RadReads n°157
This week: Personal moonshots, how to create wealth, a “news diet,” living forever
Good Morning, RadReaders!
We’ve got a packed issue with stories on career unbundling, creating “wealth” (via measurement and leverage), and my postscript on the stopping negative thoughts in their tracks.
My Personal Moonshot
5 mins | Marginal Revolution
Tyler Cowen is an economist who uses the Internet for distribution (a true, career unbundler). You may recognize him from the blog Marginal Revolution, his Bloomberg Column, or his YouTube course. Cowen believes that there’s still very little competition on the Internet for his ideas (economics), has created a portfolio of activities that are all highly synergistic (“an intellectual blitzkrieg”) and my favorite part has put in the consistent work, having written a blog post every day, for 14 years).
🎙 Curing loneliness through human connection
59 mins | Rad Awakenings Podcast | iTunes | Google Play
Lisa Grossman went to Swaziland as a 22 year old Peace Corps volunteer. At the time, the country had the highest HIV incidence and lowest life expectancy. She was surrounded by loss and grieving — in her own words “It literally broke me open, like a sledgehammer to my chest.” Yet she was also surrounded by love, family, and community — which inspired her nearly fifteen years later to look at our loneliness epidemic (60 mm Americans) and try to restore a sense of belonging and community.
Why You Should Stop Reading News
8 mins | Farnam Street
How much news to we really need to read? Of course we want to avoid ignorance around the events surrounding us. Yet, most news consumption is passive, fosters very little intellectual connectivity, and doesn’t build foundations for true learning and growth. Could reading less news help separate signal from noise? (Two tips: block news sites using Parental Controls and consider reading controversial stories, like The Memo on Wikipedia)
How to Make Wealth
24 Minutes | Paul Graham
A Paul Graham classic on the definition of wealth and pathways to achieving it. He starts by differentiating wealth from money and then looks at wealth creation through the lens of big and small companies. The essay focuses on the latter as vehicles for wealth creation, looking at the dangers of averaging work (across employees), the importance of leverage and measurement, and why choosing difficult terrain is often the best strategy. IMO, it misses many alternative definitions of wealth (freedom, love, equanimity, not feeling rushed).
The Men Who Want to Live Forever
4 mins | The New York Times
For a long time, I wanted to live forever… but now I’m more sanguine about my prospects 😜. In my conversations on mortality, I’ve anecdotally (n = ~40) noted that when you ask men what they fear most about death, they’ll say “will people remember me” (or a derivative “will my life have mattered?”) Women typically answer “will my kids be ok.” I didn’t think much about that difference until it dawned on me who wants to live forever: rich, successful men. This also made me realize how little a role men (including myself) play as caretakers, for both the young and old. If you want to read more about appreciating life, this moving thread on kids in palliative care will quickly reorient your thinking.
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🐦 The Follower Factory (22 mins, The New York Times): If you care about followers, you should care about how easy it is to buy fake ones. (A more detailed analysis here.)
💑 The female price of male pleasure (14 mins, The Week): Differing interpretations of what “bad sex” means.
📱 The New Dating Requirement: Consuming All of Your Partners #Content (7 mins, Daily Beast): The expectations of watching a partner’s Instagram Stories makes me feel old.
ICYMI
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🗯 Stop negative thoughts dead in their tracks: Last week’s postscript on avoiding negative thought spirals.
🎙 Busy ain’t a business model: Ant Demby, Donald Glover’s former manager on entrepreneurship, a growth mindset, and spirituality.
LAST WEEK’S MOST READ
💸 How Your Psychology Affects Your Finances (4 mins, LifeHacker): How we fall for mental accounting, relativity, and anchoring.
