DeveloPassion's Newsletter - The right time

By Sébastien Dubois • Issue #53 • View online

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Welcome to the 53rd edition

Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩

Life sometimes takes unexpected turns. This week marked the beginning of a new chapter of mine. I don’t know what the future has in store for me, but I’m eager to discover it all.

My attention was split between the War in Ukraine and the big upcoming changes in my life which explains why I didn’t produce all that much. But it’s all right; I’m not a machine and it’s okay to breathe ❤️

Alright, let’s goooooo! 🚀

The Lab 🧪

I’ve decided to work on a new experiment: a starter kit for Obsidian. My idea is to create an Obsidian vault pre-filled with my recommended structure, and accompanied by a guide explaining how to use it. Perfect for PKM newcomers and people who want to get more serious about note-taking and note-making.

This is a little project that fits perfectly with my “lab” idea: limited scope, achievable with reasonable efforts, and contributing to my existing flywheels. I hope to be done with v1 sometime next week. I’ll tell you more about it once it’s out of the oven 😅

Aside from that one, I’ve decided to put the second brain experiment on hold. I didn’t get enough interest to justify further efforts at this point. I’ll give that idea another try later on.

Things I've learned

A few of the things I've learned this week

This week I’ve learned and written about:

Emotional burnout
The similarities between Technical Debt and Community Debt
Systems Thinking and designing for emergence
Business concepts like TAM, SAM and SOM

Personal Knowledge Management News

I’ve added many more tools to the PKM Library (25!). I’ve also shared quite a few articles and videos on the PKM subreddit.

By the way, the videos for the Second Brain Summit 2022 are now available on YouTube.

focusd: Zen productivity news

André and I have resumed working on focusd last week. We’ve used our time together to explore the Remix full-stack framework.

We both have high hopes about Remix as a solution for building full-stack applications. We’ll see how that goes!

The mythical right time

Often in life, we’re tempted to wait for “the right time” for various reasons. We wait for the right time to buy a new car, a new house, replace equipment, go on vacation, ask for a raise, start a new project, etc.

Unfortunately, in most cases, the right time is nothing but an illusion. Actually, as the saying goes, reality is just an illusion that we all agree on.

Waiting for the right time sometimes makes sense, but more often than not, we’re just afraid. We create narratives to justify our indecision, but deep down we know the truth. We’re afraid of making the wrong decision. Afraid of change. Afraid of spending too much. Afraid of sharing our feelings. Afraid of letting go. Afraid of what others will think, etc. There are countless examples. Those fears can end up paralyzing us and preventing us from growing and achieving our goals in life.

> If you aren’t living your dreams, then you’re living your fears (Daymond John)

Everything we do or don’t is the result of a decision. If we move forward, it’s a decision. If we push back and keep waiting, it’s also a decision.

Over the years I’ve realized that chronic indecision can lead to regrets, pain, and suffering. That’s why I try to avoid stalling for the “right” time and instead prefer making conscious choices, even if it hurts and/or bears a lot of uncertainty. Gut feeling is key, as Malcolm Gladwell explained in Blink!

Here’s my advice: avoid fear-driven decision-making like the plague. If you’ve already taken the time needed to objectively evaluate the pros/cons as well as the associated risks and still can’t make up your mind, then you’ll have to trust your guts. Make the call that feels right.

Whatever happens, don’t have regrets; it’s meaningless. Mistakes are all right. Nothing is perfect. Start before you are ready. Don’t wait for perfect opportunities to come by. Start small. Make small bets. Learn from your mistakes. Move forward. Grow.

Recent articles

No new articles this week.

How cool is that?!

Amazon's new role-playing game can help you build your AWS skills | TechRadar

An interesting way to have fun while learning more about AWS.

www.techradar.com • Share

Tips of the week

Ask HN: What's your learning strategy? | Hacker News

An interesting discussion around learning strategies

news.ycombinator.com • Share

Books corner

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

In this book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb explores luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making. It’s a book about the world we live in; a chaotic and unpredictable mess.

amzn.to • Share

Quotes of the week

“I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side” — Elon Musk
“I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me” — Bob Dylan

PKM Links of the week

Second Brain Summit 2022 - Full Session Recordings

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

www.youtube.com • Share

PKM Weekly for March 20 – Issue 011 – Curtis McHale

Your description for this link…

curtismchale.ca • Share

“Speed Reading” That Works: How to Intelligently Skim a Book

There are millions of books out there. Most of them aren’t worth your time. This article shows two powerful ways to get the gist of any book in under 60 minutes.

fs.blog • Share

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Your description for this link…

www.visual-literacy.org • Share

Why Knowledge Workers Shouldn’t Obsess About Choosing an App for Their PKM for the Long Term

Tools matter less than we think. Spending too much time choosing is just a way to procrastinate.

medium.datadriveninvestor.com • Share

How I record tech notes using the Zettelkasten method

In this video I share how I use the Zettelkasten method to document my tech notes.Chapters:0:00 Introduction1:30 What is the Zettelkasten method6:14 What …

www.youtube.com • Share

Tech Links of the week

Remix Stacks | Remix

Introducing the easiest way to create a ready-to-deploy, production-grade, fast web application with Remix.

Remix has just introduced a remix of Yeoman.. ;-)

remix.run • Share

A Summary of OAuth 2.0 Attack Methods - Tutorial Boy

An overview of OAuth 2.0 attack methods

tutorialboy24.blogspot.com • Share

Learn how to design large-scale systems.

Learn how to design large-scale systems. Prep for the system design interview. Includes Anki flashcards. - GitHub - donnemartin/system-design-primer: Learn how to design large-scale systems. Prep for the system design interview. Includes Anki flashcards.

github.com • Share

Patterns.dev - Modern Web App Design Patterns

Improve how you architect webapps Patterns.dev is free book on design patterns and component patterns for building powerful web apps with…

www.patterns.dev • Share

GitHub - WardPearce/paaster: Paaster is a secure by default end to end encrypted pastebin built with the objective of simplicity.

Paaster is a secure by default end to end encrypted pastebin built with the objective of simplicity.

github.com • Share

That’s all folks!

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