My Favourite Links on the Internet

Naval’s tweet-storm

Naval’s tweet-storm that covers his core principles on work and life. I’ve found this to be one of the most impactful things I’ve ever read and I often find myself thinking about the ideas in here. Especially the thoughts on leverage and zero-sum thinking. I treat this tweet-storm as a reference guide I come back to once every few months to help rebalance my thinking. Naval’s also expanded this tweet-storm into a podcast you can find here

Thinking about the world’s geography

This short-form essay by Tomas Pueyo blew my mind. It’s a very clever look into the differece between the history and geography we’re taught at school. History tends to be written by the victors which means we end up with a warped representation of it, which means when we normally only tend to learn one side of it. The first line in Tomas’ essay captures this perfectly - “We think we’re taught History. But we’re really taught Propaganda”.

I also think it’s wonderfully written. I couldn’t help but share another another exerpt from the essay.

"In the past, Geography ruled History. 
Over time,Geography and Technology evolved together to determine History.
Now, Technology has taken over.
Geography matters less and less.
This means Technology is the main determinant of History now.
This changes everything we understand about the world."

The importance of small wins

This timeless HBR article is from back in May 2011 and it covers the power of small wins. We’re all working on goals which we can’t achieve in a day, this article breaks down the importance of thinking about small wins and how, if done properly, celebrating small wins can help you feel accomplished and build the motivation to keep on track for those bigger goals.

Rest and recovery

This is especially relevant at the moment as we face the Covid-19 pandemic but I will always come back to the ideas from this article when I need to rest and reset. In this article Peter Heslin a Professor at UNSW breaks down the difference between a recovery activity and a recovery experience. It’s a short read but it really home for me. It really highlighted the importance of resting properly in very achieveable steps.

Wait but why

If you haven’t venuted through the articles at WaitButWhy, I would strongly recommend it. Tim Urban’s writing style is a great combination of a funny and enlightening, which makes his articles very entertaining. If you are religious or not, I would suggest starting here. It’s a really interesting view on religion and importance of spirituality even if you are not religous. For those of you not familiar with his style and animations, here’s an example of what I mean.

The luck behind getting rich

A team from the University of Catania released this research paper which tries to answer the hard question “Why am I not rich?”. Essentially the were able to quantify the idea of luck to see if that had an impact on overall success particulary around wealth. In case you want to avoid the scientific jargon and confusing vocabulary, MIT Tech Review did a great summary of the paper here.

Amanda Gorman <3

I loved Amanda Gorman’s poem, she’s a phenomonal talent especially at only 22 years old. This was my favourite passage from her poem… especially the last three lines.

And yet the dawn is ours   
before we knew it   
Somehow we do it   
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed   
a nation that isn’t broken   
but simply unfinished   

The new dawn blooms as we free it   
For there is always light,   
if only we’re brave enough to see it   
If only we’re brave enough to be it     
-- Amanda Gorman

New Zealand doing New Zealand things

As an Indian born Australian citizen who now lives in Singapore, I have had had some experience in the impact of colonisation on a countries, even decades after regaining independence. I think New Zealand is a good example of how to work with the indigenous peoples of a land and undo some of this impact. I must caveat this though, I am not an expert on New Zealand’s situation as a whole and I am sure there is still plenty of work to be done on this cause. What I did really enjoy was this article about Moehanga Day an national day to recognition for when the Maori people discovered England. Despite being a little tongue in cheek, I think the underlying idea is very powerful and brought a smile to my face. So win-win really.

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