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Happy Thursday folks!
Here is my favorite passage of the week, two quotes and book of the week with two important lessons to ponder on:
Passage of the Week:
Author Robert Greene on training your mind like a muscle:
From “The Daily Laws” by Robert Greene
Two Quotes:
“You need to know it's your actions that will make you a good person, not desire.”
“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”
Book of the Week with 2 Important Lessons:
The book of the week is Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman.
A 28-day meditation retreat toward a more meaningful life. A source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. A must-read.
This book is about what changes once you grasp that life as a limited human being; in an era of infinite tasks and opportunities, facing an unknowable future, alongside other humans who stubbornly insist on having their own personalities - isn't a problem you've got to try to solve. It addresses the fundamental questions about how to live and offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls “imperfectionism.” It helps us tackle challenges as they crop up in our daily lives: our finite time, the lure of distraction, the impossibility of doing anything perfectly.
I would recommend reading this book slowly as you can: one chapter daily and reflect on the ideas/perspective, implement in your daily life. That's what makes change last.
Here are two important lessons from the book:
1) On the art of reading and not reading:
There are three pieces of advice for navigating a world of infinite information that are more genuinely helpful:
Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket. Think of your backlog not as a container that gradually fills up, and that it's your job to empty, but as a stream that flows past you, from which you get to pick a few choice items, here and there, without feeling guilty for letting all the others float by.
Resist the urge to stockpile knowledge. Most of the long-term benefits of reading arise not from facts you insert into your brain, but from the ways in which reading changes you, by shaping your sensibility, from which good work and good ideas will later flow.
Remember that consuming information is a present-moment activity, like everything else. It's not merely that a fixation on retaining facts is a poor way to reap the benefits of reading. Sometimes it's OK just to read whatever seems most fun. Spending half an hour reading something interesting, moving, awe-inspiring or merely amusing might be worth doing, not just to improve who you become in the future - though it might do that too - but for the sake of that very half hour of being alive.
2) On firing your inner quality controller:
One paradoxical truth about control: often, the way to have the best ideas, and to produce the best work, is to develop an ability to forget entirely about trying to control the quality of your output. And a more pragmatic and imperfectionist way to ease up on a fixation of outcomes is to set a quantity goal. There is no need to pretend you don’t care about the results of your work, or to eradicate the part of you that seeks control. Give that part something to do, just make sure it has nothing to do with the quality of result.
“Quantity overpowers perfectionism, as James Altucher explains: Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect you from harm. From coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain. We like the brain. But you have to shut the brain off to come up with ideas.” A quantity goal puts you back in the driver’s seat: instead of hoping you produce something good, you get to know you’ll produce something.
Books I am currently reading:
Beyond Belief by Nir Eyal. Discover the three powers of belief shaping what you see, how you feel and what you’re able to do to unlock your true potential.
1984 by George Orwell. It took me long enough to pick this book, but here I am. It has been outstanding read so far.
READING TIP: Question Whether the Book is Worth Reading
We often consume a lot of things out of habit, without questioning their worth, books included.
Never feel obligated to finish a book that doesn’t interest you. There are many great books out there to read. Read what you are interested in, or ignite your curiosity, or help develop the skills you want to cultivate.
Thank you for reading and all your support.
I am excited to keep bringing you the new and old books, great insights, and lessons.
Until next week, stay curious and happy reading!
— Ravi Shah | @readswithravi
