November 1st, 2019.
Farewell October, and Hello November…
Let's get to the 9th 5BF and see what lessons there are to learn:
1: The Paper Phone challenge
There's an App on the PlayStore, and probably on the AppStore as well, called Paper Phone. What it basically does is that it extracts the very important things from your phone and presents them onto an A4 sized paper that you can print. Once you get the print out, it holds all the essentials of your phone, so now - you don't have to use your phone! It's basically a detox from your phone that you are so heavily attached to. I tried it for a couple of days, and it worked wonders. I read a lot, watched a lot, had more free time to be alone and think, and I was less anxious about my social accounts. The Paper Phone does have your contacts and Calendar Events, and many other Essentials, if you need them urgently. I'd highly recommend all of you to try this challenge, especially on the weekend, to see if it proves to be productive for you. Here's the link to the app (android):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.withgoogle.experiments.unplugged
2: Activate: By Global Citizen and NatGeo
ACTIVATE is a six episode, mini series, by Global Citizen, a global organization set out to help humanity and the Earth with very possible and near-future goals, and this series shows what steps are being taken to achieve those goals. One of their goals, which is in ep1, is to finish Extreme Poverty by 2030 around the world. I know, it might seem superficial at first, but as you watch the episode, you then know that it is very possible and is being done. What's important about this is that you can participate too! Make an account and start getting points, such as tweet to the president, sign a petition to kill poverty, join a local non-profit organization etc. Do check it out guys, and please, do something small for this big cause. Here's the link to their app (android):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=lr.globalcitizen.com
3: Pocket app and How I Use it
So Pocket is an app for saving articles offline to read them whenever you have free time. I use this app to listen and read the articles which is faster and more comprehensive way. I use the app's TextToSpeech feature to listen to the article, at 1.3x speed which a bit faster than normal, and also read it at the same time. This allows me to read/listen more articles during the week in a much more comprehensive way. Listening to the articles spares you the reading anxiety, which I suffer from, and skim-reading articles meanwhile is like having a subtitle, so you can quote and take note of specific sentences. Try this method, it really works.
4: Article Recommendations
Since I shared a very easy way to read more articles in quicker and more comprehensive way, let me now share some of the websites where I read most of the articles from. If I have to pick three, they'd be: The Guardian, The School of Life and Medium.com. There are a few more as well that I frequently visit, but these websites are the ones I usually read from. The Guardian provides really great articles about current events, and newly found studies. Medium.com ranges to almost everything - I've found some of the best articles from this website. Then, there is SoL: well, I'll just go ahead and share some titles of their articles that I read in the past week - they are the best!
1: learning to listen to the adult inside us
2: the real reason why couples break up
3: what they forgot to teach you at school
4: one subject you really need to study: your own childhood.
Check them out!
5: Quote
"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche, one of my favorite thinkers! Here he's trying to say that most of the times we get lost so much in the ways we like or want to do things, that we forget the end goal completely. We dislike people who are rooting for the same good deed, but in a way that contradicts with our style or philosophy. We need to be less destructively selfish here and try to see the bigger picture. Good people are outnumbered by the bad ones, so let's go hand in hand to defeat the evil - that is the goal. The path doesn't matter as much.