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- The Connection Newsletter 55 - Productivity in Chaos
The Connection Newsletter 55 - Productivity in Chaos
The Connection Newsletter 55 - Productivity in Chaos
Hello!
This is edition #55 of
The Connection
, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!) Thank you for reading.
I was waiting for a connection flight in the Philadelphia airport last Sunday when I passed a woman wearing this t-shirt:
My first thought: “What terms did they get on that licensing deal?!?”
My second thought: How cool it’s going to be when Oliver is fanboying on something - a musician, a sport, a TV show - and he decides he wants to pick up some merch. Hopefully he’s be passionate about something awesome (Taylor Swift, the UFC) and nothing lame (Coldplay, baseball).
Whatever he decides, I’m psyched at the prospect of him discovering his own fascinations. I can picture us carving out late-night hours to sit on the sofa armed with bowls of butter-drenched popcorn, wearing matching “Mother of Dragons” t-shirts, to watch his favorite show.
I’m back from San Francisco. Zipped around on a Skip scooter (terrific), drank some Blue Bottle (fine), nearly got into a fight after someone spit at me (not great), and got to see old friends and meet new Reforge participants. It was a good trip.
This week I published my notes from John Warrillow’s
, as well notes on Cole Cuchna’s terrific podcast,
.
Hope you’re having a great week. Onto the articles:
Make sure to hit "Display Images" above to see puppy pics.
As a kid I eschewed simulation games like SimCity for strategy titles like Civilization and Age of Empires. Cool to see how this video game didn’t so much as rot the brain as it did give these people a career path (h/t Amy).
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A history behind the kitchyest Italian restaurant to grace a suburban neighborhood near you.
Although the restaurant was built on kitsch, Roberts knew the food had to be the real deal. So he hired Vittorio Renda, a fast-talking, self-assured cook from Milan, to put together a menu. Renda, in turn, brought all his family recipes—meatballs, chicken cacciatore, tiramisù—and plated them with over-the-top flair. The meatballs were the size of baseballs. Gooey mozzarella flowed over the garlic bread like lava. Steven Roberts, Phil’s son, a reserved Yale-educated architect, designed the building and the interiors. He would visit flea markets in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis to find old black-and-white photographs of Italian families to cover the walls. He picked up religious souvenirs from Vatican City. “We had this one ceiling painted with cherubs, but they were a little too well endowed,” he recalls, chuckling.
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“While interviewing working parents for a book on parenthood, I spoke with one dad in Vermont who said: ‘The expectation among my male friends is still that they will have the life they had before having kids.’”
From my perspective, this was mostly true in my parents’ household. Personally, I probably hold onto this belief to a large degree as well. In reflecting on my (short) time parenting so far, all I can add is I think this idea of
parity
in parenting is deeply personal. It’s up to the parents to decide what is best for the family. Maybe that’s a 50/50 split in time and energy, maybe that’s 10/90. The fastest path to resentment is blindly subscribing to what’s currently politically correct.
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Darius Foroux breaks down his productivity method to 3 steps:
Focus. Keep reminding yourself of why you do what you do.
Preparation. Always be prepared to get work done. Every time you have a moment to yourself, don’t play with your phone, but instead, squeeze in some work.
Fuel. Figure out what foods give you energy and stick to those foods.
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Fascinating Twitter thread about what we look on dating apps (h/t
)
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Quote I’ve been thinking about:
“Your title makes you a manager but people make you a leader.”
- Former Google SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg quoting Bill Campbell
Thanks for reading!
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