Nadia's Digest - Issue #11 (December)

ISSUE #11 - last one of the year - is here! I hope you been having a happy and chill holidays, and want to thank you for your readership this past year. In spirit of the holiday season, I decided to double-down on shares and give you 10 of my favorite links to wrap up 2K17. 

A healthy reality check at the turn of the year. This post was published in 2013 but rings truer than ever. I return to it regularly when I feel caught up in trivialities and start to believe I suck at life. The article’s point is not to mock our generation or ridicule anxiety, but to confront us with some painful truths about our everyday suffering, wrapped in comical sidenotes and stick figure drawings. Reading it always makes me smile at myself and feel a little lighter, and I hope it may do the same for you. 

This ties into the ‘Move Slow and Fix Things’ read I shared in the last digest, calling upon the responsibility of developers and designers to recognize their power in shaping social issues. MIT Technology Review weighs in as they evaluate the helpful and lacking contributions of Silicon Valley, reflecting tech startups at large, over the past year.

It has long been believed that innovation is fueled by (economic) incentives, but this recent study suggests otherwise. Linking patent application data from 1996 through 2014 to federal income tax returns, they were able to track inventors’ lives from birth through adulthood to understand who is inventing things and where they come from. This surprising approach led to the sadly unsurprising insight that privilege still plays a major role in determining who gets an opportunity to develop and share their ideas with the world. Imagining the potential untapped, let’s shift our efforts from developing incentives for the currently presented to removing barriers for those underrepresented, to see some of it manifest.

Whether you’re a little paranoid about your own data security, want to hone in on your hacker skills, or are simply interested in the topic: this comprehensive and illustrated guide by WIRED will tune you right in.

If you’d love to go for a job abroad but the task of relocation seems daunting, relocate.me is for you. This website has a directory of ready-to-go relocation packages centered around job openings around the globe. The offering is limited (mostly developers at this point) but growing so let’s hope they continue expanding, and keep an eye out if you’re looking to make a move in 2018 or beyond. 

Lean startup is pretty hyped, but for good reason. It’s simple idea is to develop, test and iterate products and services quickly to make sure that whatever it is you’re launching, is something that serves your end-user. It’s the how-part that is slightly more challenging, but this post hands you a step-by-step plan to get your idea off the ground the lean startup way. If you got any entrepreneurial ambitions you’re looking to bring out in the new year, this is where to start.

WIRED is one of my favorite blogs to read and although I check the website quite often, scrolling through this list I found that a bunch of these well-edited stories slipped past my attention. From weird to insightful to critical, enjoy them for yourself!

This guided 15-minute meditation is one of my personal favorites. As I’m still struggling to adopt the habit of meditation regularly, the voice and insights of Alan Watts never fail to take me to a place of quiet. I’ll continue my practice and invite you to join me in it :)

“Make the next year your best year!”. Generally speaking, the click-bait on how to make the next year better than the last leave me unsatisfied, but this blog poses a charming alternative to setting resolutions. I believe the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves have a greater impact we like to admit, and there’s a case to make for challenging them. Shall we give it a go?

I tend to get reflective as we’re nearing the end of the year. But really, conversating and listening to my own voice should be something I incorporate more into my day to day being. If you feel the same and want to make some space for self-inquiry this holiday: these meditative questions are one way of doing it. If you’re ready to get to know yourself and your relation to the world a little bit better, take a sheet of paper and open this post .. I’d love to hear about your experiences and which of the questions struck a chord with you ✨

That’s it for twentyseventeen y'all! It’s been super fun sharing all my digital discoveries with you throughout these past 6 months and I am very grateful for your readership. I hope you had a year full of love, joy, health, wealth and learning and you’re set for another beautiful year full of blessings, powermoves and adventures. 

See you on the flipside!

With love,
Nadia Piet

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