I’m Arun Venkatesan, and this is the arun.is newsletter, where I share my current obsessions, inspiration from around the web, behind-the-scenes content, and more.

This week’s issue covers a few things:

• What's new
• Highly processed information
• Recommendations

What's new

5 years of this newsletter

This newsletter is quickly coming up on its 5th anniversary. I’m planning to write a full post on the blog about what I’ve learned along the way. Do you have any questions or topics you’d want to see covered?

Mexico City's embrace of culture

We love traveling to Mexico City and this post is dedicated to why I think it feels so special.

Designing wearable tech history

I’ve been designing t shirts recently. I did a deep dive into the inspirations behind them.

Highly processed information

My brain felt the way my stomach does after eating a whole pint of ice cream. It wasn’t intense pain, but a mild discomfort that dulled my other senses. As the normal onslaught of intrusive thoughts floated in, I felt powerless as if my hands were tied behind my back.

I had just returned from our trip to Kanazawa, Japan, where I felt the exact opposite. Though I wasn’t getting enough sleep, waking up at 3am with my jetlagged kids, my mind felt calm. I could feel and experience the sensations of day-to-day life. When we returned, this aura continued for a day and then suddenly disappeared.

I’ve always chalked up this feeling of clarity and its inevitable disappearance to the artificiality of vacations where we live a life free of the habits at home. We are away in a new place, doing new things. Of course I would feel different.

What I didn’t realize was that my clarity in Japan wasn’t about vacation. It was about being cut off from my usual information diet.

After our trip, I felt more awful than I usually do. Work felt difficult, running felt difficult. Writing? Forget about it.

That’s when I made the prescient decision to try out freedom, an app that blocks distractions. Instead of the usual way where one would start a “session” to activate the blocker for a short duration, I turned it on all day every day.

A few days later, I felt as if I was back in Kanazawa walking in Kenroku-en. My mind felt free again to focus when working and relax when not.

I used to have AirPods in my ears all the time blasting podcasts at 2.5x speed. I’d sneak in a glance at the news between meetings. I told myself that those habits were valuable, but never stopped to verify the value they provided.

Just like processed food is devoid of fiber and nutrients, processed information is devoid of context and nuance. Processed food creates cravings just like processed information leads to addiction to novelty. Both are designed for convenience instead of the often inconvenient act of nourishment.

So I’ve developed a motto that I now follow:

Read books. Read slowly. Mostly classics.

It’s my remix of Michael Pollan’s pithy take on how to eat, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”, and my philosophy for how I want to consume information.

A month in, I‘ve lost track of daily news cycles, but gained something more valuable — the mental space to think deeply about things that matter, such as: what does it mean for me to be a great husband, father, and designer? What should I do with the precious time I have left on earth?

Recommendations

Benedikt Taschen on Tetragrammaton

I’ve been a big fan of Taschen books, but never knew much about its founder. This podcast goes into his past and charts the path till today. It’s one of those classic entrepreneurial stories where one starts small and little experiments lead to greater success.

Jony Ive on Ruthie’s Table

Here’s yet another rare interview with Jony after last issue’s recommendation of his interview at Stripe Sessions. This podcast is focused on food.

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

This book has been in my reading list for a few years after being recommended a few times. I’m about halfway through and have enjoyed it enough to recommend here. It’s a memoir following the author as he surfs his way around the world during the 1960s and 1970s.

That's it for this issue.

As always, this is my personal email, so feel free to respond directly.

Stay curious,
Arun Venkatesan