Zooming forever; The little ways; Creative walking
💡Think
Hey everyone, I'm back after a week off.
I'd encourage you to watch the video above (thanks Joe for sharing!). It's in insight into plans that the Saudi prince has for a 500m tall, 200m wide civilisation and housing structure called "The Line".
If you think I'm making this up and it's the script from a horror movie, I'm afraid not. This is truly dystopian, and presented in such a way that nothing about it is bizarre or could go wrong.
I think we're already living in the future.
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ The trouble with Zooming forever
This article is mostly a dive into the effects of living on video calls has for our mental and emotional wellbeing. They say that, just like junk food, our digital communication methods now are convenient, but wholly unhealthy. Our healthy diet of you know, seeing people in real life, is slipping away as we all demand a world where working from home is the norm. It means you can open the fridge whenever you want, but it prevents us from getting that varied interaction that we all need.
❷ Little ways the world works
Goldfish and tech companies apparently have a lot in common. In this post, the author makes a (very) strong case for slowing down growth and speed. This is both for humans and our work, as the pace at which we grow is the speed at which we can fall. Profound, huh?
❸ The creative walk
What do Darwin, Kahneman, and Jobs have in common? Walking! I've spoke in this newsletter many times about how much I love a long walk, and apparently it has been proven to increase creativity. I also find that being on an airplane spurs ideas as well for me. So what are you waiting for? Your own theory of evolution, or reinvention of a tech industry may be right around the corner if you stretch those legs.
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Bonus round
How to avoid digital distractions
I was published in Smashing Magazine again! This one is about imposter syndrome
🎧 Listen
Time management for mortals
I loved this podcast episode. It's about time management, but that sounds boring so I'll try again. It's a snippet from a course about optimising your time, and in particular how striving for more efficiency / productivity can actually make you more stressed.
There's a great example about the person who replies to emails faster, which ends up with them receiving more emails. Why? Because you set expectations of availability, and become relied on to get..it...done. Although this isn't the full episode, you still get 40 minutes of excellent storytelling.
Listen to this podcast (39 minutes)