> Donating stem cells was a moving experience. A teacher I had in high school used to say that everyone has an abundance of something in life, be it money, connections, friends, confidence, or something else, and that everyone should use their abundance to help others. Donating stem cells felt like a way to express gratitude for my own health by giving it to another person.
A beautiful sentiment. The world would be a better place were everyone to think this way.
This is great. Especially agree with the part about not being on your phone - sometimes the basic cliche productivity advice (exercise, get off social media, etc) is the most powerful. It's cliche for a reason!
I get the Thinking About Things newsletter [1], which focuses on sending out articles by lesser known blogs. I don't know how they do it but they seem to know about all the fascinating blogs before they make it big. It's been a great way to discover interesting but not sponsored, SEO'd-to-death content.
Self-promotion: I run Thinking About Things [0], a simple newsletter that is a single link every other day to something interesting. Many subscribers have told me they've learned about a diversity of new blogs through the newsletter.
Is there an RSS feed somewhere, or possible down the line? My whole day is drenched with emails so I try to stay away from them whenever else possible.
A video recently went viral of David Bowie in 1999 saying that the internet was going to be the future. We're at a similar place with newsletters - a frontier that is on the verge of exploding.
I run Thinking About Things [0], a simple newsletter that is a single link every other day to something interesting. The response has been astonishing - it's gotten thousands of subscribers in a single year with no marketing. It started as a way to send articles to family and friends and yet the simple act of triage and curation seems to be something that many find valuable.
It's impossible to underestimate the degree to which curation is becoming the differentiator in the digital economy; those who can be trusted to provide valuable content from the fire hose of all that's available on the internet will become the new information brokers.
> those who can be trusted to provide valuable content from the fire hose of all that's available on the internet will become the new information brokers
Isn’t this what journalism was supposed to do before they discovered money?
We are currently in an unbundling phase and probably an extreme version of it. Too much choice so we go back to 3 TV channels and you watch what's on that day.
> It's impossible to underestimate the degree to which curation is becoming the differentiator in the digital economy; those who can be trusted to provide valuable content from the fire hose of all that's available on the internet will become the new information brokers.
Getting someone to pay for curation has always been the problem. It was easier in the pre digital days because access to information wasn’t as easy as a click.
We share the same passion and world view :) I definitely believe too that curation will become increasingly important.
I started my own daily newsletter [1] about startups, tech trends and business ideas just recently.
Sending out a daily newsletter is much tougher than I would have imagined... But at the same time it’s really rewarding because your basically shipping something every day :)
"Curation is becoming the differentiator" is not only relevant for newsletters, but also for readers. To paraphrase Cal Newport, in a distracted world, the ability to focus and to singletask is a "superpower". Curation is a service (newsletters etc), but also a skill.
As someone who is subbed to TAT, your newsletter has provided me with quite a few interesting reads, especially when some of the articles are years old, yet still relevant. Keep up the good work!
Love your newsletter! It's the only thing I've found that curates diverse topics and viewpoints that authors written thoughtfully about. Thank you and keep it up!
I balance the two by reading longform articles that convey a single idea well, rather than books that take too long to read and clickbait articles that provide instant-gratification but nothing of lasting value. (I highly recommend the Thinking About Things newsletter [0] and LongReads [1] for finding these kinds of articles.)
Seconding the recommendation of Thinking About Things. That newsletter is really one of the internet's unknown gems - I tire of most "interesting article" curators eventually, but they cover such a diverse array of topics that it's been over a year and I still enjoy their articles.
A beautiful sentiment. The world would be a better place were everyone to think this way.