Last minute rush. [Sunday Surprise 30th June]
End of the financial year and nearly the start of another adventure...
Kemon acho?
That’s “how are you?” in Bengali- seemed appropriate given we’ve just returned after a leisurely lunch with my parents. It’s been a strange week and I think it’ll continue on for yet another one, but more on that below.
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This week has been rather wistful?
I’m not sure if that’s exactly it, but it feels like a conclusion of sorts and I’m not entirely sure why it feels so very dramatic. After the next newsletter, I’ll be living for the next few months in another continent. This, as you know, has been in the works for a long time. And it’s only for 3-ish months.
Yet, when I go to work, I seem to say “this is the last time, I’ll be doing this list for a while”. People also respond in kind: the people I work with on the weekend told me they’d miss me and goodbye. There is some air of finality that I can’t quite explain and it’s making me miss things that haven’t actually ended yet.
It’s good in a way: it’s very much a counter to the “you only miss things when they’re gone” phenomena. I do find that it’s been a nice pattern-interrupt to the status quo. Even if it’s something as simple as riding a tram to work, I ended up enjoying it knowing that this wasn’t going to be something I could do for months. Even going for lunch with my parents today to my favourite kebab restaurant was just more memorable as a result.
All this begs the question, should we all be doing this a bit more frequently? If changing things up for a short while makes you appreciate what you have so much more, isn’t that something worth doing?
Would love to hear your thoughts on this, so please do hit reply and let me know.
Other things this week:
As you’ll see in Cool Finds, I found a very specific gadget that I’ve been after for 8+ years and I’m a bit ecstatic that I managed to get it on EOFY sales too!
Did my last on-call for the year 🥳🥳🥳
Officially handed over a large chunk of my work portfolio to others
Creative Update
randInt podcast - Autopilot with a Bit More Fraud
The latest episode of the podcast is up and it’s all about the “misses” rather than the “hits” in the world of start-ups. Some companies are just unlucky, but others are bit more… creative… with their promises…
Things I’m reading
I’ve had the physical copy of the book by my bedside for a while now but given I tend to head off to bed late, I keep reading a page or 2 and falling asleep.
Recently, I started the audiobook and oh my, is it worth a read! If you want to nerd out on the some really interesting/new concepts in health and longevity, this is your book. I really like the very common sense way he’s tackling a subject that has limited “gold standard” evidence and working on complex problems from basic first principles that anyone can follow along. This book is BIG so it’ll take me a while to digest, but so far, it’s been very much worth it.
Cool finds
Alogic Clarity monitor + stand*
This is something super niche BUT also something that I’ve been looking for over 8 years now. Ever since Microsoft released the Surface Studio desktop, I assumed it would only be a short amount of time before someone made a monitor that had the same form factor: basically one that tilts down almost flat so you can draw/sketch and then slides back up to be a normal monitor.
Nope, that did not happen.
There was nothing. Until now. At it just so happens to be made by an Australian company! The monitor itself is touch enabled, webcam, pen input etc, but the real magic happens when you add the Clarity Fold stand* so it can tilt flat. Again, very niche, but something that took me SO long to find.
Actionable insight
Prevention is better than cure, but prevention takes a lot of time.
That is my little summary so far of the point Peter Attia makes in his book. A lot of the chapters dissect the genesis of the “Four Horsemen” which is what he terms the most common cause of early death.
The theme that seems to come up over and over again is that they’re the result of many small things, or a few small things accumulating over time. Preventing those has significant impact on your health, but it’s not simple. The easy example is this: not smoking isn’t you saying no to cigarettes once, it’s saying no over and over again. If you’re not a smoker, that’s the norm, so it seems easy. Now if we change smoking to NOT exercising/NOT focussing on diet, you can see how those are things we may do, but don’t ALWAYs pay attention to, even though they maybe as important.
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