Rowan Spazzoli

Strategist. Lecturer. Consultant

Momentum

There are two things I want to say about momentum.

Firstly, Momentum is the name of a Google Chrome extension I’ve been using for the past few weeks. It takes the place of your new tab page and has some really great features such as:

  • A personalised greeting
  • A new, beautiful wallpaper every day
  • The local weather
  • An interesting daily quote
  • A single item to-do list that asks what the focus of your day will be

It’s a really simple add on, but I find the combination of daily content and personal focus motivates me when I open my laptop in the morning. You should give it a try.

Gathering momentum

Secondly, today was the first time I truly felt momentum in my work. I was able to achieve all my objectives for the day and I found a natural flow. This was the place I was hoping to get to when I gently started my thesis grind.

To be honest, I was a little worried then that I would start slowly and never really build up a sustainable speed. But through a kind and patient build up I’ve been able to foster a great space for work. And now I feel ready to take on the rest of the challenge.

Image was today’s featured picture on the Momentum extension. It’s called “Norway” and was taken by Jamie MacPherson

P.s. New blog feature is my song of the day. Check it out below

 

Song of the day: Lost Frequencies and Zonderling - Crazy
Thesis update: productive day, filled with flow
Blog 78/365. Read more about my #365of25 journey here

 

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A new world of personal hyper specialisation

Classic economic theory includes the concept of specialisation and returns to scale. If you’re producing one “widget”, it might cost R100. But if you’re producing a thousand widgets, each one would cost R20.

This has been massively beneficial to consumers. A normal day for me doesn’t consist of gathering food, weaving cloth and hunting animals. As such, almost all the products I consume are produced by specialised companies.

Now though, the internet has taken this one step further. Not only are goods becoming hyper specialised but services are too.

For example, today I didn’t have the time to cook. So I opened an app, ordered food and 15min later it arrived. It only cost R10 to deliver it (plus tip), which is almost less than the petrol it would’ve cost me to pick it up. Also, considering the opportunity cost of me going out and getting food, it is definitely a saving.

This specialisation of service is extensive, and examples include:

  • Buying shopping online and having it delivered
  • Taking an Uber instead of driving (the service isn’t new, but it is much cheaper and more widerly used now due to the technology
  • Using a banking app instead of going and standing in line at a bank
  • Sending people gifts without having to leave the house
  • Doing taxes through an app like TaxTim

No more chores

Soon, AI will be able even further expand the services that are available to us, and be able to do them better than we can. Examples of these might be personal AI assistants, autonomous vehicles and delivery drones that will take care of all your most basic chores.

Ultimately, the scale, complexity and size of these systems will mean that they will do your day to day tasks faster and cheaper than you can.

Which means you don’t have to spend time doing things you’re bad at, like cooking, and can either focus more energy into professional work.

Or maybe even have a little more time for sleep

Image is of a present that was delivered to me for my birtday

Also… I have to be up in 3 hours for a flight. Yay

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