September: New Friends & New Ground

Joao's Monthly Newsletter: September 2021 In Review

September has been a month of continued discovery, in more ways than one, and it’s been great fun. I’m João Nina Matos, and welcome to my first monthly newsletter!

Here’s a quick summary of this month’s newsletter:

1. 👋 About Me: A Refresh

2. 📚 Ground Covered In September

3. ⏰ 8PM - 4AM: A Game Changing Experiment

4. 🛫 Off and Running: TKS

5. 🎬 Moving Forward

6. 💻 Product of the Month

A Principle for the Coming Month:
”Be Radically Open Minded” -Ray Dalio

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👋 About Me: A Refresh

Should you read this, you probably know me, but in case you missed anything, I’m a young entrepreneur & developer (check out my work here), and currently an Innovator at TKS. I’m a curious mind, interested in the world around me, from the intricacies of fine coffee to political & socioeconomic debates, to all things STEM; I’m interested in learning, exploring, and most of all, discussing fascinating ideas with others.

🧺 Ground Covered In September

I came back from a long, reflective but productive summer, into a surprisingly nice 14 day hotel quarantine stay, then thrown into the violent torrents of my non-stop school work. I took care of of my food, laundry, shopping, etc. for the first 3 weeks after quarantine because I was alone, and it was great fun. Recently, I’ve been executing on an arguably crazy sleep experiment I designed in quarantine. I’ve started TKS and am excited to see things develop over the coming months.

⏰ 8PM - 4AM: A Game Changing Experiment

I’ve been on a wild sleep schedule recently, sleeping 8pm and waking up at 4am, in order to get time to do my most important work before school (for which I need to leave at 7am). It gives me about 3 hours worth of isolated working time in the early morning without distractions. Now, I suck at getting out of bed early, but once I manage to wash my face and walk in something that roughly resembles a straight line, I can get to work, and I’ve had some of the best work sessions ever.

As my friend Ariv Gupta correctly pointed out to me, the reason the work is so good at these hours is because there are no distractions. Nobody is texting me at these hours, and nobody else in my flat is awake - I’m isolated, and have all my focus on my work (in fact, I’m writing this during one of these sessions, it’s 5:15am right now.) It’s made a pretty notable difference for me, and enables me to get more work done during the week.

Over the weekends, I have to interrupt this because my TKS sessions run 9pm-11:30pm Saturdays, which made it harder to adjust to the first few weeks. I used to get really tired in the late mornings, but now I’ve adjusted a little more and am having a pretty great time (I do admit, I take a 10am coffee which really helps.)

🛫 Off and Running: TKS

TKS has finally started for me! I’m in my first year, Innovate, during which I, along with the rest of my cohort, explore various emerging technologies and mindsets. So far, it’s been great fun, particularly meeting so many other teens like myself interested in genuinely impactful things. Despite being only virtual, I’ve been able to already form some great bonds with my peers, and really look forward to working more with everyone, getting to know them better, and making some really awesome projects.

🎬 Moving Forward

As I look toward October, and the coming next few months, I’m potentially looking to keep experimenting with different sleep schedules, although I’m not sure because this one has been working so well I might just stick with it. At TKS, one of the main KPIs for us Innovate students is content production, which largely tends to be blog posts, however, I’ve been doing a little thinking (for a while, like months) and I think I’d really like to put together videos for YouTube. I think it’s a far more conducive medium, and I personally enjoy it much more than reading blogs. Despite this, I admit I am somewhat fearful of the workload that comes with that commitment; it takes planning, filming, editing, and other little bits in between, which could add up to take significant time. With a lot on my plate to manage right now, that could be a problem. I’m not one to be afraid of trying though, and so I’ll definitely be trying to make time for that next month.

Key Upcoming Milestones

1. Finishing up a web development freelance project for a local startup 🦄

2. Finding an upcoming TEDx and/or conference near me 📍

3. Continue meeting great minds through TKS 🧠

💻 Product of the Month

While I’d love to say I’m sponsored, I’m not (feel free to reach me though, I’d love to help through affiliate marketing), but there are some awesome products being created on the internet. As someone really interested in the startup ecosystem, I really enjoy finding new and awesome products to use in my digital life. I figured I might share my favourite each month, so you can give them a try as well!

This month, I’d like to introduce Tempo (yourtempo.co). They’re an incredible minimalist email client.

I love minimalism, and good design. These guys did it right.

The email ‘batches’ your unread emails, so you sort through them choosing what to do with each one of them, then moving to the next. I’ve tried a lot of different email clients, and found no one else that does this. This is paired with a really clean and crisp user experience and interface design, which makes the overall experience super pleasant, and easy to use.

The main downside in my opinion, is price. It comes in at 10€/month (or 99€/year), which for me, is too expensive. Also, right now, they only support gmail emails, which also sucks if you use other email providers like I do (I have more than 5 inboxes with various providers, including outlook, and others, but I can’t use them on Tempo).

I’d recommend trying out their 14 day trial, and then watching how they develop over time. I can’t use them full time because of the price and gmail restrictions, but really enjoyed the free trial and am considering buying a subscription from them sometime in the future.