Hello hello my good friends. I am back from the holiday and resting-my-head-ignoring-inflation days. Good to be back, I hope you missed me. I missed sharing quality stuff with you. Remember the motto, knowledge means nothing unless it is shared.
The good news:
Here is the part one of the e-book I am writing, “The Stoic Guide”. Part 2 and Part 3 will be available till the end of August/September. Think of this as the first draft since it needs to be updated and polished.
Please feel free to criticize this work via email. If you notice anything bad, or have something to add, find me. Let’s also talk on Stoicism after you read the part 1. What important thing do you have to chat on rather than Stoicism, huh?
Every subscriber has access to the pdf, if there is a problem for you reaching to the pdf please reply to this mail. If you think a friend can get benefit out of this, help me spread the word by sharing this newsletter.
Some announcements:
From now on, this newsletter will arrive at your inbox at 2-weeks intervals. Weekly dose of email bombardment does not work as I noticed among my friends and also from the open-rate of my mails.
There will be quotes and summaries from the books I have read, separate from Ruggets bi-weekly posts. I will not be sending the summaries to you via email in order to not fill up your mailbox but I will link them in the Ruggets emails, if there is any summary written by me. You will always find them at ruggets.substack.com. You know the drill !
Before we continue, if I was a photo I would be something like this:
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🗒️ Book summary of the week:
🧠 Good to Know in 5 Sentences:
Existentialism:
Let’s continue on our philosophy-related terms. Existentialism cannot be explained in 5 sentences but I will try my best:
It is a philosophical movement that asserts the individual is the sole responsible for making meaningful, authentic choices in a universe deemed as absurd.
Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel can be cited as the pioneers.
Existence precedes essence, which means we are born with no character, we build ourselves on the road.
The individual is responsible for all the choices she makes throughout her life, and if she is to deny the responsibility that signals bad faith.
Since we are free to act and choose our actions and choices, we are species who are thrown into the world and condemned to be free.
Here is the best course on Existentialism. Thanks YouTube.
🐦5 Tweets/Threads:
This is the one of the most quality advice thread I have read in a while.
My highlights:
Starting is the hardest part - lean into the resistance you feel and just start.
Time management isn’t real, there’s only self management
Plan each day the night before
Have a short but powerful morning routine
Take a break every ~90 minutes (adjust accordingly)
Everybody needs to polish their rhetoric skills in this post-truth area:
My highlights:
Anaphora: The repetition of words or phrases at the start of successive clauses.
Procatalepsis: A rhetorical device in which you raise possible objections to your point and then address them.
Eutrepismus When you number and order the topics under consideration. Your audience will know what to expect and they can follow your arguments more clearly.
I am a sucker for mental models and for anything related to them, but you know this already.
My highlights:
The Arena Razor: When faced with two paths, choose the path that puts you in the arena. It's easy to throw rocks from the sidelines. It's scary and lonely in the arena—but it's where growth happens.”
The Uphill Decision Razor: When faced with two options, choose the one that’s more difficult in the short-term.
This is some sort of a fundamental attribution error. We blame people when they do wrong, we blame external circumstances when we do something wrong.
Can you draw me the picture of happiness you ask? Here:
📝 3 Articles:
This article touches upon the idea that you have to first imagine where you want to be in order to get there.
The best possible self intervention consists of a brief writing exercise in which you imagine your best possible self in a potential future when pretty much everything has gone right.
The researchers found that the best-possible-self exercise improved positive affect and positive expectations, and reduced goal ambivalence, both right after the exercise and up to a week later.
What do you say, huh? It may be great to write down your best self to start something worthwhile finally.
This is one of the best lists I have hidden in my secret vault. It is worth re-reading and re-sharing.
Not wanting something is as good as having it. (Epictetus said this 2500 years ago)
Someone else’s success isn’t your failure.
Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue.
More choices often lead to less action. Do more by doing less.
Being busy is not a badge of honor—it's a lack of freedom
This was an interesting suggestion to read on the topic of career development. Author suggests that you reduce uncertainty for others as much as you can in order to build the trust you need for career advancement.
Think of it briefing your boss without him asking questions
Letting your team what you are going to in next 2-3 sprints
Letting your customers weekly were the project is right know and what are the steps left until completion
Very interesting finding:
University College of London study found that people were far more stressed when there was a chance of getting an electrical shock than when they knew one was coming with confidence.
📊 1 Interesting Graph/Stat:
NASA asserts that they have identified 5060 planets. They may or may not be like our world. They are planets looking to our existence from a trillion kilometers away.
Super Earth: They are planets unlike any other in our solar system. They are called Super Earth since they are bigger than Earth but lighter. They can be made of gas and rock or both.
📺 3 Videos:
We see fascism takes power country by country. This video was enlightening to brush my knowledge on Fascisms:
We forget that most of the time Fascism starts as a “democratic party.” Even Hitler was elected first.
All fascist narratives have a mythic past.
The political opponent is always depicted as a merciless threat to our own existence. They are the other, terrorists in us.
Persuade people that they are better than the rest of us.
This belief in being superior will lead to victimhood stories
This video is the first part of the 4-part documentary.
The urge in me to break a pattern fired again.
We need to find more ways to connect with nature in the modern cities.
You cannot plan your life in detail beforehand. Accept there will be downs on the way to your destination.
Here is a superb playlist for you when you get high on classical music:
📽️ 1 Series/ Film or Documentary:
Uff, this was a slap in the face. I re-watched Naked. My favorite style of films is the one that is filled with quality conversations about life in general. I need to say “a-ha” while I am watching it.
Louise : So what happened, were you bored in Manchester?
Johnny : Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it. So now you want cheap thrills and like plenty of them, and it don't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored.
This quote hit the hardest:
I've got an infinite number of places to go, the problem is where to stay.
I want to leave you with a question without further getting into spoilers:
Have you ever thought, right, but you don't know, but you may have already lived the happiest day in your whole fuckin' life and all you have left to look forward to is fuckin' sickness and purgatory?
🦩 Some Fun?
Join 50k+ smart people on Refind and get 7 new links every day that make you smarter, tailored to your interests, curated from 10k+ sources.
Sample is a newsletter recommendation tool that gives you one great newsletter advice every day. My go-to tool for new quality editions that worth my time.
Now the fourth subscriber profile will be my dear friend Hasan Yılmaz. I love questioning, and it was again an amazing experience with him.
What is your biggest fear in life?
Feeling helpless and desperate in the face of something that affects my whole life.
What is one thing you never get bored of doing?
Listening to music, of course.
If you could get a sentence as a tattoo on your arm, what sentence would it be?
“Alle warten auf das Licht
Fürchtet euch fürchtet euch nicht”
What is the thing you regret the most that you didn't do/try?
Taking risks in general. I wish I had taken more risks.
Who would you like to have dinner with and talk about life?
Neşet Ertaş. For those of you who might not know him, here is link to my favorite song.
You have one wish, you can do anything, what's the first thing you'll do?
I'd like to be a superhero, Wolverine.
If money wasn't a problem for you, what would you be doing?
I’d be an artist, most probably a musician.
Who is your favorite superhero?
Batman.
Who is your idol?
Swedish House Mafia.
What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?
The way popular TV series and movies are exaggerated like GOT, Friends, HIMYM.
If you had the chance, what would be the city and time you like to be born and live in?
1980 Berlin.
If you had to listen to 10 songs until you die, which 10 would it be?
Check out the Spotify playlist. Use this link to add your 10 , please no more than 10 :)
If you can recommend only 10 books to your loved ones, which 10 would it be?
What is the one movie you keep re-watching?
Dark Night Trilogy.
If you would like to answer these questions, hit reply to this email with your answers to be published in the newsletter. I would like to know you!
📜 3 Quotes:
“No amount of guilt can change the past. No amount of anxiety can change the future.”
— Anonymous
“Progress happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen too quickly to ignore.”
— Morgan Housel
📱 1 Useful App/Website/Tool
Darebee.com is the ultimate guide for your fitness needs. Bookmark it to find new moves when you are ready to grow some muscles or burn some calories: