Earlier this month, I discovered another app in the read-it-later category called Matter. Although Matter is less than two years old, it already has features I did not know I wanted from Pocket. I also found its user interface to be very thoughtful and well designed. After a couple of hours of using Matter, I was convinced. I replaced Pocket with Matter on all my devices.

My experience above illustrates that there is rarely a winner-takes-all in today's business world. In a platform economy (such as ride-sharing and food delivery), while the incumbents may have years of market leadership, a new competitor can launch quickly at a low cost. There is rarely price competition because most apps have a free tier. As a user, I can always switch to a different app quite easily.

Back to Matter. As a startup founder and product designer, I enjoyed reading this interview with Ben Springwater, one of the founders of Matter. Some takeaways from the article made me think they will be a new market leader in the read-it-later app space.

First, Ben Springwater founded the company to scratch his own itch. He was a heavy online reader and one of the top users of Pocket. Still, he was not satisfied with Pocket and decided to build a better solution. As a founder, a personal connection with your product can fuel your drive when things get rough (as most startups in the early stage).

Second, he has a clear point of view about the problem and the solution to fix it — not just a cursory idea of building a new app. As the internet evolves, our online reading patterns also change. Now our reading contents come not just from blog articles but also podcasts, Twitter threads, and newsletters. Matter was built for these new realities, while Pocket has not improved much since it launched a decade ago.

Third, Matter knows their target audience: serious readers who care about curation and triage of good content. I am one of their target users, and the experience I had when I first discovered Matter is precisely what they aim for. By understanding the target users, Matter was able to design the whole onboarding process and gave me a great experience.

I wrote this post about a read-it-later app, but it's also a microcosm of today's business world. Technology has accelerated the ability to build and launch a new business. You will get overtaken by a new entrant if you're not always on your toes. To quote Andrew S. Grove, “Only the paranoid survive.”

#productivity #startup

Humans are living longer and longer. The majority of children born in developed countries today can expect to live to more than 100 years. Many of us reading this article will work until our 70s and 80s. At the same time, the world is changing quickly, so we must always adapt, grow, and learn new things.

However, even if you have decided to block some time for continuous learning, you have another problem. There is an abundance of learning resources out there. What should you learn? What learning resources should you pick? You have limited spare time and you can't possibly learn everything.

Start with WHY

Finding the time to learn is hard. Learning new things and getting to proficiency is hard. Therefore, understanding WHY you're doing these hard things will help you along the journey.

Everybody will have different methods to understand their WHY. I've used a framework from the book Getting Things Done by David Allen, which gives me the following “horizons” to review:

• Purpose and Principles: your big-picture view, such as your life's purpose and why you (or your company) exist in this world
• Vision: your 3-5 years big strategy
• Goals: your 1-2 years plans and targets
• Areas of focus and accountabilities: the knowledge and skills you need to perform better at your job or responsibility
• Current projects: the knowledge and skills to do your work today

Build a framework of WHAT you want to learn

When it comes to learning, Elon Musk is a person that I really admire. As an entrepreneur, engineer, and industrial designer, his career is very diverse. Consider that he is founder of X.com and executive at PayPal (financial services), founder of SpaceX (aerospace), CEO of Tesla (automotive and clean energy), founder of The Boring Company (infrastructure and tunnel construction), co-founder of Neuralink (biotechnology), and co-founder of OpenAI (artificial intelligence). It takes skill and discipline to be able to learn such diverse fields of knowledge so that he can lead those multi-million dollar companies.

In 2015, Elon Musk hosted an Ask-Me-Anything session on Reddit. Answering a question about how he can learn so much and so quickly, Elon Musk gave the following answer:

“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang onto.”

To use the tree analogy, learning starts with the tree trunk, then the branches, and finally the leaves. In other words, start with understanding the fundamental concepts of what you want to learn. At this stage, coming up with good questions is more important than answering them.

For example, recently I wanted to learn about the palm oil industry and its impact on environmental sustainability. Typing a few broad search terms on Google (such as “palm oil sustainability”) is always a good starting point to get the brain going. The first few search results whet my appetite to ask more questions, such as: How does the palm oil industry work and what type of companies are involved in it? What are the environmental issues caused by the industry? What is the industry doing to combat this problem?

You can learn faster by connecting new knowledge to existing knowledge. When you are learning a new field, try to relate it to something you already know. Even if the field is something totally new to you, quite often you will find at least analogies to something you know. Having a big repertoire of “mental models” will help you.

For example, I learned that a palm oil industry player can get certified to prove that its products and business practices follow sustainability guidelines. Sustainability certification is very important in the palm oil industry and has a direct impact on revenue. When learning about the certification process in the palm oil industry, I dug into my experience in the audit process in the financial services industry and my university education about manufacturing supply chain. While they are not the same, making analogies between them helped me.

One more tip about building your knowledge tree: As you follow one branch, you will discover other branches. Once I understood the palm oil production supply chain, I wanted to dive deeper into each area and learn more about them. While this is part of the learning process, if you're not careful, you can go down the rabbit hole that doesn't help you achieve your objective. Always go back to the WHY and decide whether you want to go deep or broad in your learning process.

Choose HOW you want to learn

There are theories that different people have different preferences in learning styles. One such theory is the VARK model, i.e. Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic. However, further studies have shown that the VARK model is merely an indication of preference, not the quality of learning. In other words, anybody can learn using any style.

Personally, I think the best way to learn is by picking the right learning medium for the context. For example:

• Visual: I watch educational YouTube videos when I'm low-energy and just want to do passive learning
• Aural: I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I'm exercising at the gym
• Read/Write: As I wrote in How I manage the information firehose, I block time every day to do serious reading and writing notes
• Kinesthetic: Some learning must be done by hand. For example, the best way to learn painting is by actually painting.

A word about Just-In-Time vs. Just-In-Case

Congratulations if you are already blocking some time every day to learn and invest in yourself. Now you need to be strategic about how you spend this time.

Be careful about hypes. I work in technology and a lot of topics get over-hyped. I'm sure you've come across many articles about blockchain, artificial intelligence, etc. Don't fall into the trap of trying to learn everything (i.e. Just In Case).

Understand your WHY and treat knowledge like a “semantic tree” so you can decide what to learn and how deep you need to learn. Then, apply Just-In-Time learning by picking the right resources. JIT is very possible today because of online and on-demand learning resources, even for obscure topics — you can find rare books on Amazon, purchase them online, and start reading in minutes.

Regardless of how you learn, don't forget to also reflect and experiment. These two final steps will help your new knowledge to stick.

#systemsthinking #productivity

Back in the '90s, before the internet and the search engine, I used to have to go to my university's library to find information. Today, we have the world's information on our fingertips, and we can find data about almost anything from wherever we are. Our challenge today is not about getting information, but about filtering the signal from the noise and turning that filtered data into knowledge.

The following is how I tackle this challenge.

Step 1: Curate sources of information

Most of us have our regular “channels” from which we get information. These sources may be online (websites we frequent, social media, RSS feeds, mailing lists) and offline (newspapers, books, and magazines).

The first step is to periodically review the sources of information. Ask yourself:

• Are the people I follow on social media still interesting to me?
• Are the websites I regularly visit still giving me valuable information?
• Are the mailing lists I subscribe to still relevant to my needs?

These days, most of my sources of information are online. I want to share a couple of tips about getting information:

• RSS is a way to read the content of a website without actually visiting the website itself. Using software like Inoreader (which is my choice for RSS reader tool), you can “subscribe” to many websites and read all their content in one place. Not all websites support RSS, unfortunately, but many still do.
• Podcast is a great medium to get news and information (and entertainment) without having to use your eyes. I listen to podcasts when I work out and commute — it's probably the only times where I multi-task. I currently subscribe to 32 podcasts and I found PocketCasts to be a great software for managing that many subscriptions.

Step 2: Skim, then read now or save for later

With my mobile phone, I usually get my news and information first during my downtime, e.g. short breaks between important activities or when I'm riding public transport. In this step, I do a light skimming of my information sources. The goal is for broad coverage, rather than depth. I look for clues about whether the information is relevant or interesting to me.

If there is an article that catches my eye, I will decide whether to read it then or save it for later. This will depend on the length of the article, the time I have, and just how compelling the article is. If I decide to save the article for later, I will save it in Pocket, a “read-it-later” tool.

Step 3: Block time for serious reading

This step is very much a habit that I have established. You may have heard of “the five-hour rule,” which says that no matter how busy you are, always block 1 hour every workday to learn something. This practice is critical for my growth as a person and a professional.

The keys to this step are focus (hence blocking the time) and active reading (highlighting passages and taking notes). E-books are great because I can highlight and take notes directly on the e-book itself.

Readwise is a great tool that consolidates your highlights and notes in one place. It integrates well with Kindle, iBooks, and Pocket (among others). Readwise then allows you to review your highlights in the future, so you can remember important passages from the articles and books you have read.

Step 4: Save and file information

After step 3, I will decide whether the article is worth saving. If it is, I will save it on Evernote. I do this because of two reasons:

• Although most information is available on the internet nowadays, there is no guarantee that it will be there forever. Articles sometimes disappear on the internet and the URL may change.
• Like in Step 1, saving the article to Evernote is another act of curation. I have almost 10,000 notes on Evernote now, each has been tagged for easy searching. If someday I need to find a particular information, searching my Evernote will give me better and more relevant information.

Step 5: Connect new information to existing knowledge

In this last step, I block time to think about how the new information is related to the knowledge I already have. To do this, I follow the Zettelkasten method described in Sonke Ahren's book, How to Take Smart Notes.

Zettelkasten is a method to store and organize knowledge, extend your memory, and generate new ideas. With Zettelkasten, you write one note for one nugget of information or idea, then connect the note to other notes. Connecting a note to other notes mimics how the brain learns. I've found that this method has helped me surface meaningful ideas and facts.

We are living in the information age and your brain will be overwhelmed if it must remember everything. As David Allen says, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” Having a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tool is important for this step. My tool of choice is Obsidian.

Final words

Having the right tools to do the above steps are important. What's also important is establishing the habit to do them. If you read for more than entertainment, and if your goal is to manage information and turn it into knowledge, then having a blocked time in your schedule for reading and thinking is critical.

Your Personal Knowledge Management tool gets more valuable as more knowledge is stored in it. Having the habits and consistency to add more information into this tool will give you exponential returns over time.

#productivity

I recently watched the excellent documentary The Social Dilemma on Netflix which talks about the rise of social media and how it influences our behavior and damages our society.

Social media today is a triple-whammy of forces. First, like any other business, the platform itself is trying to grow. This means getting more users and monetize them through advertising. Second, to get more and more users, the platform has to make users interact with each other and spend more time on the platform. They achieve this by incentivizing users to seek attention. You get attention not just when your online behavior is positive (e.g. funny and catchy) but also when it's negative (e.g. controversial and shocking). Third, social media platforms want to make advertisers happy because advertisers give them money. Advertisers want to change your behavior, which can range anywhere from the mundane (e.g. buying product) to nefarious (e.g. changing your vote — as entertainingly explained by another Netflix documentary, The Great Hack).

The intent and principles of those three things are not new. Pretty much all businesses want to grow and want to get you to use more of their products. Many businesses also get revenue from putting advertising on their properties. The difference is that today, technology has made the scale and impact of change humongous. There are more than 2 billion users on Facebook-owned social media platforms, and Facebook has detail data about each one. It has been proven time and again that Big Data and Artificial Intelligence can successfully change users' behaviors. Furthermore, social media platforms try to change our behavior surreptitiously. I think this is why our society has such a blind spot with this issue.

The impact on mental health is real. The documentary points out the increase in suicide rates among teenagers. But I'm sure the impact is not only for the young ones. For teenagers on Instagram, it may be self-consciousness about body imperfection. For professionals on LinkedIn, it may be comparing career achievements with others.

Are there solutions to this issue? The root cause is the business model of social media platforms and how this industry is currently unregulated. As long as we (as a society) prefer “free” content with ads, we will continue to have this issue.

The documentary itself proposes a solution for people to delete their social media accounts. However, I think there is still a way to gain the benefits from social media without being negatively influenced by it. My own approach is to be a stoic and use social media mindfully and purposefully. I use social media mainly as contact tools, i.e. for networking and keeping in touch. LinkedIn and Facebook are great for this purpose. I set guidelines so they continue to be useful. For example, here's how I engage with marketers on LinkedIn. I also impose limits on myself. Once I detect that my emotions get affected by my news feed — either positively or negatively — I step away and close my browser.

In the end, how each of us uses social media depends on our own comfort level. Do, however, proceed with your eyes open. “The Social Dilemma” is one entertaining way to be informed about this subject. Another good resource is Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

#productivity

First of all, I know that sales is not an easy job and it takes skills to balance between helpful and annoying. To sales people:

• Trust me when I say I read all your emails. Unlike many people, I love emails because I can read them at my convenience. But do you know what I hate? When you call me on my phone and interrupt me in the middle of work.
• Unless your email is blatantly wrong (my name is Andre, not Andrea), I will reply to you. I know you prefer certainty, so as much as possible I will answer with a clear “Yes” or “No”. In cases where I answer “Maybe”, I will suggest a timeframe when you can follow up.
• Because I take the time to read your email, I expect you to do the same. If I reply and say I’m not interested, don’t send another email in a week asking if I have read your email.
• If we don’t know each other and you send me a request to connect on LinkedIn, please tell me why we should connect. I’m kind of old fashioned on LinkedIn and I don’t usually connect with people I don’t know.
  

To other people in similar position as mine (i.e. “buyers”), may I also humbly offer my suggestions:

• Know what you need and want. In other words, have a plan that gives you clarity on the “what” and the “when”. Without which, you won’t know which vendors to talk to.
• Archive emails from vendors and have a way to search them later. Outlook’s powerful search engine has really helped me in this area. I’ve made an engagement with a vendor based on a cold email I received in the previous year.
  

#productivity