#85: hunger for life

Aug 11, 2023

👋 Welcome to the 85th 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.

Every day, as I dive into a sea of content, some words just pop. They resonate. I grab them, stick them in my note-taking app as 'reminders’ to circle back later.
But they'd usually just sit there, rarely revised, and sometimes, entirely forgotten.
So I decided to change my approach.
Now I treat these words like daily tasks. Literally. I add them to my task manager, set to repeat daily.
Every day, I read a bunch. Out loud. I let them sink in. Then, I move on, ready for the next day.
It’s a great way to turn fleeting inspiration into lifelong habits. Second nature.
Some current favourites:
Start now. Because over time, there won't be enough time left.
Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.
Waking up at 5:45 am solves 99.9% of issues.
By separating who you are (identity) from what you do (output) you’re free to fail, change paths, have fun and not take life too seriously.
The aim? Internalize. Make them me.
Zig Ziglar said, “People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.”
He's right.

With that, let’s dive into this week’s ideas…

In this issue:

📝 Putting ideas into words

🔥 Why self-care hasn't cured your burnout

📚 Reading is important to me and I will prove it

📝 Putting ideas into words

Writing down your ideas helps to make them complete and precise. Without writing, you may never realize that your ideas are not fully formed. Therefore, it's important to subject your ideas to the test of writing if you want to have fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.

Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought.
Putting ideas into words is a severe test. The first words you choose are usually wrong; you have to rewrite sentences over and over to get them exactly right. And your ideas won't just be imprecise, but incomplete too. Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be one you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that's why I write them.

→ Paul Graham | 5-min read

🔥 Why self-care hasn't cured your burnout

What a fantastic piece of writing!

Overcoming burnout isn't just about resting; it's about redefining ambition and recognizing that sometimes burnout signals a hunger for more life, not less. Instead of viewing burnout as a sign of lethargy, it might be a sign that you're more ambitious about every aspect of your life, not just your career.

I ended up highlighting pretty much the entire article (13 paragraphs)! Sharing a few here.

It’s not surprising that career aspirations, when divorced from the context of other desires, would feel unsteady. Who really wants to become “someone,” if that someone doesn’t feel whole when she leaves the office or feels lost without the structure of work?
In the midst of a period of burnout, it’s easy to believe that what you crave is freedom from ambition. But the long-term cure is often more ambition — an ambition that feels gratifying and organic and can be applied to everything you care deeply about.
The answer to this state of affairs isn’t always to rest and relax and reflect on where you are. The answer is sometimes to try on the more ambitious version of a goal for size to see if it feels more motivating.
In our anxious quest to redesign our systems to make them more humane and more accountable, we can’t either focus solely on rest or treat a life that’s dominated by career ambition as complete. We have to recognize and celebrate the basic joys of feeling driven — waking up in the morning with a hunger for life itself, wanting to pack each precious day with all of the passions and the people we love the most.

I came across this article in the Rabbit Ideas newsletter that shares a selection of useful online resources for self improvement and productivity. Check it out.

→ Bustle | 9-min read

📚 Reading is important to me and I will prove it

In 2018 I decided that reading more books would be one way I would recover from burnout: I would do what I actually wanted to do, instead of doing what my phone encouraged me to do (specifically: hang out with my phone). Other people were making spreadsheets of the books they’d read and tallying them and setting goals; I would too. 50 books in 2019. I did it, but the feat itself weighed on my mind constantly: am I reading fast enough to keep on pace? Should I pick a shorter book next, or avoid this longer one? It felt less like reading and more like optimizing my reading. I remember very little.

→ Culture Study | 7-min read