Category: Everything else

I opened the NYT vaccine rollout tracker and learnt of a new milestone. This week, we saw the 7 day average of doses administered cross 3 million per day in the US. That’s amazing.

If the United States’ response to COVID-19 in 2020 was abysmal, the last few months have been world class.

At current pace, every adult in the US could be vaccinated by June 28.

The vaccines – particularly the mRNA formulations – have shown stellar results even with new variants. I think it is only a matter of time before they’re eligible for children too. We’re getting close.

I am grateful for all this and am looking forward to us getting to the other side.

PS: As these numbers were such a surprise, I realize I haven’t been keeping up with the news as much (not a bad thing). But, I did see a number of headlines about challenges with the rollout in the EU, Brazil, and a few other countries. I’m hoping that changes soon.

I was working through a knotty situation and talking to two friends about what I’d done to resolve the knots.

One of them shared that he’d learned to take the time to verbalize what was causing dissonance or discomfort. Verbalizing it helped him become aware of what was causing the problem, accept it, and move on by figuring out a constructive response.

Another shared the importance of spending time in nature. As we take in the enormity of the world around us, we gain perspective of just how small and insignificant our problems are.

It turned out to be one of those situations when I had experienced the benefits of both of these ideas in working through my knotty situation.

Both ideas resonated.

“Will I be out of balance?” isn’t a useful question.

It is a given. As long as we’re trying/pushing/pursuing, being out of balance will just be a part of our reality.

Better to focus on frequent check ins to build awareness and an ability to respond constructively and correctively.

The London taxi driver study is a seminal study from two decades ago on how learning changes our brain.

Taxi drivers in London – in the absence of Google maps – had to memorize the London map to be able to navigate to wherever the passenger wants to go. This training took two years on average was colloquially called “being on The Knowledge.”

As part of the study, researchers analyzed the brains of London cab drivers relative to those in the “control.” And, they found that the hippocampus – the area of our brain that controls spatial memory – was significantly larger in taxi drivers.

The led to a famous hypothesis – “It seems that there is a capacity for local plastic change in the structure of the healthy adult human brain in response to environmental demands.” Over time, the researchers led by Prof Eleanor Maguire further corroborated this hypothesis with more “before and after” studies of London taxi drivers.

Put simply, what we learn has the power to change the structure of our brain.

Always a good reminder that we are more malleable and adaptable than we think.

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.”

I think of this note from The Bhagavad Gita from time to time. It is always a good reminder to focus on the path that lies ahead. Imperfect as our abilities to traverse it may be, at least it is ours.

It is also always easier said than done.

It is amazing how much more energy, resilience, and perspective we can muster as long as we have something to look forward to.

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PS: As a result, it is always worth investing in experiences that we look forward to.

I saw someone searching for the perfect box of blueberries recently. In the time it took me to pick up a few things around her, she worked through 20 or so boxes.

I didn’t stick around to see if she found the box she was looking for. I hope she found it.

There’s something to be said for such single minded determination over blueberries.

For a moment, I was tempted to chuckle at her choice of item to optimize. But, I realized right then that we all have our own equivalent of blueberries – some seemingly random thing that we over optimize. I certainly have a few.

One finger pointing at them, three fingers pointing back at us, etc. :-)

This image has been doing the rounds on social media and news outlets around the world.

The Suez Canal blockage is holding up $10B of goods a day.

There are many pieces of thoughtful analysis on the causes, possible solutions, and potential impact of this.

This note isn’t one of them. Instead, my reflection when I learned about this was – shit happens.

It is a helpful reminder from time to time about just how much is out of our control. The best we can do is learn to focus on how we respond.

Someone I know was the victim of a crime recently. She was beaten and dragged while attempting to stop robbers from stealing her purse. Luckily, she escaped without broken bones and has emerged with her spirit intact.

She sent a note reflecting on the lessons she learnt. One of her observations was about the many bystanders who chose to whip out phones and take videos of the event rather than help her. A couple of her lessons spoke to some of the challenges she (and many other) Asian Americans are dealing with right now.

It’s been a heavy few days in the United States with the many attacks on the Asian/Asian American community.

Perhaps a better way to describe these few days is a heavy few days amidst a heavy few months amidst a heavy few years. Racism and bigotry received a big global “like” for the few years following a series of events in 2016 – with Brexit, various elections in Europe, and the American Presidential election. There’s a price that we all pay for those likes – some more than others.

Fittingly, I’ve been reading “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson over the past weeks. Isabel Wilkerson draws powerful parallels between the caste system in India and race in the United States. Those parallels ring true.

Now more than ever.

In the first decade of writing on this blog, I valued novelty. I used to try and share new notes and lessons and did my best to avoid overlap with old posts.

I did so because I thought that was the best way to push myself to absorb concepts. New ways of thinking, new patterns, etc.

In this second decade, the pendulum has swung the other way. While I don’t share duplicate posts (or at least haven’t as yet), I’ve changed my mind on repetition.

The most important lessons are the hardest to learn because they involve changing our habits. This doesn’t happen because we make a commitment on new year’s day. It happens because we commit to obsessing about this change. We then stumble and fail a hundred times, repeat that commitment to ourselves, and ensure we recommit every time.

So, novelty is helpful. But, if we’re obsessing about a change we’re seeking to make, repetition might be what we’re looking for.