Hello there,
“Ok. So now everyone has a podcast and newsletter.” read a tweet on my TL – right about when I was thinking of starting “Bits by Muigai” – my own entry into the weekly newsletter space. While the tweet didn’t deter me, it got me thinking, do people really need another newsletter in their already full inboxes – now that everyone is going digital? Probably not.
True, there is a plethora of newsletters. But just how many are local? How many individual newsletter subscriptions do you a) personally know the curator? b) have that are Africa based. Let’s do a little tiny experiment, hit reply and share a few local [consistent] individual [not business] newsletters that you enjoy reading and I’ll compile them on my next issue. Might be a small pool, considering there are only a few of you in this inaugural newsletter, mostly my friends and mum (hi, mum), but well worthwhile IMO.
I want to start a culture where us, as Africans can openly and regularly share content. We have a lot of smart people, so why not? There is a lot that we can learn from each other. And heck it doesn’t have to be about business, could be self-hacks, light-bulb moments, favourite essays…
And no, I do not mean the every now and then article or social media post. I mean consistent insights about what is simmering in your mind, experiments… The possibilities are endless. Everything is in your mind.
A newsletter is a simple way to do it and I’m giving it a shot.
So every Saturday AM, keep an eye on my Bits by Muigai newsletter.
I will cover concepts that you probably wouldn’t have come across easily, share my latest essays, favourite reading excerpts, witty movie scenes…
Here we go!!
Work Accounting
Two weeks back, I ran a sprint with my colleagues on my latest essay “How I [assess] work.” The article took me about 5 months to write precisely because it was a journey to uncover how best I can make an impact in my work.
In my prep, I asked myself what is the core tenet behind meaningful work – and that question resulted to another question:
How do you personally measure that you are doing impactful work on a day to day basis?
For me, this was a very interesting question in this sense. One is that the question forces you to introspectively ask yourself what impact means to you. Not to your company, but to you. Two, your legacy will be an accumulation of your daily logs to that answer. So we can call it, a possible legacy thermometer. How frequently you check your temperature depends entirely upon you.
Different people have different measures. But by far, the most interesting I’ve come across was Jim Collins – a researcher, and author of the business classic Good to Great.
In Jim’s Life Fulfilment Tracking System (LFTS), lies a spreadsheet with three columns.
Column 1: How many hours spent doing creative work.
The first cell is just a simple accounting of what happened that day. Where did my time go? What did I do?
Collins configures his schedule to spend at least 50% of his working time on creative projects with the goal of exceeding 1000 creative hours over 365 days.
Column 2: A quality score of the day. (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2).
The second cell is tracking the quality of the day.
2 is a great day, +1 is a good day, 0 is a ‘meh’ day, -1 is a net negative day, -2 is a bad day.
Tracking the quality of your day is a sure bet of tracking your mental health.
Jim sometimes found that his best days weren’t the easiest days. The best days were the days he was able to bend his mind for long periods of time, doing the hard work he loved best.
Column 3: A note on what happened that day.
The third cell is recording activities, decision making processes and capturing thoughts.
Ever wonder how the stand-out autobiographies were written? How the author happens to remember a specific day in the past so distinctively? Up to the point of remembering what they had for breakfast in 1995. It’s not all memory. Journals play a big role in not only recalling the past but preventing hindsight bias.
(If you found his tracking system useful, I recommend listening to his interview with Tim Ferriss where he mentions his LFTS among a myriad of other insightful stuff. This episode is one of my all time favourite.)
My impact tracking system is centered around the menial to creative ratio – which is based out of my axiom that work broadly falls under two categories:
Menial Work – what society has already defined for me. It comes by default since we operate in a shared world with systems, processes, and laws.
Creative Work – what I extend for society that is beyond the apparel limits. It is forging my identity in a world not least travelled.
That said, my own LFTS is built upon this formula:
Comparative advantage: high creative to menial ratio.
By no means, should my menial work beat my creative work on an largely undisputed scale in the long run.
Net Productivity: menial work – creative work
Both creative and menial work are important. But ultimately my real personal contribution is defined by the net difference.
Average: high menial to creative ratio.
Performing menial work exceptionally well won’t make you great. You will always be appreciated for holding fort while others chase their ambitions.
I agree with Jim that we have to carve out a significant portion of our days to create in order to achieve impact. We are born to create. If we fail to create, we run the risk of a self-identity crisis.
What I’m Reading
Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell (my 2020 birthday gift) and what a treat, what a book and what a magnificent storyteller in Gladwell.
One of the key points (out of many, and trust me there are many well deserving to be highlighted) is that he talks about the Truth Default Theory (TDT) by Timothy Levine which offers a breakthrough alternative view of deception and deception detection. Essentially, it answers why we suck at reading and judging strangers and reveals why society cannot function without a collective assumption that the strangers we are dealing with are honest.
What I’m Watching
Fargo. I’ve had a couple of false starts with this anthology series based out of “true crime” stories out of Minnesota but with a steady dose of 1 episode a day, it’s quickly settling down into my all time favourite dramatic memorabilia list.
Here are my favourite witty scenes:
1. Shades of Green Riddle.
Lorne Malvo: Do you know why the human eye can see more shades of green than any other colour?
Because of predators.
We are omnivores. When we were monkeys in the woods, staring into nature we needed to be able to discern many colours so that we could detect the enemy, distinguish shades of green plant to eat from the poison, and so on.
2. The Power of We.
Peggy Blomquist:We got a plan.
Constance Heck:The word ‘we’ is a castle, hon, with a moat and a drawbridge. And you know what gets locked up in castles?
Peggy Blomquist: Dragons?
Constance Heck: Princesses. Don’t be a prisoner of ‘we.’”
3. A chicken is an egg’s way of making another egg. You see, it’s all a matter of perspective. The chicken sees it one way, the egg another.