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Hi friends,

Greetings from Utrecht!

As promised in my last email, I've been busy uploading book notes and writing the second part to my "mission, vision, values" essay. As part of this I've dusted off my Goodreads account, which I hadn't touched almost 10 (ten!) years. To my surprise, there's a decent number of my friends and favorite authors that are still very actively using the platform. It was nice to just browse the platform for a bit and see what everyone is reading, what books they really liked, and adding a bunch of them to my own to-read list. Good timing too, as I'm currently slogging my way through Schopenhauer's Counsels and Maxims, and this guy is just *maximum cranky*. He even looks the part:

I'm about halfway through and I'm already craving some lighter fare, so it's nice to having some fresh recommendations to look forward to.

Here's what I want to share with you this week:

​Mission, vision, values, part 2: My previous essay focused on why it's important to define your mission, vision and values, and gave a practical template for finding your own. This essay takes a look at the next, and most important step, if you want to make them stick and get the most value out of them: actually making them core to your company and company processes.

Lots of book notes: I'm slowly adding the books I've read this year to the notes section of my website. Go there to learn more about the individual books, I'll just list out the titles and my rating here for brevity's sake.

• ​On Writing by Stephen King, 4/5
• ​Awareness by Anthony de Mello, 3/5
• ​The Lessons of History by Will Durant, 2/5
• ​Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, 2/5

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The Best Bits

​Ali Abdaal's Top 10 Time Management tips: Ali Abdaal is a great source of productivity tips, and this video is one of his best. I've come across most of these tips in various other sources, and the way Ali combines them here makes for a very powerful foundation to increasing productivity.

​Being Alone: I don't quite remember how I came across this essay, but it describes something that I think is quite elementary. Especially no that we're forced to quarantine in many parts of the world, knowing how to be by yourself, and improving your relationship with yourself, can be one of the best things you can do for your mental health.

Quantum physics explained: I watched Tenet yesterday, and against my expectations I absolutely loved every minute of it. It's weird, self-indulgent, unapologetic, over-the-top, overly sciency and insanely bombastic. I see why it's not for everyone, but it appealed to the science nerd inside of my like no other science fiction film in recent history. The way the "science" plays out is pretty dodgy, and it inspired me to revisit this excellent video on quantum phyics. Turns out you don't need fiction for science to be weird as hell.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn

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