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Hi friends,

Greetings from Utrecht!

I've spent the last two weeks finishing my overdue essay, and reading up on some interesting topics on Build-in-public Twitter. Specifically, I've been reading some articles from authors I'm following where they share the principles for the life they are trying to build for themselves, and the way their work and professional lives fit into that. This is something I've been thinking about more and more myself. Ideally, I would like to minimize the amount of time spent working, and maximize the amount of time I can spend with family and friends, and reading and learning. It's been incredibly interesting to see how others define this balance for themselves, and how they go about making that balance a reality.

Following Paul Millerd's work has been especially eye-opening for me. He's an ex-McKinsey consultant living in Taiwan, providing consulting services as well as sharing his knowledge with would-be freelancers. He also writes about the future of work while advocating living a non-default life, or, as he calls it, following "the pathless path". Well worth checking out if you're into that sort of thing!

Here's what I want to share with you this week:

​How to meet better: My last essay on mission, vision and values touched briefly on the topic of meetings. Specifically, I mentioned that it is a powerful tool in disseminating your mission, vision and values throughout your company. This essay zooms in further on that topic. Besides a practical framework for a meeting rhythm, I've also included a handful of suggestions that I've found make meetings more tolerable and increase their impact.

The Best Bits

Practicing Joy: I don't know about you, but the pandemic lockdowns and general outlook for where were headed definitely has me feeling down periodically. More so than I remember feeling before all this started. This article touches on that subject, and has some very practical, gentle suggestions for what you can do to lift your spirits, if you happen to find yourself in a funk.

Mercator projection issues: Procrastinating on Twitter I found one of the better visualisations of the well known fact that the Mercator projection map actually has CRAZY distortion for countries far away from the equator (you'll have to click to see the animation). A great example and reminder of the idea that "the map is not the territory".

Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom The distortion of the Mercator projection map is crazy. It is a conformal map that inflates the size of objects away from the equator, which contributed to an inflated view of the relative importance of North America and Europe vs. equatorial regions. pic.twitter.com/oP5bUhWHUl July 2nd 2021 564 Retweets 1.784 Likes

The Beginning of Infinity: I'm a big fan of Naval, and his latest podcast series is centered around David Deutsch's book The Beginning of Infinity. I've been meaning to read it, so I was pleasantly surprised to find one of my favorite thinkers diving into the same topics in podcast form.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn

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