Freedom to Learn
Savvy Saturdays - 7/25/20
Hello friends,
Greetings from Austin!
My “roomie” roommate (as in the one who lives in the same room), moved out this past Friday, and it was a very big sad moment. 😢Even though he’s just moving up 3 hours away to the Dallas area, I always find good-byes to be pretty hard. 😔
As someone who has lived in the same apartment for the past 4 years, though it’s a joy to have new peeps join the apartment, it’s always emotional having roommates yeet out to their next season of life.
Before the move-out, we decided to have one last meal together as roomies. 🍔🍟(sponsored by Hopdoddy’s… though not really)
Besides the emotional departure of a roommate, I’ve been coping by biking around Austin. 🚴
I always find face masks to have a cool edgy look, but I think my neon helmet reinforces the fact that I care about safety, and in fact, don’t use the same passwords for all my online accounts. ~a white lie~
The sky was looking pretty amazing, especially on Friday, and I snagged several photos while going to my weekly fix of Half-Priced books.📖
As I was exploring the sociology section of the book store, I got interested in this one book on Social Psychology, which covers:
the study of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence of others.
Basically, a lot of insight over human behavior influenced by social contexts.
Though it was a textbook, which triggered some college PTSD vibes, there was something very satisfying about being able to read without having to prepare for a test.
Weirdly enough, I always found that when I had to read a book for a class, it was always 10xs harder to focus on what I was learning. Especially when it was tied to an essay or test, I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it.
I felt like I had a lack of control and always had to force myself to “study” the material.
That’s why I found the freedom to learn, outside of the education system, to be a beautiful thing.
When you’re no longer bound by a curriculum, and allowed to explore Wikipedia pages, browse through different aisles in a book store, or ask Google for more than just the answers to problems on StackOverflow or Chegg, there’s a wide breadth of knowledge to be had.
Like exploring uncharted territory, the ability to traverse lands and discover nuggets of wisdom is like a pirate finding buried treasure.💰
Of course, having a class is helpful, as it provides a map that reduces friction in needing to learn certain topics. But the removal of the unknown can take away the excitement of learning.
So let this be a reminder to indulge in your curiosity!
Take some time to learn outside of your specific field of study and explore topics you find interesting.
Feed your brain with something outside of the YouTube Recommendation algorithm that you take control of in exploring.
You never know what you might find. 🙂
Thanks for catching me in this update! I can’t believe summer is almost over…
It’s crazy how fast and slow time flies during a pandemic. 👀
Anyways, hope this update was insightful. Apologies to all my teacher friends for the subtle bash on education. 😅
Please stay safe my friends, keep it savvy, and I’ll see y’all in the next update! 😊
Weekly Collections
Faith
How Do I Find Freedom from Worry?
“Do you remember what 2 Corinthians 1:20 says? “All the promises of God find their Yes in [Jesus].” What that means is this: When you live your Christian life by picking a promise, banking on it, plugging in, so that faith goes into the word of God, do you know who bought that for you? Jesus.
We’re sinners; I’m a sinner. I don’t deserve any promise of God fulfilled in my life. How can I count on the promises of God being fulfilled in my life? One thing: Christ died for me. Christ bought every promise for John Piper. This is the new covenant. Christ shed his blood so that I can pick anywhere in the Bible and say, “I’ll take that promise for today.
I can pick that promise. Why? Because I’m deserving? No way. Because Jesus is deserving, and I trust Jesus, and he gives it to me.
Where fear says, “What if blank happens?” faith says, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
When worry surfaces, faith responds, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).
When doubt and frustration scoff, saying, “They’ll never change; this is a waste of time!” Jesus looks us in the eye and responds, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).”
—Ask Pastor John Podcast
Entrepreneurship
The “invention” of the flat iron steak
An interesting cover by The Hustle, a business and tech newsletter I subscribe to, that talks about how the flat iron steak which “began as an experiment in a meat science laboratory in 2001” is today “a $630m-per-year culinary sensation”.
Learned a lot about how cuts of meat are based on the way muscles and tendons are sliced and different ways of cutting beef effects the way the meat’s texture and composition can change!
Productivity
“As a hard approach to managing your emails, Inbox Zero is designed to help keep your inbox clear or almost empty so that you don’t have to stress over your emails.
Inbox Zero was created by Merlin Mann, a productivity expert. According to Mann, the term “zero” isn’t about the number of messages in the inbox. It’s “how long it takes to use the inbox.”
Mann has taken the time to identify five potential actions for each of your inbox messages:
Delete or archive
Delegate - is there somebody else who should deal with it?
Respond - a quick response that doesn’t take more than two minutes
Defer - move to a “do it later folder”
Do it now
Each time a new email comes in, ask yourself what to do with it:
What does this mean to me and do I care?
What do I need to do with this email?
What is the most prudent course of action for this email?
—Flow-E
Weekly Reflections
Mental Model
Probabilistic thinking is essentially trying to estimate, using some tools of math and logic, the likelihood of any specific outcome coming to pass.
It is one of the best tools we have to improve the accuracy of our decisions. In a world where each moment is determined by an infinitely complex set of factors, probabilistic thinking helps us identify the most likely outcomes.
When we know these our decisions can be more precise and effective.
—(Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions)
How to apply the mental model:
Notice fat-tailed processes - when outlier events are far more likely to happen than they are in an actual normal distribution.
Apply Bayesian updating - take into account all prior relevant probabilities and then incrementally update as newer information arrives.
Address asymmetries (metaprobability) - check if your probability estimates are any good in the context.
Verse of the Week
"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.
For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
—2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Challenging Quote
“You cannot be passionate about anything without feeling pain.
There is always a sacrifice when it comes to passion.”
—Anonymous
If you guys have found the newsletter to be helpful, I would love to hear from you on what’s been good, any suggestions for improvement, and anything else you’d like to see!
Please don’t be shy to let me know and thanks in advance!