My takeaways from Medium Day 2024

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Yesterday was the 2024 edition of Medium Day and I had the opportunity to attend many great sessions. Here are some of my main takeaways!

90% of distractions have internal triggers

From the session by Nir Eyal (website)

"The time you planned to waste is not wasted time"

The internal triggers for distraction are generally uncomfortable feelings we want to avoid. Things like boredom, anxiety, fear.

We think the issue is the external triggers (like emails, slack messages, etc), but the real problem comes from within. And this is what we need to work on first to become indistractable.

Prepare today for the impulses you will get tomorrow

The key is to learn to manage those emotions, or reduce them as much as possible. For example, if a task is boring, try to make it more fun in some way. This will reduce that uncomfortable emotion.

"Everything good is on the other side of some discomfort"

They also discussed their thoughts on TODO lists - "they suck"

A couple of reasons:

• Unrealistic
  • Since it is so hard to measure how long it will take to complete a task, it's hard to know how many todos you should have
• It forces you to measure yourself against how much you complete
  • But TODO lists are infinite, so you will rarely feel accomplished - there will always be more to do

Their solution is to use a time-boxed calendar. Where everything you want to do is scheduled. Then during that time your focus is simply to work on that thing without distraction - not to complete it.

This gives you more feedback on how long things take and forces you to make trade-offs - there are only 24 hours in a day, so do you prioritise going to the gym or family time?

Sitting is a health crisis, but standing can be even worse!

From the session by Turner Osler

The problem with sitting (particularly ergonomic chairs) is that they support your entire body - so your muscles have nothing to do.

When your muscles have nothing to do, they "go dark" - this is particularly bad because muscles do more than just move your body, they also play a part in other metabolic processes that get disrupted by sitting for long periods.

But the risk of a heart attack in people that stand at their desk double that of people who sit!

• The issue is that since you aren't actually moving, your blood pools in your legs and increases the risk of clots forming

The workaround is to avoid using the supports you chair gives you

• Here is an example of how to sit better
• This forces your body to work and you will naturally shift around as you sit, reducing the risks of sitting

People without children (by choice or not) are discriminated against

From the session by Ali Hall

I never really considered this 🤔

There is a societal assumption that everyone wants (and can) have children - anyone who claims they don't is often met with comments like "you will change your mind" or "you will regret it later".

You may regret it or not, just like every choice in life. But the fear of regret is not a good reason to have children.

A quarter of adults don't have children, but nobody really talks about people in this group. I've heard many people speaking about their children, but I very rarely hear people speak as much about not having children. I think there needs to be some more representation here 🤔

To me it comes back to free will and people having the choice to do what they want and live the life they choose.

This is just a short list of things I picked up from the talks I managed to attend - but there were many many more!

Looking forward to watching recordings of the sessions I didn't manage to attend in real time.

See you tomorrow 👋