#20: follow excitement
What's on my mind
“What do I love doing?” is a good qualifier to help decide where to focus on.
Or, you could take a double-negative stance and ponder:
“What can’t I resist not doing?”
In other words, not enough of what activities would make you feel you're missing out on joy and flow.
And on what you can truly contribute to the world.
The things you hate not doing are probably a few.
And they’re the ones worth pursuing.
👋 Welcome to the 20th volume of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter sharing ideas to help get 1% better everyday in work and life.
In this week’s issue:
📚 Outliers (by Malcolm Gladwell)🛤 Life is Short💭 On independent thinking👋 Dru Riley (Trends.vc)
📚 Outliers (by Malcolm Gladwell)
Notes on the definition of success, practice, and creating equal opportunities
Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.
Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.
To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success with a society that provides opportunities for all.
🛤 Life is short
If you find yourself thinking that life is too short for something, you should try to eliminate it if you can.
When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." There's something fake about bullshit. It's the junk food of experience.
What are you spending your time on that can be classified as bullshit?
Unnecessary meetings? Dealing with other people's mistakes? Addictive (and unrewarding) hobbies?
It's crucial to make a conscious effort to take an external view and ask "Is this how I want to be spending my time?"
And if not, replace them with things that matter.
Then, to find what truly matters, ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future.
Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That's what you do when life is short.
💭 On independent thinking
Nowadays, there’s no shortage of information.
This is exciting, but also risky, because it’s so easy to take everything others say at face value.
It’s essential to be thinking independently in all life areas.
The goal isn't to oppose the crowd, but to avoid believing something simply because the crowd tells you so.
The world needs more people with a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People with a vision.
📚 A line that resonated from a book
All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth Is Change.
Parable of the Sower (by Octavia E. Butler)
📰 A newsletter you look forward to
🐦 A Twitter account to follow
🎧 A song you'd listen to all day on repeat
When The World Ended (Tim Legend)
📱 An essential app
🤔 A question that's been on your mind lately
What would make this a no-brainer for you?
👋 Follow Dru
Final Thought
Earlier today, we ran our first community session on personal knowledge management.
Shoutout to Praveen, Mike, Nate, Ritesh, Jake and Andrew for making an appearance!
There’ll be more coming up, and I’ll share the details here.
Have a great end to your week,
Reza 🍋