Hey friends -

A quick heads up that we changed things up with our email provider and our newsletters now come from a different email address: hello@radreads.co.

As the newsletter has grown (21,000 subs!), it's become impossible to have reader responses juxtaposed alongside my day-to-day email.

Nothing should change for you, I just wanted to make sure last Saturday's email didn't get stuck in promotions. If so, just take the following step:

👉Drag today's email from "Promotions" to "Inbox" (in a 15 second video tutorial)

And I hope you enjoy one of my most popular posts of the year, How to Design the Perfect Day.

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How to design the perfect day

Tim Urban has a simple equation for measuring happiness.

Give it a spin, you'll be amazed by its accuracy.

That dinner reservation you had to book exactly 30 days in advance?

That long-awaited guys' trip in Vegas?

The upcoming Kanye album? (Yawn)

The formula shows us how our happiness (and ultimately our lives) teeter on a razor thin equilibrium.

When our expectations are too high, reality fails to keep pace.

(Happiness, negative.)

But conversely, do you want to live in a world of lowered expectations, just so that reality can clear this reduced threshold?

Now I want you to take Tim Urban's formula to confront another stark reality:

Now you may not agree with the Internet's Philosopher, but researchers, journalists and redditors seem to land on a shared consensus.

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Intuitively, this makes a ton of sense. Picture yourself on a cross-country flight with Wifi powerful enough for Google Docs (but not Netflix). Armed with some watery coffee (and protected from kids demanding snacks) you could probably plow through a couple of hours of deep work. Eventually your ambitious big picture thinking would fade away - replaced by robotic emailing and the $10 trek towards Inbox Zero.

There's no shame in this behavior. It makes a lot of sense since once distractions are removed you run into a finite resource: Your cognitive energy.

So let's go return to Urban's formula:

If reality is pegged at 2 hours what does it imply about your expectations for any given work day?

Read the post (7 mins)

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Here are this week's top reads:

// one

The omnipresence of work

7 minutes | More To That
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How do you turn off? How do you get your mind to stop thinking about work? The fantastic Lawrence Yeo (also a new girl dad) shows us that this obsession is about more than just managing our attention — it's tying our existence to the premise of utility. Surely we want to be thoughtful global citizens contributing towards innovation and progress. But Yeo warns of a slippery slope in which "we view the natural world primarily for its utility, rather than for its sheer beauty" and "nature is nothing but a reservoir for us to draw upon to make more sh*t." (If you're not a More To That subscriber, what are you waiting for?!)

→ Read the post​

// two

Hacking the Eisenhower Matrix

4 minutes | NOBL Academy
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The Eisenhower Matrix is an effective and timeless framework for prioritization (inspiring my own $10k framework). But how do you separate what's important and very important? This piece offers three modifiers and triaging questions including "who are you really serving?" and "are you clearly articulating the trade-offs?"

→ Read the post​

// three

Meet Reid Hoffman

6 minutes | Coda
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In this post, Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn, details his “blueprint,” i.e. 13 principles that help him in business and life. My favorites were "experimentation beats debating," "I’m not interested in being the smartest one in the room" and "If I ask for feedback, I really want feedback." (This pairs well with one of the best career essays of all time, 10,000 hours with Reid Hoffman.)

→ Read the post​

// four

How to say no to commitments

3 minutes | Forge
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An important (yet under-discussed) component of prioritization is learning to say no. There's obviously a healthy tension between creating seedlings for serendipity and running yourself ragged by never saying no. I've been heavily working on my disciplined pursuit of less and found that "owning your no" and asking "Would I do this thing tomorrow" are helpful heuristics.

→ Read the post​

// five

Meetings would go faster if people took the time to listen

4 minutes | Harvard Business Review
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As RadReads has grown, I've found myself in a bit more meetings than I'm used to. But I'm committed to not turning them into the time sucks that they were from my prior corporate life. Sometimes you need to slow down, to speed up — and the speed bump: deliberate listening.
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→ Read the article​

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Below the fold

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ICYMI
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• ​How to buy back time - Here's the replay of my interview with Tim Francis on scaling yourself with a Virtual Assistant.

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LAST WEEK'S MOST READ
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• ​How to set goals (that actually work) (RadReads, 830 clicks)
• ​7 cognitive biases that make us suck at time management (The Doist Blog, 331 clicks)
• ​Sit down with Daniel Ek (The Observer Effect, 264 clicks)

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And finally, RIP Alex Trebek — we all have so many shared memories (including when you rapped hip-hop lyrics).

With gratitude,
Khe

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PPS Gmail users, don't forget to move this email out of your "Promotions" and into "Primary"
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