<aside> 🐘 A collection of the 3 Pieces of Content I've found the most valuable this week on the internet, with some reflections, key lessons we can learn from them, and why they can add value to our lives. Plus, one or two very cool quote(s).
</aside>
(2).png)
Table of Contents ▶️ ▶️ ▶️
Notion page containing full summary of the conversation between Ali Abdaal and Benjamin Hardy (organizational psychologist) here - this is the live Notion page you can find in the video description.
A deep conversation about organisational psychology, having goals, finding meaning, the flow state, writing.
If you like psychology and productivity, then I'd say that you may find this video interesting and insightful.
The view Dr. Hardy has on goals is a new and attractive one to me. There's this widespread belief in the productivity world: do not set goals, have systems and habits and enjoy the process, because having goals and achieving them leads to a spark in happiness which then decays very rapidly because we instantly look for the next milestone to achieve. So, according to proponents of this view, we need to focus on building meaningful systems that make us enjoy the process of improving on a daily basis, regardless of where we aim towards.
Dr. Hardy, however, argues that “It’s very difficult to direct your attention if you don’t have something to direct your attention towards” and “Goals give your brain a reason to process the information you take in”. He sustains that every human behavior is to produce an end (prospection), which means that not believing in goals goes against the human nature. Consequently, we may think we don't have goals and that goals are not important to us, but is that actually true? Or are we simply deceiving ourselves in order to feel a sense of belonging to the group which believes that goals are useless?
Retirement seems to be a prominent thought in our minds, especially when we feel constrained by a job which we don't really enjoy. This seems an inevitable burden of our society: working hard during our youth in order to accumulate some decent level of wealth and thirstily seek retirement, and rest, from employment apparently. And the FIRE (financial independence retire early) community is a rather big and successful one.
In this article, The School of Life addresses this widespread dream of achieving retirement and finally take some rest from work, underlining the elephant in the brain which rules our society: "This word manages to pull off an astonishing feat: it momentarily anaesthetizes all those who hear it into forgetting their society’s founding pressures and most ingrained competitive values and renders deeply desirable states of inaction that could - without the word - simply have appeared contemptible or downright lazy".
<aside> 🐘 "Strikingly, at present, we only invoke the idea of retirement around employment - which is a profound pity because there are so many other things that it might be extremely important for us to stop doing, but which we feel obliged to continue with because we are under punishing pressure from others to conform."
</aside>
<aside> 🐘 "Our societies are very keen for us to have busy, competitive, complicated lives. We should express thanks for the well-meaning suggestions and then, without causing anyone offence, make our moves towards announcing early retirement from a host of areas that torment us in the name of the simpler, kinder lives we long for."
</aside>
"Someone in the prime of life who loses any interest in going to the office, who doesn't care about promotion and who isn’t trying to accumulate ever more money would standardly be described as a loser. Unless, of course, that is, they could declare that what they wanted to do was ‘retire early’ - at which point they would be transformed in our eyes into fascinating and near saintly figures."
https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/how-to-retire-early/
do what you can with what you have for where you are.
It's not gonna feel perfect. That's ok. Divide what's controllable vs non-controllable.
Focus your energy on what you can control. In the athlete world, there are 5 things that are essential: nutrition, training, sleep, recovery, mindset. Anything outside of that is a distraction. Preparation and effort (to narrow down the 5 essential things into two principles). Anything else is non-controllable.
Complaining highlights what you have no control of (e.g. temperature of water too cold). This takes away energy from the controllable, the essential.
Turn i have to into **i get to ...**do this... It takes a switch of mindset. Repetition is needed in order to become aware and be laser-focused on what's essential while letting go of the non-essential.
Things happen for you, not to you.
https://omny.fm/shows/essentialism-with-greg-mckeown/ben-bergeron-on-chasing-excellence
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you."
OSCAR WILDE