Monday Setup - October 12, 2020
Welcome to the “Monday Setup”, the perfect way to get your mind right for the week ahead. It’s full of actionable and deep advice to keep yourself healthy, wealthy and wise, along with a few curated finds of my own from the week before. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Healthy Mentality
Treat yo’self. There are plenty of tidbits I could share to help you trick yourself into eating well and exercising, but occasionally it’s important to remember that unlocking healthy habits is a means to an end. Over time, you might come to enjoy your new diet full of kale smoothies, but that’s not the reason you consume them. If we eat for proper fuel, we shouldn’t forget to treat for proper enjoyment. And in fact, it’s healthy (sort of)! It turns out, self-compassion is key to what one study calls “health-promoting behaviors”. Constraints and planning for your future are good things, but when done to the exclusion of all else, you risk an important part of your mental health. Rewards are important, especially if done as an occasional break from typically healthy routines and behaviors. Remember this week to think about your health holistically, and that means occasionally telling yourself it’s perfectly fine to indulge, so long as you enjoy it fully and return to healthy habits tomorrow.
Wealthy Mindset
Trust in the power of compound interest. Whatever you do, expect it to compound over time, so long as you continue it. Writing a book? Write “two crappy pages a day”. Learning to code? Make your goal a meager five minutes per day, and don’t miss it. And no matter what you do, learn and read to supplement it. Time isn’t necessarily what matters in building or strengthening a skill, but it does require some dedicated time every single day. This short-but-consistent daily effort adds up to real substance in a shorter timeframe than you might think. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “you can’t have it all, all at once.” So don’t plan on it. Do a little, and do it everyday. There’s no magic to improvement; both effort and knowledge compound over time as long as you’re consistent.
Wise.
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” - Richard Feynman
Feynman was such a fascinating character; he was a brilliant physicist but an even better tinkerer. The two aren’t mutually exclusive; however, Feynman’s curiosity was compensated through tinkering, which led to understanding, which then led to mastery. This was a principle he internalized and lived by, having learned and mastered seemingly disparate skills such as drumming, picking locks, writing Chinese, and even reading “modern” hieroglyphics. Curiously, Feynman didn’t consider published work the stamp of his knowledge, unlike the vast majority of his colleagues. He valued experience above all else, and as it relates to learning, this is a somewhat discomforting concept for me. It is, however, an essential one to keep in mind for intellectual types who generally glamorize thinking, sometimes even at the sake of “true understanding” (think armchair philosophers). As Feynman showed, learning through doing might just be the most dependable method toward the attainment of deep knowledge.
What NOT to read this week
Sometimes, we find ourselves following our own minds down rabbit holes unintentionally. The following are some areas of the internet to avoid this week.
Anything on election rigging and the state of American democracy. Tread lightly through your newsfeeds over the next few weeks. I believe the only thing that matters in the election is your vote. Mail it in if you can, or vote in person and simply take the proper precautions. Check this site if you need information for the ways you can vote in your state. Either way, there is no telling what the possibilities are come November 4. Regardless of who wins the election, do your part, and leave the rest for another’s worry.
Comments! This may not ring true for everyone, but I sometimes peruse comments on a social media post or article simply because I want to know which opinions I disagree with, so that I can publicly shame them. This is shameful in itself, of course, but I’m far from the only one (also, if it’s any consolation, I don’t do this anymore because I largely stay away from social media). This pattern is so addicting because of the emotional reaction involved when consuming divisive subject matter, and so as a counterbalance we must outreason the “other” so that they “can understand” (what we know and they apparently don’t).
This week, do yourself a favor and steer clear of comments, on any platform. If you read an article, reflect on it and ignore the rest. If you watch a video, don’t poll the rest of the audience to understand what “the people” think; the internet is often much less reflective of reality than you might be aware of in the moment. Once you’ve gone long enough without hearing a deluge of others’ opinions, suddenly the emotional appeal to bashing the ignorants will subside, and you’ll be free to think for yourself. Here are a few links to help with this:
What I'm reading now
Lots of amazing newsletters on Substack. I recently joined On Deck’s inaugural “Writer Fellowship”, which is an eight-week program designed to open previously closed doors to a community of writers with similar goals. We all want to be better writers, but some have more specific goals in mind, such as growing our newsletter readership, establishing a writing routine, finding the “right” subject matter, or even making enough money from writing to call it our career. Our eight weeks just kicked off this past weekend, and I have a retroactive goal of my own I need to add: find more interesting things to read! Of the many I’ve come across in the past few days, here are the ones I’m most excited about:
Age of Invention by Dr. Anton Howes. Age of Invention tickles the nerd in me. Dr. Howes is a historian writing about...you guessed it: invention. He covers the history of innovation, specifically the individuals who contributed to them.
Lenny’s Newsletter by Lenny Rachitski. This one is all about products, specifically software products. Of the little I’ve read so far, it’s jam-packed with useful insights, especially for those of us working in tech or with an entrepreneurial itch.
Entertainment + Tech by Matt Susskind. A former Google Product Manager writes about tech in entertainment, and entertainment in tech. It’s a fascinating read especially if you find yourself spending inordinate amounts of time on Netflix (like me!).
(Honorable mention) The Browser by Robert Cottrell. I already mentioned this one in a previous Monday Setup issue, but it’s very worth mentioning again. It’ll fill up your reading backlog quickly, but the discoveries shared within each issue feel like the internet’s true hidden gems.
Newsletters have a special way of connecting to interesting thinkers/writers, so if you’re interested, feel free to visit Substack’s “Top Writers” page to find what else might interest you.
Genius by James Gleick. I mentioned this last week, but I mention it again here simply because I’ve stuck with it. Some books I do, and some I don’t. I read a lot but don’t always finish what I read, and sometimes I’ll finish a book I started months before, after taking a hiatus and following my sporadic interests. With Genius, my curiosity of Richard Feynman’s life is absolutely quenched through reading this book. His fascination with what others would call mundane is truly unmatched, and his learning style I’m convinced can’t be emulated, and still that won’t stop me from trying. I’ve never met anyone like him, but I’m happy to experience him through the description and tales James Gleick shares.
What I'm working through
Focusing on one thing at a time. This pertains to so many areas of my life, from work to ideas to reading books. I’ve done enough introspection to know that this derives from my impatience with achievement. For so long I haven’t been heeding the advice RBG shared (above) - I want it all, all right now.
Several years into my meditation practice, and with several more years of evidence of nothing substantial produced or published or built or created, my frustration boiled over. I started learning that I needed to ease up on my expectations, and learn to work slower and more narrowly.
I haven’t fully accepted this yet. I still find the makers and the doers a confusing community of inhuman workhorses. I feel like I don’t belong. The only thing that’s helping? I’m building a foundation through writing. I’m working hard, a bit each day, and I’m not stopping. I’m doing this for my 2021 and ‘22 and ‘23 self. Right now, it’s writing for the sake of sharing what I’ve learned (either by my own experiences or through others’). Later, it’ll be whatever grows out of my writing. I’m playing the long game, and only time will tell if it works. It’s a scary game, but I know for certain that playing whack-a-mole is not sustainable or as rewarding as I need it to be.
Thanks for reading!
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