Books
80k Hours - Benjamin Todd
This book made me happy from the moment I found it. Choosing a career is such an over-simplified and overlooked topic. Most advice revolves around âfollowing your passionsâ which is abstract and misleading. Finding a fulfilling career is more nuanced and important than people think it is. Through your life youâre going to spend approximately 80k hours on your career. How about taking more time to consider where those hours go?
I highly recommend this book if youâre starting our your career (or perhaps looking for a change).
Summary of idea I liked about the book:
- Six ingredients for a dream job: engaging work, work that helps others, work youâre good at, supportive colleagues, no major negatives (long commutes, long hours, unfair payâŠ), work that fits personal life.
- The way the book explains why passion is not enough.
- Advice of how to build up your career capital. For people starting out their career this is priceless advice. Chapters 8-11 are were most of the practical advice is.
- Evidence on how much impact doctors have. We usually think that doctors are among the positions that help the most. However, contrary to belief, thatâs not always the case.
- Ways to have impact without changing jobs: donate to effective charities, political advocacy / communication, help people that are doing good.
- The chapter on the importance of joining a community (chapter 11). For most of my life Iâve been rather anti-social online. Social media is not for me and I often struggle finding people that resonate with me. This chapter encourage me to join communities of mindful people. Youâre not alone in the world, be brave and start looking for âyour peopleâ.
PS: Thanks to the people behind 80k hours. You did a great job. Humanity needed this.
Articles
Aggregation Theory - Stratechery
Pretty short and insightful read. It explores the topic of aggregators, companies that aggregate suppliers and provide a shared platform for distribution. Interesting read to understand the paradigm shift in goods distribution.
Examples of aggregators include:
- Google: aggregate websites, articles, news under search
- Amazon: aggregate book suppliers and basically distribution of goods worldwide
- Netflix: aggregate media content under a subscription
- Spotify: music
- Uber: taxis
- AirBnB: hostels
âŠyou get the idea.
Before this companies existed, suppliers were in direct contact with their clients. The surge of aggregators lifts the burden of dealing with âcustomer experienceâ from suppliers. That responsibility goes to the aggregator that is in charge of providing the best possible experience. The better the experience, the more users it would attract. The larger the user base, the more supplies would like to be part of the aggregator.
Mental Models - FS.blog
Mental models are useful to understand how something works. There are a lot of such models and we often rely on them to better understand the world. This article explains a ton of models in simple terms.
My favorite mental models:
- Inversion: we often think about problems in one direction. However, its often useful to turn the problem upside down. For example, the problem of âdoing good in the worldâ can be re-framed as âpreventing bad thingsâ. Similar to math, some problems are easily solved by inverting them.
- Occamâs Razor: simple answers are often more likely to hold true. Complex scenarios rely on too many moving parts making them hard to measure. Apply the simplest and most straight forward decision and youâll save brain energy.
- Law of Diminishing Returns: think about squeezing a lemon. At first you would get a lot of juice with few effort. However, the more you squeeze, the harder it is to get even a drop of juice. This teaches us that is often wise to stop optimizing a system and moving onto something new.
- Randomness: the brain is addicted to pattern-seeking. This tendency can make us look like fools when we try to generalize/connect random events. In order to overcome this, acknowledge that the world is a series of random, non-ordered events. Stop trying to predict and embrace the chaos.
- Opportunity cost: thereâs a hidden cost in every decision, the cost of not doing something else. Everything has itâs trade-offs. Apart from considering the action youâre taking, think about the possibilities youâre neglecting.
- Narrative Instinct: the world is full of stories. Everyone likes to tell stories about their adventures, successes and struggles. Be mindful about the narratives that you believe and the stories you tell yourself. Perhaps a sad day is that way because of the story youâre making up.
- Survivor-ship bias: we often attribute success to the actions of victors instead of to randomness/luck. This bias could lead us to learn false lessons due to ignoring all the losers who acted the same and failed. Study both parts in order to gain a clear insight on what worked and why.