Link Bundle
1️⃣ We only work for 2 hours and 23 minutes productively. I thought it would be more likely to be around 4 at least.
New research from the UK’s largest money saving brand has revealed that the average UK office worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes out of the working day; with social media and trawling news websites labelled as the main distractions affecting employee productivity each working day.
2️⃣ This post gives a good perspective on the time we have . How can we go on living life knowing that we are mortal? It seems so absurd and I think it is our strongest muscle.
Most people sleep about seven or eight hours a night. That leaves 16 or 17 hours awake each day. Or about 1,000 minutes.
Let’s think about those 1,000 minutes as 100 10-minute blocks. That’s what we wake up with every day:
Some questions:
Is 10 minutes of meditation a day important enough to dedicate a block to it?
Reading 30 minutes cost 3 blocks of you? Is it more or less?
You spend 2 hours on video games, it is 12 blocks of what you have. Think again.
You spend 8 hours working, do you love your job? It is 48 blocks of what you have. Nearly half of your awaken life. Are you sure continuing this way?
3️⃣ I loved this book when I first read it. A little color in our white-collar lives, wouldn't it be nice?
My first 2 strategies to seem genius in a presentation:
4️⃣ 10 rules of philosophy to live by is a good read of quotes and philosophies. For example, this is the best strategy to see if an argument is valid: What assumptions would make this rational? Dig into each one of assumptions.
Paying close attention, rather than constructing arguments, lies at the heart of the best philosophising.
5️⃣ Here are some great questions to use with your boss next time. Try to lead the 1-1-s with your questions. My favs:
I am having some challenges and struggles with X. Can you help me think about how to navigate and address X successfully?
What are your priorities over the next X days? What can I do to help you with this?
As you reflect on what I do at work, what should I start, stop, or continue doing?
6️⃣ One study found that 73 percent of people’s vivid memories were either first-time experiences or unique events.
Our first kiss, our first flat, our first job. In the Happy Memory Study we conducted at the Happiness Research Institute, we found that 23 percent of people’s memories were of novel or extraordinary experiences.
7️⃣ James Clear hits it again with a fresh perspective. Setting high goals is tough, so what we need to do is to change our lifestyles. Here are examples from him:
Think more on what you can change as a lifestyle, on a day-to-day basis.
8️⃣ You know I love lists like this as much as I love my wife :)
Collect feedback from everybody. Play games with close friends where you have to give each other constructive criticism and ways to improve. Collect anonymous feedback from internet strangers on Admonymous.
Free will. The anthropic principle. Solipsism. The simulation hypothesis. Moral realism. They’re fun to argue about through the night but don’t judge anyone too much based on the positions they take and don’t treat any of them too seriously as guides to actually living your life. It should all add up to normalcy in the end.
Humans are made to walk. Set up your life to encourage walking by acquiring soft-soled shoes, good audiobooks, and/or a dog. If you’re not enjoying walking and not getting your 10,000 steps you can get there with good design choices.
Participate in exactly one riot in your life.
Most great music is made outside your country and in other languages.
At work, if someone wants to set up a meeting or call, don’t accept until they send a clear agenda or a list of questions/topics. If you need someone’s time, send a clear agenda and list ahead of time. Meetings should not be about deciding what the meeting should be about.
9️⃣ This is a good post on how to ask more quality questions from the master of product management.
Remember to use every angle while asking questions : why, who, what, when, where, which, how many, how, how long, do, are, will, have, should, and is.
🔟 The mindmap guy was one of my old discoveries. There are tens of book summaries but this one is the one of the bests.
1️⃣ 1️⃣ Best mental models gathered together? I got you with this link.
Via Negativa
The action of improving a system by removing elements from it. The paradox of choice states that more options can lead to poorer decisions. Via negativa is the solution.Warren Buffett’s 5/25 rule is a method of via negativa: List 25 goals you want to achieve in the next ten years. Select the top five and ignore the remaining 20 at all costs.
Second-Order Thinking
Thinking in terms of effects and the effects of those effects. Second-order thinkers ask themselves the question; “and then what”?Second-order thinking is largely related to thinking in terms of permutations and combinations in combination with decision trees. This is crucial in the investment business. As Ray Dalio says: Failing to consider second and third-order consequences is the cause of a lot of painfully bad decisions, and it is especially deadly when the first inferior option confirms your own biases.
90-9-1 Rule
In a social media network, only 1 percent of users will actively create content; another 9 percent will participate by commenting, rating, or sharing the content; and the last 90 percent will watch, look and read without responding.Perfect Solution Fallacy
Also called the Nirvana fallacy, it’s a false dichotomy suggesting that a perfect solution exists to a problem and that courses of action should be rejected if just a small part of the problem remains.Sturgeon’s Law
An adage cited as “ninety percent of everything is crap.” Quoted by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, it represents the belief that in general, the vast majority of the work that is produced in any given field is of low quality.Occam’s Razor
All else equal, Occam’s razor is the idea of preferring the theory with the fewest assumptions. Also called the parsimony principle, it’s a basic idea to all science and suggests to choose the simplest scientific explanation that fits the evidence. In terms of tree-building, this means that, ceteris paribus, the best hypothesis is the one that requires the fewest evolutionary changes.
1️⃣ 2️⃣ Whenever you are putting something off, try to imagine the future you and conditions as vividly as possible.
In Blouin Hudon and Pychyl’s research, the students who reported conjuring the most vivid mental images also felt the strongest relationships with their future selves and were the least likely to procrastinate.
In putting something off until a later point in time, we’re failing to consider how much our future self will want to avoid the same negative emotions that we’re trying to avoid right now.
1️⃣ 3️⃣ Certain personality traits seem to be generally beneficial across a wide range of cognitive abilities. Those "helpful" traits are:
Self-esteem
Internal locus of control
Compassion
Industriousness
Order
Independent-Mindedness
Openness (to experience & ideas, especially)
Activity (i.e. doing lots of stuff)
1️⃣ 4️⃣ Short and good post on some ideas you can apply to your daily life as a Stoic. My favs:
You don’t need to judge everything
Practice the conditions that you fear
Practice imagining death
1️⃣ 5️⃣ Some good rules:
There’s nothing more important than the relationships with people you care about. ⭐️
Confrontation doesn’t equal conflict. It’s how you go about it.
Both in business and life, double down on what works.
Playing the long game is a superpower.
Most decisions should be made on 1-2 variables alone.
Don't latch your identify onto outcomes. They won't last forever. ⭐️
1️⃣ 6️⃣ Good info to keep in mind — quality of your conversations > quantity of it.
A quality conversation is just as important as the quantity of conversations. In his 2020 study, Hall found that meaningful interactions — like laughter-filled hangouts or emotional discussions — adequately keep loneliness at bay. The most effective mode of communication for these interactions is to have them face-to-face (although a phone call is a close second), Hall found in a 2022 study. “The most impactful thing to do is have a meaningful conversation with someone you really like, face-to-face” every day, Hall says. “However, what the evidence also suggests is that just doing any one of those three things — face-to-face, or with someone who’s close [to you], or quality conversation with a stranger — will do.”
1️⃣ 7️⃣ Here are some great podcast suggestions:
📚Book Summary of the Week
Letters to a Young Poet
This is by far the best explanation of marriage and how it can help transform the people. You as a partner has to show the utmost respect for your partner solitude. Merging into one being is an “impossibility”. It is sad maybe but even between the closest people infinite distances exist.
“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
I felt the urge to rush to my comfort zone when I felt a little bit unease at all. Maybe you can relate. Time told me a lot of times the rose gardens were never promised for me. There was always someone in a bitter situation. There will always worse thing that will happen in near future. There is no end to bad things. But it is good. You cannot escape that. You cannot predict that. You are in the midst of transitions. You are always becoming something other than you.
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
One thing I am certain about is this: I will ask questions until I am dead. You can read my will when you see me asking no questions at all. There is an insatiable appetite inside me about finding new things that I do not understand. Maybe it is a good thing. Maybe not. The possibility of undiscovered roads my questions can take me is the best thing for me. I do not know where I am going, but who knows?
"And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrased, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers--perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life."
Drop you prejudices already. Every day you need to see the same person with fresh eyes. Every day you need to erase her wrong-doings. Every human being may be expecting some love and understanding from you. Love is not received, it is given.
"How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage."
This is hard to accept. As human beings, we love the feeling that our victories are shared, our sadness is felt thoroughly. We are solitary. No matter how hard you try to understand and feel me, it is impossible. 7 billion people and everyone of them is a rock to you. And you are rock to them. Why is there always somethings never intruded? Never be explained by words? Never be understood without you saying anything since it is practically impossible to say something about them because you do not fucking know how to put them into words? Why do we give so much importance to words anyway? We are superior to words.
"Ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another."
Since I already asserted that I love questioning this quote hit me the hardest. LOVE THE QUESTIONS. What a philosophy huh? Do not rush the questions. Some day you will figure it out anyway.
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
Love is the most difficult thing. It requires passion and patience. It forces you to become something out of yourself and be a universe for another. It is tough, filled with heart breaks. Love forces you to give the all control to the opposite side sometimes. The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love as Henry Miller said, wisely.
“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”
I look for what I have been looking for and I still have not found what I am looking for. “Go within” advice never worked for me. It still did not work. I still could not find what I must build my life upon.
"There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, I must, then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge."
“Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life”
The last quote below is the extended version of fourth quote I have shared with you. You must not think that something happens to you. Somethings happen with you. That uneasiness will shape you who you will transition into. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you."
We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you."
🦋 Poem of the Week
TELESCOPE There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are because you’ve been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky. You’ve stopped being here in the world. You’re in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning. You’re not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity. Then you’re in the world again. At night, on a cold hill, taking the telescope apart. You realize afterward not that the image is false but the relation is false. You see again how far away each thing is from every other thing. - Louise Glück