Weekly Mix #258 - Why I'm moving to a 4-day work week

4-Day Work Weeks, Sea Stories, Extreme Questions, Beautiful Bikes & AI

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Happy Monday!

Last week marked my final week working 5 days.

The concept of the 4-day week has always intrigued me.

For one, I've always like working odd hours—early mornings, late evenings, and the weekend—because there are so many fewer distractions.

Most people aren't working then, so there are fewer pings on Slack, or emails to respond to. But there's also something about knowing that other people won't be messaging you that helps focus.

Part of what held me back in the past was not feeling comfortable with my own performance, and that of my team. I'm happy with it now.

But the main motivation for reducing my work week by a day (at the cost of 20% of my salary) was not meeting the goals I set for myself around writing, improving this newsletter, and consolidating the things I'm learning in my day-to-day work.

Some (my past self included) might say, "well, if these things matter to you, just spend more time on them."

But if I've learned anything about productivity, it's that our environment—the structure of our lives—matters much more than a better daily schedule, or better discipline.

Or, as James Clear puts it: "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

An extra work day to focus on other things should be a big upgrade to my system.

Have a great week!

Graham

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Links

📚 Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations - Admiral William H. McRaven - An easy read, this is the story of what must be one of the most interesting careers in modern military history. McRaven was involved in Desert Storm, capturing Saddam Hussein, the Captain Phillips rescue, and the mission to capture/kill Osama bin Laden to name a few.

📖 Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas - Jason Cohen - I loved this post. An excellent list of questions to generate wider thinking. It's very startup/product-focused, but with a little tweaking, you can apply them elsewhere.

"How do you come up with fresh, transformative ideas?

We're blinded by our daily work: No forest, all trees.

The following prompts jostle you out of tiny thinking. Each stretches some dimension of reality to an extreme."

📖 Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think - Tim Urban - This is a long read, but a classic, and one I come back to regularly, especially if I have a difficult decision to make or feel like I'm being influenced by social norms or what other people think.

🚴‍♂️ Sturdy Cycles - Unbelievably beautiful, all-titanium bikes.

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The artificial intelligence (AI) hype is high right now, and there seems to be an AI tool introduced to for a new purpose every day.

But it's hard to deny that some of them are very impressive, and look like they will have a meaningful difference in productivity very soon, like this one for designers:

Aaron Levie-->

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@levie

AI for interface design. This is getting wild. pic.twitter.com/mLn9iUtQOa

February 8th 2023

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