Links and Reading

Currently Reading:

A Guide to Japan by Pico Iyer
Rules of Radiology

Listening : FKJ Tiny Desk - on repeat 24/7

Directives: Give Up

Quotes

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment (Rumi)

Commencement speech by Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes creator)

“We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.”

“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.”

“If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children.”

Themes of the Month

Book Notes

Books don’t work as a medium of knowledge. You don’t absorb information by reading sentences. You absorb information by applying it, playing with it and connecting it to other disparate topics.

You can test this theory by asking a person to ’tell me about the last book you read’. Especially if it’s a non-fiction book, they won’t be able to recall it very well.

The solution?

Either read for pure enjoyment (junk fiction) or pure education (textbooks)
Take notes on any books you do want to be able to talk about.
Steal ideas from books you read and just integrate it into your world view.

Currently : All notes are on ‘Obsidian’. This allow me to re-read books and explore the ideas without having to physically find the book and re-read it.

Thoughts on Time

Decision making is the ability to manage time.

Etymology of decide is to ‘sever’. Sever a pathway (similar to suicide, homocide etc).

You have a finite amount of time and an infinite amount of activities. The problem is that a lot of these activities are actually valuable. But you can’t do them all.

So decide. Cut out. Sever. Focus on a few things and cut the rest out

Sunlight on a log doesn’t make it catch fire But when you focus the light with a magnifying glass, it will burst into flame

Easy vs Difficult

Doing the difficult thing actually overall makes you happier

It’s the difference between deep happy and shallow happy. (Derek Sivers)

Shallow happy is binge watching a Netflix show. Deep happy is reading a difficult book and expanding your world view

Shallow happy is eating the ice cream. Deep happy is working out and eating right

Shallow happy is easy. Deep happy is hard.

Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.