Meditation / Arc / Margin Call
Hi everyone, thanks again for subscribing and welcome to another edition of Divergent. Apologies for posting late this week. I hope you find some ideas to make your day easier or more fun. Enjoy your Sunday!
PJ
Meditation Superpowers
Someone said that all of mankind’s problems could be solved if everyone sat still in a room alone for 15 minutes every day. I can believe that. I started meditating back in London, at a time when I felt overwhelmed. I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and it led to my meditation practice. No other book has had more impact on my well-being.
Meditation creates a shield from stimuli and thoughts before I head back to life. It applies a slow-motion filter to my response to events. I get additional seconds to assess my options before I react to hunger, arguments or fatigue. I make better decisions as a result.
Meditation, at first, can be a challenge. Our brains seem impossible to tame. I started with guided meditations on the Headspace app but there are others like Calm and Waking Up. Otherwise, here’s a protocol I wrote on how to meditate with a timer.
Arc: the better browser you didn’t know about
My browser “history” since I’ve been on the internet:
Netscape
Internet Explorer
Safari
Mozilla
Chrome
Brave
Arc
You can do almost everything with nothing but an internet connection and Google Docs. With Arc I almost never see my desktop wallpaper anymore. Every file I need (eg: screenshots and downloads mostly) are just a click away within Arc. My tabs are neatly stacked into folders rather than hidden in a dark corner, meaning no more infinite tabs and they’re cleared up automatically every 12 hours. The UI is full of other delicious little features like collaborative, Powerpoint slides to share like this mood board. You can also create several “spaces” (sessions) to keep professional matters separate from personal stuff. The experience feels brand new. Give it a browse without waitlisting here.
The Era of Margin Calls
The Silicon Valley Bank debacle prompted me to watch this again, and even on my 3rd round I still find this movie fascinating. It doesn’t explain how the 2008 crisis happened as The Big Short does but it’s about the people who were in the room and the few conversations that threw the world into disarray. Here’s why I love it:
An amazing ensemble cast with nuanced acting across the board.
The layers of each character peeled away artfully.
The cinematography.
Jeremy Irons.
The script.
My take: in the world of finance, the ability to stay isolated from the consequences of your decisions is key to accumulating power. If you like Succession, you’ll love this.
Coming next: Dan Toomey
Mark my words: this guy is going to be huge. Dan is a comedian who produces TikTok-style parodies for Morning Brew on the contradictions of the workplace and other business stories. He’s got a YouTube show called Good Work. And he just graduated. Just consume it all already:
What Americans think working in Finland is like
How Finland thinks America works
We hired an AI Matthew McConaughey
A quote that stopped me in my tracks
“The way you treat your body is how you treat the world.”