Week 12 - "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change" - Albert Einstein
Just wanted to preface this week's publication with a huge thank you to anyone who wished me a happy birthday! I appreciate every one of you for following the newsletter :)
Thoughts of the Week
For some reason, I’ve always thought of the future version of myself as a different person. I know I’ll still have many of the same characteristics as I do now, but I think imagining “future Tarun” as a different individual is the way I cope with all the things I think I’ll need to learn by then.
It sounds ridiculous but I’ve always believed that someday I’d wake up and just be ready to be an adult. Yet, I’m slowly coming to grips with the fact that the future version of myself is just the person I am now experiencing incremental changes over a long period of time.
Honestly, this realization has been pretty scary. But not because of what I know it’ll involve. Rather, it’s knowing that the brain that decides whether or not I skip my 7:45 discussion is the same brain that’s going to be responsible for buying a house or even naming a kid.
These are massive decisions. So to think that I'm really going to be the one making them is terrifying.
However, what’s helped me cope with this is acknowledging the fact that change happens pretty slowly. It’s not an overnight process, and the reality is that it’ll take years of micro adjustments and lessons to eventually mold me into someone ready to make life’s biggest decisions.
It could be something I read in a book tomorrow that takes 5 years to sink in or just a piece of advice from a professor or friend. Regardless of how or what I learn, I think it’s important to acknowledge that change is often a result of compounding these lessons and experiences over long periods of time. And it’s this compounding effect that ultimately gets us ready for all the big decisions in life.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter and if you can at all relate to anything I’ve said.
Something to think about
“See, many of the challenges we face in life are largely under our control.
We choose the jobs we apply for, the house we try to afford, the partner we seduce, the weight we lift.
These things can still be hard.
Tough, challenging, sometimes unbearably difficult.
But it was us who chose the flavour of that difficulty.
So what happens when absolutely everything comes crashing down?
The single worst possible scenario you can imagine happens.
Well, you get to see what you’re made of.
What you’re genuinely made of.
When all your forces are marshalled to a single challenge.” - Chris Williamson
What I Learned This Week
The Illusion of explanatory depth
The illusion of explanatory depth is the idea that we think we know much more about the world than we actually do. It’s only when we are asked to explain something that we come to terms with our limited understanding. For example, most of us live in apartments or houses which we would probably say we understand pretty well. However, if we were asked to explain the concept of a house, how they are built, or how they came to be, most of us would realize we don’t really know what we thought we knew.
The Peak-End Rule
The peak-end rule is the cognitive bias that suggests individuals usually judge an experience based on how they felt at its’ peak and at its’ end. A good example of this is an individual who vacations in a beautiful location but encounters several problems such as a delayed flight, and a noisy hotel room. Despite the minor setbacks, they are still likely to rate the vacation positively because of the peak experiences of the vacation and the positive experiences they might have had at the end of the trip.
Interesting content I consumed this week
TLDR: An interesting study that examines the relationship between the coaching environment and mental toughness in cross-country athletes.
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That’s all for this week! If you have any thoughts or suggestions on ways to improve this newsletter or parts you think could be in or excluded, please let me know!
Change is constant till you die. And it is debatable whether you always 'improve'. I don't think life is that linear. Also, if you are expecting to ever be 'ready' for the big things in life, you may be disappointed! Most people just do what they do at any given time based on the information and experience they have at that point. In other words, we are all just 'winging it' 😜
I think this ties in well to the “1% better everyday” philosophy that has become quite popular. I know that I will have bad days every now and then but if I stick to compounding improvements over years if not decades that eventually I will become the adult figure that I always imagined myself when I was younger.
On another note I do think that the 1% better every day is related to so much more than we realize. While it might be easy to characterize becoming better as improving productivity, fitness, and grades I would argue that it could be as important to prioritize meaningful social interactions and new experiences with the world around us. Overall there is so much that we do that makes us better without realizing it.