Greetings everyone,
I have really been grappling with time-management recently. I thought I was good at managing my time, but it turns out I just had all the time in the world and never had to make any decisions about how I spent it. I think time-management, and all the things people use to optimize it, are simply just prioritization strategies. It’s about being efficient, but also about deciding what is worth doing and spending time on. In the last 1-2 years, I’ve become a lot more careful about what and who I spend my time and energy on. There isn’t time for anything and everything — you have to give yourself to the things and people that matter most.
Google Calendar is great.
On to the newsletter.
Clear thinkers take feedback from reality, not society.
Naval Ravikant (1974-)
✏️ On the Rich Life
Those who are conservative and prudent in their spending often justify their behaviour by saying they are ‘planning for the future’. Every worse case scenario needs to be accounted for: the potential loss of a job, an unexpected expense, a spur of the moment vacation. The problem with financially living in the future is two-fold: 1) it doesn’t exist and therefore you cannot enjoy the future; and 2) no amount of extrapolation or thinking can accurately predict how things will play out in the future.
I think it is wise to have money set aside for rainy days, or to consider the down-stream consequences of taking a new job. But sometimes, these behaviours can come at the expense of the present. One of the things that I had to realize in my own financial journey is that money is not meant to be shoveled into bank accounts — there is no award for having a 50% savings rate. Your income can always grow, your investment contributions can always be higher, and your emergency fund can always be extended another 6 months. It’s equally as important to financially live in the present. Money is a tool that, when used correctly, can give you the life of your dreams. If you are explicit in the life you want, you can prioritize your spending on the things you love and still prepare for an uncertain future. The key is to know what your rich life looks like. For some, it is fancy hotels, nice cars, and vacations. For others, its a beautiful home and the flexibility to take 6 months a year off from work. Society will tell you what your rich life should look like, but only you can give yourself the right answer.
For me, I realized that there were some things that I thought I wanted but in reality didn’t actually care for when I started prioritizing my finances. For me, my rich life is having the freedom to be able to go out for dinner, buy books, or purchase a new office set up. It’s one where I don’t think about day-to-day finances at all because I live within my means. It’s having a comfortable and convenient home that makes life enjoyable without having to go anywhere. It’s having a financial safety net that makes me feel safe knowing that if everything were to disappear tomorrow, I would have some breathing space to figure it out.
Everyone differs in what they want and enjoy. Defining what those things are is the first step to seeing your money as a tool to give yourself the life you want, and not a digital number on your phone that is never large enough, or even worse, fighting against you.
💡 Food for Thought
risus abundat in ore stultorum — laughter is abundant in the mouth of fools
🔗 Sunday Best
Connected Papers
A great resource for academics and researcher conducting systematic reviews or meta-analyses!
When you put in a paper into Connected Papers, it will give you a visual graph of all papers that are related to it. It’s a great tool to get a high-level overview of an academic field and make sure that you don’t miss related papers in your literature searches!
Henry Miller on Friendship and the Relationship Between Creativity and Community
By Maria Popova
It is often in the cradle of friendship — a word not to be used carelessly — that our creative energies are strengthened and renewed. Through its tendrils, we find community — a place where our own creative work is reflected and refracted through that of others to cast a shimmering radiance of mutual magnification that borders on magic.
How Lust Becomes a Counterfeit Love
A Conversation with Hamza Yusuf and Amir Sulaiman
The acclaimed Amir Sulaiman lends a poet’s sensibility to this discussion with Hamza Yusuf on lust, which Imam Al-Ghazali called one of the two main desires that must be broken for spiritual health yet is widely celebrated today. How can we differentiate lust from love?
Sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself.
—Miles Davis (1926-1991)
Thanks for coming!
AT