Reflecting on work and life.. thoughts on writing and career

Hello, friends!

I'm currently writing to you from a lovely park nearby, and let me tell you, the weather is absolutely fantastic! That's one of the things I adore most about Bangalore. The weather never upsets you.

But before we get into everything, I have an exciting news. I have Updated my Website! 🎉 Its my favourite thing to do, lol. I built a new navigation design, and a brand new blog for my Notes and Digests to stay. Go have a look! Would love to know how you liked it. Here it is.

I had a decent last week. Starting from Monday I was very excited for a new week and had a great start. I wrote my journal, meditated and made good progress at work. But then, from Wednesday, I started getting distracted, fallen away from my journaling, meditating and found it a bit hard t focus on work.

Let me share a little background story.

In mid-September, I started feeling like I wasn't giving my best, and this feeling had been building up for months. As I reflected on it, I realized that I wasn't growing as a person, even though nobody could tell just by looking at my daily routine. However, I had this nagging feeling inside. Through my reflection, I gained a better understanding of it. I talked about this more in my last newsletter. I made a decision to gradually introduce some changes into my life and develop new habits, apart from work. Over the past three weeks, I've been journaling on and off, aiming to make it a regular habit. I've noticed that whenever I sit down to journal in the morning, it energizes and motivates me for the day, about 9 times out of 10. Additionally, I've been exploring meditation as well - and I have been wanting to build it into my routine.

But last week - because I fell off, It was demotivating. I couldn't see progress. I felt hard to drive towards the change I'm trying to bring.

But you know what? It happens. The nagging feeling, the regular routine, and doing nothing just work. It's been like that for a year. When you do something for a long time, it's hard to break out of it. Even after you've strictly ordered yourself to change, you'll still find yourself falling back. There will be moments when you're tired of trying and you give in. That being said, slowly but surely, you do make it out. As you keep trying, you replace old habits with new ones, and one day you realize it's hard to fall out of the good habits you've now built.

Aside from that, I've been learning a lot recently by enrolling in a cohort-based course called Building a Second Brain.

This course focuses on personal knowledge management. A study revealed that we consume the equivalent of 30GB of information every day. The course teaches methods to cut through the noise, make sense of the vast amount of information we consume on a daily basis, and use it to enhance our creativity in a productive way. I discovered this course three years ago but couldn't afford it at the time. However, now I can! 😄 I'm leveraging the knowledge gained from this course to develop a system that enables me to be productive, creative, and produce my best work. The first live session begins on October 4th, and I'm incredibly excited to join it!

I'll keep you guys posted on what I learn, and also how I'm progressing trying to build new habits and do more cool stuff.

Okay, I learned a lot last week and now I can't wait to share it with you. Here are some of the highlights I made from what I learned.

On Work and Career

It’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work. Work very hard—a surprising number of people will be offended that you choose to work hard—but not so hard that the rest of your life passes you by. Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place. Figure out your own productivity system—don’t waste time being unorganized, working at suboptimal times, etc. Don’t be afraid to take some career risks, especially early on. Most people pick their career fairly randomly—really think hard about what you like, what fields are going to be successful, and try to talk to people in those fields.

On Writing

Writing is your map. By putting your thoughts on paper, you can navigate them more easily. In our information overload era, writing goes beyond expression. It's a tool for clarity, comprehension, and connection.

Writing acts as a cognitive filter. Instead of consuming random content, writing about what you read, watch, or listen to forces you to conduct preliminary research, select high-quality sources, and be more intentional with your information intake. Writing becomes a filter for the information that enters your mind and the ideas you cultivate.

Writing is an excellent explainer. As the French writer Boileau once said, What is clearly thought out is clearly expressed." Richard Feynman advised, "Without using the new word you've just learned, try to rephrase what you've learned in your own language. When you struggle to express something in your own words, it reveals gaps in your understanding. Writing exposes these gaps, leaving no room to hide behind gestures or authoritative tones. If you can write it, you can truly explain it.

On Money

Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that’s a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful. In almost all ways, having enough money so that you don’t stress about paying rent does more to change your wellbeing than having enough money to buy your own jet. Making money is often more fun than spending it, though I personally have never regretted money I’ve spent on friends, new experiences, saving time, travel, and causes I believe in.

On Worry and Risk

Don’t worry so much. Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most of the decision are reversible. Most people are too risk-averse, and so most advice is biased too much towards conservative paths.

Favourite things last week

🐦 Twitter thread: This thread talks about how most people are bad at answering questions. Sometimes when a question is asked multiple times, or with skepticism, there's often a question behind the question. Most people fail to see that, and respond Ineffectively. This thread talks about how to understand the question behind question and give a satisfying response.

🐦 Twitter thread: One more! Sahil Bloom is one of the most Inspiring person I have come across in the internet. He is brilliant! In this thread, he shares 22 peices of advice he'd like to give his 22 year old self. Trust me, this thread is amazing. One of the advice he shares is to Make decisions that your 80-year-old self and 10-year-old self approve of. Its so important to think from both those perspective. One makes sure you are doing the right thing long-term, and the other makes sure you are having fun.

📹 Video: This video talks about how to think clearly. Sounds weird? Have you ever felt that you wanted to communicate something thats in your mind, but you are not able to put it into words? have you ever realised while explaining something, that you don't know what you are talking about? This video tells us how we have so many gaps in our thinking because of several reasons and how to get out of it.

That's it! Hope October to you is Kind, Gentle, and Inspiring!