What I’ve been reading:
"Notes from the Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The first existentialist novel. One of the best books I've ever read, regardless of genre or fiction/nonfiction classification.
You know from my instagram story rants how seriously (probably too seriously) I take book recommendations because I want to avoid confusion and wasting people’s time. That’s why I say that context is needed both from the side of the person asking for a recommendation and from the person who is recommending a specific book or books.
This is a long way of me saying that, as someone who is extremely picky with his book recommendations, Notes from the Underground is one of the few that is on my list of books that I would recommend to everyone and is up there at the top of that list.
I initially read it in my native language and have read some of my favorite parts in English because I wanted to compare the translations. But this is my first time reading it cover-to-cover in English. Since that’s the language I’m writing in, it’s only right to read the full English translation of one of the best books I know of.
Why I personally love this masterpiece is its critique of idealizing rationality, its acknowledgement of the irrational (and often dark) side of humanity, and its dismantling of the idea of the possibility of a utopian society.
What I’ve been watching and listening to:
Israel Adesanya post-fight interviews.
Until 8 days ago, Adesanya was the UFC middleweight champion and considered one of the best pound-for-pound mma fighters in the world.
Last Saturday, he lost his title to Alex Pereira, the man who beat him twice in his kickboxing career and the only man to ever knock him out. And he lost via stoppage (TKO) again.
Losing a fight in front of millions of people is difficult enough. Losing to a person who already beat you twice, knocked you out once, and losing in the last round of the fight that you were winning—that’s about as big an ego hit as you can take.
I was never a fan of Adesanya. Although I had respect for his exceptional fighting skills, his willingness to fight the very best opponents, and the fact that he is a fellow anime nerd, I simply didn’t like him as a character.
Well, I’m sure that I’m not the only one who has gained a whole new level of respect for him and even started liking him in the previous week.
That’s because Israel Adesanya has been holding a masterclass on how to deal with a loss.
Combat sports are full of people making excuses after a loss and even going into "hiding" and refusing to do any interviews.
So far, Adesanya is handling this loss probably better than any superstar has ever handled losing a fight that had so much at stake.
Me watching his interviews is not about him, that specific fight, or about mma.
It’s about seeing another human being deal with failure in the best way possible and taking notes.
What I’ve been thinking about:
You need to make your online diet plan.
Criticizing the online space for all the distractions and waste of time that it’s creating is easy. It’s also unfair. And I’ll be the first to admit that I am sometimes too quick to participate in this criticism.
We have to recognize that, when used in a healthy way, social media, youtube, and different streaming platforms are sources of immensely valuable and almost always free information.
If you plan your online diet, that is, if you are intentional about the things you consume online, the time you spend on your phone and computer will change your life for the better. It definitely changed mine.
I want to write more about this topic and provide some concrete, actionable advice as I’m looking back on around 6-7 years of using the internet to my own advantage and 3 years of daily creating online.
You could help me do a good job at this by letting me know what have been your biggest struggles with the consumption of online content. Is it not knowing what to consume, having too many things to consume, not knowing how to take out valuable insights from the content you are consuming, not knowing how to set boundaries with your consumption, or anything else?
Hopefully I will be able to address all of your specific pain points so that we can all keep using this online space in a way that it serves us, instead of us serving it.
Thank you for reading.
Stay strong, love life, and never feel sorry for yourself.
P.S. Quick announcement: This Thursday, Sisyphus Society will open for new members one final time this year. The next round of enrollment will probably be at least 1.5-2 months from now. If you want to receive more information about Sisyphus Society and free downloadable resources from it in the next couple of days, as well as the link to join if you are interested, sign up for the waiting list here.
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Hello.
I've struggle with twitter mostly, who brought to me all the pain of the world, and make me sad about how people were fighting in the comment, and how this was to me a sign that humanity will not find a path to a resolution about all the challenges (global warning, limites ressources) that are awaiting to us.
So I got to restrain little by little time passes on this app. Now I barely go on twitter 2 or 3 times a week.
Also on YouTube, I have a divertising consumption, so no content (or only a few) I watch bring me valuable knowledge for my personnal growth. So I start to make a list of what I really want to watch, what subjects I care the most, and so I unsuscribe channels that no longer match to this conditions.
Finally I can say that, globally, I was really passive in my way of consuming social media and content online, I was mostly following the trends, and what my friends telling me : the last banger video to watch, the last drama to follow on twitter, and I dive into it, like I have nothing better to do in my life . But I realise that after watching/reading it, my main feeling was "I've clearly wasted my time here" because on twitter I was raging about something I can't do about it, and on YouTube it was mostly funny video, that's OK sometimes but too often it became not funny anymore, and as I say, I learned absoluty nothing interesting from it, regardless of the time spend watching it.
(Sorry for my bad english. Have a good day)