## Highlights Simon never went to college—he stayed at Shopify and moved up the ranks to lead infrastructure teams that help keep Shopify processing hundreds of thousands of requests a second, day and night. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxpsjgzx4gnjcrztqrfxen)) Instead of building systems to optimize server performance, he was optimizing his own brain: he was building himself into a learning machine. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxpmyw6zbe81sp943ntysr)) I strive to be T-shaped: _really_ good at something, but with a wide foundation—and that’s a metaphor we use widely at Shopify ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxr94pm79kmger7m3f1v7v)) ^w4kswm The one thing I do try to follow is to go on streaks of reading a lot of books on a particular topic around the same time. Doing this is useful because it means I don’t have to just trust one author’s perspective on a particular topic, and it helps me connect a lot of facts together, so I can understand things better. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxs6t35as3v7yyg4fkh97h)) ^ltrbor To me, flash cards aren’t to memorize random things, or to win at trivia. They’re there to trigger a concept you’ve already learned, but want to make sure you don’t forget. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxts1kd2x2nmd9wnmy7626)) ^jk74bq Notes get into my Zettelkasten from the highlights in my Readwise. Readwise has a feature called Daily Review, which shows me about 15 of my book highlights every day. If I think a highlight is important, I’ll create a new note in my Zettelkasten and start connecting it with others. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxvqq37rm4x8k6ft704hcn)) ^9ugb4b in my Zettelkasten I put in the original quote and the source, and then write a short commentary on it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxw3yv1vxbahr2nk9wbvyv)) to me it’s actually really helpful to know who was president at a certain time because it allows you to connect the president with that time period. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegxzp4w3sj35fmwh44e4x38)) ^bvdts7 a friend was raving about the [reMarkable tablet](https://remarkable.com/), and I now use it for reading those types of documents a fair bit. It’s a simple e-ink tablet. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hegy5khatr7vtxv6pr3qa3s4))