Instead of working on any of the blog posts in my drafts, I decided to make another new one. Hopefully this one doesn’t suffer the same fate as the last 4, but I suppose the fact you’re reading this right now would indicate it hasn’t.
It’s been a busy few months for me. Straight from final exams/projects to the Yukon, back home for a day, then Banff for a week, right into starting my brand new Co-op Quality Assurance position. While staying busy might be good for personal development (to an extent), it certainly proves to be fatal for any potential blogging habits.
What I’ve been Working On
Myself and my habits. In particular, paying excrutiatingly close detail to the fine-grained decisions I make. I believe that the more one pays attention to their conscious experience, the easier it becomes to fix the unproductive habits and reinforce the productive ones. To live this belief, I have been journalling every day to help anchor my progress; it’s incredibly helpful to have a tool to get a broad overview of how far you’ve come, and will also help avoid repeating the same mistakes that were made in the past.
Other than internally, I have been paying much closer attention to my professional relationships with people. I have found that employing principles I have learned through my reading I have gotten better at dealing with the interpersonal conflicts that come up every now-and-again as president of a student society. While it isn’t much, I have been developing proper leadership skills and learning how to better motivate a team to achieve successes, all through paying a closer attention to how I behave.
I have several projects on the go, perhaps I need to work on multitasking less and finishing a project before starting another one…
What I’ve been Reading
My many vacations gave me lots of time to read. Over my road-trip to the Yukon, I finished a Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine, a very insightful book about integrating the practice of stoicism with the 21st century world. In particular, I found the last several chapters especially note-worthy. Far too many insights to cover in such a brief paragraph–initially I had planned to write a blog post just on this book, but for now this shall suffice… Until I reread the book again in the near future. I love the way Irvine describes his own experiences as a practicing stoic in the 21st century, and it has inspired me to be more considerate of certain stoic principles in my conscious life. The described ideas of negative visualization and the trichotomy of control are immensly helpful practices, that I can already see making a difference in the way I appreciate my daily life.
What I’ve been Listening To
More gym time again means more podcast time, something I sorely missed no longer having to commute (thanks, Virus…). Lately, I have taken a particular liking to Tim Ferriss’ podcast. It’s a great look into what decisions make successful people successful, and gives some great insight into the path I want to take myself, while also being incredibly entertaining.
I also recently completed listening to James Clear’s Atomic Habits, an awesome audiobook that has got me think so much deeper about my habits and how to improve them. I’ve already found myself applying the principles in the book to help make my bad habits harder to do, while making changes to make sure nothing can impede me from completing my good habits (except blogging, clearly). I’d highly recommend anyone with any interest in bettering their life to at least give it a listen, it’s only 5 hours long and worth it.
Anyways, that’s my relatively brief catch-up blog post. I’ll leave you with this photo of me and my dad taken by propping my camera against the car when we first got to the Yukon.
