Week #0 | danielfalbo

Week #0

| Let the party begin

Hey there! Hope you’ve had a great week :)

If you’re reading this, thank you for being here since the very early days! I plan for this to be a very long-term thing, we’ll see.

🪐 Various cool stuff

Apple’s 911 ad (~1 minute) 🥲

🎧 Songs I had on repeat this week

(and their beautiful music videos)

💤 Productivity

Things you're doing but don't want to be doing (~15 minutes)
Not the usual productivity advice.

Interesting snippets:
- “[…] half the people I know have a copy of War and Peace on their nightstand. They’re trapped in a cycle like this: They “need” to finish War and Peace. Except they don’t actually like reading War and Peace, so they don’t. But they’re “supposed” to be reading it, so they don’t start another book, and every night they just look at whatever the algorithms throw on their phones. Years pass without reading any books. Here’s my advice: Stop trying to read War and Peace. If you were going to read it, you would have done it already. […] I tried an experiment where I tried to read books but only what I truly felt like reading. The result was that I abandoned most books pretty quickly, but I also finished more books than I had in years. […] I also finished more “serious” books than when I had tried to be disciplined. If you want to read more, maybe you should stop fighting with yourself.”
- “Most grad students go home over the holidays promising that they will do research. But research is hard, so they stare at their computers for a couple of hours every day without working and constantly feel guilty and eventually come back from the holidays not having accomplished anything and also not having relaxed and recharged. My advice is: Stop trying! You’re only hurting yourself by trying to work. Enjoy the holiday and trust that the rest will help you in the future.”

🎞 Movies I watched this week

Catch Me If You Can
⭐️ 5 /5

Great photography, heartbreaking story, worth watching.

💶 Finance

I recently turned 18 and inevitably started learning about personal finance.

Money can be a source of stress and anxiety. While a lot of people toss away the best years of their lives in pursuit of money, which is bad too, it’s a good idea to learn a little bit about money. To start scratching the tip of the iceberg, I recommend:

Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (~10 minutes)
The 4-Hour Workweek summary (~10 minutes)
Rich Dad Poor Dad summary (~10 minutes)
How to Invest for Beginners (~30 minutes)

By the way, how lucky we are for having access to all this priceless information for free!

💻 Tech

Blockchains and decentralization will probably be among the most revolutionary technologies of the century. If you have no idea what crypto means or what a blockchain is, but you’re interested in learning more about it, I suggest starting here.

The other day, I was discussing investments, compound interest, crypto, and other cool stuff with my friend Jonathan (who is also an ETH miner) when a dilemma occurred to us: assuming ETH will do very well, would it be wiser to directly buy or mine crypto? I tried to ponder on that and quickly do some calculations. If you’re interested, check them out.

🦉 Quote of the week

Life is short. Remember to dance. — unknown