One of my favorite things these days is to read about other people trying different ways to be productive (productivity porn as it is called in certain corners of the internet). The Ivy Lee productivity method, @pmarca’s anti-todo list, David Allen’s GTD, Inbox Zero - one imagines Sisyphus researching ways to efficiently move that boulder uphill.
The cynic in me can’t help but scoff at the Current Thing when it comes to productivity. If there’s a way to make meetings suck less, however, I’d gladly latch on to any fad. Every time I spend a lot of time in meetings, I get the urge to start walking far, far away. I have found a fair few articles and tips to have better meetings - one of my favorite bits of advice is to not have them in the first place. That’s not always feasible though and so, I have linked to my favorite resource on the topic in today’s newsletter. If anyone has any other recommendations, I’d love to hear them in the comments section.
As an aside, how good is First Review when it comes to strategic/tactical content on startups! I can’t believe it’s free.
Links of the Week
Productivity - A collection of tactical tips on how to make meetings suck less. (Link)
“The process of making and remaking decisions wastes an insane amount of time at companies,” he continues. Here’s a specific speed bump that often slows startups down: “I’m always shocked by how many plans and action items come out of meetings without being assigned due dates. Even when dates are assigned, they’re often based on half-baked intuition about how long the task should take. Completion dates and times follow a tribal notion of the sun setting and rising, and too often ‘tomorrow’ is the default answer.”
Energy - Regular readers of the newsletter will know about my enthusiasm for nuclear energy - both fission and fusion. This article talks about the funding boom that fusion is witnessing and presents an optimistic vision of fusion arriving sooner than expected. To be taken with a pinch of salt. (Link)
Having raised more than $3 billion in 2021 from the likes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, fusion developers insist this zero-carbon energy source could be a reality within a decade.
Economics - An Economist deep dive into how India’s economy might be the fastest growing in the world. A reasonably well-balanced piece (paywalled, unfortunately). Extremely bullish on the long-term prospects for India. (Link)
Yet, as the pandemic recedes, four pillars are clearly visible that will support growth in the next decade: the forging of a single national market; an expansion of industry owing to the renewable-energy shift and a move in supply chains away from China; continued pre-eminence in it; and a high-tech welfare safety-net for the hundreds of millions left behind by all this.
History - On the mystery and fascination behind the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (Link)
The irresistible point about the Leaning Tower of Pisa is the thought that it (or you) might just possibly fall… Italy is full of medieval and Renaissance towers you can climb. But none is as famous as Pisa’s, for there is something deeply unnerving about a tower that is leaning so precariously, an unnerving yet ultimately reassuring sense of natural law successfully defied.
Biography - A review of Magellan’s biography. For those unaware, Magellan was the Portuguese explorer best known for achieving the first European navigation from the Atlantic to Asia. His story gets more and more bonkers the more you read about him. (Link)
He notices, for example, that on Magellan’s voyage of discovery to the straits that would be named after him, the death rate was about 90 per cent. “The voyage Magellan captained failed in every declared objective.” Yet not only did this driven, ruthless visionary hazard everything, he persuaded Carlos I of Spain (better known to us as the Emperor Charles V) to risk his prestige, merchants to risk their money, and his fellow adventurers to risk their lives on a mission to the ends of the earth.
Movies - The story of Manish Shah who has spent his life bringing dubbed versions of South Indian movies to the Hindi audience up north culminating with the smash hit ‘Pushpa’. Fascinating stuff. (Link)
“Most of our directors live between Andheri and Bandra,” Shah said, referring to the suburbs in northern Mumbai where shooting lots and post-production facilities are located. “The directors think that India too lives between Andheri and Bandra and watches Netflix and Amazon. You don’t expect them to make action movies, they find it downmarket.”
Sociology - A deep dive on Mr. Beast, the YouTube star with millions of subscribers and an insatiable thirst to become number one. I found it a bit sad, not sure why. (Link)
Happy reading!