👋 Welcome to the 57th issue of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter promoting ideas to help get 1% better everyday.
My name is Reza, and 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.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been using Opal (a screen time tracker) on my phone to block out the apps that I count as distracting. iPhone’s native Screen Time never did the trick for me, but this has been a true game changer. When I counted the collective number of hours I spent—often mindlessly—browsing Instagram or Twitter, I knew it was time to get some help here. Give it a try and let me know what you think. Also, let me know if you’re using anything similar that works for you!
Another new addition to my “stack” is Motivation. Particularly, I love that I can add their widget to my Lock Screen. Every time I’m checking the time or weather on my phone without unlocking it, I also read a new line that makes me ponder.
What are some apps/tools that you use daily and you’d miss them if they were gone?
Okay. Time to dive into this week’s ideas!
In this issue:
💭 How to balance meaning and money
📚 The Greatest Salesman in the World
✅ Advice that actually worked for me
⭐️ Repair and remain
🏃♀️ To rush is to try to compress time
💭 How to balance meaning and money
How do we balance the pursuit of a secure living with a meaningful life?
The role work plays in our lives is not fixed—nor should we want it to be. It’s by wrestling with work’s place that we figure out what we care about—how our careers stack up against our values, our loved ones, or whatever else we hold dear.
There will be seasons when we’ll prioritize work and those when we’ll prioritize life outside of work. So I’m wary of any one-size-fits-all prescription or the idolization of “work-life balance,” as if there’s some mythical state to which we should all aspire.
📚 The Greatest Salesman in the World
Wealth should never be your goal in life. Your words are eloquent but they are mere words. True wealth is of the heart, not of the purse.
I determine to render more and better service, each day, than I am being paid to render. Those that reach the top are the ones who are not content with doing only what is required of them.
When an act becomes easy through constant repetition it becomes a pleasure to perform and if it is a pleasure to perform it is man’s nature to perform it often. When I perform it often it becomes a habit and I become its slave and since it is a good habit this is my will.
✅ Advice that actually worked for me
Synthesize things as you read.
Do a weekly review. Every Sunday, sit down for an hour with a text editor and review your week. What went well, what went poorly, and what you’re aiming for in the next coming week.
Write regularly, and learn to ‘think in writing’. This is true for literally everyone, regardless of whether you want to be a writer or not, whether you want to publish or not. Just have a Google Doc in which you add a page a day of whatever’s on your mind. This has a million benefits, but a simple one is just clearing your cache: if you don’t do this, your brain sort of gets clogged by all the things you have on your mind, whereas if you ‘empty’ your brain onto a page that creates room for new thoughts.
Tell the right stories about yourself.
Do the most important thing first thing in the morning, and don’t check social media until you’ve done it.
⭐️ Repair and remain
Pay attention and mind the details and you save yourself a lot of hassle and money. That slow corrosion that comes if you ignore the small, nagging troubles of your life has the potential to wreck a family the way a nail clipper can wreck a bathroom. And somebody’s going to pay for it, even if it isn’t you. Mostly it will be the kids, plus the ongoing emotional and spiritual costs divvied up among the friends, family, and community who witnessed your vows, who backed you as you struggled along, who loved you then and still love you now.
🏃♀️ To rush is to try to compress time
All this extra stuff, I suggest, is the effort that some part of your system is applying, ineffectually, in its attempt to compress time, to try to manipulate a future moment into arriving sooner.
This effect, of course, is not constrained to driving. In fact, it happens nearly constantly for a lot of people who seem to be rushing incessantly through each moment, longing for the current thing to be done so the next thing can begin. A life defined by chronic cognitive and muscular tension that result from habitually living as if ever so slightly in the future, existing within a simulation of the next moment rather than a deep experiencing of this moment right now.
✨ One last thing…
👋 Until next week,
