Category: Medium

Infinity and Eternity Cover

Infinity and Eternity

Nik

Infinity asked his sister Eternity: “Do you ever get bored?” “All the time,” Eternity said. “How about you?”

“Never,” Infinity replied. “How could I? There’s so much to do! So much to see, feel, and experience! I want to climb Mount Everest. I want to be a drummer. I want to live in a monastery. Don’t you want to try them all?“

“I did,” Eternity said, “and I can tell you that, after a while, they’re all the same. There is nothing new under the sun.”

“What? How can you say that?!” Infinity looked incredulous. “Flying a plane, surfing a wave, kissing the love of your life, how could these possibly be the same?”

“Oneness lies not in what you do, little brother. It lies in who you are underneath, and whether you can bring them to any occasion. When you live every day from the shining light that is your true self, how you spend your time no longer matters.”

Infinity had never heard his sister talk like this before. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. What are you even saying? Who is this ‘them’ you are talking about? And what does it mean to ‘live from the shining light?’ Why have you not told me about any of this until now?”

“You know, Infinity, I’ve waited a long time,” Eternity said. “In fact, I’ve spent endless lifetimes waiting. I just figured today is as good a day as any to see if you are ready.”

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28 Lessons From 5 Years of Meditating Every Day Cover

28 Lessons From 5 Years of Meditating Every Day

Nik

I started meditating on August 29, 2019. I haven’t missed a day since. That’s over five years — almost 2,000 days — of sitting with my eyes closed for at least five minutes, usually 15, without fail.

I originally started meditating for two reasons. First, I felt called out when I heard Naval Ravikant say in an interview that meditation is “one of those things that everybody says they do, but nobody actually does.” I was already a mindful, self-aware person — but noticing is not the same as processing. Instead of just realizing that I was, say, biting my nails, I wanted to feel calm and present enough to actively stop, too.

Second, in that same interview, Naval actually provided a doable way to meditate. “It is literally the art of doing nothing,” he said. “All you need to do for meditation is to sit down, close your eyes, comfortable position, whatever happens happens. If you think, you think. If you don’t think, you don’t think. Don’t put effort into it, don’t put effort against it.” Freed from all the gurus, gadgets, and distractions of what has since become a $5 billion industry, I could finally start meditating right then and there, without complications or expectations. So I did.

After my first, intense week of meditating for an hour each day, I wrote down some initial lessons. Then, as my habit became smaller but stayed consistent, I reflected some more on day 800. Since then, I’ve shared the occasional, individual insight on my daily blog.

For my five-year anniversary, I figured why not round up all lessons, organize them, and present them in a way that makes sense? So that’s exactly what I’ve done. This way, you can get a comprehensive overview in one post but also dive deeper into any particular idea that interests you.

Here are 28 lessons from five years of meditating every day.

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10 Lessons From 10 Years of Writing Cover

10 Lessons From 10 Years of Writing

Nik

Today is the ten-year-anniversary of my first blog post. Back then, I didn’t know the first thing about headlines, title case, or narrative structure. I had no clue I was going to be a writer, let alone that I would get to do it full-time. And I definitely didn’t imagine landing here, a decade later, fully intending to write not just for another ten years but for the rest of my life.

Still, somehow, I’ve managed to publish over 2,000 pieces of writing since that first post. I rarely feel all the wiser, but I’ve undoubtedly learned a thing or two along the way. To mark the occasion, I’d like to share ten of the more palpable lessons from my journey: one particular theme that emerged during each of the years that I’ve been writing.

Here are ten lessons from ten years of wordsmithing.

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Balance Is a Verb, Not a Noun Cover

Balance Is a Verb, Not a Noun

Nik

“All I want is work-life balance.”

How often have you had this thought?

In theory, it makes sense: We strive to spend our lives well. That means directing the right amounts of time, effort, and attention to life’s many domains, from the necessities to taking care of ourselves to what’s most important to us.

Therefore, if we could allocate our limited resources perfectly, we’d achieve the ultimate equilibrium — and with it calm and happiness, right?

I don’t think so. In fact, I believe work-life balance doesn’t exist — and I can prove it to you with a single question:

What does perfect work-life balance look like, in detail, in your very life?

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Choosing To Get the Education I Deserve

Nik

It was one of those weeks where one and one just add up to three.

First, I woke up at 5 AM one morning. Groggy, unable to sleep, I dragged myself to the couch and opened a new fantasy novel. I struggled with a phrase on the first page. Then another on the second. I read and read, and by page 24, I was scratching my head so hard it started hurting: “Is it just me, or is this written so badly, it’s barely comprehensible?”

Between the multi-paragraph sentences, needlessly verbose descriptions, endless adverbs, and backwards unwinding of the action, I gave up on The Atlas Six right then and there. I confirmed with several friends that the writing was indeed atrocious, and after some googling, I found out why: It’s a self-published book that became a bestseller because the 15-year-olds on TikTok are all over it. Now, I’m not too old for a Booktok recommendation, but I am too old to read bad, unedited writing. Aren’t we all?

A few days later, my friend Franz sent me a list of the top 100 literary classics, aggregated across a decade of rankings. “How many have you read?” he asked me. I did a quick count. The answer was five. Ouch! Here I was, a writer with ten years of experience, apparently wasting my time on TikTok drivel, yet having read almost none of the all-time greats of English literature. “What the hell am I doing?” I thought.

In that moment, something clicked — and then so did I. I proceeded to Amazon, loaded my shopping cart like a kid on Christmas with an unlimited budget, and hit “Order.” Over the next week, box after box arrived, and while I watched them pile up, I finished two early birds — Albert Camus’ The Stranger and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Turning those pages felt like taking a big breath through my nose after stepping outside for the first time in days. “Ahhhh! That’s better.”

I’m currently enjoying J. R. R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion, and while I do feel like my literary train is finally heading in the right direction again, the whole incident made me reflect: How can someone who writes for a living cruise right past the most important works in their industry for a decade?

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The Only Post About the Pomodoro Technique You’ll Ever Have To Read

Nik

On a cloudy September afternoon in 1987, German-Italian programmer Francesco Cirillo was trying to study for his sociology exam. He couldn’t concentrate. “I made a humble bet with myself,” he says. “‘Can you stay focused for two minutes without distraction?’”

Cirillo grabbed a timer from his kitchen, wound it up, and started reading his book. It worked. Francesco’s tomato-shaped clock rang after just 120 seconds, but the moment he looked up from his book, still half-lost in its pages, the Pomodoro Technique was born.

“For the first time, I had managed to turn time into an ally,” Cirillo writes. Right when they most appeared to be his enemy, he finally started using his seconds instead of running away from them.

For the next five years, Cirillo kept refining the method. Since 1998, he’s taught it to millions of people around the globe. And his book The Pomodoro Technique is now in its third edition.

I first discovered the Pomodoro Technique around ten years ago, and I wrote about it as early as 2015. Since then, I’ve completed well over 10,000 Pomodoros to write millions of words. In the last 12 months alone, my productivity app tells me I’ve completed over 1,400 sessions averaging around 50 minutes each.

Here’s everything you need to know about this amazing tool.

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Ikigai: The Wonderful Japanese Concept Everyone Misunderstands Cover

Ikigai: The Wonderful Japanese Concept Everyone Misunderstands

Nik

Explaining Japanese concepts to a Western audience has become a big trend in nonfiction, and ikigai is leading the charge. Naturally, in our almost-typical self-centeredness, we’ve managed to make the worst book about ikigai the most popular one and totally misunderstand the idea.

If you’ve heard of ikigai — and at this point, I’d be surprised if you hadn’t — you’ll probably loosely associate the word with “happiness” or “your life’s purpose.” That’s because our discourse about ikigai has been dominated by a single book, and while it’s a good book in and of itself, unfortunately, it completely misstates what ikigai is actually about.

I love Japan. I went to Tokyo, Kyoto, in Osaka in 2013. In 2022, I also read all major English books about ikigai — thankfully, there are only three of them. So today, I’d love to share what I’ve learned with you. Let’s understand what ikigai is actually about.

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Why I Deleted Most of My Social Media Cover

Why I Deleted Most of My Social Media

Nik

A few weeks ago, just before Elon bought Twitter and made it look cool, I deleted my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. “FITT,” their initials spell, and fitter I feel indeed.

The main idea behind minimalism isn’t to save money or time. It is to save mental energy, which physical items take up, even if they’re sitting quietly in your attic. Somewhere in your subconscious, you know the broken volleyball net is up there. Even if it only makes it to the top of your mind on occasion, you’ll feel a burden being lifted once you chuck it in the trash.

Digital minimalism works the same: You can stop using your social media, but the accounts will still be there. So will all the connections. All the posts you’ve created will still harbor the energy you put into them. The weight of sunk costs will be palpable.

“I wonder what Marcus from my year abroad is doing.” That thought hits different when you can check up on Marcus vs. when you can’t — and the latter is not necessarily a bad thing.

We tend to be kinder to people when we keep them only in our memory. Plus, when you can’t see Marcus’ new house, you won’t feel bad about yourself from the inevitable comparison that follows. When Marcus only visits your attention once a leap year, your natural reaction is to wish him well, then be on your way. For many relationships in our lives, this is the way they’re supposed to go. We’re not wired to maintain distant yet infinite contact with thousands of people.

Manage your social media in a way that prevents them from managing you.

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Yesterday Died For You Cover

Yesterday Died For You

Nik

In The Why Cafe, stressed cubicle worker John gets lost en route to his much-needed vacation. He ends up in a small diner in the middle of nowhere, where the friendly staff seems to be oddly clued-in not just about his trip but also his life in general.

Spending an entire night at the diner, John faces several existential questions — the kind that’s important to answer but easy to ignore in our busy everyday lives, and the staff helps him along the way.

Towards the end of his stay, John asks Mike, the cook and owner of the diner, when he first found himself confronted with life’s big questions. Mike explains that, a few years prior, he was just like John: ambitious, overworked, and scheduled down to the last minute.

Then, Mike took a month off after grad school and traveled to Costa Rica with a friend. One day, after an afternoon of bodysurfing at the perfect beach, the two sat on a log, ate fresh mangos, and watched the waves. “As the day wound down, we were relaxing and watching the sky turn from brilliant blue to pink, orange, and red, as the sun began to set,” Mike says. He realized:

“While I had been planning every minute of my life for the last two-and-a-half years, this scene had been repeating itself every day. Paradise had been just a few hours’ plane flight and some dirt roads away, and I didn’t even know it existed. Not only had it existed for the two-and-a-half years I’d been so busy, but the sun had been setting there, and the waves had been crashing upon that beach, for millions if not billions of years.”

For the first time in his life, Mike understood: Every day when the sun sets, today becomes yesterday — and yesterday is dead.

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There Are Only 3 Ways to Live a Happy Life Cover

There Are Only 3 Ways to Live a Happy Life

Nik

What happens after you die?

In his book Sum, neuroscientist David Eagleman provides 40 different, often contradicting answers to that question — some harrowing, others hilarious. What if God allowed everyone into heaven, but then we’d all complain about being stuck there with one another, concluding it is, in fact, hell? What if God turns out to be a microbe, completely unaware humans even exist?

Maybe you’ll continue life in a world inhabited only by the people you already know or be forced to live each moment again, grouped by similarity. Four months of sitting on the toilet followed by three weeks of eating pizza, after which you’ll have 24 hours of nonstop stomach cramps before sleeping for 30 years straight.

Despite conjuring stories that happen exclusively in a place from which we can’t return, (and that we therefore know nothing about) Sum holds profound implications about what we might choose to do in the here and now. The mere idea of accidentally becoming a horse in your next life, realizing only in the last second how great it was to be human, could be the exact hoof kick you need to finally start writing your novel, for example.

Sum is Derek Sivers’ single-favorite book of all time. Whichever specific tale it may have been that spurred him into action, one day, he decided to write a book just like it, except he’d answer a different question — a question even more important than what’s beyond death, with even greater indications: While we are on this earth, how should we live?

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