What’s Tim Taking? Radical Simplicity, Functional Meetings, and Real-Life Reminders

Welcome to What’s Tim Taking? Volume 9—your bi-weekly dispatch of tools, obsessions, and ideas worth stealing.

Book I’m Reading

Lately, I’ve been feeling disillusioned—by headlines about tariffs and inflation, by the relentless noise of hustle culture on social media, and by the creeping sense that everything’s optimized except for peace of mind.

So I picked up The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sundeen. It tells the true story of Daniel Suelo, a man who gave up all forms of currency and chose to live entirely off the grid, without a penny to his name. The book explores his radical rejection of modern consumerism and his search for meaning through simplicity, self-reliance, and human connection. It’s a provocative meditation on what we value—and what we give up to get it.

Idea I’ve Codified

This new section takes an idea I’ve been chewing on and expresses it in code. Not real code, but pseudo-code—a kind of thought experiment disguised as a JavaScript function.

Why code? Because code forces clarity and reveals structure. If you can’t explain something simply, it probably doesn’t work. That’s what I’m after here.

The first idea I’m codifying? Meetings.

I’ve spent too much of my life in them, most of them being unproductive. Not because meetings are inherently broken—but because we treat them like the default. A meeting isn’t a plan. It’s a function. It should take inputs and return something useful.

The code below breaks that down—and yes, there are comments (// = notes). If you’re new to code, read those. That’s where real thinking lives.

// This function represents a meeting.
// It takes in several inputs (like people, agenda, context) and returns results (like outcomes and next steps).

function runMeeting({
    attendees = [],       // People invited to the meeting
    roles = {},           // Each attendees role (e.g., facilitator, note-taker, decision-maker)
    agenda = [],          // List of items to talk through
    context = "",         // Background info or why this meeting exists
    prework = [],         // The often overlooked task which requires attendees to come prepared
    deliverables = [],    // Outcomes or tasks the meeting is expected to produce
    location = "Zoom",    // Where the meeting happens (default is Zoom)
    time = "30"           // How many minutes the meeting is planned for
  }) {
  
    // Step 1: Go through each agenda item and have a discussion
    const discussion = agenda.map(item => discuss(item));
  
    // Step 2: Take notes during the meeting, ideally done by an assigned note-taker or LLM
    const notes = takeNotes(attendees, roles.noteTaker);
  
    // Step 3: From the discussion, decide who needs to do what and assign action items
    const actions = assignActions(discussion, roles.decisionMaker);
  
    // Step 4: Identify anything that might be blocking progress or left unresolved
    const blockers = identifyBlockers(discussion);
    
    // Step 5: Based on everything discussed, figure out the outcome of the meeting
    const outcome = generateOutcome(discussion, deliverables);
  
    // Finally, return a summary of what the meeting achieved
    return {
      outcome,           // The main result of the meeting
      notes,             // Everything that was captured
      actions,           // Who’s doing what next
      blockers,          // What’s in the way
      nextSteps: planNextMeeting(outcome)  // What's happening next, if anything
    };
  }

Quote of the Week

“Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life” –Jerzy Gregorek, Olympic weightlifter

Lately I’ve been swimming in what I call “big boy problems.” The kind that show up in both your email inbox and your gut. This quote has been a useful compass: every time I’m tempted to dodge a hard conversation or decision, I remind myself that leaning in now makes the future easier. The wave always looks big in front of you, but paddling straight into it beats drifting wherever the current takes you. The obstacle is the way.