Readwise at the end

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

As I’ve mentioned a few times on here, I have a handful of tools that I use every day. I mentioned some like Anki and Feedly last year, but now I’m adding Readwise to the mix because it has a great small feature that not many people notice.

My main goal for each day is to still get Anki and Feedly to zero, and I generally am able to accomplish that. When they’re done, though, they’re done. They have a fixed end, and you’ve hit zero. You can “study ahead” in Anki a bit, but it’s not a great thing to do on a regular basis.

Often when I’m done with those and have some time to kill (waiting for the doctor, before a football game starts, etc) I’ll drift into social media. That’s an easy way to go and I’ll still often do it. However, I’m now trying to use the Readwise “Daily Review” tool a bit more.

Readwise

I work hard to remember content from the books I’ve read. I have this blog, we have a monthly virtual book club, and a podcast that shares knowledge from them. I’m always looking for ways to refresh my memory from those books, and Readwise is a big help.

Readwise has a lot of tools, but the main one is to automatically pull in your highlights from Kindle. From there, you can visit your Readwise Daily Review page and it will show you five of your highlights to review. They show up one at a time, like this:

You’ll notice four icons below the quote that it pulled.

  • Discard: Don’t show me this again. It won’t remove the highlight itself, but will hide it from showing up in future daily reviews.
  • Master: This allows you to select some words to be hidden the next time it comes up so that you’ll have to fill in the blanks and learn a bit more.
  • Feedback: You can tell it to show this quote again “Never”, “Soon”, “Later”, or “Someday” to adjust the pace.
  • Keep: Just the default for “yep, good quote, show it again some other time”

They’ll also sometimes show additional quotes (“A supplemental highlight from a book you’ve read”) or recommendations from new books based on what you’ve read, like this:

I have Readwise set up to email me a reminder every morning, so I’ll at least do one set of five quotes per day.

When I have extra time beyond that everything else, I’m trying to make Readwise reviews the default. I’ll still spend some time poking around social media as well, particularly if my brain is shot, but this is a great tool to add to the list.

Let’s do this again next week

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’ve mentioned the fantastic “Founders” podcast on here a few times. Not only do I get a lot out of it, it partially inspired my new podcast as well.

Earlier this year, David from Founders did a show with the guys from the “Acquired” podcast and it was an amazing episode. It was nearly three hours long, but I didn’t want it to end. In fact, near the end, David jokingly suggested to the other guys “let’s do this again next week“.

While I know he was kidding, my first thought was “yes, please”. That would be amazing! However, I don’t think it would work.

The work makes the conversation

What made that long episode so special was the way all of them were able to refer back to episodes they’ve done in the past, pulling in ideas and quotes from those. The immense amount of work they’ve put in (both of their podcasts have hundreds of episodes) is what lead to this conversation.

I have no doubt that a weekly chat between all of them would be great, but it’s the work they put in every week on their shows that makes that kind of conversation possible. I get a lot out of their regular shows, and those shows are what give them the insights that lead to great conversations.

I hope they do another joint chat at some point, but for now I’m more than happy to have their regular shows continue to show up in my podcast app.

If you have the time, that long episode they did can be found here, and it’s well worth a listen.

Digitally prepping for a trip

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Over the next few months I’ll be heading to both New York and San Antonio for some fun trips. My goal is to work very little on those trips, but I still want to keep up with some of my daily streaks (such as this blog), so preparation is key.

Blogging

I generally stay a week or so ahead on blog posts, but I’ll try to push that even a bit further before those trips so that I’m not out of posts when I get home. Last year when we went to New York, I had enough posts pre-written for the duration of the trip trip, but just barely, and when I came home with COVID I simply had to stop blogging for a week.

While that might largely unavoidable, I still would like to give myself a bit more cushion for these trips. To write more I need to read more, so I’ve been pushing hard to build up a nice buffer.

Anki

The other big one I need to consider is my daily use of Anki (flashcards, as shared here). I’m currently on an 1,930 day streak, and I’d rather not break it. Fortunately, Anki does two things that help.

  1. First, the streak is counted if you review just one card. If things get busy, I can always review a single card.
  2. You can “study ahead” whenever you want. In the week or so before each trip, I’ll study ahead so that my daily card count will be much lower while I’m away.

It also helps that I tend to study Anki cards in fits and starts, which works well for those kinds of trips where I can just slip in a few minutes here or there when time allows.

Duolingo and others

I have other daily tasks that I routinely do, such as Duolingo and Wordle. Those are short and easy and I can likely just knock them out as we get moving in the morning. I also consider them to be less important, so it’s ok if I miss a few days.

In the case of all of these items, it helps that I enjoy them. I wouldn’t have that huge streak in Anki if I didn’t enjoy doing it at least to some degree.

Of course, I haven’t talked about how I plan to handle normal work stuff (emails, meetings, etc), but I think most people already have a solid plan in place for those. The bulk of my time lately is in meetings, whether that is with clients or at Chamber-like events, so blocking those from my calendar takes care of most of it.

Now it’s time to go work a bit further ahead to make my time away that much easier…

No one considers themselves an expert if they really know their job

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I recently listened to an older episode of the “Founders” podcast where host David Senra unpacked the book “The Vagabonds“, which was the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s Ten-Year Road Trip. I’ve not read the book yet (it’s on my list now), but Senra’s podcast was fantastic.

I have a few posts that will come out of that episode, but this one is based on a statement from Henry Ford about people that work for him. Ford said:

“None of our men are ‘experts.’ We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the ‘expert’ state of mind a great number of things become impossible.”

This reminded me a lot of what Ryan Holiday shared when he said:

“The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.”

It can be very hard to properly judge our depth of knowledge in any given area. A couple of years ago I shared the story of two friends that both considered themselves to be “intermediate”-level WordPress developers, when I was quite sure that one of them had 10x the skills of the other.

However, from each of their perspectives I would have said the same thing as each of them. From the perspective of my highly-skilled friend who only considered himself to be “intermediate”, that assessment is exactly why he continues to work at such a high level. If he ever sat back and said “I did it. I’m an expert.”, he’d be sunk. Instead, he keeps working and he keeps learning, and is a huge asset to all the people that he works with.

I encourage you to check that episode of Founders, and if time and desire allow, read the full book as well.

Answers come from understanding, not knowledge

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I work hard to accrue knowledge. I think that’s a lot of my Enneagram 5-ness coming out, as I shared a few years ago when I unpacked the various Enneagram numbers:

“Fives collect knowledge. Knowledge and information of almost any kind (even the strangest information) provide Fives with a sense of control and a defense against feelings of inadequacy. Fives also collect information or knowledge because they don’t want to appear foolish or uninformed, or be humiliated for not having the correct answer.”

That fits me perfectly. I’m worried I won’t have the right answer in some situation, so I work hard to have all of the answers. I know that’s completely impossible, but it doesn’t slow me down.

Regardless how much knowledge anyone acquires, it only goes so far. I shared last month some thoughts from James Clear and how he believes that creativity comes from connected thoughts. In my mind, “connected thoughts” can only come from more knowledge but that’s not really accurate — it’s the true understanding of that knowledge that makes it possible.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s classic book “Blink“, he says:

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”

All of that said, I don’t have a great answer on how to take a bit of knowledge and turn it into true understanding, but I have two things that might point in the right direction.

First, deepen your knowledge. This is precisely what I’m doing as I try to gain more from the books I read. I can only take it so far, but conversations and book clubs help me see other points of view.

Second, see the knowledge through a story. A good example there is the idea of social norms versus market norms. The knowledge of that is great, but seeing real example of how it works is when it really starts to hit home.

I’ll continue to accrue knowledge as much as I can, but I hope to also add more real understanding of the things I learn as time goes by.

When is it for you, and when is it for someone else?

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Lately, I’ve been trying to pay more attention to who a creation is for.

In the case of this blog, as I’ve said for years, I’m writing primarily for myself as a way to get thoughts out of my head and organized a bit better. If you’re reading this I hope you find value in the posts, but I’m not looking to appease any particular readers, nor to try to play the SEO game and rank well in Google. Rankings may come, and some posts may be appreciated by many, but that’s not my goal.

In other cases, my work is entirely for other people. When we’re building a website for a client, it’s 0% about us. To be fair, it’s usually very little about our client either — it’s for the people that they’re trying to reach.

Then there are some that are in-between. I’ve recently started a new podcast that is largely for me, with the purpose of revisiting great books to help strengthen their concepts in my head. However, since I have guests on the show, I certainly want to make sure they get something out of it as well. They hopefully get some “stronger knowledge on a book”, but I also hope to get them a bit more exposure for their work and their projects. It’s a fine line.

Everything I do has an intended audience, even if it’s just myself, and keeping that in mind in all situations will help make sure everything is approached from the right angle.

Getting more out of the books I read

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I read a lot of books, but I’ve noticed that I’m not retaining what I read particularly well. That’s frustrating, and this blog is intended to help with that. I think it does a little bit, and my retention would be even lower without it, but more needs to be done.

I shared a few months ago that the value of summarizing a book is far greater than the value of reading that summary, and I’m taking a few steps to create additional summaries.

First, I have the new Sunday Summaries every week that lightly touch each of my posts from earlier that week. This forces me to go back and look at them again, and many of them have content pulled from books that I’ve recently read.

Next, we’ve recently started a monthly virtual book club with our Meetup group. This creates a mixture of “I need to read that book before the meeting” or (more often) “I need to refresh myself on that book again before the meeting”. It’s free and open to all and you’re welcome to join us. Details are here.

Lastly, I’m starting another podcast (to go with “A Brighter Web” that Robert and I already host). The new podcast is called “Stacking Knowledge” (website, Apple) and it’s another way to revisit the books that have impacted me the most. The format is loosely based on the “Founders” podcast, but I’ll be covering a wide range of business books and I’ll have a guest with me each time to help unpack them. It should be a great way for me to dig back into those books, and getting another perspective in each episode should be fantastic.

Refreshing a book

In both of the book-related items above, most of the time I’ll be digging back into books that I’ve already read but I’ll I want to make sure I tighten up my knowledge ahead of time so I’m ready to go. To be honest, the forcing of that tightening is a big part of the value here — just taking the time to prepare for the book club and the podcast is of huge value to me.

For the actual prep, I’m doing four main things right now:

  1. Assuming I’ve read it before, go back through my notes to see what stands out.
  2. Re-read the book (if I have time and the necessity exists) or at least Blinkist it.
  3. Find another summary or two to consume. This could be YouTube videos that people have created, or perhaps a summary from someone like Derek Sivers or Nathan Lozeron.
  4. Dig back into any blog posts I’ve written that discuss the book at all.

From there I build a new page of notes with quotes and ideas to share. Building that summary is the important part, at least for me, but I know that sharing the output of it can be valuable for others.

I hope you’ll consider joining us at the book club or subscribing to the podcast to keep us all moving forward.

What matters is doing the right thing

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

There are two kinds of people in the world:

  • Those that want to be right.
  • Those that want to do the right thing.

There is certainly some crossover there, but if your focus is always trying to “be right” you might miss opportunities to shift gears and do the right thing.

In Kim Scott’s book “Radical Candor“, she shares this thought from Steve Jobs about being right.

I don’t mind being wrong. And I’ll admit that I’m wrong a lot. It doesn’t really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing. In my experience, people who are more concerned with getting to the right answer than with being right make the best bosses. That’ s because they keep learning and improving, and they push the people who work for them to do the same.

Steve is remembered as someone that was very intense and would push people beyond their limits, but if you stood up to him and showed him a better way to get something done, he’d listen.

I try to do the same, and remember that when it happens I end up being less wrong than I was before.

Writing the report is the important part

by 2 Comments

Reading Time: < 1 minute

When we’re preparing for our quarterly meetings with our clients, we spend a lot of time digging into their analytics from the previous quarter. We want to understand what worked, what didn’t, what’s growing, what’s fading, and anything that could be of value to them.

While the output of that research is certainly important to the client, the work that we put into the research is where the real value lies, because that’s what helps us to really understand what’s going on.

In his book “High Output Management“, author Andrew Grove relates it to reports:

“Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information. Writing the report is important; reading it often is not.”

That’s kind of like these posts that I write. I hope you find value from them, for sure, but my value is in putting them together. Finding quotes, linking ideas, and thinking through my own thoughts are where I get the most out of them.

I find this to be true of most creative endeavors. I shared the example of David Senra’s “Founders” podcast recently and it’s the same way. David’s output for us is fantastic, but the value he gains in putting it all together is easily 100x more valuable.

You might find this kind of value in creating videos for YouTube, creating a podcast, or even journaling privately with yourself. Look for the avenue to force yourself to dig into your work, and you’ll find immense value in the act of digging itself.

The ownership of immaterial things

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Ownership of physical objects is easy to understand, but taking ownership of an idea can lead to problems.

This doesn’t mean “taking ownership” of a situation at work; it’s always good to stand up and own your work. It’s when you take ownership of a certain idea and refuse to let it go that it becomes troublesome.

I shared this idea a few years ago regarding people that say things like “I’ll never switch to an iPhone”, and Dan Ariely dug into a little deeper in his book “Predictably Irrational“. Dan says:

“Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology — rigid and unyielding.”

It can be fun to disagree in this regard when it comes to cell phones or sports teams, but it gets much more challenging when it comes to politics and values.

If you believe that all school lunches should be free, college loans should be forgiven, or that we need to build a wall along the border, you’re welcome to have those beliefs and I encourage you to fight for them. However, if you take such ownership of an idea that you “can’t stand the idea of its loss”, that’s problematic.

In the light of new angles or evidence, be willing to change your position. It’s not “flip-flopping” — the people with the strongest convictions tend to be the most curious about them. As Gary Vaynerchuk has said, “You can be humble and curious but also have conviction in your beliefs. It’s not either-or.“

Take some ownership, fight hard, but never stop evaluating what you believe.