I kept reading books and articles about solitude and discomfort and boredom. This Michael Easter book covers all of it, succinctly in the frame of a journey to the Alaskan wilderness. Worth a read. Highlights from the book follow … “When our ancestors weren’t searching for food or getting pummeled by mastodons, they had long moments of downtime, lounging around for hours a day. They had to make something out of their boredom....
When a book keeps popping up in your radar, from a wide variety of sources, over months, then you just have to go read it. via the amazing Ricardo Siri. click the image to see full size. The Overstory was it for me. Two friends, three random youtube videos and a couple of podcasts made be buckle down and read it. I wanted to go slow and savour it and finish it slowly....
This post was first sent to my newsletter on May 2nd, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) New month, new newsletter! :) Let’s get right into it, shall we? An informed look on the why of the farmers agitation. Vivek Kaul’s post on how Bihar fared when they did away with APMCs in 2006, shows why the farmers are up in arms. Read them here, part 1, part 2, & part 3...
If you want to someday make money from your skills and your craft, you owe it to yourself to read this. If you have never read Lucas, you owe it to yourself to read him. Buy Cashflow for Creators! My highlighted notes from the book follow … Craft is the nuts and bolts of how you do The Thing. For a writer, it’s stuff like grammar and spelling and reading. For a glass artist, it’s not mixing different COEs or—at the highest levels—how to mix different COEs....
Despite financial troubles there’s a sense in which my childhood was immensely privileged — a pauper in the material world, I was a sultan in the world of ideas. — Erik Hoel I started by wanting to share that quote and link on my microblog and then my thoughts turned into a blog post sized comment. I decided to post it here too, then. That quote describes my life to a T, even now....
This post was first sent to my newsletter on March 7th, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Before we get into this weeks newsletter, I’d like to take a moment and recognise the loss of my grandmother, who passed away on the 24th, last month. She was a simple, thoughtful and kind woman, who raised a village. I miss her dearly. This was my eulogy to her. Back to the letter and back to something that is related to the last one....
Yes, I preordered Cal Newport’s, A World without Email. https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2021/02/10/announcing-the-email-academy/ India folk, go here - https://www.amazon.in/World-Without-Email-Reimagining-Overload/dp/0241341418/ Having read 5 of his books, I know this will make a big difference to my life. What I have actually done though, is tried to repay Cal in a small manner for his podcast at https://www.calnewport.com/podcast/ Now that is pure gold! If you haven’t been listening, you have sorely missed out on a ton of productivity tactical gems....
*Image, courtesy [Tom Gauld][tgt]* This post was first sent to my newsletter on February 1st, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Welcome to the first, “serious” newsletter of 2021. This was supposed to be my year end post, but life, as usual got in the way. Now that I’ve jammed both the blogs together, most of the personal stuff is going to stay focussed on stuff about books and reading and writing and a few photos thrown in once in a while for good measure....
This post was first sent to my newsletter on December 7th, 2020. You really ought to subscribe :) The beginning is always today. — Mary Shelley The biggest obstacle to ultralearning is simply that most people don’t care enough about their own self-education to get started Finding Time for Ultra learning What matters is the intensity, initiative, and commitment to effective learning, not the particulars of your timetable There are nine universal principles that underlie ultralearning projects....
This post was first sent to my newsletter on November 16th, 2020. You really ought to subscribe :) Teaching Birds How to Fly, & Skin in the Game! via pixabay This probably is the last post, I have on Antifragile, for now. These lessons over the past few weeks are those, that have sunk in for me, and something that I use on a daily basis. I’ll write more as I learn and internalise some new piece of wisdom (knowing the book, I’m sure I will)....