Elsewhere: Week of April 26, 2021
Elsewhere is a series of interesting things I came across during the week, published every Sunday.
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Thought Detox “It's Gonna Be May” Sale
Thought Detox is on sale during Mental Health Awareness Month.
Yesterday, on my Write.as/WriteFreely-related blog, I wrote about holding office hours for anyone wanting to contribute to the WriteFreely Swift projects I maintain. Check it out!
Elsewhere: Week of April 19, 2021
Elsewhere is a series of interesting things I came across during the week, published every Sunday.
- I'm worried about post-factual democracy. This article suggests how we might re-establish trust (hint: as always, it involves transparency).
- While I've been focusing most of my time lately on iOS/Swift development and writing, I also specialize in being a generalist.
- Procrastination is not laziness, it's a coping mechanism for dealing with negative emotions. There's even more on the topic in this excellent Life Kit interview.
- I can't stop thinking about this tweet by my pal and former colleague Margarita Noriega:
“Metrics are not goals. And goals are not values. Ask yourself today: does your work reflect your values, or a goal, or a metric?”
Elsewhere: Week of April 12, 2021
Elsewhere is a series of interesting things I came across during the week, published every Sunday.
- Ian's Awesome Counter is an app for Apple Watch to help you stay on task. I love the story on how how father and son teamed up to develop this.
- I came across the idea of topic journals and I love it: individual journals meant purely for your thoughts on a given topic.
- I'm trying to go deeper on my reading, and this article on how to learn and retain technical knowledge has a lot of great tips.
- Turns Out: Québec “likes to think of itself as a generous society capable of great social solidarity”, but as this sociologist points out, the pandemic has proven much of how we think of ourselves to be false.
- Watch This: Iron Maiden's “Fear of the Dark”, arranged for symphony orchestra, and performed remotely by 160 musicians around the world.
On Burning Out While Doing What You Love
The topic of “do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life” has been popping up on my Twitter timeline again lately.
Elsewhere: Week of April 5, 2021
Elsewhere is a series of interesting things I came across during the week, published every Sunday.
I updated the time format on my iPhone to 24-hour time, and doing so put all of the third-party apps on my phone into the “Other” category of the App Library. 🤷🏻♂️
Elsewhere: Week of March 29, 2021
Elsewhere is a series of interesting things I came across during the week, published every Sunday.
The McNamara Fallacy
I keep thinking about this particular logical fallacy, summarized beautifully by this quote:
The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes.
The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading.
The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness.
The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
— Daniel Yankelovich, “Corporate Priorities: A continuing study of the new demands on business” (1972).
I first came across it in business school, nearly twenty-five years ago. It’s interesting that we still don’t seem to have learned anything from it.