thecrystalcodex

[thecrystalcodex]

Scroll 2: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

It’s loud this time, there are 4 different speakers blasting music, reporting news and chatting over the sound of drills. My head’s fuzzy again, I’m not great with overlapping sounds- In fact I get headaches from having 2 songs play at once. Four is too much.. I’ve just finished The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living a Good Life by Mark Manson.

Rating: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☀ ☀ (3/5)

Manson’s style of writing is highly conversational, splattered by colorful words and inappropriate commentary at times. Each section tends to be short, linking logic with examples (Often times from personal experience).

I wasn’t mind blowing, per say, just bluntly honest and entertaining. I enjoyed the personal examples, but I just personally prefer scientific studies and research. Of course, this book is more focused on philosophy and self-help. 

Here’s some things that have stuck with me:

1) Values: how we measure our success and failure to arbitrary measurements established by ourselves. Measurements by external factors that we can’t control such as other’s opinions are unproductive, while we can encourage self improvement by internal commitments.

2) Just do it: we can change it, just by changing it. Instead of waiting for some inspirational creativity to strike, he claims that:

Actions -(lead to)-> Inspiration ->  Motivation 

back to actions again in an endless cycle. Therefore, to start anything, we should just do something first. I’m definitely applying that to the college app process. 

3) Manson’s Law of Avoidance:

The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.

By limiting your identity and defining yourself, you are also limiting all the possibilities you have. 

4) Fault is different then Responsibility: and people should take responsibility for everything that occurs in their life. I think this is particularly important after reading a book like Outliers because Gladwell puts a diffrent spin on the story of hard work makes success; instead he argues that success is the accumulation of opportunity. However, the important part, which is sometimes passed over, is that the successful people took advantage of the opportunity. 

Malcolm urges readers to understand that such opportunity, or the lack of it, is never one’s fault. However, everyone has the responsibility to take action and respond to it.

5) We are never right. We just become less wrong.

Of course, there are plenty more insights in the 212 pages. I don’t agree with all of what he claims either: how could we possibly not declare ourselves as one thing, so we don’t limit ourselves, yet limit our choices by saying no? Contradictory.. 

Nonetheless, I’m glad that I pushed myself to read through the book, despite noticing how easily he calls me out in some examples. I hope to apply some of that advice as well (: Next book: How Google Works by Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg Previous book: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell 8/8/19 ~ Crystal

[thecrystalcodex]

Scroll 1: Outliers: The Story of Success

You know that feeling when you’ve finished a great book? You reach the last page, shut the book, sit there and just think. Because, whether it’s how the plot perfectly ties together or the way the world shifts just a bit, there is a bit of magic in the thunk as the covers close shut.

That’s basically how I felt when I finished Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. 

Rating: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ (5/5)

I just felt that I learned so much in each chapter, from useful information to that completely arbitrary statistics that are just fascinating. The information flowed well too- Gladwell takes the reader by the hand, walks them through some data, before taking a completely new spin on it. He then applies it, from the birthdays of Canadian hockey players to the lineage of Jewish lawyers, to the reader. There’s little jargon, and his style of writing is conversational although a bit more academic. 

I also loved how he tied each story throughout the book, often referring back to previous statistics as if an inside knowledge with the reader.

I also hope to record some lessons, and fun facts, that I’ve learned from each book so here they are:

1) Outliers, truly successful people, are not only a product of hard work: but much, much more. They come from an accumulation of opportunity, family history, upbringing and more. This is basically the theme of the entire book, but an important lesson nonetheless. 

While many people think that starting earlier helps a lot, which it does (as they are able to accumulate the 10,000 hours to mastery faster), it also begins limiting people earlier. Malcom argues as the top becomes more competitive, the top of the top are given more opportunity, and in a feedback loop, are given an edge in the competition. Over time, he concludes, the accumulation of such opportunity is what makes people successful; not that they were a genius in the first place.

And with this idea of opportunity leads to growth leading to more opportunity, Malcom provides a study that demonstrates how lower, middle, and upper classes have nearly equal scores in first grade but the upper class soars above by fifth grade. The tests, taken at the beginning of the school year and at the end of it, indicate that the growth comes not during the school year but rather during the summer. According to him, because upper class students have the resources to, they are able to take advantage of that time and thus get ahead.

2) Plane crashes and adaptability: one of my favorite chapters in the book is The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes, and not just because I love air disasters. In this rather chilling analysis, Gladwell recounts the story of how a Korean airline rose from having one of the worst airline track records to one of the safest. According to psychologists, this has to do with the distance-power index (DPI), how easily people of lower status/power in society accept the leader’s decisions. Koreans, with nearly 6 different ways of addressing someone based off their relations to the speaker, have an extremely high DPI. And in fact, the countries with the highest DPIs also tend to have the highest number of plane accidents. Thus, Gladwell argues, the lack of communication in the cockpit between the pilot and co-pilot (who assumes the pilot has absolute say) may be catastrophic in case of failure. 

3) Asians and math: because it takes a shorter time to say numbers in Chinese, with Cantonese as the shortest, then it takes to recite then in english, Chinese are able to memorize them better in the 2 second short term memory span. To add to this, English tends to have a very illogical way of stating numbers, meaning mental math becomes harder. 

Funny going into college app season knowing all of this now... 

But I’m really glad, after eyeing it in the airport for over 3 years, that I’m finally able to read this book (:

Next Book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Previous Book: -Shrugs-

8/9/19 ~ Crystal

[thecrystalcodex]

Scroll 0- The Resolution

It’s hot. My head is fuzzy, and I’m slouching on the couch scrolling through endless images on Instagram. My eyelids start drooping, I close Instagram and enter snapchat. Then tumblr, pintrest, discord before landing on webtoon. A new chapter is out.

Sometime between the hours of endless scrolling on my phone, the fuzziness in my head switches to throbbing and my eyes dry out.

So I go on youtube on my computer instead to work on college apps. By this time, I begin to realize- I’ve been switching between electronic to electronic the entire summer.

In the midst of my college search, I land upon this video: 

Pretentious right? Well at least the title is. But what he says does make sense: everything I’ve done so far has really been reactive, not proactive. And I want to get rid of the fuzziness in my head.

Thus, I’ve started with a half-hearted resolution to stop scrolling through things that I want to do and instead focus on actually doing it. First, I went to the library and sought out a book that I’ve been eyeing at the airport for a long time: 

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell

I read through the first 3 chapters of the book by the end of the day, and I was blown away. More importantly, my head was relatively clear and my eyes were significantly less strained. I’ve loved books for so long and yet for some reason, I had dropped reading physical copies, instead looking online for fan-fiction,  manga, and webtoons (admittedly I still love all three) because they were just so much more portable. It’s also somewhat became embarrassing to actually be reading a book around class or in my free time. However, I’ve fallen in love again with just flipping pages, the inconvenience of propping up books or keeping pages down, and books in general.

So I’ve started this blog as a way of keeping myself on track and as a release from the stressful college app situation to just rave about the pure amount of knowledge and genius compiled in books.

Its also an unapologetic way to talk about myself (Hopefully)? But mostly just non-fiction books that have changed my life.

And thus the adventure begins...