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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 Paul Millerd on doing small experiments:

Two Quotes:

Book of the Week with 2 Important Lessons:

The book of the week is Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday.

An essential reading especially for today’s times but is as timeless as ever. The aim of this book is simply to show how to uncover and draw upon the stillness we already possess. Ryan Holiday covers a wide range of practical habits to implement into our life and become a better human being. An absolute guide to how to attain the everlasting stillness in life.

All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality: the capacity for stillness. Sometimes cynically confused for idleness and ambivalence, stillness is actually the doorway to self-mastery, discipline, and focus. It’s impossible to charge ahead in life without it. Stillness enables high achievers to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing.

Here are two important lessons from the book:

1) Become Present:

Being present demands all of us. As Laura Ingalls Wilder said, now is now. It can never be anything else. Seize it. The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us.

We want to learn to see the world like an artist: While other people are oblivious to what surrounds them, the artist really sees. Their mind, fully engaged, notices the way a bird flies or the way a stranger holds their fork or a mother looks at her child. They have no thoughts of the morrow. All they are thinking about is how to capture and communicate this experience. An artist is present. And from this stillness comes brilliance.

Don’t reject a difficult or boring moment because it is not exactly what you want. Don’t waste a beautiful moment because you are insecure or shy. Make what you can of what you have been given. Live what can be lived. That’s what excellence is. That’s what presence makes possible.

You have plenty on your plate right now. Focus on that, no matter how small or insignificant it is. Do the very best you can right now. Don’t think about what detractors may say. Don’t dwell or needlessly complicate. Be here. Be all of you. Be present.

2) Build a Routine:

A good routine is not only a source of great comfort and stability, it’s the platform from which stimulating and fulfilling work is possible. Routine, done for long enough and done sincerely enough, becomes more than routine. It becomes ritual – it becomes sanctified and holy.

A routine can be time-based. Jack Dorsey, the founder and former CEO of X (previously Twitter), gets up at 5 AM without fail. The former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink gets up at 4:30 AM and posts a picture of his watch to prove it each morning. Queen Victoria woke up at 8AM, ate breakfast at 10, and met with her ministers from 11 to 11:30. The poet John Milton was up at 4AM to read and contemplate, so that by 7AM, he was ready to be “milked” by his writing.

When we not only automate and routinize the trivial parts of life, but also make automatic good and virtuous decisions, we free up resources to do important and meaningful exploration. We buy room for peace and stillness, and thus make good work and good thoughts accessible and inevitable. Get your day scheduled. Limit the interruptions. Limit the number of choices you need to make.

Books I am currently reading:

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin. With 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril.

The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life by Paul Millerd. This book is an ideal companion for people considering leaving their jobs, embarking on a new path, dealing with the uncertainty of an unconventional path, or searching for better models for thinking about work in a fast-changing world.

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.