Newsletter III
Work is nuts, but a commitment is a commitment
Hello everyone,
I hope that your week has been productive and fulfilling.
Intro
Although I lost again my Sunday mark, I will be sharing a blog-post per week, in my attempt to find some tranquility by sharing what I have been thinking over the past few years.
Writing is a unique skill in our time and age. For starters, it’s a great skill for any business-related endeavor, as it’s important to be able to communicate your ideas, even convince the reader on their merit. Moreover, it has considerable therapeutic and growth attributes, as you have to reflect on what you write about, forcing you to reassess your arguments and dive deeper into the subjects.
All in all, it’s great.
At the same time, it’s quite demanding, especially since I just joined Netdata, a high-growth startup, doing what I love, advocating for users. I will try to do my best and juggle everything, I promise.
Weekly post
This week, I will be sharing the last edition of my blog-post series “From the Greek University to a Startup”. It’s mainly story time again, where I talk about the 2 companies that I joined, how I approached them, and what I learned from that process.
Thoughts of the Week
This week I have been mainly thinking about meta-knowledge or knowledge that makes me better at assimilating knowledge.
For example, I have been reading “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler and it’s astounding how much more there is in reading a book. Although I was aware of the different types of reading, namely for knowledge or entertainment, there is so much more to it.
Some insights are obvious and I had discovered organically, via trial and error. For example, if our goal is to extract knowledge and wisdom, we must read actively, meaning that we don’t daydream and we spend considerable mental energy to wrap our heads around the author’s terms and propositions. As Adler underlines, if a book didn’t require from us some effort, it would mean that it has nothing to teach us, no new insight for us to learn. If our goal is to be lifted and reach the Author in a particular subject, we must expend some energy.
It’s physics.
More than that, the books make you think explicitly about various parts of reading a book, things that I wouldn’t notice on my own. Such as the differentiation of words and terms, words being the language component and terms being the logical one, our interpretation of the word. Thus, coming to terms with the Author is basically the effort to ensure that you understand the words with the meaning that the author intended. Unless we do it explicitly, we could arrive to a different understanding of the book.
And this is only a fraction of this whole meta-knowledge quest that I have been searching lately. We are knowledge workers, and our mind is our tool. If we want to make an impact, we need to be able to use it effectively, and it only makes sense to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn the tricks of the trade.
It’s an investment that compounds. Even Warren Buffet says so.
Quote of the Week
Things that I read this week
I’m compelled to treat consciousness as a process to be understood, not as a thing to be defined. Simply put, my argument is that consciousness is nothing more and nothing less than a natural process such as evolution or the weather
Thank you for reading.
Take care,
Odysseas