37 | The Power of Presence
Why meditation is like HRV training for the mind, showing up every day, strengthening our memory, why companies should not be families, and more.
Good morning,
It’s been a while. A hackathon submission at the eleventh hour meant that I missed last week’s newsletter. The hackathon was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot, way more than if I only followed courses. I’ve written before about how learning to code is great because it empowers you to build products.
I enjoyed the hackathon that much, I’m doing another in Lisbon in October! I’m excited to go abroad for the first time in over two years, meet new people and build cool stuff with them.
I’m convinced I have ADHD. I say that because I struggle to concentrate on a task for any longer than five minutes. I’m even doing it now, glancing out of the window occasionally as I write this. But I’m sure I’m not the only person who suffers from this. Our attention is in the middle of a 10+ team game of tug of war. And no one team is winning for long before another team forces us in its direction out of nowhere.
This competition for our attention is problematic. It’s made me take longer to complete tasks, which in turn causes me to feel annoyed at myself. But instead of succumbing to it, I’ve decided to do something about it.
And this is where meditation comes in.
In my writer’s workshop for On Deck, we discussed meditation. I mentioned how I struggled with sitting and not thinking for a long period of time, my mind would wander. That wandering would cause me to question the point of meditating. But then my friend Josh made a point that has completely changed the way I see meditation. He said that I should be okay with my mind drifting but snap it back into focus the moment I realize that it’s happening. And by doing this, I’m training my attention.
Meditation is like HRV training for the mind. HRV is heart-rate variability, which measures how quickly you can switch from the sympathetic (beating fast) to the parasympathetic (beating slow) nervous system. I.e. going from stressed to relaxed. Practising meditation takes me from a distracted state to a present state. In that present state, I can focus on what’s in front of me and get whatever needs to be done done. But it also means that in my leisure time I’m able to focus too. Like if I’m watching TV, I’m able to focus on just the programme and not start thinking about something else. Being present lets me stay relaxed, and that improves my health. Stress kills.
If you don’t meditate, you should give it a go. It can be as short as a few minutes every day. You won’t regret it.
👀 Recommendations 👀
💪⏰ The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday - Kishore Nallan. Kishore writes about how telling himself “I shall write some code everyday before or after work” led to him turning his project, Typesense, into a company. Turning up daily and putting in the work is enough to put you in the top 90%.
💪🧠 Let’s build the memory muscle - Manish Gvalani. My friend Manish writes about memory and the techniques we can use to improve it. He touches upon spaced repetition, active recall and writing. Manish has seen a spike in growth for his newsletter and I couldn’t be happier for him. It comes at no surprise as he churns out great content every week.
👨👩👧👦🙅♂️ “We are not a family” - Tobi Luttke. Shopify CEO wrote an internal memo in the wake of large diversity rows. Including anger from some employees at Shopify’s internal comms rules, “10 Slack Commandments”, referencing Biggie’s “10 Crack Commandments”. Luttke sent out this email in response. A great example of CEO pushing back against the woke mob.
“Beyond straight performance output, everyone that engages in endless Slack trolling, victimhood thinking, us-vs-them divisiveness, and zero sum thinking must be seen for the threat they are: they break teams. Teams survive and thrive on the actions of the collective, and the cohesiveness of the whole. Poor performance and divisiveness cannot be tolerated.“
👶🎭 Sean Lock has no time for child actors - Channel 4. Sean Lock tragically passed away this week at 58. A comedian who was a perfect example of British humour at its best. This clip is from one of my favourite Sean moments 13 years ago when he let the children of Mitchell Brook Primary School know how he felt about their acting. And if you enjoy that, listen to him recalling when he won ‘rectum of the year.’
That’s all for this week.
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