1. Emotional Intelligence

Feel, skilfully.

A healthy mind is the cornerstone of a healthy existence. Be self-aware of your emotional states. Don’t let them uncontrollably guide your thoughts or actions. Skilfully manage them with reflection and intent. Practise mindfulness meditation. It is a skill to be learned and improved upon.

Influences: The School of Life (Alain de Botton), The Art of Loving (Erich Fromm), Waking Up (Sam Harris)

2. Discipline

Be unapologetically disciplined.

The only thing or person you can truly control is yourself. Hence, discipline lies at the core of fulfilling most wants and needs. It pays off to be – unapologetically disciplined. In everything you do, practise this skill. Because that is what it is: a malleable skill.

Influences: Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), Enchiridion (Epictetus), The Courage to Be Disliked (Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga)

3. Intention

Life is ending every second, don’t be stupid.

Remind yourself of your own mortality. Be aware of how you spend your limited time. Do so with intention. Embody a philosophy of life – to live a life worth having lived.

Influences: A Guide to the Good Life (William B. Irvine), Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), Enchiridion (Epictetus), The Little Book of Hygge (Meik Wiking)

4. Virtue

Be good, do good.

The highest good is virtue. Be a good person. Find joy in being of use to society, in contributing. Maximise your potential and have a positive net contribution. Let this principle be at the core of your decisions. It will be intrinsic. It will be freeing.

Influences: Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), The Daily Stoic (Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman)

5. Passion

Be insanely passionate about something.

Have something that makes you forget to eat or sleep. This passion allows you to pursue and create relentlessly. It will be deeply meaningful.

Influences: Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl), Leonardo Da Vinci (Walter Isaacson)

6. Curiosity

Be curious about everything.

Be interested in the little things. Have diverse interests. Be easily fascinated. Ask how and why things work. Learn about them. This curiosity drives continuous excitement. It sparks new ideas.

Influences: Leonardo Da Vinci (Walter Isaacson), Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Richard P. Feynman)

Don’t overwork yourself. Simply, practise deep work until 6 pm — EVERY day.

Keep it up for a long time.

It will compound.

I track all time commitments that matter to me, including those that are personal. The tool of choice is a digital calendar. On it, I prospectively block the time I intend to or must spend. Further, I retrospectively add missing or adjust deviating events. Routinely, I analyse all these entries for frequency and duration to match their importance.

This allows me to measure and optimise the time I spend and effectively pursue the purpose I set in life.

I. Groundwork

Eat and sleep well enough. Have 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep on a consistent schedule.

II. Overview

Scope the subject with a mind map. Break larger subjects down into core concepts and find the connections between them.

Keep the Pareto principle in mind (i.e., focus on the 20% of content that likely produces 80% of the results).

III. Planning

Organise your study periods around a retrospective revision timetable. Base your selection of topics to learn next not on arbitrary sequential orderings. Instead, prioritize topics according to areas where your understanding is weakest.

IV. Studying

Apply Parkinson’s law (i.e., that your tasks will use the time available to them) by setting deadlines for yourself and studying with the Pomodoro technique (i.e., alternate focused intervals with short breaks).

Interleave your practice by studying several related concepts together.

Start by understanding core concepts, making use of the Feynman technique (i.e., break complex topics down to their simplest form, explaining them as if to a child).

Prioritize active recall (i.e., actively try to retrieve information from memory) and spaced repetition (i.e., adjust revision frequency based on understanding).

References

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press.

Abdaal, A. (2021, February 22). The Ultimate Guide To Studying For Exams. Ali Abdaal. https://aliabdaal.com/studying/the-ultimate-guide-to-studying-for-exams/

However, extrinsic joy (e.g., societal acclaim) is not a sustainable way to continuous happiness. Don’t be dependent on external factors (e.g., opinions of others).

Build a framework of joy that is in your control.

Focus on intrinsic joy. Find joy in being of use to society, in you, yourself, contributing.

Simply, be in control of your happiness through the joy of contribution – and get closer to continuous happiness.

This can be useful and productive.

However, this may also provide a view that is too surface-level.

Keep this in mind.

It consists of:

• Awareness, be aware of what can happen.

• Prevention, be clear about how to prevent it.

• Acceptance, be ready to accept it happening.

Diversify your identity (Mark Manson). Have many things that make up who you are. Don’t just be an academic, be an academic who is engaged in the arts.

If one identity is questioned, you will have other ones holding you up mentally.

Furthermore, frame your given identity in a way that enables you to detach from it. Don’t say I am an academic, say I am someone who is engaged in academic work.

Your work is something you do, not who you innately are (Austin Kleon). Phrasing it this way (i.e., detaching yourself from it) can make it easier to dismantle a bad habit or better yourself within any field.

Diversify, detach and observe rationally, then act accordingly.

According to Haviv, “a logo is the period at the end of the sentence. It is not the sentence itself.” A logo should not carry all the weight of its brand. It should not try to say a whole lot about the brand. In other words, “a logo is not communication, a logo is identification.” 

A logo needs to be three main things:

Appropriate

A logo should be appropriate in the feeling it conveys. For instance, a sports-related logo could feel bold and dynamic; in fashion, it could express elegance.

Distinctive

A logo should be distinctive and memorable. It should be unique enough to persist in the observer’s mind. A way to test for this is that someone who just saw the logo for the first time is able to easily sketch it on a piece of paper.

Simple

Less is more, a term used by many functionalist designers and architects, summarises this aspect to a great degree. A logo should be as reduced as possible. However, this has to be done in a way that still allows for it to be distinctive enough. This enables it to be reproduced in many applications and sizes without losing its readability. “[It is] kind of the continuum on which we work […] between distinctiveness and simplicity, how special can we make it while still keeping it uncomplicated [and] how simple can we make it while not […] becoming generic.”

Logo design, like so many, if not all design disciplines, is a balance between appropriateness, distinctiveness, and simplicity.