Why I disappeared

Read time: 3.5 minutes

Hey everyone,

I didn’t win the lottery or get kidnapped by a state-sponsor actor, but a lot has changed since my last email to you.

Since we made the difficult decision to relocate from Toronto last year, it’s been a whirlwind of on-the-fly learning. We’ve traded the city life for the suburbs in a different province, and the challenges of this transition have been both daunting and rewarding.

I crossed the country by car with my family, and four days with a toddler on the road is as great as chaotic, not to mention several plants everywhere. 🚗🧒🪴

Initially, the pre-work to make sure everything was properly packed and shipped and to say ‘goodbye for now’ to friends took all my free time.

Once we arrived, we juggled a toddler’s first daycare experience while diving headfirst into all the joys of managing a house up here. From picking a water softener to mastering the HVAC system and furnace, it’s been quite the learning curve!

I was procrastinating and a victim of perfectionism, trying to find the perfect moment to get back to the newsletter and tell you what was happening. Guess what? Such a thing does not exist! The enlightening moment was when I finally was able to get back to journaling again.

I’m still catching up, but I’m excited to keep sharing my thoughts with you. Thanks so much for your patience during this busy transition. Stay tuned for more updates and some great content coming your way soon!

With gratitude, 🙏🏼

Eder

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The step of the week 👣

Document your decisions

Let me share a personal experience. When we decided to relocate from Toronto, I had a simple mantra guiding me: document everything relevant to this decision so we don’t have to make it again.

Each time you find yourself revisiting and revising a decision, you’re caught in a cycle that drains your time and energy, leaving you physically and mentally exhausted.

Ready to break free from this cycle? Start by implementing a simple workflow to document your decisions.

Create the habit of documenting the decision in your second brain. Use Notion, Tana, OneNote, or whatever makes you comfortable.

Add the initial scenario
Describe the variables you consider
List your requirements
Add references and links to the inputs you took
Document the final decision and rationale.

When you start wondering why you made such a decision, you can return to your notes and avoid the whole thing.

This is valid not only for big decisions like relocating with family but also for more everyday tasks and can help you with questions like:

Why I selected this appliance instead of the cheaper version?
Why did we decide to go to this place on vacation?
What was the reason for taking this strategy path?

It does not need to be complicated; it should remind you of the considerations you made so you don’t have to make them again.

My favourites for the week

🤑 Budgeting – Monarch

Since I became an orphan from Mint, I tried to find an app that would suit my needs from a budget app. I was looking for a clear dashboard, flexible reports, and a superb view of transactions. It was also a must to have collaboration support so it could be shared with my wife.

Monarch has all of that and more. I have been using it for a while and am really impressed.

🔥 News – A line of code that broke the world

Crowdstrike was a name little known outside of cybersecurity circles, but that changed after the chaotic day of July 19, 2024.

The company is the market leader in Endpoint Protection, with over 24,000 clients across 170 countries.

An update containing a bug was automatically distributed over the Internet, crashing around 8.5 million systems worldwide, from hospitals to banks to airports. It is considered the largest outage in the history of information technology.

The bug was a trivial programming mistake likely in just a single line of code —a function was supposed to be called with 21 parameters, but it only received 20—but the damages were much more severe, estimated to be at least US$10 billion.

This shows how fragile our IT supply chain is.

You can read the Crowstrike File 291 RCA executive summary. If you are brave enough, you can also check the Root Cause Analysis.

Quote of the week

There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.
Getting Things Done, By David Allen

Rediscovered using Readwise, my favorite app to revisit my highlights and remember what I read.

A favour to ask 📢
I would love to hear your feedback. Please reply to this email and share your thoughts: what you liked, what you didn’t, problems you are trying to solve and topics you would like to see covered.
I really appreciate it!