Why write Clichés?
Inspired by very sane and level-headed advice from multiple sources (julian.ac, nabeel.qu), I decided to write my own set of battle-tested principles, advice that I would given myself, and anything that would inspire me. There are multiple benefits to this: it gives me a social accountability to be true to many words on this page, helps me retrospect by actually writing and thinking (rather than thinking and forgetting) and above all, may help someone on their bad day.
Battle tested advice
Practice/Active Learning: As one transitions from a full-time college life towards full time jobs and more responsiblities, its hard to be dedicated full time learner. In such a scenario, what is working very well for me is to identify the subjects or topics I want to learn and create an ambitious goal or a project around it. It works very well for research topics, sports and even cooking food. There is still a lot of merit to reading textbooks and learning for the sake of it, but if you are faced with a decision paralysis when faced with a daunting new skills, approaching it as a project and clashing with the ambititous goal head-on atleast breaks that paralysis. Others have also noted this.
Writing: Write about everything you think. If its a technical topic, write it as a lecture. If its something random, write on Substack or as a Blog. On bad and good days, write in journals. It helps you add structure to your thought, identify gaps and minimizes the cost of context switching, if you are juggling multiple tasks. But occasionally, get bored and forget you haev digital devices. That Boredom is an excellent way to introspect and come up with new ideas. Then write again. Don’t be a Finite Automata, be a Turing Machine.
Principles
- Enabling Others: I am very lucky to have met people who have opened door I couldn’t even see. Whenever one can, one should reciprocate the same. It doesnt take a lot of time or energy, and the positivity is very uplifting. If you are very confident that two people in your network should talk, connect them. If you think your way of understanding the material is currently missing from the internet, write it down. Teach people the tricks of the trade.