Morfternight #46: Rearranging websites is fun.
Hello! I am Paolo Belcastro. You are reading this because you subscribed to Morfternight, the weekly newsletter about leadership, product management, distributed teams, and anything that tickles our brains. Thank you for being a Morfternighter! If you like this, please forward it to your friends. Also, if someone forwarded this to you, you can subscribe. Morfternight #46: Rearranging websites is fun.The one where we talk about enjoying the journey and learning without forgetting.🤩 We welcome two new Morfternighters who joined us last week! We love to have you here and remember: like a smile, this newsletter can be shared with others without you losing anything. 📷 Photo of the weekHaystack - More Photos👋 Good Morfternight!One week into my summer break in the French countryside, I am enjoying good friends, good food, and walking around in nature as planned. I am also using the opportunity to reorganize my stuff online once more… As you may remember, I recently split my single website into paolobelcastro.com for my home page, paolo.blog for my essays and illustrations, monochrome.blog for the photos, and morfternight.com for this newsletter. As it was bound to happen (but well, I had to try), it isn’t sustainable to manage four separate websites, and I do not publish nearly enough content on each of them to be annoying to whoever follows. All those addresses still work, but I have brought most of the content back to paolo.blog. The only missing parts are this newsletter’s archives and the online shop, but as I still have two more weeks of vacation, I have high hopes to be done before returning home. I guess one could say that I have more fun working on those websites than appreciating the final product, which is a perfect segue for the rest of today’s Morfternight. 🌍 It’s the journey, not the destination…A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a reflection spurred by listening to Marshall Goldsmith on the Knowledge Project podcast. I have recently been more focused on measuring the value of what I do by evaluating the outcomes than the process. I like this approach because, on the surface, it allows for smarter work by focusing on quality instead of quantity. Goldsmith underlines, though, that randomness has such a weight on the outcome of our actions that focusing only on impact presents a high potential for unhappiness. A few days ago, I read The arrival fallacy: why we should decouple our happiness from our goals by Dr. Hannah England on Ness Labs, and it reminded me of another negative aspect of focusing only on outcomes or reaching goals: the happiness that procures is short-lived, compared to the effort needed to achieve most objectives. It is much more effective to focus on the journey and spread multiple smaller milestones on its path. Translated to building software products, it makes a lot of sense. It is much better to iterate fast and ship often, navigating from one milestone to the next in rapid succession, than betting the house on that one new major feature that will take months to build but, when ready, will change our lives and business forever. (Spoiler alert: it won’t.) 🪩 A word (or two) on learningI love learning new things, for fun or because I need them. I sometimes regret forgetting things I learned in the past but haven’t practiced much. For instance, I love Maths, and I used to be pretty good too, but after turning 21, I changed my path, stopped studying Maths and Physics, and took a deep dive into Photography. As I recently helped my youngest daughter E. with her studies, I realized how much I had forgotten. This seems pretty standard for humans: anything we have learned but then don’t use for many years is progressively forgotten in favor of new learnings (except riding a bike, according to popular wisdom). It is a much bigger issue with AI, as our current models can learn how to do something but then need to reset and start from scratch to learn something else. I liked reading about The Computer Scientist Challenging AI to Learn Better, an interview with Christopher Kanan, a researcher trying to program AIs that can learn new things without forgetting the old ones. Back to us humans, I also found a few interesting tips about maximizing learning opportunities in a busy life. That's it for today!I write and publish photos on paolo.blog If you know someone who could enjoy Morfternight, share it with them! 🤩 Cheers! |
Older messages
Morfternight #45: Gone Fishin'
Thursday, August 4, 2022
The one that wasn't sent because of travel and now is late.
Morfternight #44: Am I wrong?
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
We discuss the possibility I may need to change my mind. It feels good.
It's still Wednesday somewhere...
Thursday, July 21, 2022
Morfternight #43: We talk about Jane, Lily, Sam, and Martin, but also a product mindset lesson about transatlantic crossings.
Morfternight #42: A trip to Death Valley
Thursday, July 14, 2022
We also discuss the weather, the best camera, and the JW Space Telescope.
Morfternight #38: Ebbs and Flows
Thursday, July 7, 2022
We discuss correlation, causality, humour, time crystals, and Mr. Beast.
You Might Also Like
👕 Fresh ideas for making $ with dirty clothes
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Ever seen a VIP red carpet for a laundromat? How this wealth manager is building a modern laundry biz Hey Contrarians, The stocks-to-socks career path isn't all that common — but it does exist. We
Closes Tomorrow • World Book Day Promo for Authors • Email Newsletter + Tweets + FB Posts
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Book promo on 4/23/24 for World Book Day Join ContentMo's World Book Day Promotion #WorldBookDay is April 23rd each year. ContentMo is running a special promo on 4/23/24 for World Book Day
3-2-1: Two ways to grow, how to criticize, and a simple recipe for finding good opportunities
Thursday, April 18, 2024
3 ideas, 2 quotes, and 1 question to consider this week.
Course update: Digital Psychology and Behavioral Design
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Emotions are what ultimately motivate people to act. So if your product or website is not pulling on the right emotions for customers to buy, nothing will convince them. But there's a way to use
Justin Welsh Joins an All-Star Lineup at CEX
Thursday, April 18, 2024
New speakers announced at CEX! Discount code inside.
Ahrefs’ Digest #179: HARO’s demise, sea of sameness in SEO, and more
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Our meme of the week: Major ouch! 📰 News & updates Google unplugs “Notes on search”: It's ending May 2024. Google updates Merchant Center product data specifications: A whole bunch of changes,
Taking advice from fellow writers and creatives | #113
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Looking at my fellows for inspiration ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Why Cleveland’s Sky Has a Purple Glow (Sometimes)
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Purple rain?
The world’s most outrageous LinkedIn profile
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Yup, it's got Ivy League MBA credentials
Emails missing the inbox?
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Rehabilitate your domain reputation We have 4 updates for you this week: 1. Email Deliverability Matters Domain reputation determines if your emails make it to your subscriber's inbox.