Weekly Mix #208 - How to make a major life change

Airborne Taxis, Major Life Changes, Optimization & Shoe Trees

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Happy Tuesday!

This week, after almost 18 months, I moved back to Montreal.

It's a bit strange, in some ways—Montreal is only an hour or so flight from Halifax.

In other ways, it's a vastly different place: much larger population, much different living situation, and a much different routine.

I went to the office for the first time in just as long, and that too felt odd, and quiet. It remains to be seen how much hybrid work will affect how we work long-term.

Either way, it's a chance to rebuild my own routine, starting with a purge of all the things in my apartment I lived without for the past 18 months!

Have a great week.

Graham

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Links

📖 Looking to the skies: Funding for future air mobility takes off - McKinsey - Having spent significant time flying drones (for photo and video), and significant time driving a Tesla, one thing that seems fairly clear to me is that electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles—basically big drones—will arrive well before full self-driving. The challenges are difference, but the funding in the sector seems to be speeding up.

📖 The 3 Phases of Making a Major Life Change - HBR - This short piece outlines some of the major phases of making a change, often prompted by a big event (like the pandemic). It reflects something I've experienced often: a big change in your environment and routine is a good time to make some intentional changes. Conversely, sometimes if you want to make a change, you should change your environment.

📖 Why Silicon Valley's Optimization Mindset Sets Us Up for Failure - Time - This article touches on two things I've been thinking more about lately: 1) how the pandemic has highlighted all the issues that can arise when we bulid solely for efficiency (not robustness), and 2) how we tend to optimize for the things that are most quantifiable or obvious, rather than those less-certain, hard-to-quantify things.

📖 The crypto dons of Beirut - Jacob Russell - Lebanon is in the midst of an economic crisis, and has been for the last couple years. This story is interesting because it highlights some of the potential that cryptocurrency has as a borderless store of value, and the real-world uses it has at the moment.

🔧 Shoe trees & Sno-Seal - One of the relics of a different time that I like is taking good care of shoes. Not many of us wear proper leather shoes anymore, but a good set can last a long, long time if you take care of them. Two products that I rarely see anyone use are cedar shoe trees and Sno-Seal. Use the shoe trees to preserve the shape of things like leather shoes, golf shoes and Blundstones. Use the Sno-Seal for any leather winter boots (like Blundstones) to protect from salt and make them waterproof. Your shoes will stay in good shape for years.

🍿 Scotland Diaries Episode 1 - Random Golf Club Films - I spent a lot of time golfing this summer, and significant time thinking about why as well. It's time-consuming, frustrating, and even when you make progress, it's a difference of a few shots. I discovered Random Golf Club Films, and they're some of the most beautiful, captivating, and entertaining YouTube films around. I particularly enjoyed the Scotland series, but there are a variety of formats. This one with Kevin from The Office is entertaining too.

10 Tweets

​​A list of leadership books from Jacob Espi​​

​Lack of time usually signals a lack of ______​

​Lessons about friends after becoming wealthy​

​It's never too late to reinvent yourself​

Photo of the Week

I tried to make the most of my last week in Nova Scotia for a while, and thankfully the weather provided. It's hard to leave with evenings like this!

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