The Kaizen Newsletter #21 (10/15/2019)
Canadian Thanksgiving!
Celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving this past weekend by going to a chalet with a bunch of my really good friends (yeah sorry they’re mostly all Asian 😂), and decided to just enjoy the weekend and not think of anything else, and honestly it felt really good to just have fun for a few days.
So no main story today, but will be back in force the following week.
Now, on to the newsletter.
Weekly Articles
📱 Product
The past, present, and future of FYI: How Hiten Shah turned an obsession with customers into Product Excellence - We’re doing a complete revamp of our product at work, so this article gave really good insights on the process that Hiten Shah used when building FYI. I really liked his approach of building a quick MVP (in 5 days) and released it to just a few users and gathering feedback that way.
Why we decided to go for the Big Rewrite - Again related to our product revamp. In the article, there are a few questions that we should consider before actually doing a Big Rewrite. I answered yes to most of the questions, so I believe we’re going in the right direction.
✏ Writing
Writing is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence - I thoroughly enjoy reading about writing since I always learn something new. The following quote from the article really resonated with me and is also very similar to what David Perell preaches as well.
Putting words down on paper sometimes comes naturally to me, but often it does not. And that means that in order for me to consistently write, I need to make it as easy as possible for me to build the habit; I need to lower the activation energy to start.
👾 eSports
Unkillable - I’ve never played nor understand League of Legends, but I really enjoy reading about other eSports players. This Player’s Tribune article is about Faker, one of the best League of Legend players. I just love when players show personality and confidence and truly wished we’d see the same in hockey. Like this quote is amazing.
They’re great players, they deserve the recognition, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t piss me off. It may sound arrogant, but I’m confident that I’m really good. If I’m losing to players that I know aren’t on my level, I’ll get angry. The last two games of that series, you saw how I play when I’m angry.
Weekly Favourites
🎮 Video Games
Legends of Runeterra - Not a big video games fan, but I’m a sucker for card games. I hated Hearthstone because of all the RNG and Artifact completely bombed. Looked forward to trying Riot’s card game.
🛠 Tools
Weava - Since I’ve been doing these newsletters, I’ve always wanted to have an easy way to highlight articles that I was reading, but never found a good one. I even thought of building my own chrome extension that would do exactly that. HOWEVER, I finally found something that does this! I haven’t tried it out yet, but I will definitely be using it for next week’s article so we’ll see, but it definitely looks promising.
🐦 Tweets
Been seeing lot’s of Lizzo vids out there, but this is definitely the best one 😂
Really cool vid on how an Octopus changes colour while dreaming. Never knew this was even a thing!
I should definitely learn from him and also start the day with some affirmations. Kid is going to kill it some day.
🎧 Music
Songs
Albums
Wow…That’s Crazy - Wale - The features are SO good on this album. I’m honestly surprised that I liked it so much. Some of my favourites were Sue Me, Cliché, Expectations, Love… (Her Fault), On Chill, Routine and 50 in Da Safe.
Over It - Summer Walker - This album also did NOT disappoint. Favourites were Come Thru, Potential, Like It and Stretch You Out.
🙏 Shoutouts
Shoutout to all of my friends that I spent Canadian Thanksgiving with. Great weekend of fun, chilling and relaxing with good company 👌.
👋 End Note
If you want to know what I'm up to now, you can check it on my website here.
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See you next Tuesday!
PEACE ✌🏻
Alexander