12/18/20 Recommended Issues: Racing Safety, Reading Better, Task Mentality

Good day!

Each week we handpick newsletter issues by independent writers you may have missed that provide new or unique perspectives. 

If you read last week's and would like to subscribe or leave a review of any of the highlighted newsletters, you can do that here: Erick Erickson's Confessions of a Political Junkie, TK News by Matt Taibbi, BIG, and  Next Big Thing. The narrowSCALE community really appreciates it!

Also, if someone forwarded you this and you'd like to subscribe, you can do that here -- thanks!)

Here's what's worth reading this week...enjoy!

READ BETTER

HOW you read matters in Idea Journal Weekly 3 on Dec 6

This small-but-mighty issue is about reading: how to read better, what to read more of or less of, and how to be more effective with your reading time. What captured my interest is that each of the three short sections is independently digestible and each one actually caused me to pause after reading it… either to let it sink in, or to think about whether I agree or not, or to reflect on how I read in comparison.  All three offer clear nuggets that you could actually choose to do something different with if you want to… and you may find yourself reading this issue twice. (1224 words; ~4.5 minutes) Read it...at least once :)

TASK MINDSET vs SCHEDULE MINDSET?

1 Easy Mindset Change Conquered My Stress in Mental Health Update by Jordan Brown on Dec 11

This issue was intriguing because it makes you re-evaluate your relationship with task lists. Many of us have these lists that we add too, and we feel accomplished when we check off items, and we also struggle to ever get to the end of... which can add some stress to life.  Jordan advocates for a “schedule mindset” (instead of a “task mindset”), where you block times of your day/week to work on categorized sets of ‘stuff’ or tasks or whatever you deem worth spending time on. The conceptual difference between these two mindsets is worth pondering as they’re simply different ways of thinking and organizing your life...and one might work better for you than another. (493 words; ~2 minutes) Read it...

SPEED AND SAFETY- IMPRESSIVE INNOVATIONS

The Racing Safety Edition in Why is this interesting? by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy on Dec 15

If you’re already a hardcore F1 or IndyCar fan, you may already know this -- but for the rest of you, this issue offers a fascinating deep dive into the safety differences between F1 and IndyCar and also into the (arguably pretty incredible) safety innovations both have made. That you can have a 53g crash, with “a helmet visor warped from the heat of the gasoline chemical fire”, being trapped for 28 seconds, and escape with only burns on your hands and feet seems unfathomable. You’ll walk away much better informed about why, with such speeds, there actually are so few deaths-- and also wowed at the technological and process advancements. (1457 words; 5.5 minutes). Read it...


Some interesting facts for the week:

• Most people (95% (!!!) if it's a brand new show; 75% if it's an existing show with multiple seasons) decide to watch a tv series after seeing just one episode. Holy smokes, make that first episode count! (Pulse 12/6)

• In Q2 and Q3, private accommodations (think: vacation rentals) represented 40% and 33% of new bookings on Booking.com. It will be interesting to see how much private accommodations aid in the travel industry recovery and how much hotels will be hurt as corporate travel remains low and share shifts from hotels to private. (Travel Tech Essentialist 12/9)

• Hrrmmm, tradeoffs: most cities plant only male trees because it’s expensive to clear up the fruit that falls from female trees. But, since male trees release pollen, that can be one of the reasons your hay fever is getting worse. Hachooo!  (Simply Good Life 12/11)

• "Serendipity" is such a great word... Who knew it was coined by Horace Walpole in the mid 18th century when he wrote in a letter to his friend - The Three Princes of Serendip ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. (Why is this interesting 12/14)

• There's actually a term for designing a space/property/etc to force people to use it in exactly one way (like when dividers are put on benches to keep people from being able to sleep on them in airports, in parks, etc..) It's called "hostile" or "defensive" architecture. The more you look for it, the more you'll see it. (Why is this interesting 12/11)

• It's not just your imagination: you've probably been spending increasingly MORE time in meetings as the pandemic has drawn on. The average number of hours knowledge workers have spent in internal meetings at companies has trended up since the beginning of the pandemic...starting at around 14.5 in April as many were settling into the pandemic, and reaching >16.5 now.  (Culture study 12/13)

• Allulose is a sugar substitute that interacts with your body differently (better) than sugar and other substitutes-- and it seems to be flying under a lot of our radars. Might be worth learning more about. (Peter Attia 12/6)

I hope you learned a tidbit or two! If you're on the hunt for any specific newsletters to read, feel free to email me or peruse narrowSCALE.

Next week we'll take a break for Christmas, so look for the next issue on January 2nd!

Also, if you're not subscribed to THIS newsletter yet, please subscribe here :)!

Take care and happy holidays!
~Jessica