š Welcome to this week's Pursuit. My name is Amir, and each week I go over 10 hours of content in pursuit of living a meaningful, fulfilling and balanced life. I'm grateful to share my findings with you and hope I can have a tiny impact on your life. Subscribe now if you haven't already!
This weekās discovery:
š¦Ā More Lanes, More Traffic
š¢Ā The Influence of Numbers in Life
šØĀ The Drawing Advice That Changed My Life
šĀ Seek Healing to Procrastinate
šļø A Quote I'm Pondering On
šµĀ Music I'm Listening To
š¦Ā More Lanes, More Traffic
The problem is that your time, attention, and energy are substantially more constrained than all the things you could do with them, despite your attempts to improve them. As with the ājust one more laneā approach to urban planning, the ājust one more pomodoroā approach to productivity is a game thatās impossible to win. More lanes create more traffic, and greater productivity creates more workāat least if you donāt constrain the amount of work.
You may be inclined to avoid the spaciousness of leisure, because it can bring up feelings you donāt want to be with, like that fear of finitudeāof one day having to leave the party of experience before the end. As Pascal puts it: āAll of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.ā And when unable to sit quietly in a room alone, many of us choose to work instead, and then we tell each other that this is just fine, actually.
By welcoming the constraints of our own finitude, the choices we make become imbued with meaning. Itās precisely because we canāt do everything that what we choose to do is important. And the moment you accept that you canāt do everything, you resolve workās problem of induced demand. As you grieve the loss of roads not taken before, you will grieve the loss of roads ahead that you will choose not to take. And this is totally fine.
šĀ Read - 8min (reposted)
š¢Ā The Influence of Numbers in Life
The desire to quantify and gamify various aspects of life, such as social status, intelligence, or health, stems from our innate need for certainty. Numbers and gamified systems provide a sense of concrete measurement, even though they may not accurately reflect reality. Real games offer an escape from life's ambiguity by presenting clear outcomes and consequences. In contrast, important decisions in life are often ambiguous, lacking clear yes or no answers. Gamified systems claim to provide clarity, but they are based on potentially flawed human judgments and assumptions. For example, fitness trackers like Whoop rely on algorithms and data that may not have clear scientific consensus. Despite this, people let these numbers influence their mood, self-perception, motivations, and actions.
š§Ā Listen - 2min
šØĀ The Drawing Advice That Changed My Life
Your problem is that one day you write a song, the next day you write a poem, and the third day you do a drawing. None of it adds up to anything. All you're doing is laying a single brick of a million different houses and expecting that one day it'll magically become a mansion. It's not gonna happen. Action comes before motivation. It's not the other way around. I think there's this myth that motivation leads to action, and that you've gotta wait for some sort of moment of inspiration that strikes you like lightning from the gods. But it's the other way around. Firstly, you need to act, and only then will you find your motivation. Thinking about stuff is not doing stuff. It's the complete opposite of doing stuff.
šŗĀ Watch - 10min
š§š¼āāļøĀ Seek Healing to Procrastinate
In our pursuit of true calling, resistance often manifests as the need for healing and seeking support. However, healing can become a form of procrastination, diverting us from the very thing we should be doing. The part of ourselves that we believe needs healing is not the part from which our creativity springs. In fact, the more adversities we face, the more fertile and abundant that part becomes. Today, there exists a prevailing mythology around the necessity of healing before progressing in life. Yet, oftentimes, these endeavors become mere procrastination, a means to evade the very thing we should be doing. Seeking support from others also becomes a form of resistance, as it hinders our ability to handle our own affairs. We must recognize that our lives are entirely our own, and the tribe we fear being excluded from is composed of flawed individuals preoccupied with their own lives. Most people do not deeply care about what we do or what we are committed to. They are engrossed in their own struggles and concerns.
š§Ā Listen - 4min
šļø A Quote I'm Pondering On
Donāt confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but doesn't make any progress.
šµĀ Music Tracks I'm Listening To
š§Ā Youāll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:
Previously on Pursuit: