Adam’s 5 Finds: Best 2h Podcast Episode | Another Creativity Exercise | No Time?

Today’s newsletter will be all about a fantastic podcast episode I listened to last week twice. Shane Parrish (host of one of the best blogs) interviewing Naval Ravikant, the CEO and co-founder of AngelList.
He’s invested in more than 100 companies, including Uber, Twitter, Yammer, and many others. He’s one of most interesting people around.
Two hours of gold!

Podcast to Learn a Lot From

Here it is. Enjoy this podcast with Naval Ravikant on Reading, Happiness, Systems for Decision Making, Habits, Honesty and more. Listening to this might change the way you look at your life, podcasts like these are rare.

If you need a good podcasting app here’s the one I recommend.

Naval Ravikant on Reading, Happiness, Systems for Decision Making, Habits, Honesty and More — www.farnamstreetblog.com

Weekly Exercise to Boost Your Creativity

Today’s exercise is based on the podcast above. I want to show you how to become an idea machine, how to be the most creative person around. Here’s today task: Listen to this (or another) podcast episode and immediately write down 10 things that inspired you. This exercise is based on the 10 idea exercise I presented some weeks ago (find details here).

Tip of The Week — How to be More Productive

Watch this TED video to understand what the excuse “I don’t have time” really means. You can read all sorts of tips and articles on how to “save time,” but as Laura Vanderkam points out in her TED talk, “we don’t build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.” In other words, “time is a choice.”

This TED will give you some hints on how to make a priority for these three things: your job, your relationship and yourself.

There is enough time, even if we’re busy we have time for what matters and when we focus on what matters we can build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.

“I don’t have time is just another way of saying, it’s not a priority.” Another great quote from the podcast with @naval

This Video Explains Why “I Don’t Have Time” Is a Poor Excuse — lifehacker.com

Favorite Book — “The Thing Explainer”

Here’s a book recommended by Naval, that I also hugely enjoyed:
“The Thing Explainer” by Randall Munroe.

Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe uses line drawings and only the thousand (or, rather, “ten hundred”) most common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there.

So could you describe how a nuclear power plant works trying to use the 1000 most commonly-used words in the English language (see these words here)?

Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words: Randall Munroe: Amazon.com — www.amazon.com

Simplicity Quote I Love

“I think it’s the mark of a charlatan to try and explain simple things in complicated ways.” — @naval

The final thing I took out from the podcast episode is this quote. Whenever I have to explain things I try to explain them in a way kids would understand.

Don’t be a charlatan, rather explain difficult things in a simple way!

Have a great weekend, all

Adam