Part II - On staring at the abyss and figuring out how to spend our time on earth
Using technology to live true(r) to my values
My never ending struggle to write more and better is my Sisyphean tragedy. But I return to your inbox after seven months with two(!) pieces: this post and a recent piece on extreme heat in India.
Nearly a year ago I wrote the first instalment of what was supposed to be a two part series on life advice.
That it has taken me this long to get you the second instalment may be evidence that I am not ready to offer any advice to anyone. But I am very strict about keeping arbitrary promises I make on the internet so I present to you Part II.
Part I covered “values and principles that drive most of my practical decision making” and Part II was intended to be a deep dive on my “practical choices…mostly from an early-career perspective.” I wish I could tell you what I meant when I wrote this, but I will make my best attempt at hashing out the remaining advice I have to give.
The hard stuff: applying values to life
My last post focussed on figuring out my values. I am still trying to figure out how to apply these values to my life, especially as my context changes between work and grad school, New York and Boston, US and India.
So far I have settled on an approach that balances forcing it and taking it easy.
Every few months I set some goals for myself, ranging from clear actionables (get a drivers license) to vague sentiments (be less judgemental). I also revisit my prior goals, only to find that I have forgotten many of them entirely. The first few times this was disappointing --- I felt like a failure and wanted to abandon the entire exercise of reflection and goal-setting. Over time I have come to view these forgotten commitments as proofs of my Bayesian updating or opportunities to rediscover ideas I had once been excited about. More simply, I have become a believer in doing whatever mental gymnastics you need to do to stay motivated and optimistic. All other results will follow.
My past year back in school has been challenging on the “applying values” front -- something I subliminally expected while writing Part I before I started classes. I have been surrounded by people in the same life stage, making it hard to distinguish the fads from the true trends.1 I have had less time in reflective solitude and on most days feel too comatose from new information to be able to process it.
This summer I have found solace in familiar sources -- making friends with people from other life stages, careers, and continents and consuming stories in all their forms. As I return to business school I will be whispering to myself to hold competing ideas in my head without losing sight of my current commitments.
Making space to focus on the hard stuff: personal management
“Wow you are so organised” is the most recurring compliment I’ve received in grad school. In turns, I chafe at and am flattered by this. Sometimes ‘organised’ feels like code for ‘controlling’ and ‘regimented.’ It makes me wonder if I am uptight. But it also confuses me because being organised is precisely what enables me to be spontaneous and open to experience. Implementing a flexible personal knowledge management (PKM) system has been one of my biggest lifestyle changes since undergrad, making me less stressed while maintaining my productivity. It has helped me get out of the rut of young adult life, where everything feels like logistics and nothing feels like love.
Teenage Surbhi would’ve rolled her eyes at the idea of writing seriously about ‘personal management’. She would’ve considered it the terrain of people who only buy books at airport bookstores. However, teenage Surbhi had the luxury of her family and her university dealing with a lot of life’s practicalities for her. Starting my career during in the pandemic in New York left me shorn of that privilege. I realised in the hardest ways that inane bureaucracy can make the difference between thriving at work and being stranded in or deported from countries. During my short-lived consulting career, I also resigned to the instrumentalisation of my time under capitalism.
This essay by a blogger named Jenny mirrors the values that lie at the foundation of my approach. She writes, “Unfortunately, the work that most of us spend the bulk of our days on is not work that fills up our self-actualization tank. Mostly, we work at a job to make money so we can pay for a place to sleep and food to eat. We work to prove that we deserve to live.”
My fantasies of being a full time travel writer are long gone and instead I am learning to build a fulfilling life under the knowledge that most of my time will be under the control of others. PKM helps me organise my life to find fulfilment in the time I do have left. I try to automate away the stupid stuff so that I can dedicate my labour to meaningful work, myself, and my relationships.
‘PKM’ is whatever my executive assistant would do if I was important enough to have one -- scheduling, reminders, file organisation, life admin etc. Thankfully in 2024, there are enough tools that make it easier to be your own assistant. I don’t like to think of them as ‘productivity’ tools. I don’t find the notion of productivity conducive to creativity and fulfilment -- I am not endlessly optimising my day to fit more into it. Instead, I am clearing my brain of the ceaseless murmur of planning to focus on the present. This is a minor shift, but one that helps me step out of a mindset of endless optimisation, and stay content with ‘good enough’ systems.
I don’t think there is one right ‘system’ for anyone, and there are plenty of YouTubers who can send you in the right direction. But for the sake of illustration, this is what I mean by my vague abstractions:
Core
Calendar: I use Google Calendar with a simple automation to colour code events based on keywords (easier to scan) and an appointment schedule for setting up online 1:1s. I try not to schedule anything one day a week and take the day as it comes (I recommend this Ezra Klein interview). My calendar helps me micromanage my weekdays from 8am to 6pm so I can meet ‘productive’ goals while also salvaging half of my life to tend to myself and my relationships.
Cloud Storage: As a young photographer in the 2010s I had quite a few run-ins with data loss because of corrupted or lost drives. Now I like to manage my data such that I can lose any of my devices and still function. I directly operate out of cloud storage by using the Google Drive desktop client and am synced across my devices as long as I am connected to the internet.2
Notes App: For well-defined projects I use Google Drive but for all other ambiguous, ephemeral information, I use Notion. I have a few databases for meeting notes, random thoughts, book reviews etc. and use the Notion Web Clipper as a replacement for browser bookmarks. Notion can seem intimidating because it is so versatile and has so many influencers constantly shilling templates. Instead of perfectly organising all my information I have settled for a ‘good-enough’ system: I file things in one of ~four databases and use the search function to find whatever I am looking for.3
Physical Notebook: I have carried a physical notebook since I became a teenager. Until a few years ago I used it exclusively for to-do lists. More recently I have been using it more liberally, for whatever thought or idea happens to strike me at any time -- in the middle of lecture, on the train etc. Writing on a page pushes me into states of awareness I can’t attain while typing on a screen. My notebook gives me space to focus on possibilities instead of probabilities.4
Supplements
Email: There is an oft-quoted theory that contrary to expectation, email didn’t make people more productive, it just increased the volume of communication without improving its quality. I haven’t investigated the empirics but I do choose to relegate email to logistics and newsletters. If I have something substantive to share, I will make a longer, shareable document I can reuse in the future or get on a call. I also have a lot of filters and rules in my inbox to prioritise important information without missing things.
Zotero: Though I never pursued the PhD that my 19-year-old self thought I’d get, I am still an academic at heart. I use Zotero as a complement to Notion, but for more organised projects / working ideas. It helps me broadly stay in touch with academic work despite being a working professional.
Lightroom + Google Photos: Self-explanatory for photographers. All else can defer to Google Photos or iCloud.
Most pieces of information I interact with day-to-day have a home in one of these places. Once I have returned the information to its home, I can rest in peace and use my brain for thinking instead of remembering. I can be a better listener when my mind is not running down an infinite to-do list. Instead of memorising deadlines, I can remember my friends and family. The work I save in my day-to-day, I can put towards my relationships.
From Jenny again:
Sometimes I think that all that love is, at its core, is a willingness to do the work. When people say “love is not enough” they mean “the emotion of love is not enough to sustain a relationship”, and of course it isn’t. The emotion cannot lift you in and out of the bathtub when you injure yourself, drive across the country with you for the sake of your dream, wrestle with hex wrenches to put together flatpack furniture for the umpteenth time. Which isn’t at all to discount the emotion: the emotion is what makes the work joyful when it’s easy and bearable when it’s hard, what makes mishaps feel like adventure and sacrifices feel like gifts. It’s even what recognizes when letting go is the better choice. But the fuel that powers the emotion after its initial ignition is the work of showing up.
…I’ve been told that defining love by its precondition of work is bleak, but I don’t actually think it is. What better thing is there to put your work into if not love? Unyoking your love from your job—fundamentally an economic transaction—frees you up to put work into your relationships and your community, inside the workplace and out. It also, crucially, frees you up to put work into loving and caring for yourself, and pursuing the things that make you more of who you are.
Today I hope you have the honour of putting in labour for love, not logistics :)
I was thinking about impact investing for a solid month at one point…
I also maintain two offline backups -- one on a 2TB SSD for photos and another on a cheaper 8TB HDD for everything I have ever read or created
Notion is not perfect and I’d love to find a system that helps me with active recall but I’ve been intimidated and disappointed by alternatives I have explored so far. Recommendations welcome :)
A phrase I found in my notebook from a seminar called “Being Human.” I no longer remember if it was my own thought or someone else’s. I will work on incorporating “attribution” into my PKM.
I feel such a sense of relief at the notion that -- whatever these next two years of school hold for us -- I'll get to sort through it in your company. Thanks for making me think harder and breathe easier. Miss you Surbs.