Diversity In Tech, Sports On The Brink Of Collapse, & Beautiful Efficiency – Link Roundup

Since I no longer post often on Twitter, I’ve decided to do a regular roundup of all of the interesting and thought provoking content that I’ve come across recently.

I really enjoyed doing these link roundup’s in 2016 and plan on continuing them in 2017. In addition to being an outlet to share interesting stuff that I’ve come across, it also acts as reinforcement for me. I find that revisiting a story and summarizing my thoughts about it really helps my recall and retention, and often I’ll notice something that I missed the first time around.

Articles

• Frequently Asked Questions – entrepreneur Derek Sivers eloquently answers common questions he received in 2016 on topics such as starting a business, focusing, learning programming, writing, and more. [Derek Sivers]
• The Managerial Entitlement Complex – “Any manager who expects a response from an employee at any time of night has an entitlement complex. Any manager who expects someone to get back to them at 4pm on a Sunday has an entitlement complex. Any manager who thinks someone’s life comes second to their work has an entitlement complex.” [Signal v. Noise]
• Slack Makes Diversity a Priority While Quadrupling Head Count – This really got me thinking: at what point in our business (or any business) do you start forcing diversity if it isn’t coming naturally? 10 people? 20? 50? [Businessweek]
• Efficiency is the Highest Form of Beauty – this post just had me nodding my head in agreement the entire time, from his struggle to explain to people what he does to his suggestion for demonstrating that efficiency is beauty in your own life. [Mr. Money Mustache]
• Meet John Knoll, The Creative Genius Who Brought Rogue One To Life – …and he’s also the creator of Photoshop. What an interesting guy. [Wired]
• ESPN Is Hemorrhaging Subscribers And Pretending It Doesn’t Matter & The NFL Was a Sure Thing for TV Networks. Until Now – the How Professional Sports Could Fall Apart scenario I outlined in October of 2015 is playing out in front of our eyes and everyone involved seems to be in complete denial. [Deadspin / Businessweek]

Podcasts

• Abdi and the Golden Ticket – the story of a Somali refugee living in Kenya who has a rare opportunity to get a US Visa. [This American Life]
• Finding The Fake-News King – they use some creative techniques to track down someone in the US responsible for pedaling fake news and knock on his door to learn more about why he does it. [Planet Money]
• Serial Entrepreneur: Mark Cuban – still my favorite entrepreneur, Mark and his story never fail to motivate me. [How I Built This]

Books

• Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss – this is a really unique read. I’m about 1/3 of the way through. It’s effectively the (700 page) cliff notes from Tim’s podcast interviews with world-class performers. Since I’ve listened to most of the ones I’m interested in, I found the new material to be lacking, however it does put a lot of great info in one place.

If you’re interested in more stories like this check out the Link Roundup archive.