Trying to be more deliberate about consolidating all the things I’ve (attempted to) learn or get better at over the first half of the year.
The context behind the knowledge repository is that I needed a single place to consolidate links that I read from various places on a daily basis. Been trying a bunch of systems (OneNote consolidation, Google Sheets, Notion clipper), but none of them are low friction enough.
Thus, the Telegram group with many topics was born!
- I tried maintaining one channel for each topic that mattered to me
- Realised that the list of things that I thought about kept growing and growing, and a group with topics made more sense than many channels
Unfortunately, it comes with a real downside - a whole bunch of links are read once and they then disappear into the black hole.
Figured, therefore, that the best way to counteract this “black hole” effect is to spend a day every 6 months to take stock of what’s going on in each category, and to highlight some key learnings 😊
What have I been reading in H1 2024
Here’s what I’ve been hoarding reading this first half of the year!
Quick surprises and un-surprises
The Unsurprising:
- Product, tech and design being top is not a surprise at all, given that it’s my profession 😄
- Bunch of entrepreneurship, career navigation and org culture in there as well, given that I’ve found myself in small moldable teams where I’ve had some degree of influence in the culture.
- Even though I run a tele channel on sustainability x innovation, a bunch of private readings on climate related stuff still puts the topic at #4 (given my broad concern about the environment
The Surprising
- I really expected to have read much more Fintech related things - AgriG8 was ultimately an agri-fintech, and compared to digital health (and area I’ve left behind professionally quite some time ago), I’ve not been keeping up with Fintech 😖
- I’m not in AgriG8 fulltime anymore though, and it does feel like there’s a saturation of Fintech PMs out there, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll dedicate from here on
- Put in quite a bit of reading time into metacognition and productivity, while neglecting other human skills. Is this a sign of confidence in my interactions with others while not being confident in learning? 🤔
- Then again, it is pinned to the top, which indicates how much I worry about my unrefined learning and productivity methods. Should reflect and adjust.
- Leadership and community building being really low is surprising too - these are topics that I think about regularly. Perhaps it’s a season of application of internal knowledge as opposed to seeking new perspectives. Either that, or I should be lumping management into Leadership rather than Human Skills? Doesn’t feel right - probably won’t do that.
Why these categories?
While there’s a whole bunch of topics (more than I honestly should be keeping track of), the way some topics are lumped together was a result of a compromise between granularity and not multiplying the number of topics.
In lieu of going into key learnings, for the first iteration of this half-yearly review, I’ll go into the thought process behind the inclusion of each category - starting with the separation between Markets and Functions.
Markets
There are 3 markets that I’m looking at in this season of life: Fintech, Digital Health/Longevity, and Climate Tech (Climate, Environment and Degrowth). Likely (definitely) a result of my academic and professional experiences, and more (as you will see)!