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DeveloPassion's Newsletter - Interleaving books

DeveloPassion's Newsletter - Interleaving books
By Sébastien Dubois • Issue #44 • View online
Hello everyone! I’m Sébastien Dubois, your host. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for DeveloPassion’s Newsletter or the Dev Concepts project. Thank you for being here with me ✨
If you enjoy this, please forward it to your friends 🙏. If this email was forwarded to you, then don’t forget to subscribe. Note that you can also become a supporter and get direct access to my reading notes.
Welcome to the 44th edition
Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩
This week I’ve received and configured my audio gear and have spent time testing it with my son. We have recorded a few fake podcast episodes. It’s was mighty fun. Unfortunately, it’s all in French and doesn’t make much sense. So I won’t publish that 😂
I’ve started thinking more seriously about launching my YouTube channel. It’s part of my plans for this year, but I might start before March. I’m still brainstorming about the topics I want to cover first. Don’t hesitate to reply to this e-mail if you have ideas 🙏
I’ve also published the second “Midweek Links” edition. Don’t forget to fill in this tiny 3-questions survey to help me improve it!
Alright, let’s goooooo! 🚀

Things I've learned
A few of the things I've learned this week.
A few of the things I've learned this week.
I’m almost done reading The Mom Test. Next week I’ll digitize my notes and share those with the paid subscribers ❤️
I’ve learned a few basic things about video editing, and will certainly learn a ton more once I start preparing videos for YouTube. This should make for a fun learning experience. The good news, from what I’ve seen, is that Adobe Premiere shares many features similar to what I know from Lightroom. By the way, if you have video editing courses to recommend, I’m all ears! 🙏
I’ve also learned a few things about audio processing. For instance, the use of high-pass filters, which let high frequencies through, but drop low-frequency ones (e.g., bass, wind, traffic, footsteps, nearby traffic, etc).
Interleaving books
While focusing on a single book at a time, we sometimes get stuck and have to rely on our willpower to continue reading up until the end. But sometimes we give up. This happens for a variety of reasons, good and bad. Some books are dense, hard to read, complex, or simply boring at times.
When we slow down to a crawl and stop making progress, we get demotivated. When that happens, giving up the book might be the right decision. But we might also be missing out, and it’s not always obvious right away.
Worse still, sometimes the motivation hit is so bad that we even stop reading for a while, which is kind of sad. To avoid that, you may want to try interleaving books.
Interleaving books is the idea of reading multiple books at a time (e.g., 3-5) and switching regularly between them in order to remain interested and motivated.
When we read multiple books at once, it’s ok to put one down for a while and switch to another one that we are currently reading. It’s not about multitasking; when we read a book, we can still stay 100% focused on that activity. The obvious benefit is that we can avoid getting demotivated by renewing our interest thanks to the context switch.
I’m currently experimenting with this approach and have found that my motivation to continue a book that bored me a bit usually comes back after 4-7 days. That happens unconsciously but is probably related to the fact that I’m a completionist.
There are no “rules” with this approach. Pick up as many books as you are comfortable with, switch whenever you feel like switching, and don’t feel bad if you end up abandoning some.
One challenge with this technique is the fact that we may lose context if we leave a book aside for too long. I’ve found that consistently taking notes while reading non-fiction solves this entirely. I just have to rewind a bit, read my most recent notes, and I quickly get back to where I left things off.
Interleaving books does imply finishing each book later on, but that shouldn’t be an issue in most cases. After all, reading must remain a pleasurable activity, not a stressful one.
I thought about this while reading an article about interleaving indie projects.
focusd launch
This week André and I have launched the landing page for focusd:
focusd
focusd
Years of zen productivity practice turned into a product to help you be more effective, focused, and confident.
focusd.app  •  Share
So far, we have 16 people on the waiting list, which is encouraging. We will see how many of those actually start using the app once it becomes available.
We have also officially launched the focusd community, a community dedicated to zen (i.e., well-being-driven) productivity. Join us using this link if you want to learn more, share ideas with us and/or discuss focusd.
Alternatively, you can follow the dedicated Twitter account to stay in the know about the project.
Next week, I’ll do my best to re-record the intro video using my new microphone.
André and I will soon get in “coding mode”. Time to make this real ❤️
Recent articles
No new article this week.
How cool is that?!
Vanta.js - 3D & WebGL Background Animations For Your Website
Vanta.js - 3D & WebGL Background Animations For Your Website
3D & WebGL Background Animations For Your Website
www.vantajs.com  •  Share
Tips of the week
This tip of the week is dedicated to those who fancy writing but doubt themselves, feel scared, unqualified, or stuck.
First, if you want to write, just write. There’s no permit to get, no exam to pass, no jury to convince. You can write, just as you can breathe, smile, talk, and walk.
Second, you don’t need big ideas to start writing. You can write about one discrete thing at a time (e.g., write atomic essays). Once you have published a few, you can roll them up into longer-form articles.
Consider that knowledge is like a staircase. You’re on a certain step of that staircase, and there are other people around you. Some are a bit above, others a bit below. Some much further along the way, some not. By sharing knowledge, you can always help others get a step further.
When you reach out to folks further up on the staircase, they may be more willing to point you in the right direction because they have a better idea of where you are coming from.
You can repeat yourself (a lot!). Repetition is good. It’s useful to repeat yourself. If you say the same thing multiple times, people remember it better. Most people won’t see or engage with what you share. So share the same content multiple times to give them an opportunity to discover what you’ve created. 
Books corner
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
Naval is someone that inspires me a lot. I’m really curious to dive into this curated collection of his insights.
amzn.to  •  Share
Board game of the week
Exit: The Abandoned Cabin
The “Exit” games are cooperative escape games. Together, players have to decipher various enigmas, find codes and reach the exit.
The particularity of these games is that you can only play them once because you have to bend and/or destroy some of the elements of the game.
To be honest, it’s not a concept I’m super fond of (environmental impact, no replayability, no way to sell once played), but it’s still an interesting experience to try at least once.
amzn.to  •  Share
Quotes of the week
  • “Give yourself a give, the present moment” — Marc Aurelius
Links of the week
How to Think: The Skill You've Never Been Taught - Farnam Street
How to Think: The Skill You've Never Been Taught - Farnam Street
No skill is more valuable than the ability to think. But how can we learn to think better? How can we avoid thinking poorly? Let’s explore.
fs.blog  •  Share
Those Computers In Your Head – Jacob Brazeal
Those Computers In Your Head – Jacob Brazeal
You think this post is going to be about coding, but it’s really about chess and realizing that you can build wonderful special-purpose machines in your head over time.
jacobbrazeal.wordpress.com  •  Share
GitHub - hackerkid/Mind-Expanding-Books
GitHub - hackerkid/Mind-Expanding-Books
Books everyone should read.
github.com  •  Share
1 How to visualize decision trees
1 How to visualize decision trees
Decision trees are everywhere. Why not try and visualize those?
explained.ai  •  Share
When Windows 8 was released, I wrote about ways to stop Microsoft from capturing endless amounts of information. With Windows 11, you should still pay attention to that, but in addition, you will probably also want to restore the UX to a usable state. For some reason, Microsoft has decided to make everything annoying
www.startallback.com  •  Share
JetBrains DataSpell: The IDE for Data Scientists
JetBrains DataSpell: The IDE for Data Scientists
JetBrains DataSpell is an IDE for data science with intelligent Jupyter notebooks, interactive Python scripts, and lots of other built-in tools.
www.jetbrains.com  •  Share
That’s all folks!
If you want to support my work and receive even more from me, then become a paid member and share the link to the newsletter with your friends: https://newsletter.dsebastien.net ❤️
PS: don’t forget to join the Personal Knowledge Management community, the Software Crafters community, and come say hi on Twitter!
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