Hey everyone, welcome to the 30 people that have signed up since the last newsletter.

I haven’t been very good at releasing this newsletter for the past few weeks. I am sorry 😂Life’s been busy and I needed a break. Quite a bit has happened in the past few weeks. Two weeks ago I participated in the Midmar Mile. It’s the worlds largest open water swimming event. I am going to be talking more about later. Louise and I also got a puppy! His name is Axle and he’s flippen’ cute.

One Cool Find

This week I found a curated collection of essays that eventually became books. It’s a great list of interesting reads that you can find here. My favourite so far has been 0 to 1 and the Psychology of Money.

Find the list here.

The Curse of preparedness

Being prepared can be a curse. But, it’s also a good thing. The scouts have this saying: “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst”. This is a great mantra. I’ve adopted it in life and try to have an optimistic outlook towards anything while being prepared for the worst. Something that I have become increasingly aware of is that I tend to over prepare. Sometimes, I’ll over think a simple assignment from my bosses. As someone with a semi-athletic background, I used to train really hard for my running races. When the opportunity arose, to do the Midmar mile, the worlds largest open water swimming event with over 16 000 swimmers swimming over the period of two days, I couldn’t resist.

This was my chance to prove to myself that I could do something without over preparing.

Here’s the catch, before the Midmar Mile, that the longest swimming race I’d ever swam was 100m and that was in highschool, over 16 years ago. 1609m is a totally different beast.

My natural inclination is to prepare to the point where I am more than competent. This is a problem because I can sometimes use it as an excuse. “I am not prepared enough” is a really easy excuse to make. This is partially why I swam this race without too much preparation (That, and the fact that it was really last minute).

My Question to you is: What areas in your life are you procrastinating on/in because you’re not “prepared” enough?

The new “linked thought” kid on the block

I am writing this newsletter to you from an app called “Scrintal”.

You can find out more about it here

I was approached by the awesome team at Scrintal to try out their product. Scrintal is a linked thought software with a twist. If you’re familiar with programs like Roam Research, Obsidian and Logseq, then you’ll know all about the “Graph View”. Scrintal uses the graph view as the core of it’s user interface. They are trying to replicate the feeling you get of working with analog paper on a desk. You’re able to view all your cards and edit them within this “graph view” which they call a “board”.

The app is currently in closed Alpha, but definitely go sign up for their waiting list if this sounds like something that you’d be interested in.