A Learning a Day

A decade ago, I made it a point to read 2 books per month. I was curious about many topics and I’m glad I indulged my curiosity in that phase.

In this current phase, I am reading significantly fewer books but I’m spending more time attempting to change my habits based on the books I read.

2025 might just go down as the year when I attempted to change my life based on what I learnt from “Good Energy,” “Built to Move,” and “Outlive.”

If I manage to do that, it’ll go down as a successful year. If I don’t, I’ll plan to read them again and try again in 2026.

Changing our measure of success changes our approach.

I find myself often wishing for a battery indicator – like the ones on a phone – I can look at for the people around me. Especially for myself.

First, the context. I was tired on two separate occasions recently.

One of these days was with family and I was noticeably withdrawn. An extra hour of sleep would have transformed that morning.

I was even asked – “Everything okay? Tired?” And I said “yes – all okay.” Some combination of ego and lack of self awareness meant that I didn’t admit to my tiredness.

The other day was at work. I was wiped out and every minor disagreement hit me a lot harder. I saw a couple of issues and felt my heart sink. And I ended a perfectly normal day feeling beat down.

In both cases, if there was a simple battery indicator I could have looked at, I would have seen the indicator point to the fact that I’d gone into battery saver mode. I needed a recharge to reset – that recharge is usually just sleep. In rare cases, it comes down to food or other factors.

Low battery states impact everything – our ability to be resilient, to be optimistic, and to keep perspective.

The more awareness we have of them, the better.

Perhaps I should just begin by imagining a battery indicator and keep checking in on the charge level.

Nearly two decades ago, someone I know was reflecting on a discussion where a person spoke up a couple of times with minimal signal.

This friend shared the quote – “Better to be silent and be thought of as a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

That idea has stuck with me – perhaps due to its beautiful combination of wit and wisdom. I still think of it every time I’m in a similar situation.

Both when observing others as well as when I’m at risk of doing the same myself.

Every day, I see or read some fascinating prediction about where the world is heading.

Many of these predictions are based on some fact – the impact of AI on entry level jobs, impact of political uncertainty, etc.

But the range of these is mind boggling. There are many predicting widespread unemployment in the next five years, others who are concerned about AI’s impact on our ability to think, others who believe we’re headed for a major social-economic crisis, a few worried about AI taking over and destroying humanity, others worried about the impact of a changing global order, and so on.

The one thing I remind myself when I see these predictions is – nobody knows.

Or more accurately, I say to myself – nobody fucking knows.

We are dealing with more systemic change all at once than anyone can comprehend. The second and third order effects in a complex system create conditions where changes are happening so fast that it is hard to know what to respond to.

One thing is for certain – there’s no point overreacting to every high confidence prediction.

Nobody knows.

One of the more impactful changes we can make in our lives is to both notice and be grateful for near misses.

As these happen more often than we realize, we’re guaranteed to see an order of magnitude increase in the gratitude we experience.

The process of building good habits is like initiating a long download on spotty wifi.

Progress feels incredibly slow, often frustrating. And all it takes is for one glitch and the download has to start from scratch.

Hard to build, easy to mess up.

There tend to be three dominant attitudes to hard work –

(1) Avoid at all costs

(2) Accept and grind

(3) Learned to love it

Here’s the fascinating thing. Neither one of these is universally “good” or “bad.”

For example, sometimes, it is the desire to “avoid at all costs” that can lead to ingenious short cuts. And the flip side of learning to love hard work is that it can feel like hustle porn – where overworking is worshipped.

Sometimes, the same person can have one attitude in one area of their life and another in the rest. That can be endearing or frustrating depending on where you stand.

The key is to first decide what your attitude will be in the areas of your life that matter. And then to surround yourself with people whose attitudes match yours.

The HBO Max social team has had to hype up a series of questionable rebrands. Now they’re back to where they started 3 years ago.

Rather than complain about the lemons they’ve been handed, they’ve gone out on a self-deprecating humor blitz.

It started with claims of “white smoke” – situational humor.

Then a note about the reactions they expected.

This was hilarious.

Their new headline took the cake.

They transformed a facepalm moment into something unforgettable.

A good reminder to make the best lemonade out of the lemons handed to us.

“You trust the quality of what you know, not quantity” | Mr. Miyagi, Karate Kid

Applies just as much as to Karate as to every other skill in this life.

I was aware of the “don’t eat till you’re full” advice for many years. That awareness never translated to action.

Until I wore a continuous glucose monitor and saw the effect of eating till I’m full – especially at night.

That’s the thing about learning – it usually happens when seeing the long-term consequences of our actions shocks or surprises enough to change our behavior.

So, if we’re having difficulty changing our behavior, it might be worth asking – what is an experience that would help us see or experience the long-term consequences of our current path?