PARA

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Jonny
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Sunday Shares | 17MAY2020

Greetings, loved ones. I’m back bringing you my favorite finds from recent memory. Feel free to let me know what you think. Also, if you have ideas on how I could tweak this to be more beneficial, efficient, etc., share with me!

Read

Article: 5 Ways to Get Organized and Think Clearly

A brief article that brings some non-obvious approaches to getting your office space (or wherever you’re working these days) organized. My two favorite concepts shared:

  • Establish a common file naming convention such as DATE_PROJECT_FILENAME. Then, you can always find what you’re looking for. I see this pairing perfectly with the PARA Method. I’ve experimented with date formats, and I don’t love the YYYY-MM-DD format, because it isn’t obvious to everyone what order it’s in whereas the military format (see post’s title: 17MAY2020) always works, but it doesn’t sort alphabetically.
  • Organize your desk according to natural workflow tendencies. We read left to right, so put inbound items on the left, work in the middle, and outbound on the right. It brought the GTD Method to mind, establishing a personal file inbox.

Watch

Video: Astrophysicist Explains Gravity in 5 Levels of Difficulty | WIRED

This is a brilliant series by WIRED on YouTube featuring experts in their field explaining a concept—in this case, gravity—to people of varying understanding. It gets more and more fascinating the higher up they get. In contrast, it also highlights how much they actually know, breaking down complex topics enough for children to grasp the basic concept.

Video: The David Beckham Statue Prank

This is a truly laugh-out-loud video. Man, this is Jim Halpert-level pranking.

Listen

Song: “Daisies” by Katy Perry (Spotify | YouTube)

Obviously I will always promote my girl, KP, over anything else. Enjoy this fantastic, acoustic-heavy song that has some classic Katy to it but is still a fun, new jam. The music video looks super hipster, and I still can’t spell “daisies” correctly on the first try.

 

Playlist: Techno Bunker (Spotify)

This is just a fun playlist that I’ve got in my study folder. No lyrics and a great rhythm, I’ve added this one to my rotation for when I need to be in the zone.

 

Podcast: 418. What Will College Look Like in the Fall (and Beyond)? | Freakonomics Radio (Apple Podcasts | Spotify)

This episode has the presidents of Arizona State University, Boston University, and American University speaking to how they’re handling the autumn semester amid COVID-19. They address several topics like expanding housing in a crowded city, price tiers for online vs. in-person courses, and how to address 25% of your student body being international students possibly not returning to campus.

Act

One of my favorite subreddits is /r/udemyfreebies. They post whenever Udemy has a deal for a free course. It reminds me of my buddy who’s mom had a rule that she could never buy anything full-price at Hobby Lobby, because everything is always 50% off at some point. Same idea with Steam. Why buy anything full-price when it seems like everything is always on sale?

Anyways, give them a follow. I’ve picked up a bunch of courses (and haven’t used them because I wasn’t invested, but that’s an entirely different topic…), but they’re there for when I want them!

I started iOS App Development For Beginners – No Swift Skill Required for a business idea with my brother-in-law until we opted to focus attention elsewhere until we got to the point where we actually needed the app (I’ll share more on that another time, I’m sure), and the quality was fantastic.

Learn

Concept: Natural Light

I’ve been doing some reading on why natural light is so important. It’s one of those things I could sense was important but didn’t have anything concrete to back my hunch up.

Two recent pivots have had me thinking more about this: a change in jobs and moving to a new house.

With regard to the job, I went from a narrow part of a building connected to the main structure through sky bridges. Our area was only seven cubicles wide, and the whole building was floor-to-ceiling windows. I absolutely took that for granted. I moved from that more modern, naturally lit building to an older, beige-colored office without windows. I never paid it much mind, but now the difference is obvious.

We also recently moved from a ground-floor apartment to a townhome. The apartment had blinds that made it annoying to open and shut regularly, and all our windows pointed toward another apartment building, so direct sunlight was very limited. Contrast that to our new townhome where we’ve got massive windows on the ground level, and my study desk sits right next to a window. It’s been a gamechanger.

My biggest take-away from the article is that fluorescents flicker imperceptibly, and that strains our eyes without even knowing it!

Ponder

Idea: 4 Most Essential Skills

I’m a huge fan of David Perell. Recently, he tweeted:

That got me thinking. While you could certainly be successful with the ability to code, I think you could swap that for leadership and have a much more adaptable skillset:

There are so many sub-skills or spin-offs you could choose like empathy or discipline, but I think leadership captures most of those ideals.

Quote: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

All my life I have dreamed that by my work mankind would at least be advanced a little.

I came across this quote in Washington’s Museum of Flight. I was designing a rocket for my senior design project at the time and reading Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam. It was such an incredible museum that filled me with awe and emotion as I walked through the history of rocketry while quite literally devoting a majority of my final year in college applying the principles discovered by these titans. For further reading, the “founding fathers” of rocketry are widely considered to be Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (Russia/USSR), Hermann Oberth (Germany), Robert Esnault-Pelterie (France), and Robert Goddard (USA).

As I am slowly refining this newsletter, I’d love feedback on the format and content. Reach out in the comments or via Twitter (@JonnyMHenderson).

Photo by Aaron Weiss on Unsplash
Jonny
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Sunday Shares (12APR2020)

Welcome! I’m excited to be sharing new finds with you this week. Please share feedback with me on what you enjoyed the most. I’m especially interested in how you find the format (i.e. sections). Comment below or reach out via Twitter: @jonnymhenderson.

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Article: P.A.R.A.
I’ve been using PARA for some time ow. It’s a fantastic system for organizing your digital (and physical) files across all the platforms you use (i.e. platform-agnostic). I’ve listed it on my Articles page as a must-read, and it truly has helped me always be able to find the file I’m looking for.

Watch

Video: Eva’s Cooking Show—Episode 1: Pancakes

Shameless self-promotion here, but a friend shared a video of a toddler cooking and asked that I send one of our daughter. We had a ton of fun making it, and it made for a great quarantine bonding activity 🙂You can watch it on YouTube or below:

Side note—I found the YouTube Audio Library for the background music, which is free (public domain) and creative commons licenses. Such a handy resource

Listen

Song: “Ode to the Mets” by The Strokes

Their new 2020 album, The New Abnormal, is a fun listen. I have never actively listened to them other than “Reptilia”, which I loved from Guitar Hero, but this one is sweet jam (maybe strawberry?). Listen on Spotify or YouTube.

Podcast: North Star Podcast

In my last newsletter, I shared how I’ve been really enjoying getting to know David Perell better through his work. I listened to his podcast this week, and really enjoyed several of the guests he had on. Here are some episodes to get started with:

  • Andy Matuschak: Designing Education—Andy (@andy_matuschak) has worked for Khan Academy R&D and Apple building iOS. His insights into design and learning are excellent.
  • Austen Allred: The Future of Education—Austen (@austen) founded Lamda School, a free coding education that then gets 17% of your salary (if you make more than $50k) for two years to earn back their costs. Many of their alumni have gone from minimum wage to six-figures. It’s a fascinating look at turning such an old system upside down.
  • Jeff Morris Jr.: Building a flexible mindset—Jeff (@jmj) is someone I’ve been following for a while now, and this episode is fantastic. He previously worked at Tinder and Lamda School. I loved his story about writing letters as a kid to famous people and getting responses!

Do

Tool: Todoist

I’ve picked up Todoist again for use as a reoccurring daily checklist. I’ve never been great with checking a digital task management system (I tried it for homework in college), but the reoccurring tasks paired with badge notifications have helped. It’s still a work-in-progress, but I love the natural language where you can type “daily” or “every morning” and it will set the repeat schedule. It’s free for personal use.

Learn

History: Reinheitsgebot

There’s a very old German law, Reinheitsgebot (“purity order”), governing the ingredients and pricing of beer that dates back to 1516. “The basic law now declares that only malted grains, hops, water and yeast are permitted.” Essentially the government determined the quality of what would pass for German ber. Here’s a fun, quick overview.

There’s also a brewery in China founded by Germans in 1903 that “is China’s second largest brewery, with about 15% of domestic market share,” adheres to this law, and it’s now publically traded. Pretty rad.

Ponder

Quote: John W. Gardner

Some people may have greatness thrust upon them. Very few people have excellence thrust upon them. They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly, by “doin’ what comes naturally”; and they don’t stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.