Obstacles, Writing Prompts, Twitter's Value and Spies - Weekly Mix #143

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Obstacles, Writing Prompts, Twitter's Value and Spies

Happy Thursday !

I hope you're doing okay, regardless of how this crisis has changed your life.

The last couple of weeks I've taken the opportunity to read more, and re-organize some of my task management and personal knowledge management systems. I've been shifting from Evernote to Notion and Roam, and will hopefully write a bit more about that in the coming weeks.

Blog Post I Wrote: Obstacles Are Opportunities

I re-read my notes from The Obstacle is the Way and Ryan Holiday's article about "alive time" vs. "dead time", and this post is a summary of my feelings after reading both. Times of adversity and hardship, like the current COVID crisis, are times where we have an opportunity to use the changes for positive action, rather than reacting poorly. Extra time at home means more time for reading, or spending with family, or writing, or the thing you've always wanted to do but never found time for.

Book Notes I Added: Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal

This is part of the management reading list at our company, and while I found it a bit tough to get through, it is interesting to read about the adaption that occurred during the early years of the US military invasion in the Middle East in the early 2000s. The concepts are useful, and Stanley McChrystal, the primary author, is also an interesting figure–by all accounts a great leader, who stepped down after negative comments towards the administration at the time came out in a Rolling Stone article.

Articles I'm Reading:

43 Prompts That Will Change Your Life for the Better - Benjamin Foley - I've been trying to make morning and evening journaling a more regular habit (using Roam), and I've been looking for good writing prompts to make it easy. This was one of the lists I enjoyed the most.

Unmasking Twitter - Stratechery - While I've been trying to avoid the news (as usual), some of the content resulting from COVID has been interesting. This article looks at the benefits of having Twitter as an open forum, using some expected value calculations, and showing that it was a voice of dissent when the WHO issued guidance that later turned out to be inaccurate (supposedly with Chinese influence).

The World After Coronavirus - Yuval Noah Harari - The author of Sapiens lays out some of the risks that lie ahead–privacy and nationalism–that exist due to the extraordinary measures put in place in response to the virus.

Red Sea Diving Resort: The Holiday Village Run by Spies - BBC News - I haven't watched the Netflix movie yet, but I enjoyed this article about a diving resort set up in Sudan that served as a front for extracting Jewish refugees.

Series I'm Watching: VELA - John John Florence

The first two episodes of this 4-part mini-series are out on YouTube. The series follows John John and his crew on board his new 48-foot Gunboat catamaran as they cruise from Hawaii to the Line Islands.

Have a great week!

Graham

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