If you've read Nav's stuff, you'll be as thrilled as I am to dig into his process, life, work, and, of course, the greatness of Windows phone.

Readers of the Toronto Star will recognize him as the weekly tech opinion columnist whose nuanced takes on tech and modern life offer a richness seldom seen these days in old fashioned newsprint. (His work is also found in Eater, The New Republic, the Globe and Mail, Macleans, Hazlitt and elsewhere.)

A Nav column seems to always command complicated material in a way that makes its depths understandable. And what we find is always a surprise.

In his autobiographical writing, this deftness turns inwards, and the results are at turns raw and personal. Things never stay in one place for long, however. Nav interweaves sophisticated notions of the self, the digital, the psychic implications of capitalism, and sometimes even straight up critical theory, into these unflinching investigations of the self.

I encourage you to check out his back catalogue!

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We cover a lot in this one!

Topics include:

• Nav’s upbringing
• Moving from London UK at 12
• Lived in Etobicoke between wealthy predominantly white area and lower income predominantly brown area
• Why Nav’s parents moved from London to the GTA
• How the daily racism of London was escaped in Canada
• Why Nav maintained his english accent in Canada
• reflecting on the boom period of the personal essay
• what it’s like to look back on old revealing essays
• SSRIs and creativity
• The dirty secret of academics: they are trying to solve their personal problems through their study
• what brought Nav to the point of working on a dissertation
• why a masters is academia's gateway drug
• looking back on the dissertation and the stubbornness to finish
• why the personal essay era ended
• integrating teaching into Nav's life
• teaching journalism vs English
• how Nav knows he has crackin’ pitch
• “too good for twitter” test
• “speed of editor reply” test
• bodily signals of a pitch
• constrained format of the column vs the up and down rollercoaster of a longform piece
• why Nav actually likes writing (mostly)
• dealing with the “emotional waves of writing”
• writing as a place to manage idiosyncrasies
• battle to find and embrace your own writing voice
• Nav’s drafting process
• Nav’s appreciation of early editing from Jordan Ginsberg at Hazlitt
• Nav’s experience with backlash from Jordan Peterson’s fanbase
• the “calculus of the moment” and when to engage with conflict on twitter
• Nav’s tendency to “poke the bear” in his written work
• Allison Roman piece
• how Nav was way ahead of the game on Alison Roman - stars aligned
• Nav on the greatness of the windows phone
• why Microsoft was ahead of apple in innovating on smartphone UI but couldn’t pull it off
• how network effects limit the ability to drastically alter established smartphone design norms
• what will the smartphone be replaced with next?

Thanks for listening!

Contact: Email greatlifework (at) substack (dot) com Instagram: @GreatLifeWorkPod Newsletter: greatlifework.com