Weekly Mix #267 - How to slow down in a world that keeps speeding up

Slowing Down, Efficiency, Agency, Exercise Snacks & Biking Utopias

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Happy Monday!

The world is speeding up.

At no time in history have changes been happening this fast with implications on a global scale. Changes come in days now, not months, or years, or decades.

As it speeds up, the ability to slow down and think clearly becomes even more important. Here are 4 ways to do that:

Meditate: Even 10 minutes can make a big difference in how calm your mind is. I use Oak, a basic app that does all you need. Try it in the morning, or when your brain is feeling overwhelmed.

Walk in nature: The calming effects of nature have been well-documented. Find a park with a forested area or some water, and go for a walk, observing the wildlife and the sounds.

Read a book: The act of reading trains your concentration. Losing yourself in a book is a form of flow, and you'll immediately notice when you become distracted too. Like meditation, it's not something to be angry about; simply notice when you reach for your phone, and let it pass.

Make yourself feel small: Look at pictures of the universe, beautiful landscapes, or from previous trips. Feeling a sense of awe is a great way to gain perspective, and realize that we mean so little in the great expanse of the universe and time. It's freeing!

Tools for feeling grounded and thinking clearly are going to become more important as the world speeds up.

Have a great week!

Graham

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Links

📖 How the Push for Efficiency Changes Us - I don't agree with everything in this article, but I think the questions posed are interesting: what happens to remaining employees when others are laid off? How does efficiency and our obsession with it affect the rest of our lives?

"It’s worth questioning the moral quality we assign to efficiency and productivity in our society is healthy, or even useful. And it’s worth asking whether efficiency and productivity are really the modes through which we want to relate to our partners, children, friends, and communities."

📖 The Most Precious Resource is Agency - Simon Sarris - Sarris explores some observations about some of the all-time greats (in art, business, and more) who started working at a very young age, and laments that we seem to have far fewer opportunities for people to learn by doing, often by working or apprenticeship. I have to say I generally agree, and it's something modern school does a very poor job of doing. As he points out, perhaps that's why many bright children in modern times turned to programming: it was something they could learn without permission.

"It seems that the more you ask of people, and the more you have them do, the more they are able to later do on their own."

"Learning is naturally the consequence of doing."

🔧 Slab - I know firsthand how painful it can be to have documentation scattered all over the place. Slab is built specifically to integrate your existing tools and knowledge in one place, and make it beautiful and easy-to-use. I love tools like this, designed to solve a very focused problem. I'm a big Notion user (an alternative to Slab), but the downside of do-everything tools is that everyone uses them slightly differently.

🍿 How The Netherlands Built a Biking Utopia - A fascinating video looking at one of the questions I've always wondered about: how do you increase biking in cities obsessed with cars?

As it turns out, The Netherlands wasn't always such a biking utopia, and they had to face the exact same question. They invested in tons of bike lanes, but learned that wasn't quite enough...

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Graham Mann-->

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@grahamkmann

There's no bigger name in product management than @lennysan.

He recently had NoteJoy founder @adachen (former LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey) on the podcast to share learnings from her years as a founder, marketer & executive coach.

Here are 15 things I learned 👇

April 21st 2023

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