Hello!
'bout to board my flight back home to Holland after a week in the USA. This trip more than the previous 7 has come to represent more gratitude and wonder than anything else.
Any regular reader of this newsletter knows the reasons why I've struggled with these trips but let's focus on something else, the fact that...
"As you get older, you might have to work a bit harder to find wonder — but it’s worth the effort" -Andrew Wood
I had thought of this after seeing a meme (for lack of a better word) about the focus on data instead of wonder. Spending time with kids has always inspired me to wonder. Bike rides do it every time. Music too. Lemme know if you know what I mean!
For this issue, I thought to share four ways to keep finding wonder as you continue to grow up from Andrew Wood:
- 👥Lean into experiences and people as they happen to you — pay attention, get close in, use your eyes, ears, mouth, nose and hands to experience things as they happen. Put away your phone, forget about what you’re doing later that day, save for later the thing that made you sad that morning, and just be in the moment. I have a hunch that the best way to find wonder is to be curious and optimistic at the same time.
- ✨ Work out what gives you a sense of wonder, and do what you can to engineer more of those moments. — Big skies, cheese on toast, salty single malts, three-chord guitar songs, mind-bending philosophy, virtuoso stage actors, teeth-rattling rollercoasters, great conversations with your best friends — whatever it is for you, give it the energy it deserves.
- ⌛And then spend time in your moments of wonder when you find them. — When you find them, don’t be in such a hurry to share them on Instagram. Miss a bus for them, it’ll be okay. Let them swirl around you, let them widen your eyes, let them fill your nose and your lungs and your belly. Chew them slowly or devour them; but make the most of them when they come, and don’t take life for granted.
- 🆒As soon as you can, grow out of the idea that finding wonder in things is somehow not cool or grown up. —Quite the opposite! One of the reasons adults love being around children so much is that you remind them the world has wonder in it, because it’s easy to forget that as you get older. When you experience something as wonderful, it becomes wonderful for me, too.
At the very least, I hope you get motivated to wonder!
As always, thank you for reading!
with appreciation,
Jon
p.s.
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Cycling
How I Learned to Cycle Like a Dutchman
Dan Kois writes about how he and his family learned to ride bicycles confidently while they were living in the Netherlands.
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Thank you to everyone that sent this to me : )
Expensive E-Road Bikes Won't Save Cycling
The e-bike that will change everything does not exist yet. If and when it does, it's not going to be a $13,000 road bike.
to be fair, I'd say the GSD comes pretty damn close!
The Barkley Marathons of Bike Racing. The hardest bike race in the World. The first ever ATB Race-Experience.
ATB is the highest most exalted expression of cycling known to humanity. Its vitality and adventure-spirit cannot be contained nor should it be.
ATB.life is a project of Mythical State Of.
Startups
Good to Great Revisited
A key concept here is to realize that no single push makes a difference, no matter how herculean the effort. So you have to be thinking about cumulative effects, not looking for the dramatic singular win.
Is We Work a Fraud?
The most discomforting element of this whole deception is that after perpetuating this fraud for so long, media outlets are now inviting these Hustlers to media-sponsored ‘leadership’ events where they’re put on podiums to teach us how to become visionary’s whilst they have now made it unnecessarily more difficult for genuine entrepreneurs & technology companies to raise capital in future. The future is farther because of them.
Thank you Sjors for this one!
Personal Boundaries and SEPs - Peter Riegersperger
But whatever course you take, do not let it happen that somebody else’s problems become your problems.
Sales & PR
5 Ways to Make Videoconferencing Less Terrible
"We have the technology from The Jetsons, and we’re using it for sales meetings."
Even as videoconferencing is growing in popularity, it still has a lot of downsides. Here are the etiquette rules for minimizing problems and videoconferencing effectively.
The Correct Way to Email
It is a space for artfulness, where it’s possible to stand out.
From the Collection: The Complete Commercial Artist (現代商業美術全集)
A rare set of Japanese trade publications serves a visual feast of modern graphics and lettering, as well as a study of early-20th-century interactions between Japan and the West.
Radness
BOHEMIAN BORDER BASH | 150KM GRAVEL BIKE TOUR IN CZECH REPUBLIC
In this episode of Roadbike Party we continue with the Bohemian Border Bash Event in the heart of the Saxon Switzerland, where we will ride our Gravel bikes 150 km over the most beautiful Gravel Bike routes and also a pump track.
yeah, it's in German. But gravel is an international language ; )
More coverage in English on the SILCA blog: blog.silca.cc/bohemian-border-bash