Innovation, Free subscriptions and setting goals
Hello my wonderful people,
Hope you all are doing great. This weeks been quite lazy and my morning routine hasn’t recovered from the summer malaise. But getting up early and going back to the gym in the morning was a key moment. So let’s try to build some momentum with that.
How’s your summers going ? Let me know in the comments
💖 Things I found valuable this week
📔 Book
How innovation works - Matt Ridley
This was the first of the books I read on getabstract ( More on this below). The main ideas of the books are
Society or the market decides if an invention is an innovation.
Exchanging ideas is important for innovation.
Innovation depends on experimentation, but relies on persistence and serendipity as well.
A driving need often inspires innovation.
The innovator who makes the product popular, need not be the inventor.
Current day cultures often resist change, hampering innovation. - Safety concerns against weed etc.
When new ideas lead to new practices in people's lives or change the way they work. Inventions become innovations.
Pretty standard thoughts, but the examples in there make it more interesting.
📄 Website
If you have a habit of reading, then like me, you might consider reading summaries kind of like cheating. I sure had this feeling, until I actually read a summary and realised that the core ideas remain the same and if I can get more ideas in less time rather than the ego boost of having finished a book, then wouldn’t it be better overall ??
So I found this cool site called getabstract. It has summaries to a lot of books and most importantly - IT HAS A FREE SUBSCRIPTION FOR STUDENTS. ( Even for Russian students) So if you want to check it out, go for it. I read through 2 abstracts in the time it would take me to read 20% of a normal 300 page book. So go for it.
🔉 Podcast
This week I really enjoyed listening to Sam Harris’ making sense podcast. The guest was Marc Andreesen. For people who are not much into the venture capitalist space. There is a venture capitalist trust called Andreessen Horowitz which on its portfolio has companies like facebook, airbnb, coinbase and a whole lot of others. Things which I found interesting in this podcast was how he discussed his unfair advantage of having had access to the internet a whole 10 years before it was open to the wider public. The early days of tech in Silicon valley. The trends of resistance to new technologies that he finds as a pattern. What is web3 and why this venture capitalist firm is bullish on it. Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. And how the ideas of a democracy are flawed and the distinction between a bourgeois capitalism of the early 1900 which made America an industrial force and the current crony capitalist system where managers are put in place to make all the key decisions instead of the founder and how that principle agent problem has caused American industrial strength to decline dramatically from the middle of the last century.
YOU CAN APPLY FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION ON THE MAKING SENSE podcast if you can’t afford it. More details on the website.
📹 Video - Hi, so this weeks video is one I made myself. ( Self-promotion 😛). I had the opportunity to go and observe how a 3 million sub Youtube channel works and it was quite insightful. The people there are super-cool and the dynamic is much more positive than how I have observed usual or conventional media productions work, as it is the case with the university studio or a professional TV studio. So here is the vid. check it out.
🎲 Application - So the summer I been a little bitch and got lazy with tracking what I eat. And I can feel that above my waist every time I sit down. But no worries, I will be back to my fitness mode in a month. And the app that helps me the most with this is LifeSum. It is quite simple, you input your fitness goals - to lose weight, to gain or maintain. And how long a timeline you want to meet your goals and the app tells you your daily caloric input required to get to that goal. Then you track everything you eat. It has a really good library of foods which has all the data required like percentage of carbs, proteins and fats. The library even has Indian food so it probably has whatever you eat too. This brings a lot of perspective on what you eat and how much calories are actually contained in things. The free version is enough for me. So you give it a go. Tell me what you think.
🤩 Something new, I’ve learnt
I learned how to automate a telegram bot using python. The process is quite simple and even a neophyte to programming like me can do it in less than a day. So I think if you have the foundations of programming you can do much better. So I used to automate English language infographics for my telegram channel. So if you want to learn English get in there ASAP. I will link the two videos I used to learn how to make the bot and automate it.
1. How to make a bot
2. How to program it using python
🙌 Get 1% better
3 types of goals.
Input goals - Go to the gym
Output goals - Do 3 sets of 10 reps on the bench with 40 Kg
Outcome based goals - Get Rambo chests
The input goals are 100% within your control. Output goals are less so, I might feel a little bit off that day and won’t be able to do it. The Outcome based one is very much not within my control. I might not have the genetics for Rambo boobs. But dividing your goals into these 3 marks give you direction on a daily basis.( Source - Ali Abdaal)
👤 A cool person
Kim Korshunov - The guy behind the Youtube channel I was talking about. Really cool dude. Loves his work and has the same curiosity to his work as he had on the first day. I would highly recommend you check out their vids if you are into the techno-lifestyle space. I’l leave a link.
✍️ Quote of the week
Specialisation is for insects - Naval Ravikant ( He got it from someone else though)