"Let's talk about death" is certainly not a joyous way to begin or end your day, but bear with me. This won't end morbidly.

There are three attitudes that I've generally observed when someone talks about death:

• Evasion: You ask your mother about your sick grandma. "Ma, what happened to grandma? How is she doing?" To protect you, your mom lies, "She's just under the weather. Everything is fine, child!" I observed this a lot growing up. Even when my own father was going through medical troubles, he wouldn't reveal it. He would evade the question masterfully. "Appa, where are your blood test results?" [Pause] "Oh the doctor's office never sent me a copy; they just shared the results on a phone."

• Fear: This is probably more common once you grow up. We fear death as if it's a vile, unwelcome guest that's robbing us of everything we love and care of. Who hasn't heard stories of people sharing their greatest regrets right before they die? In fact, an entire book was written on this: The 5 Regrets of The Dying. The way death is portrayed in movies and media -- with violence, grief, and bloodshed -- it's natural that we fear it.

• Apathy: And then there are the people whose life mantra is YOLO. They don't think about nor talk about death. Not because they're evading it. Rather, they think, "We're all gonna die anyway. Why bother worrying about it? Let's make the most of every day."

I found a fourth attitude in a book I began reading a few days ago: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

This is how the author, Sogyal Rinpoche, describes the fourth attitude,

"Death is neither depressing nor exciting; it is simply a fact of life. According to the wisdom of Buddha, we can use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the painful death of someone close to us or the shock of terminal illness to force us into looking at our lives. Nor are we condemned to go out empty-handed at death to meet the unknown. We can begin, here and now, to find meaning in our lives. We can make every moment an opportunity to change and to prepare -- wholeheartedly, precisely, and with peace of mind -- for death and eternity. In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected."

Instead of evading, fearing, or being indifferent to death, Rinpoche urges the reader to accept death while we're alive and use the knowledge of acceptance to prepare for it, by living a life that is fueled with meaning.

In my case, I've thought about the death of my loved ones significantly more than I've thought about my own death. I feel paralyzed with fear when I think about the death of the people I love; tears stream down my face before I finish a thought. But, reading this book is giving me a chance to view death differently.

I'll share more learnings on here as I keep reading it.

If you'd like to join me on this intellectual journey, subscribe to my newsletter, Making Of A Book, where I share short essays on interesting topics like this each week and share the behind-the-scenes journey of publishing my second book, Unshackled.

Photo Courtesy: Elliana Esquivel

"Man is troubled not by events, but the meaning he gives them." -- Epictetus.

It is 304 B.C.

A 30-year-old, haggard, dark-skinned merchant is on a voyage from Phoenicia to Peiraeus when his ship is destroyed. Luckily, he survives the shipwreck and lands in Athens, Greece, which at the time was the epicenter of philosophical study.

A bookstore catches his attention as he enters the Polis. He walks in and happens to pick up Memorabilia by Xenophon, a student of Socrates. As he reads about the father of philosophy, a man whose intellect rose above his circumstances, he asks the bookseller excitedly, "Sir, where can I find men like Socrates in this town?" Just then, Crates -- a famous cynic living at the time in Greece -- walks by the bookstore. The bookseller points to Crates, saying, "There's your man! He's the one. Go talk to him."

Soon, he becomes a pupil of Crates, eager to absorb what his teacher has to say.

Cynicism was one of the schools of philosophy back then. The word cynic has nothing to do with the meaning we give it today. Cynicism is a way of living life in virtue and in agreement with nature. It's about rejecting all conventional norms and desires for wealth, power, and fame. It's about living a simple, ascetic life, sometimes in a derisive way in public.

To teach Cynicism, Crates gives the pupil a pot of lentil soup and says, "Here. Now, carry this around wherever you go. That's your lesson number one."

Overcome with bashfulness, the pupil tries to hide the soup under his cloak. But Crates, irked by his lack of respect, smashes the pot, leaving a trail of soup -- dribbling like diarrhea -- down his legs. "You must not feel ashamed of this. You must not care what anybody thinks."

Eventually, though, the pupil leaves Crates to set up his own school of philosophy.

That is what we call today stoicism.

Who invented Stoicism?

The pupil from the story above is Zeno of Citium. His dive into philosophy is supposed to have come from consulting the oracle, a name given to the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo. In his biography, Diogenes, another philosopher, writes that "Zeno's interest in philosophy began when he consulted the oracle to know what he should do to attain the best life, and that the god's response was that he should take on the complexion of the dead. Whereupon, perceiving what this meant, he studied ancient authors." (Interestingly, Socrates' quest for answers is also said to have come from consulting the oracle). Zeno began learning the Cynic philosophy from Crates, but soon discovered that he was too conventional for it. Besides, he realized, there is a way to adopt the same Socratic value system -- of placing knowledge above all desires -- and still live a conventional life where you take part in the policies of your city and be a member of your society. Zeno began teaching his new school of thought at the Stoa Poikile (meaning painted porch) in the Agora of Athens. At first, his disciples were called Zenonians, but soon, they came to be known as Stoics, a name previously given to poets who congregated at the Stoa Poikile.

Athens In 300 B.C.

The world looked very different when Zeno set up a school in 300 B.C. versus when Aristotle did, a hundred years ago. Between 400 and 300 B.C., the greek city-state polis went through many wars and was thoroughly destroyed by the Macedonian Empire. It was a time of utter chaos and confusion. People were feeling far more powerless than their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. So they turned to philosophy as a salve for their soul, slowly separating what they can't control (everything on the outside) from what they can (everything on the inside). More specifically, Stoicism as a philosophy gave them solace in knowing that they were all part of something much greater, thus making the absorption of Polis into the Macedonian Empire more palatable. Alongside Zeno, there were several other schools of philosophy that occupied Greece in 300 B.C.: including the schools set up by Aristotle, Diogenes, Plato, Epicurus. These schools were not diametrically opposite in what they taught. In fact, all of them promised to teach you how to lead a better life and become a better version of yourself.

As Jonathan Rée, philosopher and historian, says, "Choosing between these schools -- which were all proximate to each other -- was more like choosing between Cafe Narrow and Starbucks than choosing between rationalism and empiricism."

The Three Pillars of Stoicism

The philosophy of stoicism really rests on three pillars (or three topois): Logic. Physics. Ethics. As with the word cynic, the meaning of these three words was different back then from what they are perceived to be today. Logic refers to the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, and is more expansive than the modern meaning it's given today. Physics refers to the structure of the physical world, a combination of what we today call metaphysics and natural sciences. Ethics refers to the role we humans play in the physical world around us. Said another way, ethics is the central pillar that guides you on how to live your life in virtue with nature. But to build strong ethics, you need a good understanding of the workings of the world (physics) and the capacity to reason correctly (logic).

Keep Reading...

I plan to continue appending my learnings here over the coming weeks and build a comprehensive guide on Stoicism, so if you'd like to join me on this intellectual journey, sign up for my weekly newsletter to get updated on future articles. :)

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I was walking my roommate’s dog, Bella, yesterday evening.

It was my first time walking her.

As we set off, I watched her attentively as she wandered from one plant to the next with childlike curiosity.

I let her lead me at first.

She would walk towards a rosemary shrub. Pause. Inspect. Keep walking. Move on to a stranger’s front yard. Pause. Position herself well. Pee. Keep walking. On and on and on.

Along the way, whenever a car passed by us or a stranger walked toward us, I’d pull her aside. In those moments, I lead her.

Throughout the walk, we were playing a table tennis match of who’s leading who?

Somewhere towards the end, I realized, Huh. This is how our mind works.

While one part of our mind helps us wander around and follow our curiosity, the other part acts as the diligent dogwalker, not letting the curious mind too astray.

Duality in Creative Work

Creative work generally feels like a mind-wandering dog.

As a writer, sometimes I get into rabbit holes on topics forgetting what my original question was. The insidious part of this process is, it's fun!

It’s fun to be stuck in rabbit holes and discover a new book, podcast, or essay that fundamentally changes your understanding of a topic.

The joy of sharing a piece of priceless content we discovered is unparalleled. I feel it every time I share recommendations with you in my newsletter.

But, I also know that if you let the dog take lead entirely, it will lead you astray.

This can be witnessed in aspiring musicians who never finish a song; yearning for authors who always get stuck in the middle of writing a book; and daydreaming artists who never let themselves finish a piece of art.

We all need the dog-walker to control the direction of movement and tug on the rope when the dog gets too wild.

This is why there is a whole industry around time management, productivity, and coaching. Almost nothing we hear from productivity gurus is novel anymore. I say this as somebody who built a course on planning. Yet, it helps to hear it. It helps to work with a coach who can be our dogwalker when we can’t be our own.

Yet, not all of us can afford to work with a coach.

So how do we do it ourselves?

Being Your Own Dogwalker

I’d be lying if I said I’ve figured this out.

But, looking back on my life, I can at least say I’ve done an okay job of letting my curiosity flow while also adding structure. Here are my thoughts on how you can actionably add discipline to creativity:

• Set one major goal in each “vertical” of your life: It’s tempting to set many New Year's resolutions when a year begins. But, what if you were to only set one for every “vertical” in your life? To me, vertical refers to things such as Career, Family, Fitness, Mental Health, Hobbies, Friends, etc. By setting just one priority, the dogwalker of your mind has set the direction. So now the dog can begin wandering within the constraints of that. We’re only 4 months away from the end of 2022. So what will your major goals be? Think about it.

• Set aside time to mind-wander every day: Some of the smartest people I know, both personally and impersonally, all set-aside time to read and think every day. When you don’t give yourself this time, life can soon begin to feel too structured. Routine creeps in, leading to monotony. But when you give yourself this time, even if it’s just 30 minutes, you give yourself room to wander and the peace of mind in knowing you’re not letting life pass by you on autopilot.

• Have a good idea capture system: I’ve talked about this before in depth. When you have a good system to capture and store ideas, a system that will resurface those ideas at the right time, you will be at peace in knowing that even if you can’t work on it right now, it will come to you at the right time.

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The Library of Alexandria is oft quoted as one of the earliest, largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. Although the origins are unclear, the idea of it began when a wise man convinced Ptolemy I, a scholar and companion of Alexander the Great, to build a library that would house a copy of a book on every subject known to humankind. Ptolemy II carried forward this idea more obsessively by housing about a hundred scholars in the museum who spent all their time conducting research, writing, publishing, and making copies from other languages. But the nail on the coffin was hit by Ptolemy III.

One story goes that the hunger of Ptolemy III for knowledge was so great that he decreed that all ships docking at the port should surrender their manuscripts to the authorities. Copies were then made by official scribes and delivered to the original owners, the originals being filed away in the Library. — Ancient

An oft-quoted figure specifies that the library was the home to about 500,000 scrolls at the peak of its glory. This is why its inglorious destruction is still a heated debate among historians. But despite the loss of a voluminous amount of literature, we moved on.

We moved on to writing encyclopedias, building dedicated writing rooms, inventing the printing press, the telegraph, television, and in the most recent decades, building the internet, Wikipedia, and social media.

And now, we live in an age where the collective knowledge around the world doubles every 12 hours — a feat that took 400 years just over a century ago.

 Photo Courtesy: Anne-Laure

While the dissemination of information has gone through intense evolution, our brain has not. Our brain is still playing catch-up as we swim in a sea of irrelevant information.

Enough people have addressed this problem with information overload, including me when I wrote an entire guide on this topic. So now let's turn to a more solution-focused approach: monitoring our information diet.

I sat down to monitor and update my information diet a few weeks ago, and am still in the process. If you're also interested to do this, join me in this endeavor!

Monitoring Your Information Diet: 4 Steps

Photo Courtesy: Olga Hashim

Here are the four steps you can follow to monitor and update your information diet:

• Identify topics you want to learn about for the next 6 months: Since we're in the second half of 2022, think about up to four topics/areas you want to genuinely learn more about for the rest of the year. At first, I recommend simply writing down everything that comes to mind, and then stepping back to ask yourself, Okay, here's all the topics that interest me. But what do I want to learn about this year? Personally, the four areas I've narrowd down to are: (a) philosophy, (b) brain & the body, (c) mental models, and (d) mindfulness.

• Inspect & weed the current sources of information: Take a big ol' hand hoe and visit your current mind garden to inspect all the places from where you consume information. Take a look at your Kindle books, email newsletter subscriptions (including this one!), news websites, magazine subscriptions, and social media channels. Be merciless in weeding out the sources that don't pass the litmus test of Is this really worth my time? You can always bring it back if you start missing a certain newsletter, podcast, or magazine. It's not irreversible. Personally, I unsubscribed from most email newsletters save a few, returned the Kindle books that weren't interesting, and continued blocking my social media feeds.

• Identify & plant new sources of information: This is the fun part of this process! You get to plant new sources. You get to meander through the best parts of the internet and curate subreddits, blogs, websites, and newsletters that have genuinely worthwhile content. Don't rush this process. It's supposed to take time. In fact, it's a perennial one since you're a dynamic creature whose interests change. For now, focus on curating at least 3 sources for each topics that you can always rely on to supply good information. Furthermore, I also recommend creating a bucket called "People & Blogs" to curate the people whose content you'd like to stay updated on.

• Build a system around it: Finally, if you know me, you know I love systems. Systems override friction. They reduce cognitive load. In my case, I built 2 "systems" around my Information Diet: (a) a Notion page where I curated the links to all the topics I wanted to learn about. I set aside the top part of the page to drop links to what I want to read next. (b) I set aside the first 60-120 minutes of the day to sit down and read, think, and take notes. Until you set aside time to wander your mind garden, building it is useless. I'm sure you have your own systems where you like to curate links and set aside time to read. Just ensure you do this before you end this process.

As I mentioned earlier, I am still in the process, especially around curating links of the best sources under these topics. Eventually, I do plan to make my Notion page public so you can take a look at my mind garden.

I hope that gives you enough to start.

And I hope I make the cut when you begin weeding out your sources. ;)