Weekly Overview: Embracing Intentional Living✨

Hi friends!

At the start of each year, a thick cloud of self-doubt descends upon me. While everyone else is celebrating their victories from the past year and setting resolutions for the new one, I find myself internally grappling with a wave of negative emotions, thinking, "Does everyone else have their life figured out while I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life?"

As part of the tradition, this uncertainty lingered through my first week of 2024 as well, turning it into a masterclass in unproductivity. The constant questioning of where to direct my energy and whether it's truly worthwhile consumed me. Some pretty heavy thoughts, eh?

But as the first week of the new year wrapped up and reality settled back in, my mind started buzzing with ideas. While there is a lot I intend to learn and improve upon, I'm committed to being intentional with every decision this year. More specifically, I aim to bring more clarity to both simple and complex life decisions. Whether it's picking up a book, binging on a series, planning a trip, or diving into an online course, I'm determined to stay focused, consistent, and deliberate.

A key aspect of this intentional commitment is documenting my learning process and bringing you all along. My sincere hope is that you discover value, inspiration, and benefit from my experience.

The format is quite simple: I'll share my weekly readings, my favorite online findings, wins of the week, objectives for the upcoming week, and a thought-provoking quote at the end.

Let's get to it!

📚 Readings this Week

1. Book: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein. I highly recommend this book as it highlights the often overlooked biases and noises in human decision-making. The authors describe how noise affects various fields such as law, medicine, and more, and present strategies to mitigate its impact. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on guidelines for developing structured decision-making.
2. Articles:
   1. The F.D.A. Warned an Asthma Drug Could Induce Despair. Many Were Never Told. (The New York Times)
   2. Instagram’s new teen safety features still fall short, critics say (The Washington Post)
   3. Is It Dangerous to Keep Getting COVID-19? (The Time)
1. European Union keeps a wary eye on China as it plans tech spending (The Washington Post)

❤️ Things Online this Week

1. Podcast: Why is There So Much Fraud in Academia? | Freakonomics Radio. I anxiously wait for the new episode of the Freakonomics podcast almost every single week and this latest episode stands out as one of my personal favorites. In the first installment of a two-part series, the host Stephen explores the unsettling trend of behavioral science researchers faking their results. The podcast particularly focuses on the research misconduct allegations on a paper co-authored by Havard and Duke professors Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely, first brought to light and exposed by the Data Colada blog. Very insightful and definitely recommend giving this episode a listen!

💪 Wins of last Week

1. Weekly Snippets: Finally beat overthinking and launched this weekly newsletter. Excited to maintain consistency and hope you all enjoy it!
2. Poetry: I've recently started diving into poetry writing again, and it's honestly been quite refreshing. Planning to share a few on my website soon. Grateful to still find joy in exploring this creative avenue.

🎯 Goal for this Week

Starting an online course on Probability and Statistics, fueled by insights from "Noise" and progressing to "Skin in the Game." These books have reignited my interest in structured and probabilistic thinking. Time to dust off those college notes!

✍️ Quote of the Week

"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Best,
Tehreem