Modest Operations | Newsletter Volume 10

As I was putting this volume of the newsletter together, I realized that one of the unexpected side benefits of doing this on a weekly basis is that, in looking back through the quotes I've saved to Evernote, I'm able to notice patterns about what has somehow risen to the forefront of my short attention span.

If I was half as good at actually reading the items on my Instapaper list as I am at saving them, I'd be nearly superhuman in my media consumption, so I'm left to just cherry-pick the articles that pique my interest.

This week, it seems to be email and writing...mixed in with politics and current events?

This Week's Links A list of things I've been reading & thinking about.* "A commonplace book is a central resource or depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations and information you come across during your life and didactic pursuits. The purpose of the book is to record and organize these gems for later use in your life, in your business, in your writing, speaking or whatever it is that you do." - How And Why To Keep A “Commonplace Book” (Ryan Holiday for RyanHoliday.net) * "We spent 12 months investigating various lawsuits and allegations against Singer. In total, we spoke with more than 50 sources, including four men who have never before told their stories to reporters." - ‘Nobody Is Going to Believe You’ (Alex French and Maximillian Potter for The Atlantic) * "It’s too easy when you’re writing full time to feel like you should stuff every single minute with writing, even when you know reading is a huge part of your job." - The ideal routine (Austin Kleon for AustinKleon.com) * "A good communication architecture enables information to flow across the company (up and down, side to side) without impediment. It ensures that every person understands the organization’s strategy and priorities (and their own role in it); that people can easily access the information they need to do their job well; that people understand how to make and communicate decisions; problems are surfaced to leaders efficiently." - The CEO’s most important operational responsibility (Gokul Rajaram for Medium) * "To summarize, CEO emails trump other forms of one-to-many communication in authenticity and permanence. Period." - The weekly CEO e-mail (Gokul Rajaram for Medium) * "Email is definitely not ideal, but it is: decentralized, reliable, and not going anywhere—and more and more, those feel like quasi-magical properties." - The 'Future Book' Is Here, but It's Not What We Expected (Craig Mod for Wired) * "Last weekend I tweeted out some larval thoughts about what I call 'feel-bad liberalism,' or a style of liberalism that seems mostly concerned with expanding the list of things left-of-center people should feel bad or guilty about, often in ways that (I would argue) are much less tangibly connected to improving the world and addressing injustice than certain people claim them to be, and/or which rely on rather radical notions of politics or language that have little purchase in the real world." - Help Me Name This Thing, Send Me Questions, And A Reader Has Some Smart Thoughts On "Feel-Bad Liberalism" (Jesse Singal for Singal-Minded)