Happy Sunday Friends!

Welcome back to another Sunday Friends! I’m glad you’re here. Here is your Sunday Musings, dedicated to exploring and sharing thoughts and insights on productivity, technology, and life. If you find it useful, please feel free to forward this along to friends!

This Week in Productivity

📋Delegation

What is it?

Building off the concepts of the 2-minute rule, and the mental construct of time being our most valuable finite resource. What is your time worth to you? Assign an aspirational hourly rate to your time (this should change as you gain skills and experience btw). Now look at your task list and delegate anything that’s below your hourly rate. use the time gained to deep focus on your high-value work.

Now, while this works in the job front, it also applies to everyday life. Work around the house, on the car, etc. Outsource the things you don’t want to do that can be outsourced for less than the time value you have for yourself or the task.

How I use it

I actually enjoy plunking on the keyboard, working on technical solutions for cyber offense, defense, and exploitation. I very much enjoy the analytical process of sifting through disparate pieces of information to make connections and develop intelligence in the forms of pattern of life analysis, link diagraming, and attribution. My job isn’t to do that anymore, however.

Now for me, I’ve adapted the delegation approach by incorporating the Eisenhower matrix. It’s not always about my time being worth more, but rather, rather my time being better spent on certain tasks. Meaning I prioritize those tasks that only I can do, or that have high consequences and deadlines. I delegate the things that still must get done, but don’t require my skillset and will be better accomplished by someone who will do it better than me.

Technology I’m Looking At

Canary Tokens

The most common thing I hear from victims of breaches and hacks are that they realized the breach way too late. It's crucial to detect unauthorized access early. The folks at Thinkst created a bunch of different tokens for you to employ in business, or at home to detect an attack or compromised equity and trigger an alert, similar to coal mine canaries.

The Thin Slice

It’s interesting, I see ways to use it both defensively, and offensively. I think they’re a great way to detect unauthorized access.

You can use them as system files, on websites, messages, documents, images, binaries, and even credit cards (More on this).

My Opinion

Canary tokens (or honey tokens) are a great layer to the defense in depth cybersecurity model. Nothing is perfect, but the idea is to make YOU not worth the attacker’s time, or at least get notified in time to safe yourself time and heartache.

What's particularly interesting about Canary Tokens is the Credit Card canary. Sign up (free) set up valid credit card credentials (sorry folks, you won’t be charging anything on it). Save these credentials as a payment option in your online accounts, and you get an alert if someone attempts to test out the card information. At worst, you'll know your information was stolen earlier than waiting for the company to disclose, and at best, the attacker will steal the wrong information.

Quote I’m Musing

“It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them.”

-Epictetus

In other words, events are just that - events. Whether it's through religion, fate, or something else, things happen. Through our judgement of those events, we decide that something happens is unfair, or bad, or good, or offensive, or rude.

This specific sentence from Epictetus guided the founding of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, according to Dr. Albert Ellis. In fact, both Beck and Ellis noted that they drew on stoic philosophies in developing their psychotherapeutic techniques.

This is is a life-long journey for me. I am analyzing and making judgements on things happening around me constantly. From conversations to balloons from other another country floating by, I have to deliberately remind myself that I have the ability to hold no opinion. When I’m successful, I find more clarity of thought and a calmer mind.

I’ll leave you with a follow up from Epictetus, he said, “If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.”

I would love your feedback!

Which musing is your favorite? What else do you want to see or what should I eliminate? Any other suggestions? Just send a tweet to @erichaupt on Twitter and put #SundayMusings at the end so I can find it. Or, eric@erichaupt.com for long form email.
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Have a wonderful week, I’ll see you Sunday.
​-e