Either I spent all my time on Twitter today, or I spent all my time working and Twitter was the only brief distraction. Either way, all three links today are from tweets that dropped in my timeline.
1. Thinking about work balance
Tiago Forte asked an interesting question:
What percentage of the meaning in your life do you derive from work?
I think I’m at 70% which is too high for me. I’d like to trend downward over the next 5 years to about 40-50%
— Tiago Forte (@fortelabs) February 20, 2020
I don’t know how to answer that question (also not sure I entirely even understand it), but i do know that my balance is off. I’m definitely lacking “non-work meaning”. I’m going to have think more about it, and if it requires fixing. And if so, how. @MoneyMonetisms suggested a good starting point:
If you could wake up tomorrow morning and do whatever you wanted for a straight 57 minutes, without any cost or repurcusions for the other parts of life, what would it be? What would make your heart sing. Write it down right now and see what happens.
— Monty Sandhu (@MoneyMontisms) February 21, 2020
As an aside, I like the specificity of 57 minutes rather than “an hour”. It requires more deliberate consideration. What would I do for 57 minutes? I would read, or write, or bead, or plan my next venture witch is itching in my brain. I guess that answer does give a lot of clues about how the balance should be distributed.
2. More accurate maps
It’s a pretty well known fact that depicting the curved surface of the Earth on a flat map is problematic, and that the sizes of countries is distorted. In the image below, Greenland looks about as big as South America, but in reality it’s about 8 times smaller. Brazil might look big, but not big enough: it’s actually about the size of Canada.
Flat maps are about as accurate today as they are ever going to get in their current format. (There is an actual mathematical formula to measure the errors of a map. The globe has an error count of 0, the best flat map has a count of 4.563. The map Google uses has an error count of over 8.)
But now, a cosmologist and his colleagues have developed an entirely unique flat map: it’s two sided, and has an error score of 0.8. You need to flip it to see the “other side” of the world, much like you have to turn the globe to do the same.
I think it’s pretty cool out-of-the-box thinking. You can read more here.
3. All about hedges
Probably the most random thing you’ll see all week here. This is a Twitter thread about…hedges. No, not hedge funds. Hedges. I’m not going to try and sell you on it. Just go read it. You’ll never look at a hedge the same way again. (With thanks to @geniusboywonder who brought it to my attention).
https://twitter.com/gawanmac/status/1255154537951682564?s=20
