Weekly Wisdom #307 - Details Matter, Science Fiction, Travel Consideration & Life Advice

Details Matter, Science Fiction, Travel Consideration & Life Advice

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Happy Monday!

Lately, in both my work and my personal life, I've been focused on the details.

At work, we had a lot of small things we knew we needed to fix in our software product.

And personally, I've been trying to learn how building houses works, which involves all kinds of tiny details.

Sometimes it seems like this kind of stuff is a slog, and that the details don't matter—I've had to learn to coach myself away from this, as I rarely had patience for details in the past.

But as I've come to learn, a lot of those tiny details add up.

When you're building houses, all the tiny details are how you get a beautiful, amazing final product. From the siding and roofing you choose, all the way down to how you install your windows, it all makes a difference.

And in software, all the tiny details are what make an experience frictionless and delightful.

​This Tweet from David Singleton, CTO of Stripe, which lists a bunch of the tiny things they've shipped, is a great example:

David Singleton-->

@dps

At Stripe we care about being meticulous in our craft. Sometimes that means putting effort into getting the small things right. Little details compound into end to end experiences that are surprisingly great.

We shipped 100s of tiny tweaks last year. Some of my favorites 🧵

1:22 PM • Jan 11, 2023

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"Little details compound into end to end experiences that are surprisingly great."

Have a great week!

Graham

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Links

📚 Book I'm Reading: The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu - I've been meaning to read this trilogy for some time, and after watching the Netflix series that came out, I finally got into it.

I don't read science fiction that often, but what I appreciate about it is how much it bends your mind.

It's a similar experience to reading A Brief History of Time, which isn't fiction, but it instills the same kind of awe and perspective.

📖 Technovelgy.com - This remarkable website is a great place to explore while reading science fiction.

It's a collection of both ideas from science fiction, and a list of predictions from science fiction that have come true.

If you want to step into the future, this is a great place to start.

📖 Travel Is No Cure for the Mind - More to That - "Why are you surprised that traveling does you no good, when you travel in your own company? The thing that weighs on your mind is the same as what drove you from home."—Socrates

While I love travel as much as the next person, the point of this piece is that often the things we glorify—travel to other countries and new experiences in particular—are simply temporary respites from a life we aren't as happy with as we should be.

If we really want to be happy, we should be focused on finding that wherever we go.

And some good tools are:

Gratitude (perhaps through mindfulness meditation)

Finding fascination in the minds of others (through book and our close relationships)

Tweet of the Week

Rich Life Advice-->

@RichLifeAdvice

40 Cheat Codes I wish I knew at 20.

1.

10:59 PM • Mar 21, 2024

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