The Stonecutter’s Credo, Do Things That Don’t Scale, and Habit Stacking

Gathered here are ten hand-picked and carefully curated recommendations that might spark your curiosity this month:

I.

A wonderful quote I’ve come across this month. I’ve read “The Stonecutter’s Credo” for the first time, written by author Jacob Riis:

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Source: Jacob Riis

II.

Q&A: As we grow, fail, and evolve, so too has my taste in books over the years. In this post, I answered a reader’s question about how my taste in books has changed.

III.

A tasty recipe: A creamy dish made from orzo and the tangy bite of feta cheese, straight from Ottolenghi’s Simple cookbook. Skip the prawns for a vegetarian treat. I love the subtle aniseed kick the fennel adds, which brings the dish to a whole new level of flavor. Every bite feels like a little surprise.

IV.

This month’s shower thought: All guilty pleasures bring us joy. So why feeling guilty about pleasure?

V.

An Observation: There’s still a lot I don’t understand about how languages work. John McWhorter, a linguist who has dedicated his career to demystifying the roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the world, talked to Bill Gates in a recent interview. When John isn’t busy ​writing books​, he is a professor at Columbia University, host of his own ​podcast​, and frequent lecturer for ​Great Courses​. He explains why English is so irregular, what the ideal language would look like, why all dialects are created equal, and more. I recommend ​this podcast episode.​

VI.

A Must-Read: Paul Graham writes incredible essays. In Do Things that Don’t Scale, he writes about how delighting customers and making them happy is more effective than most of us think. In this essay he challenges us to think about the un-scalable things you can do to delight your co-workers, clients, readers, or fans as much as you can. How far do you go in delighting others?

VII.

Something Useful: One thing that has made building new habits easier for me is ​habit stacking​. It’s simple but really effective: I take something I already do, and add a small new habit right after. For example, taking my morning coffee and drinking a glass of ice-cold water right after. By linking new habits to existing ones, it feels more natural and less challenging to stay consistent. Let me know how you feel about it!

VIII.

Life lessons: Louis Theroux, the documentary maker from the BBC, is one of my favorite filmmakers. Louis has this remarkable ability to connect with individuals who lead entirely different lives, and portray them in such a way that it makes them more human. Once we get to know the people we call “odd”, oftentimes we are reminded of having more things in common than we might think sometimes. In an interview for Huck, he shares some life lessons that made his career.

IX.

When I travel, no matter how remote my final destination is, Coke seems to be everywhere. Which has made me wonder several times – how does Coca-Cola make its way to these remote places? Melinda Gates noticed this during one of her trips to the developing world too, and argues in her TED-Talk that the strategies that Coca-Cola uses to reach people everywhere around the globe could also work for distributing health care, vaccinations, and even condoms, to make the world a better place.

X.

In the spotlight this month:

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Lisanne