#118 | Sparkling water in my MacBook
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac
“Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.”
― Lao Tzu
🥰 An Ask 🥰
We, at Yokeru, want to start helping the families of vulnerable older people.
I’d like to talk to you if you have ever supported someone (perhaps a parent or grandparent) who is vulnerable and lives alone. I especially want to talk if you still do. And if you know of someone who has, then an introduction would be wildly appreciated.
The conversation won’t take more than 15 minutes, and it will be immensely helpful for us! Plus, you’ll contribute to a tool that helps people just like you.
Just reply to this email, or email hector@yokeru.io and we can set up a call. Thank you! - xx
A couple of years ago, on the Kenyan coast, I accidentally poured a litre of sparkling water over my MacBook. Needing a laptop for work, I returned to Nairobi to fix it. But — shock — it turns out sparkling water is terminal to MacBooks.
Being broke and laptopless, I went to the cheapest laptop shop in town and spent $100 on a Lenovo. I worked through its tiny 16:9 inch screen for the next six months. Its keys kept falling off, the battery failed me, and the heavy charging cable was always a little too short.
Nevertheless, my productivity didn't plummet. If anything, I became more focussed; I stopped task-switching because I could only have one program running simultaneously. RAM limitations meant every third distraction met with the blue screen of death.
Yesterday Apple promised the new MacBook Pro would make the team at Yokeru (including me) more productive. The advert promises we'll become especially effective with their M2 Max chip.
I certainly welcome help on this front. But productivity isn't linear. And technology, counterintuitively, does not automatically make systems more effective.
Where there are systemic issues, technology is only sometimes the answer. Remote work is a pressing example. Is 1080p video quality more productive than audio only? And could either compete with being together scuzzy office huddled around a whiteboard?
No matter how powerful, new MacBooks would not have saved FTX or Theranos.
Apple tells us our problem is productivity; they say their Retina XDR display, bundled with an array of pro-ports, is the solution. But is this true?
When looking at our lives, when things feel like they are crawling to a halt, we must at least consider the Lenovo solution. What is the most straightforward answer? What is the shortest path? What do we not need to do?
My week in books
Transform Your Life: A Blissful Journey by Kelsang Gyatso. A beautiful book about Buddhism. Thank you John for the recommendation!
“Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will never be acheived unless we first establish peace within our own minds. We can send so-called 'peacekeeping forces' into areas of conflict, but peace cannot be oppossed from the outside with guns. Only by creating peace within our own mind and helping others to do the same can we hope to achieve peace in this world.”
Anything You Want and Hell Yeah Or No by Derek Sivvers. Remarkably good books! Unexpected in their depth; truly inspirational. Thank you Matt for the gift.
“To have something (a finished recording, a business, or millions of dollars) is the means, not the end. To be something (a good singer, a skilled entrepreneur, or just plain happy) is the real point. When you sign up to run a marathon, you don’t want a taxi to take you to the finish line.”
Live well,
Hector