Are We Just Workers?

Vol. V of The Sunday Selects

May 11, 2021

Hi friends,

Welcome to the curatorial issue of Path Nine — content for the curious, contrarian, and creative.

This week’s curatorial issue is all about working better so we can live better. This may or may not (definitely is) foreshadowing upcoming posts and a few professional announcements. So keep an eye out for the next few issues.

Let’s get down to business.

Before we begin: If you’re reading this but haven’t joined the Path Nine community, hit the button below to join the entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, architects, psychologists, designers, and engineers that read Path Nine to learn the strategies reshaping our work and lives

Here’s a look at what we’re exploring in this issue:

Insights: Training For the Unknown, Intellectual Athleticism
Ideas: Stop Working So Hard
Information: 1) 11 Myths About Decision-Making by Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, 2) A Year Into Remote Work, No One Knows When to Stop Working Anymore by Chip Cutter, 3) Routines vs Rituals — Tatiana Figueiredo
Innovations: Rows

/Insights

Articles and Essays from Path Nine - <1 min read

In case you missed it…

If you’re new to Path Nine, here are some ideas you may have missed:

Training For the Unknown — Or, How to Build and Sustain an Antifragile Career. Some people benefit from chaotic events. They thrive on them and grow stronger in their pursuits, and are therefore antifragile. Others are utterly incapacitated by these same events, or fragile. It’s critical for us to know and understand how vulnerable we are, especially when it relates to our careers. To better understand this dichotomy, I find it instructive to look toward athletics for inspiration.
Intellectual Athleticism (IA) — An Important Trait for a New Era of Work. The Passion Economy and the future of work are ushering in new opportunities for intellectual athletes and creating a world where intellectual athleticism will be the defining factor at work. Those who wish to thrive should understand the benefits and learn to operate like an athlete.

/Ideas

Notes from Kevin Kirkpatrick - 2 min read

Stop Working So Hard

First, let me be clear — I’m all in on working hard. In fact, anyone who knows me will likely tell you that I’m a pretty hard worker. When it comes to personal and professional pursuits, I’ve always been the one to work WAY more than necessary, pushing everything to the max. It’s just how I am.

And guess what? It’s where I’ve done my worst work.

It’s where I’ve found myself burnt out, making one poor decision after another. It’s where I’ve lost friendships, relationships, and a lot of time. It’s where I’ve pushed past reason to simply try to achieve my own goals. All under the guise of “working hard.”

The idea of “working hard” can be quite insidious. It’s a fine line that we walk as we search for places to hide from the realities of a world we can’t fully control. When we feel like the chaos has overwhelmed us, we try to make sense of it in any way possible, and work is a place where this becomes dangerous.

When we start focusing only on working hard, the elements of our personality may fade into a cliched and caricatured version of ourselves, mirroring the tired tropes we’ve learned about the leaders who work overtime in pursuit of their dreams.

As work bleeds into life more and more, it’s easy to remove the barriers and let the “work hard” mentally take over. If we’re not careful, we can quickly lose everything that makes us human, transforming into robotic worker bees with only one goal.

The question is: are we just workers, or are we something more?

/Information

Information from the interwebs - <2 min read

11 Myths About Decision-Making — Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

Underlying these myths are three common and popular ideas that don’t serve us well: First, as busy people, we don’t need to invest time to make good decisions. Second, we are rational human beings, able to thoughtfully solve thorny and high-stakes problems in our heads. Third, decision-making is personal and doesn’t need to involve anyone else.

A Year Into Remote Work, No One Knows When to Stop Working Anymore — Chip Cutter

“You never feel like what you’re doing is good enough, so you get stuck in a trap of overworking,” Ms. Lipp, the mother of a 5-year-old, said. “Sleep is the difference. If I get like eight to nine hours, I can take on the world. If I have six hours of sleep, it’s like the walking dead.”

Routines vs Rituals — Tatiana Figueiredo

Rituals add intention, creativity, and meaning while routines are about doing the same thing over and over. How can you add more rituals to your community?

/Innovation

Products and tools for creators - <1 min read

Rows

Many products have tried taking out Excel. To date, no one has been successful in the pursuit. But we may be witnessing the rise of the product that will finally dethrone Excel.

Meet, Rows.

Rows is the secret love child of APIs and spreadsheets. It has the core functionality of an Excel or Google spreadsheet, combined with powerful integrations like Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and Hubspot.

Not only is this a great tool, but it also acts as a front-end for whatever you build. Rows makes it easy to build use-case-driven tools to automate important workflows. Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to scale and automate a business, or just looking to be more efficient, Rows is a (not-so) secret weapon for productivity.

/Inspiration

Mindful meditations - <1 min read

“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.”
— Seneca