Luca Dellanna's information diet

Here's the new episode of a series of tiny interviews with our favorite thinkers, creators, writers, technologists.

It's a way to get a glimpse into their daily routines and information diets.

This time we're joined by a long-time Mailbrew and Typefully user who's been an endless source of feedback, and inspiration: writer Luca Dellanna.

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m the author of 7 books, a management consultant, and an independent researcher on adaptive systems. I divide my time between Turin, Italy (my hometown) and Singapore (my wife’s hometown).

My books are each on a separate topic: management, personal growth, human behavior, autism, economics, and adaptive systems.

Also, I’m the inventor of Roam Books. My hobbies are playing basketball and coding.

How do you usually start your day?

First I have breakfast, then read my brews (Mailbrew digests) while sipping coffee. Once I’m done, I check my emails and complete any task that takes less than 2-3 minutes. Finally, I begin working on the important projects I have for the day.

What’s your information diet like?

Twitter, consumed via Mailbrew, is the main ingredient in my information diet.

My favorite newsletters are Stratechery, The Diff, and Matt Levine’s. I try to avoid reading newspapers – the fact that they missed the story of the decade (the pandemic back in January 2020) is a testament to their limits.

What are the most interesting people you follow right now?

Three classics: @nntaleb, @balajis, @naval.

Three less-known ones: @JeffLonsdale, @daveg, @angjiang.

Also, here's a brew with my favorite followings.

How do you stay focused and productive?

There are only two long-term solutions which proved to work for me. One, leaving my phone in another room. Two, a weekly personal review process, where I examine which behaviors of mine had a detrimental effect on my life and whether I question whether they’re worth their benefits.

The second process is quite ineffective in the short-term but very effective in the long-term one: the hundredth time you acknowledge that your phone made you waste two hours is the time that you will learn to leave it in another room for good.

How do you keep a healthy information diet?

Iteration is very important to me.

I always try new sources of content, and then weekly remove the ones that turned up not to be that good (or used to be good, but aren’t useful to me anymore).

How do you usually consume content?

My reading stack: Twitter, Mailbrew, Pocket (for very long-form content).

Any books you want to recommend?

“Antifragile” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is always my #1 recommendation, and “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Covey changed my life for the better (despite the cheesy title, its principles are excellent).

Of course, I would also recommend my books — including my bestselling one, “100 Truths You Will Learn Too Late”.

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Read the previous interviews to Julian Lehr and Nathan Baschez.