I missed sending out Weekly Notes 16/2023, as I was not well.
I wrote one blog post.
I wrote one newsletter edition.
I am currently reading/listening to:
Writing at work was good.
I wrote a blog post on the tree walk I went with my daughter.
I wrote the 50th edition of my space newsletter, since July 2019.
I read/listened to:
I did not cycle nor play badminton because of a muscle spasm in the back.
I watched:
Soviet Rocket Engines
P Sainath
What does a Quantum Computer look like?
IndieWeb
Writing at work was good.
I wrote the newsletter, Pradeep’s Space Newsletter #49. 49 posts since July 2019.
I read/listened to:
I had a back injury. This allowed me just two days of playing badminton this week.
The same meant that no cycling got done either.
Another week where most of the writing was focused on work. I did not get any other writing done.No blog posts. No newsletter post.
I read/listened to:
I got back to playing badminton this week. I got the badminton racket gutted again.
I got no cycling done this week.
I delivered a lot of writing work this week. Left me in a high. But, this did not overflow to other writing. No blog posts. No newsletter. No other writing.
I watched:
I read/listened:
I am probably going to focus on one and not on both. I stopped the badminton middle of this week. I am going to focus on cycling.
I cycled for a day for about 11.3 km.
Focus continued to stay on work related writing this week. I hope to complete and deliver many of these in the next week.
I managed to write one blog post:
I managed to also send out one edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter:
I wrote one post on my Tumblr, Working Column:
This week’s writing was not of the quality that I would have preferred but means that I shipped content.
I watched:
I am reading/listening to:
Another week of no cycling.
Played badminton on all days save one.
The lower volume of work completed in Week 9 meant that more work-related writing got done than anything else. I did not write any blog posts. I did not publish the weekly space newsletter. I did not attend the RozWrite sessions.
I watched:
Of the lot, I enjoyed watching Nanpakal… the most. I had to watch the review by Baradwaj Rangan to really appreciate the movie more.
I am reading/listening to:
Another week without cycling. I played badminton on all days this week.
Again, a poor writing week. Two weeks in a row means it is time to buck up.
I was able to write three blog posts for the blog:
I did not publish the weekly space newsletter. I did not attend the RozWrite sessions. The contribution to the work writing was lower as well because of power cuts and fever.
I continued watching OTT. I moved from watching Malayalam and to other languages:
I especially liked the alternate rock intro music and music interlaced in a period drama in Lidia Poet.
I finished listening to Four Thousand Weeks and wrote a blog post about it.
I did not get any cycling done.
I played badminton only on two days. I played on Monday and Wednesday. I had a beginnings of fever on Tuesday and actual fever on Thursday and Friday.
I picked up Four Thousand Weeks to listen to on Audible.
I first heard of the book on Cal Newport’s appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show (Episode 568). Ferriss then posted a chapter of the book on his blog. From the introduction on the post it seemed like he was deeply affected by it. It did not affect me that deeply.
I subscribed to his newsletter, The Imperfectionist and read a few of his blog posts. I found that I could not focus on what he was trying to say. Hence, I decided to pick his audiobook.
His website gives a succinctly good summary of the book. What he adds in the book is evidence and anecdotes to back up the claim.
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief.
If you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. But that’s no reason for despair.
Confronting our radical finitude – and how little control we really have – is the key to a fulfilling and meaningfully productive life.
If you need practical takeaways from the book, I’d suggest watching Nathan Lozeron’s summary of the book on his YouTube channel, Productivity Game which also has a nice 1-page PDF summary.
On listening I found a lot of overlap with concepts from Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity, the Gita’s exhortation to follow process and not be swayed by outcomes, and Warren Buffet’s advice to his pilot.
The writing done this week other than work was disappointing.
I only published one edition of my space newsletter. This, too, was simply a round-up of space news from India and did not feature a deep dive.
I wasn’t able to attend any session of RozWrites for the Long Form Writing Cohort 3 that I am a part of. This contributed to the lack of output this week.
OTT watching continued this week. We watched:
I’ve updated the OTT list.
I’m happy to share that I was able to start reading blog posts, fiction and non-fiction books again. I’m presently reading:
In the blog post that I wrote in December 2022 called Note Taking 2023, in the section on Plain-Text productivity I had referred to Cal Newport having a system of using a workingmemory.txt file. I decided to read the blog post about it in detail and implement it at work. This led me to the book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
Cal Newport referenced Burkeman’s book during his appearance on the Tim Ferriss’ show. Ferriss then posted a snippet from the book on his blog. While Nathan Lozeron has a fantastic summary of the book on YouTube, I decided to pick the book to listen to it.
I did not get any cycling done this week. This was a major source of disappointment for me.
I started playing badminton and was able to play Monday thru Thursday.
I am playing again after a really long time and it feels really weird to play as an adult.
Parallel Spirals 