What I'm up to - September 2022

This is a monthly email about what I'm up to!

✨ Highlights of last month

• Had a relaxing, Walden-esque week in Mexico City, spent mostly in Parque México. I spent a lot of time reading - including Digital Minimalism, Deep Work, and Shop Class as Soulcraft.
• Went full-time on The Contraption Company, where I'm incubating new projects and collaborating with startups.
• Got Postcard closer to a launch with faster page speeds, design improvements, and more customers.

🤔 What I'm pondering

• Portable Billboards: Inspired by Digital Minimalism, I've been reflecting on how iPhones started as an integrated phone + iPod. But, they've evolved to be a ubiquitous billboard in your pocket, designed to constantly draw attention so that they can show more ads.
• Knowledge work commodification: It's becoming harder to get an entry-level software job, especially out of coding schools. I think this signals a shift in tech toward more performance-based hiring instead of personality-based hiring. This all seems to be a second-order consequence of remote work - where coworkers spend less time socializing. A problem is that there is not (yet) a reliable, quantitative way to measure the productivity of knowledge workers, especially in software development. But, that isn't stopping people from trying!

📫 What I'm up to this month

• Spending lots of time in New York
• Working on getting Postcard launched, and exploring some new projects around gamification and recommendations

📍 Where I'll be (via Nomadlist)

• Sept 5-12: 🌳 Catskills, NY
• Sept 29 - Oct 8: 🗽 NYC

(If we cross paths - let's meet up!)