Weekly Mix #249 - Inspired, Twitter, Audio Summaries & How Smart People Convince Themselves of Things

Inspired, Twitter, Audio Summaries & How Smart People Convince Themselves of Things

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Happy Monday!

The newsletter is back after an extended absence.

It wasn't planned, but between the hectic end to the summer, a 2-week vacation I took to Lebanon and Turkey, and the resulting busy time before/after that vacation.

I'm happy to be back!

This week will be a shorter one as I get back into the swing of things, but hope you're all doing well, enjoying the cooler temperatures, and getting excited for the holiday season.

The good news is I got some good reading done on vacation, so I should have a number of new book notes coming out over the next while too.

Have a great week!

Graham

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Links

📚 Inspired - Marty Cagan - This book falls under the "professional" category in terms of learning, but it's useful for any business founder who wants to run high-performance teams. I've been reading to apply to my current role as product manager.

📖 Inside the Twitter meltdown - Platformer - I have a lot of respect for Elon, but sounds like things over at Twitter are...rough at the moment.

Though this Tweet suggests he might be the right person after all:

Mehtab | Karta Ventures-->

@MehtabKarta

Custodial vanilla management VS turnaround - donald bibeault pic.twitter.com/X45wNTG25P

November 6th 2022

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🔧 Blinkist - Blinkist is an app that's been around for a while, offering 15-20 minute summaries of books (kind of like what I do on my site). I've been trialing it this week for a few reasons:

As a way of screening books (ie. should I spend the time reading the full thing)

As a way of reminding myself of key principles of books I've already read, in audio form

As a way of stress-testing my own summaries/making sure I capture the key ideas

The audio form is what appeals to me vs. re-reading my own summaries.

🍿 How smart people convince themselves of things - The big news in the tech space this week was the crypto exchange FTX collapsing, with some shady things contributing to their collapse. David Friedman, at 49:29 on the All In Podcast, cited a study that showed that you were more likely to be an abuser of drugs if you were smarter; the broader takeaway was that the smarter you are, the more you can convince yourself of things.

​Photo of the week

Part of the reason for the absence of the newsletter lately was the two-week trip I took to Lebanon and Turkey with friends, and the hectic return that always comes with vacation.

Both beautiful places!

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