Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator

Hey friends,

This week, I watched a TED talk that’s been in my recommendations list for years – Tim Urban’s “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator”. It’s by far one of the best talks I’ve ever seen, and articulated so much of my own (and everyone else’s) experience with dealing with procrastination.

I won’t give you a summary for two reasons.

Firstly, it would ruin it. Seriously, please just watch the video if you haven’t seen it yet.

And secondly, it’s half past midnight, I’ve been on-call all weekend and I can sleep as soon as I hit send on this email.

Have a great week!

Ali

This Week on Not Overthinking

Not Overthinking is the weekly podcast hosted by me and my brother. If you enjoy these emails, you’ll hopefully like that too. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Castro (my favourite podcast app) or any other podcast app – just search for ‘Not Overthinking’.

Not Overthinking | Money, Stories, and Old People

In this episode, we talk about a few different things — how to think about giving money to those in need, whether it’s helpful to view our lives as stories, and how Taimur has been trying to develop more empathy with old people.

My Favourite Things This Week

1 – Article – This is a great post written by J.D.Roth on How to get started with difficult tasks. I think this is something we all struggle with when faced with daunting tasks or long-term projects but the message of the article – that what matters most is that you begin even if the first steps are small – is something we can all draw from.

2 – Article – An interesting blog post from software blogger superstar Patio11 about Dropping Hashes. I’ve seen lots of explanations of hash functions over the years, but this example made them all make sense.

3 – Podcast – I really enjoyed listening to this episode of David Perrell’s North Star podcast where he’s talking to Andy Matuschak. It’s an excellent discussion about note-taking and writing from two (somewhat) different perspectives.

4 – Article – This article from Stratechery about How Tech Can Build is a particularly interesting read for anyone interested in tech and innovation.

Quote of the Week

If you stumble at the start of a spring, you’re likely going to lose the race. But if you stumble at the start of a marathon, it makes no difference. All that matters is that you’ve begun running.

From How to get started with difficult tasks by J.D.Roth. Resurfaced with Readwise.

This Week’s Videos