Don't wait, don't trust, but test your ideas!

The Do-It Newsletter #37 - New chapters and interesting finds of the past weeks

How's it coming along?

Well, alright.... but… it's not ready yet.

This has to sound familiar.

Either with work, school, or personal projects, we tend to be hesitant to share developing ideas. True, your idea may not be complete, but that's only the final step of creativity! First, you must determine whether your work (or idea) is understandable or even heading in the right direction. Getting comfortable with sharing your work or ideas early has many benefits, such as:

• Clarifying your intentions. Simply the act of getting an idea ready to share will make you clean it up and highlight the essence of it.

• Saving time and effort. Hearing that your idea is flawed early on means you can correct the error before you spend further resources on detailing. Huge time-saver.

• Following through. Sharing an idea with someone means they are now part of the process. It would feel inconsiderate not to follow through on an idea someone else has generously invested in.

Hoping to have captured these benefits, I'll be sharing what I shared and consequently learned over the last weeks:

Presenting my problem-solving framework at #NedMI2023

I got a wonderful opportunity to give a full-day workshop at the #NedMI2023 conference. Young impact-makers applied the problem-solving chapters of the 5 Acts to tackle the social challenge of dealing with misinformation. The preparation amounted to 4 iterations and test cycles, which massively clarified the individual steps and their connections! The workshop itself was also insightful as it revealed many different interpretations of the steps.

10 chapters of The 5 Acts book are now published!

Questions about structure, work-life balance, and productivity frequently pop up in check-ins with coworkers. I refer to one of the scattered articles/newsletter editions when I give advice.

At the same time, I was working on the 5 Acts and really wanted to move from the draft phase to the first “MVP” of the chapters.

I figured this was an ideal opportunity to combine the two initiatives. Therefore, I've now published the first versions of the application chapters in this Google Doc:

Have a look! (more to be added each week)

Interesting finds of the past weeks:

🌊 Re-surfaced:

Kapil Gupta - Conquering the Mind - A Conversation with Naval Ravikant

I gravitate toward badasses that preach hard work, drive, and ownership. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Goggins. There's a lot of truth in this ethos, but it can also descend into brute force or self-obsession. When understanding the mind, “taming” is not the right approach. This conversation between Kapil and Naval is a wonderful antidote to my tendency and has helped me figure out how to treat the mind.

🔗 Link to the conversation on YouTube

🤍 Appreciated:

AirPods 2nd Gen (with iOS17 updates)

The 2nd generation AirPods Pro with IOS 17 offers some stunning upgrades. The adaptive audio mode is great for commuting through the city as it reduces ambient noise while amplifying important alerts. Also, the conversation-awareness feature is (usually) great when you're in the gym/office/public transport and someone speaks to you. No more awkwardly taking out or turning off your AirPods.

🔗 Link to buy on Amazon

🔊 Listened to:

The Reason is Fun podcast - #0 - Effective Altruism, X-risk, e/acc (David Deutsch and Lulie Tanet)

I've always been curious about David Deutsch's take on specific ideas and trends. His books are primarily insightful for universal principles and fundamental mechanisms which is why this pragmatic review of EA and e/Acc was so fun and interesting.

🔗 Link to the episode

📖 Read:

Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills (9th edition)

I've rekindled my passion for summiting mountains. So far, my conquests have been of fairly timid mountains, such as the wonderful Mount Vihren (Bankso, Bulgaria) last month. But I'm eager to up the ante and go higher. This amazing book on every aspect of mountaineering has been helpful to someone who doesn't have many opportunities to learn from experience (as the highest hill in the Netherlands is a dizzying 320 meters above sea level).

🔗 Link to the book on Amazon (I got the Kindle version)

That’s a wrap

I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can leave a comment on Substack, send me a private message, or simply reply to this e-mail. See you soon!

, Edwin