hustle.

I have begun and shuttered so many of such side projects that I have lost count of them now. Some new platforms that solved no new problem for me. An open-source utility which I understood nothing of, except for the fact that its source was open. A self-hosted service that I had no use for. And the list goes on and on.

My fascination towards such unending projects affected me in many ways. The most troubling of them was that I had no time to pause and listen to my thoughts. I lent myself no time to not be busy, to slack. Here's Shane Parrish reiterating the importance of slack to be productive in our lives (as defined by Tom DeMarco in his book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency).

Many of us have come to expect work to involve no slack time because of the negative way we perceive it. In a world of manic efficiency, slack often comes across as laziness or a lack of initiative. Without slack time, however, we know we won’t be able to get through new tasks straight away, and if someone insists we should, we have to drop whatever we were previously doing.

That is precisely the state I found myself in. I was too welcoming, with my arms spread, ready to embrace anything and everything that got recommended to me. Even a mention of such a topic, and I was all ears.

I no longer do that. Anytime I am faced with such a ripple now, I take a deep breath, blink and calmly say, "no, I do not have time for you. You, even though curious, are not my priority."

Priority is an important word that governs how we lead our life. I recently learnt that when the term "priority" was coined (somewhere in the 1300s), it was singular. It stayed that way for ages. Decades. Centuries. It was only in the 20th century that we, new age humans, muddled the meaning of the term.

By definition, "priority" means "the quality of being prior". The prior one. Basically, the stuff of priority is one thing that should get all your attention.

Then we changed the meaning of being efficient. Doing things as a group, per the plan, within time mattered no more. Each individual had to be manifolds more productive, pick up more things to do in parallel. And in our quest to do more in parallel at all costs, we introduced the plural form of the term "priority". We started thinking about those 2 or 4 or 10 things that we could divide our attention among. We assigned numbers to them. "This is priority 1. This is a P2 item."

Think about it - the usage of the words "topmost priority" itself is so redundant. If you call something a priority, it should get your special attention. It should be the thing of the highest importance.

I have realized the hard way that more often than not, doing less is doing more. When I am not doing many things at the same time, my attention is not spread too thin. Being busy and being productive are two different things. David Perell puts it nicely, contrasting these two distinctive states of mind.

Our best ideas rarely come alive in busyness. They spring to life in calm and aimless contemplation. In beer mode, you find inspiration. And in coffee mode, you harvest that inspiration.

The choice of words "calms and aimless contemplation" is so brilliant. That's what saying "no" to most instinctive side hustles, not always staying busy, allows me time for. I calmly sit idle for hours at times, contemplating on stuff that I read, hear and see. I take notes, jot down thoughts to elaborate on later.

Here's Parrish again, reminding us of the drawbacks of being constantly busy.

Being comfortable with sometimes being 0 percent busy means we think about whether we’re doing the right thing. This is in contrast to grabbing the first task we see so no one thinks we’re lazy. The expectation of “constant busyness means efficiency” creates pressure to always look occupied and keep a buffer of work on hand.

Amen. Could I, then, do more if I didn't hold myself back and said "yes" to more things? Maybe. But then, more is not always better.

Cover Artwork by Ken Cheung on Unsplash

My potential is mine to fulfill or to waste.

I completed agree with Kimberly Hirsh. When someone says live upto your potential, I don’t understand what that means. Who decided what my potential was? How did you decide that? And the bigger question is, why?

My potential doesn’t define me - what I do, does.

I have decided to stay away from all the timelines for the next two weeks. Micro.blog. YouTube¹. Netflix. I am taking time off, in a way, from the discussions & chatters to give myself some space to think. It unfortunately isn’t possible with views and perspectives from others always clouding mine.

I have, of course, subscribed to the RSS feeds of many whose voices I prefer not to miss. This old medium remains the best way I can control what I read.

Why’s there a fascination among the devs to reinvent the old tech that isn’t broken? Maybe the reason that the tech has stayed the same isn’t because no one attempted to change it. Can you fathom the possibility that the tech might be fine, as it is, to most common folks? Or perhaps it might not be one of those things that most give a hoot about? Yeah?

The two prime examples I see many developers take a go at are browsers and email. Please, both work fine as they are. Don’t try to reinvent them. They have reached a state in which they are open and standard enough already. Most people know the functionality they can expect while using it.

Stop reinventing it. Improve it, no doubt. Make it faster, simpler. Cleaner. But don’t change the definition of what that tech represents. Don’t mar the traits that make the tech great in the first place, universal accessibility.

Don’t attach a lot of muck around the fundamentals of the accepted tech and call it “2.0”. I will suggest call it “1.0” of whatever the heck you want to name it.