Hello, welcome to my blog. If you’re new here don’t worry so am I. The purpose of this introduction is just to give a brief overview of the vision and direction this blog is likely to take.
If you find it interesting please do follow along. Chances are few will ever read it. Be one of those few please. 🙂
Overview
The Idea behind this blog is to act as kind a brain dump for sharing and clarifying thoughts mostly concerned with getting the most out of ourselves so that we can live fuller more interesting lives.
Topics
Productivity – Our time and attention are our most precious resources. This category will be wholly concerned with managing those resources and optimizing for the things that matter. This has been an area of personal obsession for a fair few years and my aim is to share from experience what works, and perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t work. This is quite a broad category so expect content ranging from personal knowledge management, quantified- self, information management, digital minimalism, productivity habits and technology.
Mental Models – Another area of strong interest for many years – this essentially boils down to the psychology of thinking well and making good decisions. I think this is an area where we’d all like to be better in the long-run. Mental models are a broad category covering everything from managing cognitive biases to thinking critically and making decisions more analytically across many different situational contexts. My focus has always leaned more towards how to make this work in practice. Knowing and understanding our biases and mental short-cuts is a necessary but not sufficient condition for overcoming them.
Study Habits & Uni Life– As a university student you won’t be surprised to see material on study habits. Going back to university as a mature student was somewhat of a trial by fire after many years of being out of the loop. Hopefully some of the stuff I’ve learned along the way will be useful for others too.
Book Reviews – As a prolific reader I typically read 40-50 books a year, but simply reading a lot isn’t very useful if it’s forgotten shortly after. After all, we all struggle with the forgetting curve. Thanks Ebbinghaus! This blog will be a place to gather thoughts and notes on everything I’m reading. Hopefully others will find the reviews useful either as a brief on books of interest, or in making a decision to go ahead and buy it or not. Not all the reviews will be glowing.
Coding – This is an extraordinary useful skill and my focus is on learning Python, one of the most popular programming languages in the world today. Python is used particularly heavily for data science and machine learning, and by extension in finance & economics in general. (alongside a great many other fields.) Perhaps the most interesting thing about coding is it opens the door to bringing into the world ideas that previously only existed in someones mind – and that is an exciting thought!
Finance – As an economics student with a strong interest in finance there will likely be content in this area. This will probably take the form of notes from things I’m reading or projects I’m working on – including but not limited to personal forays into financial markets.
Challenges – We all grow through challenge in the same sense as through (manageable) adversity. Self-imposed challenges are a form of controlled adversity in which we get to reap the benefits by pushing through obstacles and learning from mistakes along the way. This will be a category for personal challenge, and I hope in time, for group challenges and mutual support.
Finishing Up
I hope this brief introduction clarifies what this blog is all about. I’m always gratefully for feedback and suggestions. It’s likely this will be updated and refined over time. Please do not hesitate to contact me.
