I want to enumerate why journalling is a good habit, mainly because I want to make it a stronger habit for myself.

1. Self Reflection

The unexamined life is not worth living Socrates

“Know thyself” is the oldest advice in the book. Our life can be unconscious if we choose. The automaticity of thought and daily life can result in an almost trance like state, where you just drift from day to day without really asking the big questions. Who am I, what are my desires, what are some of my personality traits that maybe are harmful?

Humans are conditioned. We are influenced by our environment, our genes, cultural and social memes etc. This is of course inevitable.

The problem lies when this is all unconscious and unquestioned. It is when you don’t question your beliefs and ideas (which of course you’ve just picked up from somewhere else).

So journalling is a way to question yourself. Is there a better way? It’s about living an examined life.

2. Think about things

We often don’t know what we think, until we write it down.

Often it’s just a fuzzy idea. With belief for example, we often make leaps in logic or we just wholesale adopt the belief or opinion of someone we admire, without really thinking it through ourselves.

Writing is structured thinking. And with structured thinking you can more robustly make an informed point.

3. Nostalgia / Recording

I don’t typically look back, but I think that might not always be a good thing.

Psychology has shown that memory formation is flawed. We don’t see reality how is was. Often we are prone to biases such as looking back with rose tinted glasses. Maybe this is a good thing?

Journalling is a way to record day to day. What one did, thought, felt etc.

I’ve been trying to record more in general. Just take more pictures, videos, write. I don’t really go back and look at old photos, but people around me do, and its always nice to share a snapshot in time with someone else.

How I Currently Journal

I used to write in a paper notebook, but increasingly I’ve found using my phone or tablet is more convenient. I do both now.

At the moment, I use an app called : DayOne. You can record video, audio or write. It automatically saves the time and location. And I can write in it anywhere.

I sometimes dictate, because that way I can truly see what thoughts are coming up. There is less of a delay in typing and modifying. You can see the unfiltered reality of thought. It’s almost like having a conversation with yourself. It’s strangely therapeutic.

And what do you journal about? Any challenges during the day, how I can respond better, how I am feeling now. And longer term questions. Really it is personal. But I think the best format is to ask yourself questions. Be curious.

You can also you can just purely record what you are doing. Everyone has a different way of journalling.

But the most important thing I feel is to keep up the habit.

TLDR : Invest in your strengths

My sister is getting grief from parents, relatives and friends about ‘getting another degree.

This is intended to be some advice towards others, and also a reminder for myself. A degree is not the same as education.

Degree ≠ Education

For example, I think we all know some variation of this person. He/She was bad at school. But seemed to possess other skills like physical fitness, leadership, persuasion, sales skills etc.

They completely failed academically in school. Yet through educating themselves in their strengths, they became wildly more successful (than you).

What people seem to think is that having a degree means that you know about a topic. What it might mean is that you can pursue goal. But often people forget most of what they learn in a degree. It has become about signalling to employers that ‘I am the sort of person that can gain a degree’. That you can pursue goals.

This isn’t great. Pursuing goals doesn’t mean that they are the right goals for you.

The downsides of a degree

I don’t think everyone should get a degree. In Germany for example, apprenticeships are much more valued, and if they feel you can’t pursue A levels successfully, they push you towards apprenticeships.

In the UK, there are definitely plumbers/electricians making much more than white collar workers. Business owners don’t usually have a ‘business degree’, they just simply start.

I want to enumerate some of the pitfalls thinking about getting a degree.

• It means you are smart. No, it means that you can do somewhat well in standardised testing. This attitude (can be very subtle) leads lack of learning. If you feel like you are intelligent and already know, you cease to learn.
• You forget most of what you ‘learn’ on your degree (Krebs cycle meme)
• Most of what you learn to get the degree is useless. That time could have been spent on useful ‘life’ skills. How to be happy, how to manage money, how to find good relationships, how to be creative etc.
• Jumping through hoops
• Bankrupt your self/parents. Especially if doing a non vocational degree.

That said, there are obviously benefits

What is the value of a degree/university?

• Signalling to employers that you can pursue hard goals. Demonstrates long term thinking and delayed gratification
• Socialising (most important): being surrounded by a peer network of equally smart people. Potentially meeting future spouse, forming lifelong friendships.
• Independent living apart from your parents

Choose Fields that you find easy

I’ll talk a bit about my experience. I wish I had this advice in school.

I have particular strengths. I can focus single handedly on task, I can learn independently, I work well alone, I like to create and solve problems. Combined with the fact that I pretty much spent my childhood on computers, the logical option was to do Computer Science. A field that I actually find intuitive and ‘easy’.

Instead, I chose to study something that maybe didn’t suit my personality or inclination at the time. Didn’t get in to medical school the first time round.

I didn’t focus on my strengths.

Luckily, medicine is a broad field and I also realised the importance of educating yourself. I read widely outside of medicine, realising that most of what I was learning was minutiae. There were other important things to learn too.

And now, deciding on specialty applications, what you spent the next 25-30 years of your life to make a living : I’ve chosen based on my strengths and interests rather than any outside expectation or coercion.

Interest alone is not enough too. You have to be good at it. I am fascinated by psychology and the mind. Psychiatry seems interesting, yet I know that I would be a terrible psychiatrist. It doesn’t suit my strengths.

So find what you are good at. What you naturally find easy, and are also good at. Something that feels less like work and more like play.

TLDR: Advice

What everyone needs to do is :

Identify your strengths - read widely, try lots of different things and pick up things that you naturally find easy and are also good at. Then invest time into them.

David Eagleman explaining changing your mind

I want to outline how present me currently thinks about thinking, belief formation and the value of changing your mind based on evidence.

Let’s start with the fundamentals

Scientific Method

Science is not about finding evidence to support a claim. It is not a body of knowledge.

Science is a methodology to seek truth. Veritas.

Start with a question. Explore possible stories that could answer said question : coming up with a hypothesis. Which is essentially an idea, it requires intense creativity. In fact you come up with multiple hypotheses. Multiple stories that may explain whatever one wants to explain.

Then you go out and gather evidence that seeks to disprove the hypothesis (falsifiability) And you shift your confidences around based on the weight of the evidence (Bayesian thinking)

Crucial step : you never truly discard any hypothesis, its just the probability of it being true is severely diminished if there is no supporting evidence

Constantly reassess.

Let’s look at an example

Creation stories

I remember ever since my early teens I was deeply concerned about religion. I was a pretty militant atheist.

I’ve changed my view on this, I’m neither a theist, agnostic or atheist. More of what David Eagleman calls a ‘Possibilian’ 😎.

Applied to Religion There are multiple religious stories. The Judea-Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Greek, Roman, African tree spirits etc. They seek to answer the question of ‘creation’. In fact physics is essentially a creation story as well.

The problem is these stories don’t really value evidence, apart from the story created by modern physics. They are non-falsifiable, you can’t disprove the existence of God. Therefore they fall out of the domain of evidence, and into the domain of belief.

The most harmful aspect is this. It requires dogmatic certainty. How can you be 100% certain that this story is true?

This is the crux : please don’t hold onto anything dogmatically. You have to reassess the evidence, and then shift your views.

As a human you are already prone to countless biases documented in psychology. The way you think is so flawed. As Feynman said “you are the easiest person to fool”. It’s very easy to lie to oneself.

“We know too little to commit to strict atheism, and too little to commit to any religious ideology”. So… say “I don’t know” or the more accurately : the best evidence disproves a lot of the claims made in many religious stories.

Don’t know mind

All the Big Questions… What happens after we die. Is there a God. What is love (baby don’t hurt me). You have to start from a point of I don’t know, rather than any conditioned stories that society has consciously or unconsciously implanted. Empty your cup.

Explore the question, disprove certain claims.

Then come to a best guess, and realise that for most of these questions, we don’t know.

(Actually for a lot of the big questions, I don’t think there is an answer. But the question, and the process of searching for the truth is valuable)

That’s all I want. I think a little intellectual humility goes a long way. And future me, if you ever ‘believe’ in anything 100%, something has gone wrong.

Peace.