Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Full Stack Thinking. As the first proper entry since last week’s introduction, you’ll notice this one uses the format I’m hoping will be the regular structure for this newsletter. Enjoy!
// Front-end
Distraction is one of the arch-nemeses of productivity, and it’s something that feels increasingly difficult to overcome.
It’s all too easy for a day to become derailed by hearing some surprising, shocking, or confounding news. And news itself doesn’t need to be delivered by one of the traditional channels, either.
Twitter has become the de facto nerve-centre for breaking stories across the World, and what constitutes news has also shifted. It’s not uncommon to see a single tweet from a high-profile account form the basis of several ‘articles’ written by the traditional media heavyweights.
One of the many problems with Twitter being used as a news propagator is that it combines the event with the commentary. Not only does the story break on Twitter, but it’s also where the discussion around it breaks out.
This can spiral out of control pretty quickly, and before you realise it you can find yourself deep down the thread rabbit hole.
Worse still, as Mark Twain’s famous saying goes,
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
And to put a slightly different spin on this aphorism, it tends to also be the most sensational stories that spread the fastest.
This property of the Internet generally means we are bombarded with news and commentary that is more likely to evoke a reaction from us. And this is can be so detrimental to productivity.
In my experience, having an emotional response to a piece of content is just about the fastest way to drop the ball on whatever I’m working on. A couple of clicks later, and it’s easy to see a whole hour written off.
This is a particularly woeful reality when you work in the blockchain industry.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be aware of the recent attention on a number of bizarre ‘cryptocurrency’ tokens like Dogecoin or Shiba Inu. It increasingly feels to me like we’ve stepped through the looking glass on Bitcoin.
This kind of thing happens more or less constantly when it comes to Bitcoin and its myriad offshoots - the Doge mania is just the flavour of the month in this regard. But with the discourse around it becoming wackier by the day, it’s incredibly difficult to ignore. I’d much rather not be writing about it right now.
So what can we do about this?
Trying to tackling the origin of some of these maddening trends, as well as the online systems that amplify them beyond belief, is clearly a huge task. I think there’s very little hope in the short term at least.
But on a personal level, the simple truth is that we can either minimise our exposure to these things, or minimise our reaction.
The former is possible, and there are plenty of tools like this to help reduce the amount of noise you’re letting in. But it’s hard to do this without also cutting out the signal and the valuable information that these platforms can also surface.
I don’t see myself realistically being able to go cold turkey on social media, and it’s probably ideal to completely remove what is also a source of useful stimuli outright.
Minimising your reaction to the problematic content, on the other hand, is probably the way to go.
By making a conscious effort to recognise when something nonsensical triggers a response in you, it’s possible to take the appropriate action to stop that from damaging your output any further.
For now, I’m trying to implement a simple rule on this front; whenever I get a strong gut reaction to something infuriating online, use it as a mental cue to do something else productive instead. This is a simple adaptation of some battle-tested techniques for habit-building, so let’s see how it goes.
// Database
Interesting things I found this week:
Deep work and busyness culture - this is a really nice, accessible article on some of the basic principles of deep work, and some practical examples of how to take advantage of it.
Gary Halbert on marketing - if you have an hour to spare over the weekend, I highly recommend sitting down and watching this lecture. It lays out many principles of marketing and psychology in a way that makes them seem as obvious as they are profound.
Microsoft shuts down blockchain project - the latest in a line of big tech efforts to reinvent the wheel of Bitcoin that seems to have ended in sourly.
// Comments
The best quotes I came across this week:
“In the age of the Internet, when everybody has Google search and social media, differentiation is free marketing. The more specific your goal, the more opportunities you’ll create for yourself. Narrow your focus to expand your horizons.”
-David Perell, on the ‘Paradox of specificity’.
“Never post anything that isn’t true in real life … don’t do anything just for Instagram.”
-Jordan Shallow, on avoiding dissonance.
// Commits
Some things I did this week:
This afternoon I’m giving a talk at the BSV DevCon 2021 about Bitcoin transactions. You can still sign up here to watch if you like.
I finally managed to sit down and finish writing an article on the concept of nuance and choice in Bitcoin; keep an eye out for it next week.
If you enjoyed this, consider sharing with a friend. Thanks!
Jack