This Just In… A Little Bit Early
Thanks for tuning in! This week’s post features: Waking Up by Sam Harris (book), How Your Daily Routine Can Turn into Your Biggest Enemy by Ryan Holiday (blog), Looking For A Job? by Jason Shen (ted talk) & more. Enjoy…
Book: Waking Up by Sam Harris (256 pgs)
I know it might seem weird for a student in Yeshiva to be reading a book with the subtitle “a guide to spirituality without religion” but my time in yeshiva is coming to a close soon. As my time is fast approaching, I began thinking about how I am going to live my life when I reenter the real world. I started wondering how much, if any, of the practices that have learned here, will I continue to do. I also wanted to know if I could recreate a positive connection to spirituality and continue the positive feelings outside of this environment. I asked myself these questions, then I sought out a conversation in an attempt to gain a new perspective, one that I might have missed had I continued down this path, one that might ultimately be better for me. I figured I would either find this in my search, or nothing would come close and I would reaffirm and become more self-assured with my way of life.
This search brought me to this book. While this book didn’t answer all of my questions it was definitely an interesting read. This book mostly covers consciousness, meditation and the nature of our minds which are all fascinating subjects to me.
I still have a lot to discover on my journey and all things considered this book was a good stepping stone along the way.
Blog Post: How Your Daily Routine Can Turn into Your Biggest Enemy by Ryan Holiday (8 mins)
As you may be aware I had to send this post out on Friday as opposed to my typical Sunday release. As I noted in the email and Facebook page, I would be without internet access for a few days starting on Saturday and thought it would be unfair to delay the release of this post. I figured that an early release was better than a late one. However, after making this decision pretty early in the week I began experiencing the negative side effects of having a routine that Ryan mentions.
This isn’t the way I am accustomed to doing this, this is different than my typical routine. As Ryan acknowledges, this can cause some hiccups and throw people off their game; routines sometimes are a dangerous weakness.
Ryan’s suggestion to this, that I have to plan out and start implementing, is to have multiple routines to account for all contingencies. This is certainly something that I am going to be thinking about and working on while I am off the grid.
Ted Talk: Looking For A Job? by Jason Shen (6 mins 31 secs)
I am the last person that should be talking about how to get a job. I have never had a grown-up job before, let alone a serious internship. I even ducked out of an opportunity to work to come “find my passion” in Israel.
Now, as I said above, that time is coming to a close and I have to enter a new phase of my life. One that will most certainly require a real job. I am on the hunt for a job with a company that I would enjoy, I am not looking to get a job that is in my major (finance) but I don’t have the schooling or the real work experience to get a job in a field that I do enjoy (writing and graphic design).
Hopefully in the near — very near — future more people will follow Jason’s model and “stop equating experience with ability and credentials with competence.” Until then I am going to have to keep getting better and what I enjoy doing, continue to build my portfolio, and grind until someone is willing to take a chance on me. And then, the real work will start and I will have the pleasure to learn even more and work even harder.
If anyone knows of any interesting openings please let me know!
Bonus: How Did You Help Your Team Win by Richard Branson (1 min)
Last week, we briefly talked about Give and Take by Adam Grant. I touched on the fact that there are downsides to being a giver and that the book addresses how to avoid these. However, I think there’s another metric to this that we don’t typically consider. Although givers production might suffer personally, they may still be raising the productivity of the whole organization. Unfortunately, in a one-man show this can pose a problem without many benefits but in a team setting the giver might be the key to success. The role player if you will, the point man.
I’m a big fan of basketball so I relate well to this analogy and I will try to break it down. The selfish people, the takers, or in the case of basketball, the ball-hog might generate the most productive or score the most points but this can also sink the ship. If they have the ball in their hand the entire time, they aren’t helping anyone but themselves. A giver, on the other hand, might not have high production or might not score many points but he helps the team win in a lot of other, sometimes hard to identify and often overlooked, categories.
A taker, in this case, would be Carmelo Anthony, he shoots the ball a lot and usually scores a lot of points, but he deserves a lot of blame for the Thunder losing in the first round of the playoffs this year. A giver, and maybe the best example in NBA history, would be Tim Duncan who’s unselfish playing led the Spurs to multiple championships. In organizations, we have to be careful about hiring Carmelo Anthony’s and we have to praise the Tim Duncan’s more because givers help teams win championships.
Quote: “Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices” — Benjamin Franklin
I think this is really important. By looking for the virtues of others, you set your sights on the virtues that you value and as we talked time and time again, it is extremely beneficial to flood your brain with the positive. Also, the virtues that you find in others are going to be your own projections of what virtues you value. Remember the mind is a magnet the world is a mirror. Another way to exemplify this is, at a funeral, you learn more about the person giving the eulogy than about the person that passed away.
The other point in this quote, searching yourself for your vices, is equally as important. As you begin to understand your vices you can learn to eradicate them. You will know what tempts you and will learn how to stay away from that. In order to conquer your impulses, like we talked about last week, and addiction, like the week before, you have to first know what these things are. When you know where the trap is, you will be able to avoid it.
What was your favorite bullet in this post? If you had to pick only one bullet to keep in this post what would it be and why and if you had to get rid of one what would it be and why? Send a message or comment below.
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To your growth! Stay curious…
P.S. If you want my notes for the book above, send me an email with the subject “Notes for (insert book name)” and I will happily share.
