Mediations #1: Seeking Inconvenience

Relationships and New Beginnings

Mediations Newsletter is becoming a curated newsletter where I will share what I've been thinking about recently and a few things passing from my screens, eyes, and life.

The style will be between James Clear's 3-2-1, Cassidoo's rendezvous, and FS.Blog's Brain Food, and the content will reflect the complexity of life. Therefore, I won't niche into one area like software engineering, productivity, or psychology. I don't want to be a content creator in a certain niche.

Here, I want to form relationships over these emails. The best way to do that is to show you what's passing in my life.

I often advise others, and people find them useful. Yet, I don't always follow my own advice. Because giving useful advice is much easier than applying it to your life. We see what others can do better easily compared to what we can improve ourselves. Here, I want to share those bits of advice that I usually give to some people in my life.

Feel free to just reply to the email you get at any time. Also, all issues will be available on my blog too. If you want to follow the blog and my notes besides emails, there are separate RSS feeds for each.

The Mediations Newsletter has no cadence, but I will send it a maximum of once a week, not more.

Anyway, let's get to the first issue.

Some things I found great

These links are not the hottest or newest ones but rather what I recently spent time on and/or recommend.

• How Can You Get Closer to the People You Care About? — While I listened to this podcast episode, it reminded me of a conversation I had a few months ago with one of my best friends. We talked about how much we know each other and how much we actually don't because we never speak about deep personal values. I don't know if you have tried to make your relationships better, but I want to get better at this. This podcast episode already taught me a few things I want to try.

• Just normal web things. — Heather Buchel wrote a great piece about how websites manipulate our web experience and how we should keep things a certain way. The most frustrating one for me is her last point—a website hijacking my browser shortcuts. I hate it.

• Julia's latest video covering Dua Lipa's Dance The Night — Julia, again, made an awesome bass cover.

• Lee Ritenour & Dave Grusin Live at Java Jazz Festival 2013 — While YouTube was playing one video after another in the background while I was writing something, this video came up. I had never heard of these people before, but I enjoyed every second. What a wonderful concert.

• The Most Important Management Concept You're Missing: Task Relevant Maturity — I'm trying to improve my staff planning skills, and this post helped me to think about when I plan who should do what in our team(s).

• Honest, Candid, and Frank — Should I give honest or candid feedback or be frank? Now I learned the difference. From now on, I'll give candid feedback, always be honest and talk frankly often.

• Team Topologies — I keep coming back to this book lately because I'm thinking about how we can structure teams to better collaborate with other teams and increase the flow of value.

Recently, I thought about

seeking inconvenience.

How much time and money do we spend in our lives to make everything convenient? Does everything have to be convenient?

Convenience destroys the joy in any action. Inconvenience brings out the beauty.

For example, writing must be done on paper with a pen at hand instead of on a computer. Writing is not about efficiency; it's about evaluating ideas, reshaping them, and slowing down the thought stream so that we can catch the good fish in a dirty river of thoughts.

Choosing which movie to watch shouldn’t be done by algorithms while we’re lying down on our couch. It should be by referrals and recommendations from people we know and trust. We should go to the movie theater, watch a movie our friend recommended and hate that movie. We have to feel the waste of time in that movie. We shouldn't optimize for watching great movies all the time.

Also, we must be fully present while doing these activities. Who drinks coffee and does nothing else anymore? How many people have you seen sitting on a couch and listening to music without a phone or book at hand? Or when was the last time you did that?

Look at your life; find where you don't need comfort and convenience. Seek inconvenience in activities that you like to do. If you like drinking coffee, try only drinking coffee without a side activity. If you like listening to music, try sitting on a couch and listening to the music your eyes closed. You'll recognize the difference. You’ll see what exactly you like in them.

And reply to this email about how the experience was.