The Trip
I am writing this between in a half-awake state. I felt this month I didn’t have enough to contribute towards the blog. At the beginning of this month, 5th of May, I went to Wonderla on an office trip. It was as they say a thrilling experience, I sat on a proper roller coaster with all the loops and curves and blacked out for 2 seconds (I did have consciousness just couldn’t see). The other ride worth mentioning is Drop Zone, where they take the floor away from underneath you, and you fall. You fall into what seems to be an eternity, you feel helplessness, nothing to grab onto. And nevermore you are happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel than these rides and in that fraction of a split nano second, you call in the name of God, even adding your own variant of “if you exist” to remain true to your scientific attitude towards life. Cute 🙂
The Books + Podcast
I ended up reading Atomic Habits, I felt it was an okay book and maybe it really is an amazing book for NT’s. Sometimes I just read books by force and eventually start liking them, I was hoping it would happen the same for this one but this was okay. I liked where he was going and how he reached there. Reps matter, number of days is irrelevant, never skip twice, it’s the people who go through the boredom of training every day that are truly the best, the whole Cue and Reward strategy, maybe I was looking for novelty haha and in the end it turns out it just work and I am not piqued. Also you have to know yourself to follow those principles such as Make it Satisfying, coz sometimes you might read about the examples and feel unsatisfied with any sort of material reward. So I dug deeper in my case an emotional reward would be a better fit. Overall, I think it’s a good book for most people.
The podcast by Naval Ravikant, now what he’s saying feels like distilled pure gold of world knowledge and the more you can absorb the more satiated you feel and the more desire and clarity you get. My friend says everyone should listen to this once in their lifetimes. And I couldn’t agree more. I have only heard just one hour of content and it feels like the accumulation of distilled knowledge of over 10 books. The episode is called How to get rich every episode. Lemme try to articulate what all he talks about – about 4 kinds of luck, and how we should develop our own specialised set of skills. How we should try to become good at things we are naturally good at, where there is least resistance. He talks about two great Olympic athletes and how would they perform in another’s sport. And the fact they are able to perform better in their field is because of their build type and how it helps. It’s easier to excel at things where you are naturally good. And I am reminded of the quote by Einstein “If you judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree, it will think it’s stupid its whole life”. The Explore and Exploit strategy – I related to the first chapter in Algorithms to Live By, in which how long you should pass on to next candidate until you find the one good enough. That’s the only chapter I read. Exploit means once you find something good, keep going deep into it and make best use of it. And otherwise keep exploring. Also it’s good to explore earlier in life.
He also talks working alongside with High Energy, High Integrity and Smart in the right context people, pairing up with them. And I felt it, coz we can sway some people into doing things, we can inspire them for a while and it’s not long before they eventually lose interest. And it also takes a toll on our internal motivation. (This last line is my internal addition and not mentioned by him).
I know when some book or content is really good when I am afraid of finishing it or not taking down enough notes. The three items that made me feel this way are – The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf and Naval Ravikant’s Podcast’s episode. P.S. I was not happy with the clickbaity title. But then the episode is worth it every dime of second of you spend on it. He also tells how when Warren Buffet went to Benjamin Graham, author of Intelligent Investor, and said I will work free for you. Benjamin said “free is overpriced”. That was a clear shift, thought free was free, but not forgetting that inner voice of “There are no free lunches”. Guess not, gotta change that way of thinking.
I also started reading Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller. It’s an insightful read, I am down only 3 chapters and yet I understand myself and the people I have been with already much better. It talks about attachment styles and ways to figure that out of yourself and your partner. And it says how Dependency is NOT a bad thing, that was so heartwarming to know. It mentions how in this modern society we keep striving “internal peace” and “happiness” and we feel our happiness shouldn’t be influenced by other people. We try to zen ourselves, the new modern way of thinking. It debunks that, guess through my internal dilemmas, it’s been a revelation. I still haven’t fully accepted all what the books tries to say, because it feels counter-intuitive to years of conditioning fighting against millions of evolution. I am taking this one slow. The content does repeat itself a bit. But it’s manageable. I am hoping to give it a slow read over this next month.
I did finally watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, it’s a good movie. I think I left the main questions unprocessed, if nothing matters, what’s the point? If every next invention and discovery is gonna make us feel even more significantly shit about ourselves, how small are we in this cosmos of universe, then what’s the point? Maybe I will come up with an answer by the next post, I think it’s somewhere there in the last scene.
Thanks for reading!
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