Thursday Thoughts - 11/03/2022
In this short newsletter, I share the most interesting things that I’ve read, heard, and/or watched over the past week.
What I Read:
The Art of Fermenting Great Ideas | Nat Eliason
Nat Eliason uses the analogy of pickling jalapeños to tackle the concept of idea generation in this essay. The gist of his theory is ideas need great inputs, time, and the proper environment to fully develop.
This concept reminds me of various ideas on productivity and work. The first that comes to mind is Cal Newport’s philosophy of Slow Productivity. One of the main ideas of slow productivity is to work at a natural pace. This ties into the patience aspect of “idea fermentation”.
The analogy also reminds me of the Low Information Diet in The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. This “diet” is all about avoiding information. Ferriss explains that all that attention and time spent consuming information could be used to further your goals. Nat Eliason echos this sentiment in his post.
This article was a great reminder to be bored and filter information input. I especially liked his home screen example. I am stealing this idea to put a list of current projects on my phone’s home screen.
What I Watched:
How To Improve Your Running Cadence
I have been running with friends once a week to improve my health. It’s been about 3 months since we started this routine. I recently joined RunWell to make running a safe, lifelong habit.
I learned about cadence while going through the material on RunWell. This is one of the easiest ways to reduce impact on joints and prevent injury. To supplement the material from RunWell, I found this great YouTube video explaining the concept of cadence and how to improve it.
My average cadence over the last three months was just under 160 steps per minute (spm). According to the research, optimal cadence is 3% to 10% above the baseline cadence. That makes my target cadence 175 spm. I took quicker, smaller steps during my last run and increased my cadence to 163 spm. I will try the metronome and treadmill training method to get up to 175 spm.
What I’m Pondering:
As the saying goes: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”
Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance