Memory Repository 🧠

Reading time: 3 min Every decision we make contributes to decision fatigue. This is why choosing what to buy, choosing a route home, and choosing actions is tiring. We make an uncountable number of decisions every day. By eliminating these choices, we can: Save time by thinking and planning less Free up mental bandwidth for more important decisions Spend more time on goal-oriented action. This is where a Decision Autopilot System comes in handy. It's a personal system that allows you to b...

Reading time: 1.5 min Recently, I was presented with an opportunity to teach a failing high school student evidence-based study techniques, and how to implement them into their life. I used to be such a student. I was mediocre at best. I eventually fought my way up to pharmacy school, and managed to top score my final year classes, and held the title of Dean's List for some years. I was elated I could help someone in my previous position to improve themselves and achieve the results they wan...

Reading time: 3 min 90% of students trade a disproportionate amount of time & energy for minimal returns. They take consistent action & implement the latest productivity tips/apps. But fail to achieve their goals satisfactorily. Here's is why, and the dead-simple solution. Many students believe that improving efficiency and task-goal alignment is the best way to productively achieve their goals. But there is an important factor missing in this: The effectiveness of their actions...

Reading time: 1 min The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole was the most valuable book I've read last year about online writing. This book plus the writing course Ship 30 For 30 and the 100 Day Writing Challenge on Listed.to is what gave me the courage to share valuable learnings and experiences on social media, for those who might find it useful. Recently, Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush (both highly successful online writers) have written a new ebook on online writing, The 5 Pi...

Reading time: 2.5 min During pharmacy school, I noticed that most healthcare students believe that re-reading lecture notes and writing notes was how students should study.  Yet, these are the most ineffective, time-consuming study methods.  Despite learning and studying being a student's job, students are never taught how to learn and study effectively. From primary to higher education, students are not introduced to the psychology of learning and effective study methods in their general cur...

Reading time: 1.5 min I won an award by procrastinating.  I wrote a thesis in 7 days while taking pharmacy classes and working on my side commitments. The first day was outlining, and the last few days were spent writing. I procrastinated for a few days in between. 2 months later, I received an award for the paper. This is how I wrote a thesis in so little time and maintained high-quality writing: 1. Leverage your subconscious mind by procrastinating. On the first day, outline your paper a...

Reading time: 2.5 min In my first year of pharmacy school, my task manager was an utter mess. A huge spread of incomplete projects, all competing for my time, energy, and attention. It was a dumping ground: studying for pharmacy exams, student society duties, writing papers, online self-learning courses, and daily writing, all awaiting my input. Nothing without a class deadline would ever get done. And I would rarely prioritise my own long-term wants and well-being. After experimenting for 4...

Reading time: 1.5 min Yes, I did encounter a sleep paralysis demon. That day, I was extremely fatigued. I fell asleep, lying perpendicular to my bed. It was supposed to be a quick lie down, but I soon dozed off. When I woke up, I felt keenly aware of my surroundings. I felt like I could see. Everything in my room felt visible to me. But I knew my eyes were not open. I tried moving my arms and fingers- they wouldn't budge. I started thinking: "Wow, so this is sleep paralysis. Cooler than I...

Reading time: 1 min I distinctly remember once partaking in a mindfulness session with fellow students. We breathed, meditated, and did some simple yoga (by which I mean we just lazed around on fancy mats and cushions). I’ve briefly fallen asleep several times in this highly relaxed and calm state. The instructor pointed out that quite a few of us were falling asleep and noted that it was good that we were relaxed and becoming aware of our own sleepiness. The whole idea of mindfulness is t...

Why I'm slow with making purchase decisions I'm told that I take ages to make purchase decisions when it's something I don't immediately need. Need, as in it would not seriously affect my ability to live reasonably. I would stand there for a few seconds, contemplating, or come back to it after walking around elsewhere (or after a week in case of online shopping). I might note it down on a temporary wish list. During that time, I evaluate the following: the 'utility' (satisfaction, happines...

Reading time: 1.5 min In my downtime after returning home today, I played a game that involved moving my body. (It's Switch Sports). It's my way of keeping myself somewhat active while having fun on rest days from regular workouts. I set myself a start and end time (totalling 30 minutes) for this leisurely activity to be productive and save time for other things. However, setting start and end times for leisure activities dampens enjoyment of the activity. This phenomenon is supported by a p...

Reading time: 0.5 min I dreaded working on a paper today, and I've been putting it off all morning and noon. By the afternoon, I told myself to use the two-minute method. I told myself that I'd work on the paper for two minutes. If I really wanted to stop by the end of those two minutes, then I may stop. All I have to do now is open the documents and read the highlighted paragraph (that my past self highlighted for easy continuation). I had successfully put my foot in the door and started ...

Reading time: 2.5 min In a previous post, How to stick to a habit, I detailed how I managed to initiate and concrete a habit of working out to improve my health. It involved stacking my workout time with video watching time (something I consider pleasant), and aligning exercise with my goals (maintaining good health and converting unproductive time into productive time). One study placed something similar to the test. The researchers surveyed university students for books that were “difficult...

Reading time: 3 min Shiny object syndrome is when one continually chases new or trendy things. I faced this phenomenon last year when I came across RemNote. RemNote was a relatively new piece of software that offers a new way of taking notes, outlining, and making flash cards that follow a spaced-repetition algorithm. RemNote seemingly solved all problems I had with Anki, an old but trusty open source spaced-repetition flash card software. One major issue I had with Anki is that it's diffic...

Reading time: 2 min How often do you underestimate the time required to complete something? Our ability to make time estimations is terrible. From how much time we require to complete a task, to how much energy we consume, we tend to be way off from reality. One study asked students to estimate how long it would take them to finish a paper under: realistic conditions (the best realistic estimate), perfect conditions (“everything went as well as it possibly could”), and worst possible con...

Reading time: 2 min Photo by nikldn on Unsplash Pleasantness and convenience are important aspects of maintaining habits. Both of these are what makes a habit easy to follow. One makes you want to do it, and the other makes it easy to start. One recent medical study on foods demonstrated how ready-to-eat, nice tasting snacks can help individuals add healthy food items into their lives. Lifestyle modification (such as diet and exercise) comes before medication when it comes to healthca...

Reading time: 4 min I really don't like sleeping early. This is something I seriously struggle with. Time before bed is time that I have complete freedom over how to spend, whether I use it to socialize, exercise, catch up with work or study, consume entertainment, or rest. Work and study are particularly dangerous for me. Whenever I re-establish healthy, early sleeping hours, I eventually push my sleep schedule later and later into the night to finish my studies, assignments, or other commitm...

Reading time: 2 min The envelope budgeting method is a where we place our available money for budgeting that month into physical or theoretical separate envelopes for different types of spending or areas of life. When we have to spend in that area of life, we take money out of that envelope. Once that envelop is depleted and emptied, no more money is to be spent in that area of life, until that month ends, and we renew the budget. When we budget our money, we become conscious of how we spend...

Reading time: 5 min What makes a good password? It should be a chain of characters unknown to and not readily guessable by other humans, and It should have sufficient randomness and length such that it's not one of the trillions of guesses per second modern computers can make, and It should be easily memorable, ONLY to you. It's hard to balance the first two with the third condition. Implications: No common words or phrases should be used. Nothing publicly related to you should be used. ...

Reading time: 1 min The former CEO of Coca-Cola Brian Dyson once gave a speech detailing an analogy of how our life is a game of juggling five balls. Four balls are made of glass and represent family, health, friends, and soul. One ball is made of rubber and represents work. Once we drop one of the glass areas of life, it won't return to its original form.* However, in work, we can readily rebound. The older I grow, the more I agree with this sentiment. I now think of these two things when...

Reading time: 3 min The human vs goldfish attention span claim A claim you may have heard is that human attention span is decreasing, to the point where goldfish now have a longer attention span than humans. After conducting extensive research (read: looking at the first page results of a Google search), I generally got the following from many sources (with more or less similar wording): “Humans now have an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish”. This is based on a “recent study” wh...

Reading time: 1 min This is what got me more productive lately. I applied this method not only to old commitments, but my current commitments as well. A daily goal to do the bare minimum every day to reach an end goal, noted as a daily repeating task in my task manager. Reminds you that you only have to do 5 minutes of a task before crossing it off. It's not overwhelming (underwhelming, really), and takes an insignificant amount of time to fulfil, giving you a sense of readiness and perceptio...

Reading time: 2.5 min I wrote this to share a way to easily finish up old projects. Old projects here refer to commitments that are 'completable' and do not have a strict, external deadline. Assess if the commitment now aligns with your priorities, and you are willing to invest time and effort into completing it. If yes, divide the goal or habit up into the smallest possible microtask, one requiring minimal time and effort. Set a goal to do the bare minimum of the microtask every day (e.g.,...

Reading time: 5 min Landscape of Thorns. Concept: Mike Brill, Drawing: Safdar Abidi, Image courtesy of BOSTI. Image retrieved from here. Conveying messages across time A thought experiment, if you will: Imagine we are octopus, beings with no vertical transfer of knowledge. How can we prepare something that can pass knowledge onto the next generation, with no altered meaning, while having no direct communication between generations? It's impossible to write or draw something to convey a me...

Reading time: 2 min I was recently asked how I know so much about a particular field despite having received no formal education in that field. I responded: “[Search engine] is at your fingertips.” “If you want to know something, you can look it up.” (Preferably using good, reliable sources, and multiple sources to support a particular bit of knowledge.) An uncountable number of books, studies, videos, and articles (among others) are accessible on the internet. As long as we are willing to in...

Reading time: 2 min I keep a habit of writing most things down. It takes thoughts and plans off my working memory and stops it from unnecessarily popping up in my head. In the post I linked above, I noted how I used Standard Notes with Obsidian to host my thoughts and memories digitally. I stopped using Obsidian a while ago due to the amount of friction necessary to use Obsidian in my workflow, especially for capturing thoughts when I'm away from my desktop: First capture a thought, memory,...

Reading time: 2 min An increasing number of studies indicate that loneliness is a significant risk factor for mortality, one which is comparable to smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity. Specifically, via higher risks of heart disease, stroke, dementia, depression, anxiety, suicide, poorer sleep quality, and reduced immune function. Loneliness is also linked to a higher risk of inactivity, smoking, more healthcare appointments, and a greater need for institutional care. Significance: R...

Reading time: 2 min The marshmallow challenge (text) (YouTube video) is a team design challenge involving the following: "in 18 minutes, each group can use 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, and one yard of string, and one marshmallow to build the tallest structure with the marshmallow on the top." Source: Marshmallow Challenge Tom Wujec administered this challenge to many groups of people, from students, to designers and architects, to CTOs of the Fortune 50. These are the result...

Reading time: 3.5 min Teaching and archiving Humans have the special ability of teaching and archiving knowledge with extremely high accuracy and precision. We accomplish this via verbal or non-verbal communication, writing, drawing, and recording, among others. This allows us to pass on knowledge, skills, experience, and wisdom across many generations. This is arguably a unique advantage humans have over other highly intelligent organisms such as certain birds, dolphins, and certain primates...

Reading time: 1 min I remember once hearing a story about nice-smelling soap. Disease and poor health plagued an impoverished, small community. They had typical soap and clean water, but handwashing was still an uncommon practice. An individual from the outside learned of this, and provided the community with fragrant, pleasant soap for the inhabitants to wash their hands with. With this new, nice soap, handwashing rates rapidly rose and the health of the community significantly enhanced. ...