Jonah's Journal (Location, Location, Location)
Welcome back!
I have family working in real estate, and one of the things that was recited to me often during my childhood was the mantra, “location, location, location”. While my current aspirations are not oriented towards working in real estate, I’ve found my own meaning in the mantra from my childhood.
Location, Location, Location…
Presenting 2 ideas about how to intentionally cultivate and maintain your social and material surroundings.
Find your bottlenecks (Source).
I’ve already spoken briefly about how to curate your surroundings to work towards a habit or ritual that you want in your life. In the time since, I’ve found a better way to describe these small changes: addressing the bottleneck. The bottleneck, in the traditional business sense, is the point at which you should concentrate the most resources in order to keep your operation running smoothly– when you build habits, it’s the point at which it’s easiest to give up or cave in.
Identify bottlenecks, and use your surroundings to help you direct your energy and attention towards overcoming them.
Initiative vs Proximity Friends (Source).
We’ve all experienced this before– we become very close with someone we’re in a class or at work with, and as soon as you aren’t in the same place anymore, you fall out of touch. People like these are called proximity friends– you become acquainted with them since you’re in the same place as them. Initiative friends are those who you go out of your way to contact or spend time with.
It’s important and necessary to have both kinds of friends, but I’ve noticed the deeper and more meaningful relationships I have come from initiative friendships.
One in, one out.
Embracing minimalism is one of the best things I’ve done for my well-being (and my wallet). I’m a big believer in your surroundings dictating your mood, so I’ll know I’ll feel just as mentally or emotionally cluttered as the spaces I occupy– this incentivizes me to keep clean. On the other hand, I love my stuff. As a rule of thumb, I try to remove an equivalent number of objects from my life when I bring new ones into it.
Media I consumed this week
The Day My Hat Died (link)
How one man’s legionnaires hat and 40km (24 mile) run serves as a reminder of his mortality and the passage of time.
“I love the idea that we transport ourselves through life with tools… the cruelty is that the better the tool, the easier it is to forget about them [because] we’re so engaged in what the tool has allowed us to do”.
On Envy (link)
Our desires may feel like one gigantic blob, but in reality, they can be individually parsed and plotted against a spectrum.
Innovative <-----> Primitive
The further primitive your desires are, the more susceptible you are to envy.
Final thoughts
I’m heading back into the school year in the next few weeks. I’m thinking about what it means to be a student when I know I have many more exciting and productive opportunities outside of the classroom. I really like the environment that college provides me in terms of resources and community, but am not as enthusiastic about the academic realm.
Until next time,