Weekly Mix #211 - How to Decide, No Meetings, Will Smith & The Shortness of Life

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How to Decide, No Meetings, Will Smith & The Shortness of Life

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Happy Tuesday!

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all the Canadian readers.

I didn't do anything special for Thanksgiving this year, other than enjoying the extra time on the weekend to relax, finish some errands, and get outside.

But I did spend some time being thankful.

It's easy, when making some kind of change in life, to focus on the bad.

I've been a little disappointed with my return to Montreal—a result of having unrealistic expectations of what it would be like. The office is quieter, the city is quieter, and it's not like I remembered.

But there are lots of positives too—I've seen friends I haven't in a long time, visited some of my favourite spots to eat, and rebuilt some of the good habits that I lost when I left the city.

There's always something to be grateful for. Remembering it is the tricky part.

Hope you have a great week!

Graham

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Links

📚 Book Notes: How to Decide by Annie Duke - Annie Duke is a former professional poker player who has made a career studying decisions. This is a great intro to what makes a good decision, and how you can improve your decision-making process.

📖 How We Work Without Meetings at Levels - Levels is a startup in the health space, and this is a brief overview of how they accomplish their work with as few synchronous meetings as possible. Some interesting bits: they don't use Slack, and they're heavy on recordings (using tools like Loom).

📖 The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long - Brain Pickings - Featuring some excerpts from Seneca's On The Shortness of Life, the piece features some stark reminders about what living really is, and why most of us aren't doing enough of it.

📖 Introducing the Real Will Smith - GQ - I've always been a fan of Will Smith the actor. This profile delves more into Will Smith the person, and his upcoming memoir. He seems like someone worth admiring too.

📖 Progress - Neal.fun - I've always enjoyed reminders like this one about how time is passing by; I think it spurs us to action. This site is full of all kinds of cool visualizations and tools.​​

10 Tweets

​Julian Shapiro on how to source angel investing deals​​

​Isaac Souweine on how to keep employees happy​

​Daniel Bustamante with frameworks for better storytelling​

​A list of life-changing ideas​

​David Ogilvy's instructions for how to write​

Photo of the Week

I didn't manage to spend Thanksgiving with any family, but did get out for a beautiful bike ride, with the fall colours out in full!

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