DeLorean Diary

The Practical Polymath #36

Hi Friends,

Greetings from Brooklyn.

If you’re one of the twelve new subscribers, welcome! Every Friday, I publish a piece that fits in the palm of your hand and share three links that are worth your time.

I hope you enjoy this week’s edition and if you do, why not share with a neighbor, a lover or a stranger?

Until next week,

Florian

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DeLorean Diary

What if you could travel through time? 

Recently, I started a little experiment. No time machine required. Just my email account. 

One evening, I was jotting down a few lines destined to be read by no one. And then I thought, wouldn’t it be fun if I could have them resurface in the future? So I put them in an email, clicked the “schedule send” button and picked a random date. 

Two weeks later, an email popped up in my inbox with the subject line: “Hello from the past!” I had completely forgotten I wrote this. My past self was bursting into my inbox like Kramer into Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment to deliver an unsolicited piece of wisdom. 

The email ended with an injunction: “Please send a lesson to future Florian.”

And like that, I started a conversation with myself through time. I’d load up a thought and just like Doc’s DeLorean, it would land in my inbox a few weeks later. 

There’s something peculiar about knowing your future self is the recipient of the words you write. I’ve kept a journal for seven years and it doesn’t quite elicit the same sense of responsibility. That feeling that you get to address your future you and perhaps slightly alter the course of their day.  

What would you write to your future self?

Illustration by Jonathan Pau

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Weekly Wisdom

🌕 While you were Sleeping: Cleaners are the invisible heroes that keep our world from drifting into chaos. This video invites us into the shifts of people who wake up at 4am every morning to get offices, shops and schools ready for the day. We hear their perspectives on what they like and don’t like about their jobs, often busting our assumptions about this overlooked and undervalued profession.   

💡 The Art of Finding Talent: Economist Tyler Cohen, founder of the Emergent Ventures fellowship program, has a sixth sense for spotting exceptional talent before everyone else does. How does he do it? This piece breaks down his process from distribution to application and selection. What I find most compelling is the application process. No resume, reference letters or test scores required. Just a 1,500 word essay. The only thing that matters is the applicants' ideas and their ability to communicate them.

🤹‍♀️ Polymath of the Week: Brie Wolfson is the kind of person that gives you the itch to go out and create, write and be curious about all sorts of stuff the minute she starts talking. I recommend checking out her guide on how to use writing to improve your company and advance your career. Her website is a treasure trove of rabbit hole and quirky wisdom.

New Yorker Humor: I never manage to keep up with reading the New Yorker every week. But I’m always there for the cartoons and their brilliant captions. This one really hit home.

“Oh, that reminds me of this article I barely remember.”

Lateral Thought

“I am fascinated by our human position of being somewhere in the middle of this ‘existence’. We live on an average galaxy; we don’t live too long, and yet we can look out to the edge of the universe into light years and penetrate the atom, chasing quarks and another world within. The world seems to begin at the surface of our skin; there is a world beyond it and a world within, and the distance is about the same. I like that.”

Agnes Denes