I welcome you to my Rainy Sunday newsletter in which I give you some sincerely subjective thoughts moving me at the moment.
I was on vacation for three weeks which is why there was no RS. To be completely honest: I wanted to write it anyway but I actually forgot my Macbook at home. I took it as a sign to "turn off" my brain.
Consequently, today's newsletter is quite late and will be very short. The reason is that I finished the comprehensive book notes on "Antifragile" by Nassim Taleb, one of the most impactful books on philosophy and mindset.
Antifragile
A short excerpt here:
"So, I am an absolute fanboy of this book and I believe that it is one of the most powerful books someone can read in his/her 20s. Just to be clear about that statement: I am a Nassim Taleb fanboy and my brain works exactly as he writes this book: Creative chaos disrupting the status quo and then reflecting on what went well and what went badly.
To explain: The reason why I love this book and why I am using Roam Research is that my brain is constantly in an association mode. How do I connect the point of the riff-raffing by Nassim to my preference for it? Well, it is very loosely written, attaches one thought process to the other, connects the ideas of his past books "Black Swan" and "Fooled by Randomness" and is linked to them like my knowledge is linked in Roam: loosely via references. [...]
The central theme of the book is "antifragility", which Taleb defines in the Prologue on page 17 as follows:
"Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better."
Holy sh*t, I was fixed! [...]
As a prefix: I am a huge fan of ancient, archaic stories like the ones from Greek Mythology. The reason is that I do not believe such stories have just survived by randomness. I believe - similarly to Jordan Peterson - that the stories have survived due to the inherent Metaphorical Truth they are containing.
Taleb uses ancient examples to explain the triad of Fragile, Robust, and Antifragile.
- Damocles, who dines with a sword dangling over his head, is fragile. A small stress to the string holding the sword will kill him."
- The Phoenix, which dies and is reborn from its ashes, is robust. It always returns to the same state when suffering a massive stressor.
- But the Hydra demonstrates Antifragility. When one head is cut off, two grow back.
You may find the extensive notes here: Link
Vacation
I was on vacation with my Mum who had her 60th birthday before the journey. We went hiking and accomplished 104 km in one week with 5 km of altitude up and 6 km down. What can I say: She is a beast.
We hiked from Merano to Riva del Garda. While I can recommend Merano a lot as well as Molveno and Caldaro, I really have to say that I was shocked about the disgust I felt in Riva.
The city is solely touristic. There is no culture left, no authenticity in the air and no beauty in the people's faces. I feel like nobody, who works there, is originally from Riva.
Especially the E-Bike trend made me mad: People who obviously never have taken the bike at home are now cruising up steep hills. What is happening?!
It would have made me just half as mad if Italy (my home country) would take care of their infrastructure and build some bicycle tracks.
Maker's vs. Manager's Schedules
And last but not least I would like to share a piece of content with you which should help everybody understand technical colleagues.
I am talking about Paul Graham's article written in 2009. He explains two different kinds of schedules:
- The "Manager's Schedule" and
- the "Maker's Schedule"
The former - which I would call "busy being busy" - he defines as:
The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.
He differentiates the ladder in the following way:
But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.
It perfectly summarizes the real-life experience at my current client: The best technical guys have their own schedule and you need to adjust yours to theirs as they are much more vital to the company than you are.
But: If you show them the respect they deserve, have concrete questions, are prepared well and give them the feeling that you understand their way of working, they will make exceptions for you.
For example: Without my dear colleagues Ivan M.-E., Julien L. and Julien M. I would have been lost so many time. Who knows... perhaps I would have even failed some non-negotiable, irreversible deadlines which would have had an immediate impact on my client and naturally on myself reputation.
I sent them the article and they actually cheered me up for it. They even said I should inform more non-technical colleagues about this way of thinking.
I have to say that I also get used to the Maker's Schedule as I am starting more and more creative endeavors. Not as strictly but - in my opinion - you should structure you half days to the topics you work on and be stricter with meeting invitations.
But that is a topic for another time.