Thanks Tobias van Schneider and Leo Babauta for the encouragement.
This year, I was able to…
- Read and listen to more than 100 books. I started a reading habit that became an obsession, and started getting into fiction, philosophy, and history.
- Meditate daily for more than 6 months. It was very hard to just sit down, especially because of my racing mind, but I managed to do it for long and felt amazing.
- Do some local traveling. Kicked of the year going to Siwa, were I spent most the time freezing. And managed to explore parts of Islamic Cairo.
- Conquer my TV/Movies addiction. I stopped watching all the okay show/movies (only the best), watch one show at a time (follow one story), and watch it after the season ends (no cliff hangers). Only exception to the last rule is Game of Thrones, and comedy shows.
Started…
- Shaving my head, completely.
- Writing in a diary. I like to write in 3rd person, like Tim Ferriss and Bréné Brown suggests. It helps to gain some perspective, see things from another point of view.
- Getting more organized. I started creating lists, templates, and checklists for everything. And started passive and active time tracking, using RescueTime and Harvest, which helps see time leaks, and improve estimation ability.
- Drawing, again. I’m now learning and practicing my drawing skills daily. Focusing on drawing simple comics strips and cartoon characters.
Learned…
- Basic Spanish, but cannot speak, yet.
- How memory works, and improved it. Which is considered huge for me, because I’ve always thought I had bad memory. I also learned some tricks like Mnemonics & Memory palaces.
- How to read faster. Depending on what I’m reading, sometimes it’s a matter of searching and scanning for bits of information, and sometimes by Conceptualization.
Favorite Podcasts
- Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
- The Tim Ferriss Show
- Serial
Comics
- Saga
- Y the Last Man
- Attack on Titan
Documentaries
- Man on Wire
- Sunshine Superman
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Fiction
- The Martian
- The Dispossessed
- Snow Crash
- The Fold
- Armada
Non-fiction
- Zero to One
- Design is a Job
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
- Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman
- Moonwalking with Einstein
- Man’s Search for Meaning
- We Learn Nothing
“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.” — Robert J. Sawyer
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard P. Feynman
“Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.” — Viktor Frankl, A Man’s Search for Meaning