Weekly Digest: August 19, 2016
Gamarjoba (hello in Georgian)! Here is your weekly dose of my best tips for how to travel the world while your grow your career and make a difference
Travel the world
Getting sick sucks – especially when traveling. It has the potential to ruin your trip. I picked up a few tricks over the years and rarely (knock on wood) get sick now – even in third-world countries. Here’s a summary of what I do: take a high-dose Vitamin C supplement every day (1,000mg minimum and twice as much during travel days – I prefer high quality sources, like Lypo-Spheric, but there are many cheaper options), don’t neglect sleep, stay hydrated (10 cups of water minimum, more if active), limit alcohol, go to a fresh juice bar/stand each day, use saunas to induce a natural fever state, and visit local pharmacies quickly if I start to feel anything. You can read more details on this (or watch a video) here.
Grow your career
I recently read Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Gary McKeown and it has changed how I prioritize my work (and life). The Essentialism framework provides a systematic approach to identify what is truly important to us and our work, determining our highest point of contribution, and eliminating everything else. It is the relentless pursuit of less but better. Gary recommends three questions to figure out what is most important for us to focus on: “What do I feel deeply inspired by?” and “What am I particularly talented at?” and “What meets a significant need in the world?” To discern what is truly essential, we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. The busier things get, the more we need to build this thinking time into our schedule. It may be hard, but if we don’t intentionally design our life and careers, everyone else will do it for us. I recommend this book to help you make sure you are making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy (especially if you are “busy”).
Make a difference
Doing Good Better by William MacAskill will change how you view money and the charities you support. Every one of us has “the power to save dozens or hundreds of lives, or to significantly improve the welfare of thousands of people” and William shows you how. He is one of the leaders of Effective Altruism, a philosophy and social movement that uses data and scientific reasoning to determine the most effective ways to improve the world. William has concluded that one additional unit of income for people in the developed world can do a hundred times as much to the benefit of the extreme poor as it can to benefit you or I (it’s a “buy one, get ninety-nine free” sale). Want to know one of the most effective donations you can give? Deworming. 600 million children suffer from worm infections and he (and others, like MIT) have concluded that deworming tablets are one of the cheapest and most effective things you can do for both education and health. Because it helps kids stay in school, it’s actually found to be more effective for education than providing textbooks and teachers. Children can be cured with a pill and the total cost ends up being $0.50 – $0.80 per child. Deworm the World Initiative is the leading organization for this. If you want to be more analytical about the charities you support, check out Give Well.
Fun updates:
- Most popular post on Instagram – Travel can also show you the worst of humanity and history…
- Featured article – Are you a startup looking to raise venture capital? Here are my tips on how to raise seed funding quickly and efficiently.
- Quote of the week – “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl, author of A Man’s Search for Meaning and Aushwitz survivor (inspired by and included in my Instagram post above)
Thanks for reading and have an awesome weekend!
Konrad
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