The Things I Read - Week of Feb 3, 2020
Like last week, I have put the most relevant or articles I found most useful/valuable/insightful at the top. I read a shit ton of Growth articles and I think this is the last week I will read those - they all started to look and sound the same and frankly I'm not getting anything out of them anymore. What I'm going to do is divert more energy into looking for innovation and inspiration from technology/science and potentially business while asking from network, answers to questions I may have. Also... I'm going to be reading more Book Books - things that people have put time into researching and publishing, as opposed to 5 minute articles on Medium.
Love
https://medium.com/@GirishKarthikeyan700/how-to-defeat-codependence-from-the-inside-da735fe2f77b
“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
It seems most of us are walking around with an existential angst of not being enough and what we can do to please others.
Growth
https://medium.com/vanguardmag/showing-up-is-not-enough-a0990d716196
Intrinsic problems:
- An assumption of intrinsic “good”
- A presumption that talent is of value in a vacuum
- A karmic philosophy that concludes you get what you work for
- An expectation that filling one’s space and time with satisfying things and people will lead to happiness
- An overwhelming and overarching sense of virtue and entitlement
- At the same time, a self-cruelty that undermines the virtues themselves
The self is an ocean. It is both the water and the coast that contains it, and both the water and the coast exert equal force on the way they shape each other.
- Care about how you look
- Care about how you feel
- Value life equally and above all
https://byrslf.co/the-journey-to-self-knowledge-and-confidence-3ec201701d30
Replace negative thoughts with positive ones will build a healthier dialogue with yourself.
https://medium.com/on-the-rise/the-power-of-writing-247c796be142
Writing forces you to take a break from the madness and think things through before you write them down.
https://medium.com/@prachirpasricha/letting-your-mind-out-of-its-own-cage-2aa5cb4dc403
If our minds are never allowed the chance to wander into the unknown, how will we ever know what they are fully capable of creating?
Don’t always fill your schedule with things to do. It’s ok to schedule a break to do nothing - let your mind wander.
https://artplusmarketing.com/the-4-pillars-of-extraordinary-bliss-d14dbf13d235?gi=2913e390fad8
Learn
Make
Experience
Share
https://medium.com/@derekfrancis089/the-key-to-confidence-love-your-inner-child-359b68bcb906
We must all be the parent our inner child deserves. If your parents weren’t there for you the way you needed them, be that person for yourself.
This self-parenting and self-love will give our inner child a voice of their own.
https://medium.com/the-mission/12-mindfulness-hacks-you-can-use-in-24-hours-d77bf06a85ca
- Start mindful morning routine
- Coffee concentration - create a ritual around the drink you have in the morning
- Exercise to connect with the body
- Sketch a doodle
- Stretch
- Deep breathing
… If you want to learn more, you can read this article, but for me, frankly I thought most of it was actually crap.
https://medium.com/better-humans/the-biohackers-guide-to-dealing-with-anxiety-722c8133a692
Fear motivates us to escape from — or in some cases, directly combat — a perceived threat. Anxiety, by contrast, promotes overly cautious behavior in general.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is in most cases inherently counterproductive. It doesn’t motivate you to do anything to solve your problems, and should, therefore, be avoided or minimized.
CAUSES OF ANXIETY
- Current/past life stress
- Stimulants
- Poor coping skills
- External locus of control
TO COMBAT ANXIETY
- Exercise
- Work standing up
- Cut out stimulants
- Sleep on a strict schedule
- Meditate
- Take L-Theanine
- CBD
- Deep breathing
- Experiment in minimalism
https://medium.com/@denizbsgl/having-true-friends-d9db294f8330
Aristotle writes about friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics - three types. Utility, Pleasure and Virtue; virtue being the highest regarded.
Friendship is more independent and unattached, you are together by heart but there are not as much expectations as in a romantic relationship. In a way this makes friendship purer.
https://medium.com/the-ascent/this-new-year-i-resolve-to-make-my-life-worry-free-37c4180b5e37
- Cut out toxic people
- Listen to your body
- Enjoy the company of one
- Loving your own image
- Recycle more
- Make meaningful art
- Interact with animals
https://blog.usejournal.com/7-ancient-happiness-rituals-to-dump-emotional-baggage-92886d86fbd
- Uncover hidden reason for the anger by showing: Compassion Forgiveness and Loving Kindness
- Flush away fears with a fresh vision - Imaginary fears are typically made by anticipating a future worse than today.
- Practice mindfulness to remove the toxic BS you tell yourself
- Write new rules that align with your life and your goals
- Reverse the burden of regret
- Heal shame
- Step out of stress by going for a walk
Become intentional on what you want out of life. Commit to it. Nurture your dreams. Focus on your development and if you want to give up, know what’s involved before you take the plunge. Because I assure you, someone out there right now is working harder than you, reading more books, sleeping less and sacrificing all they have to realize their dreams and it may contest with yours. Don’t leave your dreams to chance.
“The strongest ones bleed in silence. Have no one applauding their growth. Have no one watching their healing process. They bloom in silence.”
“You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.”— James A. Froude
If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them
Takeaways - To create maximum efficiency, put the items you’re most likely to use in front of you. Block out everything else.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/math-101-a-reading-list-for-lifelong-learners
Books to read for improvement in overall understanding of mathematics.
https://medium.com/the-ascent/how-to-reach-your-goal-when-you-are-running-out-of-steam-eeb2b8738456
Mel Robbins 5 second rule - If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it.
Remembering the “why” you set a goal may help you move towards action.
Business
Spirit makes money through a process called “unbundling”
They let customers only pay for what they need. Water costs $3. It costs money to use overhead bins. To check luggage. To print boarding passes etc. So if you don’t use any of that, don’t pay, but if you do, pay.
“Businesses that look at what people say,” he argues, “don’t do as well as businesses that look at what people actually do.”
“Safety Features” help sell more devices. All feature set is for sole benefit of increased sales.
The site can also encourage posturing.
In recent years, LinkedIn has become a target of frustration in the social-media stratosphere: It’s not fun or user-friendly, it’s a bit ugly, and the site has become bogged down with spam connection requests and users’ attempts to market products
That’s likely why users only spend about 17 minutes a month on LinkedIn compared with 35 minutes a day on Facebook
https://entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com/our-fractured-self-a5301a66fab2
Fractured selves are not safe because they have commodified themselves and to commodify oneself is to diminish the quality of whatever services they are providing. When something becomes impersonal it becomes less important to a person. And when something is less important to a person they do a worse job.
Finding true authenticity in this world is rare because we have all commoditized ourselves.
Technology
https://onezero.medium.com/alien-nations-why-life-on-other-planets-will-resemble-ours-15fb4ede6fe7
An interesting half an hour read on the questions pertaining to the Fermi paradox - if there are intelligent life out there, where are they.
Subsequent attempts to answer that question through Drakes equation, the Kardeshev scale and Dyson spheres.
https://medium.com/throughdesign/why-is-the-tesla-cybertruck-designed-the-way-it-is-b53a6acc8490
Breaking into an 81B market requires radical redesign of trucks.
Form of the cyber truck follows a Truss bridge - Triangles are great shape in physics for load bearing and distribution.
Travel
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/this-is-how-you-live-on-swiss-time
Things to do in Switzerland
- Bathe in thermal baths
- Dip pears into melted cheese
- Go to church in Zurich
- Eat local chocolate and let them tell you about its history
- Go to a museum in Winterthur and look at impressionists - Renoir and Cezanne
"The gift of travel is to think about your life. The prison of travel is that your thoughts about your life remain in the country where you had them.”
"I sat with my legs dangling over the side of the Limmat, knowing that no picture would ever convey it, and finally I learned not to try.”
"I thought what a luxury this was, that you’d have time and money and you’d actually use them to consider how you’d spend your day and your career and your life, to see something as elemental as serving nutrition to someone as a thing of value, as its own reward. To act so deliberately and without desperation that you could live your life the way you thought it should be lived."
Misc
Tim Ferriss's account of being famous. The real takeaways here was a quote by Bill Murray which suggests whether your problems/wants could be solved by just being rich. Since there is very little downside to being rich but many from being famous. Relevant in the age of instagram/tik tok and other social media platforms where people are trying to amass millions of followers.
Every 2 years, education goes through a National Report Card or the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Math scores have been flat since 2009 and reading scores since 1998, with just a third or so of students performing at a level the NAEP defines as “proficient.”
The implication is clear. The best way to boost students’ reading comprehension is to expand their knowledge and vocabulary by teaching them history, science, literature, and the arts, using curricula that that guide kids through a logical sequence from one year to the next: for example, Native Americans and Columbus in kindergarten; the colonial era and the American Revolution in first grade; the War of 1812 and the Civil War in second grade, and so on.
The bottom line is that policymakers and advocates who have pushed for more testing in part as a way to narrow the gap between rich and poor have undermined their own efforts. They have created a system that incentivizes teachers to withhold the very thing that could accomplish both objectives: knowledge. All students suffer under this system, but the neediest suffer the most.
Namaste’s roots are found in Hindi namaha means greetings and te means to you. So namaste means greetings to you. However, modern connotations have mixed the words to mean all sorts of things.
Interesting fact - goodbye is an abbreviation of “god be with ye”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/gossiping-is-good
Dunbar argues that idle chatter with and about others gave early humans a sense of shared identity and helped them grow more aware of their environment, thus incubating the complex higher functioning that would ultimately yield such glories of civilization.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-ancient-peruvian-mystery-solved-from-space
Peruvian nasca lines and purquois were a sophisticated hydraulic system designed to retrieve water from underground aquifers which completely transformed the region. It is understood that very scientifically developed species occupied this area.