Rox’s Picks 40

Hi friends,

This is my last week of work before I start my new job. I’m excited to spend the next 3 weeks reading, writing, and getting some much needed rest.

(If you’re new to the newsletter, context: I’m finishing up my current role and closing up my consulting work. In September, I’ll be starting a new job as a growth engineer for Convictional. You can learn more about decision-making process in this essay.)

Last week’s newsletter had a 40% open rate. The top link you clicked on was Aytekin Tank’s essay on “Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists”.

Here’s What I Worked On This Week

[Article Update] How to Use Readwise to Get Notes and Highlights into Evernote

Since I published this article in April, Readwise has come out with a few nifty features since then. So this is an update.

Like I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, Readwise is how I resurface and get ideas for new essays. If books are the lifeblood of my intellectual life, then Readwise is the circulatory system that ensures I understand and use what I read.

HOT OFF THE PRESS: Readwise came out with an integration yesterday to take podcast notes with the app Airr. I haven’t used this integration myself, but I am stoked to test it out. 😍

If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe below and get this every week.

Here’s what I learned, shared, and paid attention to this week:

1. The Last Travel Backpack You’ll Need —

The Pakt Backpack

I’ll be travelling more in 2021 so I’ve been on the market for a travel bag. Is it weird to talk about a travel bag when most of us can’t travel yet? Anyways, here’s what I was looking for:

• Hands-free in case I have to open a door while holding a coffee.

• Carry-on size to save time waiting at the carousel, plus cut out all the things that can go wrong with checking in a bag

• Flexibility to accommodate the bulk of my travels — weekend trips up to 1-2-week getaways

I was pretty set on either the Peak Design Travel Duffel or the Pakt One… Until Pakt came out with its Travel Backpack. Here it is:

As you can see, this backpack opens up like a suitcase. It also fulfills all of my criteria, especially my point on flexibility:

• You can stow the shoulder straps away and use it as a carry-on duffel (my main use case)

• You can drop it on top of rolling luggage with its luggage pass-through

• You can use it for one-bag travel, then use its convertible hip belt/fanny pack on the ground

I tested it this past weekend for an overnight family camping trip. And it fit perfectly into my workflow (travel-flow?). Here’s a couple more features I appreciated:

• The laptop pocket between the halves fits any size of laptop

• The external water bottle pocket fits a plus-sized 1.5L Nalgene water bottle easily

The only con is that it’s big backpack. For comparison, I’m 5’7 and have uncommonly wide shoulders. Even then, it looks sizable on me.

Paired with my Peak Design Everyday Backpack, I can see myself travelling for months with this kit.

3. How to Distribute Content (Without More Work) —

Ross Simmonds’ Ultimate Distribution Thread on Twitter

Ross’ thread is mostly for B2B content, but the channels apply for distributing any kind of online content.

Here’s a sample workflow you can steal for your company or your professional content:

1. Start with a webinar or a Loom video (Videos can easily be turned into shorter clips, podcasts, GIFs, and blog posts, but not vice versa)

2. Transcribe the video, rewrite it for SEO, and publish it on your blog

3. Upload the video to YouTube and link back to your blog or newsletter sign up

4. Repost the article on LinkedIn, and link back to blog

5. Find a Medium publication that relates to the problem you or your company solves and get permission to repost the article there

6. Take a video snippet and share it on LinkedIn

7. Create a slides and share that on LinkedIn

8. Use the slides as a content upgrade to get people to sign up for the email list after reading the blog post

Generally, I work towards a 50/50 time split between content creation and distribution.

If you’re starting out writing online, for example, the split might skew more towards creation. But as you get more efficient at publishing regularly, you can start using the extra time you have to distribute your content on Twitter.

Right now, I spend 8 hours writing, which includes 4 hours dedicated to the newsletter. Eventually, I want to spend 4 hours a week writing the newsletter, 4 hours on “normal” writing, and maybe 2-4 hours on distributing my writing via Twitter.

Not exactly my 50/50 split, but it’s a start.

4. On Specialists, Generalists, and Polymaths —

“People Who Have “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely to Be Successful According to Research” by Michael Simmons

This article is one of the most comprehensive walkthroughs I’ve read about the idea of becoming a polymath.

The consensus is that unless you can be the undisputed #1 in your field — impossibly difficult because titles, championships, and awards can all be won and lost — you need to go wide to go deep.

Here’s an illustration that summarizes the interplay between polymaths, generalists, and specialists:

In fact, I’ve learned it’s unfair to categorize yourself (or others!) as either a generalist or a specialist. If we are to achieve breakthrough creativity and intuitive mastery of any field, we have to learn how it relates to other fields in our periphery.

As Leonardo Da Vinci said,

Here’s the good news:

• All of us have more than one interest.

• All of us have the creativity to apply skills from one area to another.

• All of us have the potential to become uncommonly good at more than one thing.

The only thing stopping us is our pride and our aversion to discomfort.

5. Some dark humour to send you back to your week —

That's it for this week!

Stay strong, stay kind, stay human.

Till next week,

Roxine 🔥

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