#49: the art of being alone

Nov 18, 2022

👋 Welcome to the 49th issue of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter promoting ideas to help get 1% better everyday.

I’m back after an extended break! And going forward, my goal is to maintain a weekly cadence… similar to the first 48 weeks!

🙋‍♂️ If you’re new here, welcome, and thanks for subscribing!

Here’s what you can expect:

Every week, I go through nearly 100 pieces of content (from books and podcasts to newsletters and tweets), and bring you the best in this newsletter. In the coming weeks and months, I’m also excited to share how my style and stack of personal knowledge management (PKM) has evolved.

Lastly, if you haven’t already, hop on over to this 🔖 Link Library to access the nearly 200 podcasts, articles, videos and books curated in the issues prior to this one.

Okay, let’s dive in; it feels good to be back already! 🙏

In this issue:

👓 The Cure for Burnout Is Not Self-Care

🌍 Little Ways The World Works

💭 How Philosophers Think

☄️ What if We Believed Anything Was Possible?

🧘‍♂️ The Art of Being Alone

👓 The Cure for Burnout Is Not Self-Care

If we don’t abandon the cultural demands that require us to conform in ways that aren’t natural to us, burnout progresses as we worry about the gap between who we are and who we are expected to be. When we understand that we will never cross that divide, and we see that we truly don’t want to be the people that we are told we “should” be, we are freed to understand our worth on our own terms.

{8-min read}

🌍 Little Ways The World Works

John Muir once said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Fields are studied individually, but there are so many common denominators across topics. The more fields a lesson applies to, and the more disparate those fields are, the more powerful and important the lesson becomes.

{5-min read}

💭 How Philosophers Think

The more pressure people feel to have an opinion on every subject, the more chauffeur knowledge there will be. In that state of intellectual insecurity, people rush to judgment. When they do, they abandon the philosophical mode of thinking. In turn, they become slaves to fashionable ideas and blind to unconscious assumptions.

{4-min read}

☄️ What if We Believed Anything Was Possible?

Instead of doubling down to make our actions fit our beliefs, verifiable facts can help us adjust our beliefs to accommodate what we know to be true. Verifiable facts can allow us to converge toward common truths. Otherwise, we’ll continue to live on different planes of reality—where we’ll continue to experience the discomfort of delusion.

{6-min read}

🧘‍♂️ The Art of Being Alone

Loneliness has more to do with our perceptions than how much company we have. It’s just as possible to be painfully lonely surrounded by people as it is to be content with little social contact. Some people need extended periods of time alone to recharge, others would rather give themselves electric shocks than spend a few minutes with their thoughts.

{6-min read}