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The digital commonplace book of Marcus Verrall
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The Commonplace Book of Marcus Verrall

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How Did We Get Here?

When we published the first edition of this book [2012], that "career escalator," as the writer Ronald Brownstein dubbed it, was jammed at every level. It had been for a while. Many young people, even the most highly educated, were stuck at the bottom, underemployed, or jobless, or trapped in dead-end positions out of sync with their ambitions and talents. Meanwhile, men and women in their sixties and seventies, with empty pensions and a government safety net that looked like Swiss cheese, were staying in or rejoining the workforce in record numbers. At best, this formula keeps middle-aged workers stuck in pro-motionless limbo; at worst, it squeezes them out in order to make room for more-senior talent.

The Startup of You (Revised and Updated)
p.5

G’day, and welcome!

I am Marcus Verrall, a curious technologist at heart and a pragmatic leader by trade. Building things is what excites me the most. I read. I write. I’ve occasionally been accused of being a rational optimist.

MV.com is a primarily a 'commonplace' book, somewhere for me to store quotes and clips from the books I read or audio files I listen to. I have been doing this for years on little coloured note-cards, with interesting or compelling quotes written by hand after finishing reading a book, following the advice and process of Ryan Holiday, an author I admire. Not only does this take many hours, it has other drawbacks, like not being portable, searchable, associated with a taxonomy or easily referenced in my own writing. It was developed after I searched high and low for something that had already been built, but found nothing suitable. 

Some of my favorite pieces of wisdom will still make it to physical cards, which will continue to adorn my working spaces, but all of them will make it to MV.com.

As well as making content generally available, I'll be making some stuff accessible only to registered members, with commenting and other features enabled. If you would like to be part of this group, please apply for membership via the registration form.

Enjoy!

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