Welcome to the Monday Merge! This is a series where I aim to help kick-start your week by sharing a collection of things across the internet and world that I’ve found interesting or enjoyed recently.
This last week has been a really busy one for me. I started a MS in Computer Science program, at the last minute resumed training for a half marathon I’m scheduled to run in February, and randomly decided to pick up writing again. Please enjoy an eclectic collection of things I’ve particularly enjoyed lately.
Books
Atomic Habits by James Clear - I’ve been listening to this book on Audible while I run, and so far it’s fantastic. The core premise; that tiny habits, even ones that make you 1% better at something each day, compound and lead to dramatic change, is a seemingly simple one. However, there’s a lot of deep thought and science that goes into proving why this is true. Even though I’m not very far in, I’m already getting tons of value from the book.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Series by Sarah J. Maas - To be completely honest, I read these the week before last, and I’ve only read the first three books, but they were so good that I averaged almost a book a day. If you like fiction and fantasy books, I recommend checking them out.
Videos
Ali Abdaal’s “How Writing Online Made Me a Millionaire” - Yes, this video helped inspire me to start writing again, but I was already thinking about picking this blog back up. This video just helped push me over the edge. The same is true of this video:
“My Most Important Weekly Habit” by Ali Abdaal - Before watching this, I had kind of pigeonholed myself into thinking that anything I wrote had to be long and super educational and require a ton of effort start to finish. Some of my more technical posts, like the “Weird RL” ones, took hours of writing and running code on top of hours of writing the post (I’m not a fast writer). Ali’s video helped me realize that it is possible to provide value in shorter content, which in turn made me OK with attempting to write shorter stuff more consistently versus only ever writing long content, but doing it really inconsistently.
This video from Architectural Digest where they had two designers transform the same IKEA Billy bookcase - I thought this was really interesting because one of the two designers is a “DIY” person, and this video shows how anyone willing to put in a little extra time and effort can upgrade a basic IKEA bookshelf into something more exciting.
Articles
“There’s A Time For Everyone” from the Astral Codex Ten blog - Scott writes about his journey to find his wife and I found it funny, heartwarming, and educational.
“Crawling into the New Year” from The “To-Woo List” - This post was so relatable for me, as I almost feel like I barely registered the turning of 2021 into 2022 and I haven’t written in months and have suffered from a lack of motivation for a while.
“Web3 had better not be Transaction Cost Hell” from Noahpinion - Before reading this, I had no idea what “Web3” was and I had no opinion (haha, get it?) about it. Now I have an opinion about it and I know a tiny bit. Thanks Noah!
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