Sunday Seven No. 003

Our New World, Tales From The Afterlives, and A Moment of Happiness

Hi Everyone,

This humble friends and family email has graduated to a newsletter. You’ll notice a couple of changes. First, 7 things I loved this week is now Sunday Seven. The same goodies wrapped up in a new title.

Sunday Seven my weekly newsletter sharing 7 things I’ve learned and loved.

I also moved the newsletter to Substack to more easily manage the content and subscribers. Sunday Seven is free and always will be.

Last week’s email was opened 147 times by 55 people.

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1. QUOTE

   Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away, and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well, and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.

   The moment I read these words I knew I’d carry them for life. This quote is from the 2016 Oscar-nominated short film World of Tomorrow by Don Hertzfeld (16min). Interestingly, Don started the project as a simple exercise to teach himself basic digital animation. The film went on to win 44 awards including the Sundance Best Animated Short.

2. ON REPEAT
   Man-o-To (Me and You) by Nu (9m40s). The minimal lyrics are in Farsi and originally from the poem A Moment of Happiness by the 13th-century Rumi. The song is as beautiful in its melody and lyrics as it is incredibly effective for concentration when played on repeat. To say I have listened to this over 200 times last week is not an exaggeration.

3. BOOKSHELF
   Sum: 40 Tales From The Afterlives by David Eagleman (@davideagleman). Each story is only a few pages long and can be read in under 5-minutes, yet I find myself thinking about it for days. Here’s a free sample. The author is a neuroscientist and a New York Times bestselling author. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw. He’s also got a documentary running on PBS

4. EXPERIMENT
   Last week I began The Pomodoro Technique, a time management method that breaks up productive work into roughly 25-minute blocks and 5-minute breaks. After a two-day experiment, I am doubling down with daily deep-work sessions of 28.4-minutes and 5-minute breaks. Why 28.4? That’s exactly the time it takes for Man-o-To to repeat 3x. Is there a song you enjoy listening to on repeat that you can also use as your timekeeper?

5. REPORT
   Our New World is a coronavirus trends report by Mary Meeker and VC firm Bond Capital. My key takeaway is that many of the offline-to-online trends we are now seeing have been in place for a while, Covid-19 is just accelerating them.

6. DOCUMENTARY
   Dealt (1hr 25mins). Richard Turner is 62-years old and renowned as one of the world's greatest card magicians. He is also completely blind. I have to admit that I started watching this just to see cool magic tricks but ended up with the story of an incredible human being.

7. LEARNING MORE
   I am just starting to dig into the Pseudonymous Economy, a term popularized by Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis).

Enjoy the week ahead!
- Yashar