66 - Create Your Own Adventure
Hey there, !
Did you ever read these books?
I remember on my Saturday afternoons, after being brought to the library by my parents, I’d eagerly scour the shelves looking for books in my favourite genres. One was Tintin, one was Selby (you know, the one about the talking dog?), and the other was Choose your Own Adventure!
They were so hard to find - I often only found one of these books at a time. I distinctly recall that there was one time I had found the Star Wars versions of this series of books, and I fell in love (after having just watched Episode 1: the Phantom Menace). It was a fantastic way to spend an afternoon, going on adventures through the books, and finding out what your decisions would lead to.
…except (and I’m sure I’m not alone here), I would always keep as many fingers as I could at each decision point of the book, so that I could backtrack my decisions and find out what the optimal route was for the book. I never wanted to actually get lost, or fail the mission, or die. I always wanted a way to return and go back through the other decisions, making sure I made the best one.
I remember that when I ran out of fingers to use, I’d take the early ones out because obviously I was on a great path, probably the one that would lead to the greatest success and WINNING the whole book.
Alas, in most cases, I’d end up just failing on the next decision anyway.
I think that for a lot of my life I used this kind of mindset to try and approach decisions. I wanted to know as much detail as possible before making the decision, or thinking through every single possibility that could occur…often leading to that thing being taken away, or the chance disappearing.
I could rationalise that it wouldn’t have been that great in the first place, but what I’ve learnt more recently is that action is also information - the best way to know about something, or talk with some sort of expertise, is to actually just do the thing.
It’s something I’m trying to adopt in my life now, especially as our lockdown is lifting.
You don’t get to use fingers to keep your place in life; make the decision, and forge ahead. Unlike the book, your life isn’t plotted out into specific routes, or pre-determined by some author.
In this life, you get to Create Your Own Adventure.
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
- The Decision Book - a collection of 50 different frameworks to think about decisions. It’s not super useful if you’re trying to make a decision in the moment, but it’s an interesting short, small read nevertheless!
- The Tintin Shop - did you know there’s a Tintin shop in Melbourne?! It’s right next to Queen Vic Market - I didn’t know at all! I bought a bunch of stuff from the Singapore Tintin shop thinking I wouldn’t get a chance to in Australia - but YAY. Snowy was the OG good doge- and these books were so so SO fun to read (even if they had some not-as-nice stereotypes of ethnic people…).
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Make Your Own Damn Mental Models - A really good piece about whether one should learn mental models or not: “Making mental models is an *activity*. This activity is telling yourself stories about stories about what’s happening, in situations that matter to you.” - based on what we’ve talked about before - optimise for usefulness to you.
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Time Confetti and the Promise of Leisure - Our leisure time, rather than being long blocks, gets shredded into smaller chunks as we spend our time on little annoyances and distractions. Text message? Facebook notification? Insta post? Each thing, even if it’s short, breaks our concentration and forces us to move our attention somewhere else, making it so that we aren’t as deeply engaging with what leisure time we have. Great read!
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A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can’t Crack - a ripper article about a guy who started walking the Appalachian Trail, died on the way, and no-one can find any information about him. He seemed to be relatively well off, coming from a tech company of some kind, and yet he just…didn’t leave a presence at all. Sad, but also fascinating, that in a world so connected, he left very little trace.