“The Good Enough Job” by Simone Stolzoff is a critique of today’s work culture, where work is the central source of identity, purpose and fulfillment. He encourages readers to diversify their sources of meaning and fulfillment, by investing in relationships, hobbies, and activities outside of work.
Here are some highlights from the book:
Jobs have become akin to a religious identity: in addition to a paycheck, they provide meaning, community,
and a sense of purpose.
The notion that we should always love our job creates outsized expectations for what a job can deliver.
In order to build a more resilient sense of self, actively invest in your nonwork identities. Finding meaning from multiple parts of your life means that when a setback comes in one aspect, it doesn’t sting as much.
Play is a natural antidote to workism. It indexes not on utility, but on curiosity and wonder. In art, there’s crafting. In music, there’s jamming.
Employees with friends at work report higher levels of productivity, retention, and job satisfaction.
Brain scans show that idle time and daydreaming create alpha waves that fuel creative insights and innovative breakthroughs.
We seek status because we don’t know our own preferences. When we don’t trust our own definition of what is good, we let other people define it for us.
If our self-worth is tied solely to external rewards, we can spend our whole lives chasing carrots without ever feeling full.
Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were once at a holiday party thrown by a billionaire hedge fund manager when Vonnegut asked Heller a question: “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” “Well,” Heller responded, “I’ve got something he can never have.” “What on earth could that be, Joe?” Vonnegut asked. “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
His interview with Paul Millerd was also fun to listen to:
“Good Work” is Paul Millerd’s second book, following Pathless Path, which I read last year during my sabbatical. In this new book, he shares his journey from being a strategy consultant to becoming a writer and creating a life centered around work he truly enjoys.
He mentions how he was job hopping over the years, searching for the perfect job and never feeling fully satisfied. His realization is:
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson was a long but very engaging read. I’ve never been an Elon Musk fan, therefore didn’t follow SpaceX or Tesla very closely. The book consists of lots of short chapters, each focusing on a different period of his life, including his companies, his childhood and family, and his marriages.
Isaacson doesn’t shy away from depicting Elon Musk’s flaws. It was also the case for his book on Steve Jobs. Reading how he treats his employees, I could see his effectiveness, but it’s definitely not for everyone.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been blogging consistently since 2006 — 19 years! And before my personal blog, I ran a daily-updated Counter-Strike website, back when the term “blog” didn’t even exist. Overall, it’s been 25 years on the world wide web!
For hosting, I used a shared server from Dreamhost all these years. When Dreamhost removed Passenger support from shared servers, I got a dedicated server from Hetzner.
I read a book called Glucose Revolution recently and it got me motivated to order a continuous glucose monitor to measure my blood glucose levels. My motivation for this experiment was to see:
if I can improve my energy during the day by reducing glucose spikes
if my headaches are correlated with high/low blood sugar
build an understanding and intuition about food I eat on regular basis and its impact on my blood sugar
We learn best by doing and there have been interesting takeaways. I paid $55 for the sensor and it needs to be renewed after 14 days. It has a very small thin needle that you don’t feel when sticking into your arm. It was painless. Once the sensor is in, you can read blood sugar levels using your phone, by touching the sensor to your phone and using their iPhone/Android app.
Terapistimin ofisinin yeni bir yere taşınacak olması kendi başına terapi konusuna dönüştü.
Normalde 12 dakikada yürüdüğüm ofisin yeni yerine gitmek artık yürüyerek 25 dakika sürecekti. Taşınma haberini aldıktan sonra, taşınma gerçekleşene kadar geçen 10 günlük sürede sürekli olumsuz olana odaklandığımı ve konforumda olacak bu azalmayı zihnimde büyüttüğümü fark ettim.
Oysa zihinsel alet çantamda bu gibi durumlarda kullanabileceğim pek çok araç vardı:
Perspektife koymak: Bu aktivitenin hayatımda kapladığı yeri hatırlatmak. Bu benim sadece haftada bir ya da iki kez yaptığım bir aktivite, her gün gittiğim bir yer değil. Bu benim haftamın ufak bir kısmını etkileyecek bir gelişme.
Şükretmek: Terapistim Anadolu yakasına da taşınıyor olabilirdi, ya da doğum iznine ayrılıyor olabilirdi. Mevcut durumun daha kötü pek çok versiyonu olduğunu kendime hatırlatarak şükredebilirim.
Olumsuzdaki olumluyu görmek: Evet evime daha uzak bir yere taşınıyor ama bu beni daha uzun yürüyüş yapmaya mecbur kılacak ve hareket etmek sağlığım için faydalı olacak. Ya da taşındığı mahalleyi pek iyi tanımıyorum, bu vesileyle yeni bir mahalleyi keşfetmiş olacağım.
Önemli olana odaklanmak: Terapiye giderken önemli olan iyi bir ilişki kurduğum, kendimi rahat hissettiğim ve fayda gördüğüm birisiyle çalışmak. Evime yakınlığın en önemli kriterim olmadığını kendime hatırlatmak …
Kontrolümde olana odaklanmak: Ofisin konumu benim kontrolümde değil ama ulaşımımı nasıl sağlayacağım ya da devam edip etmeyeceğim benim kontrolümde. Yürümeye üşendiğim zamanlarda araba ile gidebilirim demek de kontrolümde olana odaklanmak ve esnemek için güzel bir başlangıç.
Sizin de aklınıza gelen başka bakış açıları varsa lütfen benimle paylaşın.
Sugar addiction has been an ongoing battle for me since middle school. I use sugar to soothe myself from stress and headaches, or use it to get a dopamine hit when I’m bored. I’m interested in reducing glucose spikes to feel better and improve my energy levels. I came across this book in the American Book Center in Amsterdam and was immediately interested when I saw the glucose charts inside.
“The Pathless Path” tells Paul Millerd’s journey of going from traditional employment (GE, McKinsey) to embarking on a journey to follow his interests and eventually becoming a writer after going through difficult times due to health problems and loss of loved ones. Watching videos of Paul, I loved his calm energy. He’s very affable: humble, goofy, and excited like a grown up kid. His book resonated with me because I’m in a similar life stage, on a sabbatical, exploring different interests and paths beyond my software engineering career at big tech companies.
“Stop Asking Questions” is Andrew Warner’s book where he offers short lessons on how to be a good interviewer and podcast host. There are lots of great tactics that can be applied to everyday conversations. Here are my notes from each section:
4. What’s a win for you Reassures the guest that you care about their needs, establishes trust
What would make your team happy to hear us talk about?
Why did you agree to do this interview?
How can I make this interview as useful for you as it will be for me and my listeners?
5. Join the resistance “I never failed” → “It’s amazing to talk to someone who always got everything right” “I’m not a worrier” → “I don’t usually get to talk to people who are 100% confident”
Burn Rate is a book about the intersection of mental illness and entrepreneurship. It tells the story of Andy Dunn starting a men’s fashion company, Bonobos, while fighting with bi-polar disorder. Here are some parts that I highlighted:
On mental health:
When we say someone “is bipolar” rather than “has bipolar disorder” that’s like saying that someone “is cancer” rather than “has cancer.”
Perhaps depression is the absence of hope.
I became an expert at camouflage. Hide in workaholism, hide in alcoholism, show no vulnerability, do no serious self-inquiry, and have no hard conversations. In other words: get no help.
I came to perceive my job as, if not a mood stabilizer, certainly an antidepressant. By demanding so much of me, by insisting that I show up and keep the lights on at the company, the business gave me a purpose that transcended my malaise.
I wonder if I would have been able to pull this off were it not for those frenetic episodes of elevated mood that bipolar disorder made possible.
We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.
