Welcome to the Back of my Head's 13th issue.

Things have been super hectic for me. Which is why this issue was over a month late. 

I'm dabbling with too many (super exciting) projects. And I feel each of them should deserve my full attention. But I'm not someone who can do that. 

I get bored off of something very quickly sometimes. It's not even me getting bored of it, it's me getting more interested in something else. 

So I tend to keep 4-5 projects open all the time. I can switch whenever I like. Right now, for example, I've my school and JEE prep, SEO work for HelloMeets (the startup I'm interning at), this newsletter, Tastey (the side project I'm building) and a few more things that take all my time. 

So I kind of made a rule. I'm not going to send this newsletter just to be consistent. I'll only send it when I've found enough interesting links. 

Now, on to this week's links...

You're reading Back of my Head, a newsletter with links to the most interesting things I've found.  Over 100 curious people love it. If someone forwarded this to you, subscribe here.

support this newsletter by buying me a book :)

1.
How Learning Happens by David Perell

An essay that focuses on the most important part of the whole learning process: Inspiration.

Something that schools don't focus on.

"For cultivating curiosity, it seems like every technologist I know read a lot of science fiction as a kid."

"Since the school system operates at scale, it tends to squash things that are hard to predict, even if they reflect a student’s unique interest. For an in-person curriculum to scale, students need to be doing the same thing at the same time. The individual nature of inspiration makes that impossible."

2.
On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking by Jeremy DeSilva

Walking, somehow, is key to great thinking. This piece has convinced me to find some time for a walk.

It tells the story of how Charles Darwin and many others had their best ideas not when they were sitting on their desks working, but when they were on a walk.

Friedrich Nietzsche, who walked with his notebook every day between 11 am and 1 pm, said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”

French philosopher [[Jean Jacques Rousseau]] once said, “There is something about walking which stimulates and enlivens my thoughts. When I stay in one place I can hardly think at all; my body has to be on the move to set my mind going.”

3.
Code-first vs. Product-first by Zach Lloyd

"There are two kinds of programmers, generally speaking. There are programmers who care more about code, and there are programmers who care more about product."

So which is the right approach? And which one are you?

(btw if you're a developer or a PM, his whole blog is worth checking out.)

4.
How James Clear Is Writing His Next Book?

James Clear. the #1 bestselling author of Atomic Habits, is writing his next book. Codenamed, Asymmetry. 

This interview is all about how he's doing the work. From the tools he's using, to his systems. 

"Most people start with something they want to say or a point they want to make, and try to move from that point to the reader.

I think it’s actually better to work the other way—to ask what people already desire. Then move backwards from there to that point you wanted to make. If you do that, you don’t have to fight an uphill battle.”

"But I don’t want to be the adult version of the kid who peaked in high school, or the person who had a hit, and is still talking about it ten years later. Now is the time to move on to the next thing and try to do a good job with it."

5.
What Makes Work Meaningful — Or Meaningless

This is a very research take on what factors actually affect how meaningful you find your work.

Following which, is 5 qualities of meaningful work, 7 qualities of meaningless work and elements of a meaningful ecosystem.

"It seemed that no one could find their work consistently meaningful, but rather that an awareness that work was meaningful arose at peak times that were generative of strong experiences. For example, a university professor talked of the euphoric experience of feeling “like a rock star” at the end of a successful lecture. One actor we spoke to summed this feeling up well: “My God, I’m actually doing what I dreamt I could do; that’s kind of amazing.”"

"Meaningfulness was rarely experienced in the moment, but rather in retrospect and on reflection when people were able to see their completed work and make connections between their achievements and a wider sense of life meaning."

"meaningfulness is not always a positive experience. In fact, those moments when people found their work meaningful tended to be far richer and more challenging than times when they felt simply motivated, engaged, or happy. The most vivid examples of this came from nurses who described moments of profound meaningfulness when they were able to use their professional skills and knowledge to ease the passing of patients at the end of their lives."

Most clicked links from Back of my Head #12.

Other interesting things I found this week.

How many links did you find interesting?

10+  •  5-10  •  1-5  • None