Ayahuasca, Traveling, & Pitfalls in Modern Education

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Essays I'm Enjoying

​Ayahuasca: Anne-Laure wrote a beautiful account of her experience taking Ayahuasca. If you're curious about the transformative power of Ayahuasca or other unconventional healing modalities, give this a read. For further reading, you can check out my experience with LSD at Burning Man from 2018 and how it helped me through the grieving process in the wake of my mom's death. I also enjoyed the How to Change Your Mind series on Netflix about LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, and Mescaline about the rebirth of research into the therapeutic benefits of these compounds.

​What if we have it backwards? Nat Eliason explores how your intuition can lead you to pursuing things in the wrong order and how that strategic misstep can make a big difference as you work toward your goals.

​The Case for Traveling More: Jack Raines makes a case for traveling more when you're young, even if that means putting your career aside for a few months or not knowing the payoff of the adventure.

Ideas on My Mind

New experiences and the perception of time: I gave up my life as a digital nomad 2.5 years ago (discussed in this article), and since then, it feels like time is moving much faster. I think a major factor is that I'm having fewer new experiences. While traveling, I was in unfamiliar places and trying new activities all the time. My guess is that the high volume of new experiences somehow slowed down my perception of time. These days, many of my days at home look the same. That result is that time at home blurs together in a way that accelerates the perceived passing of time.

Working with your hands: Growing up, I valued the productive output of my mind above everything else. My mind was the engine that allowed me to excel in academics and make money in the startup world. But a few years ago, I started getting tired of how much time I spent on the computer. And since then, I've been playing around with doing more stuff in the physical world. And I've found that I really enjoy working with my hands and doing tasks that I used to find mundane and not worth my time. That means I'm spending more time walking, cooking, building furniture, and even writing on paper instead of a laptop. When I think about what a good life means for me, I think it will continue trending in this direction. Less time on the internet. More time in the real world. If that means that I don't have as much productive output, it's a good tradeoff.

What I'm Reading

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: This is Hemingway's memoir of Paris, set in post WW1. It's a refreshing tale that is reminding me that even everyday life can be fascinating if the writing is good.

The Prodigy by Herman Hesse: A story that illuminates the pitfalls of conventional education, especially for smart, driven people. Through the tale of a talented student from a low-income background, Hesse shows the perils of focusing on success at the expense of health and happiness.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg: Goldberg discusses how the practice of Zen meditation helped her become a better writer. This book is full of gems for getting more out of your writing practice.

— Cal

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🌎 Three other things you might enjoy

1. Doing Time Right: Everyone wants to get more done in less time. This course will show you exactly how to do that with the eliminate, automate, delegate, and iterate framework.

2. Foundations Looking for good books to read? Check out Foundations, a growing digital notebook with notes & lessons from 100+ timeless books.

3. Listen to the Podcast: Feel like school didn't prepare you for adulthood? The Sh*t You Don't Learn in School podcast exists to help make up for this societal failure.