January 2022

January has been good. My main overarching mindset this year is to pace myself in terms of how much I get done because this year is a marathon, not a sprint. I don’t want to be super exhausted close to the end of the year. I believe I’ve started out well.

Then I’m doing the more or less challenge, got it from Josh Spector’s newsletter. Each month I’ll commit to do more or less of one thing in an effort to improve my life. I like that it’s just one thing and it’s doable.

For January, I focused on taking less sugar, I’m surprised by how much sugar I had to avoid from the simple things like biscuits and beverages—of course outright surgery substances were out of the question. Everyday one part of my brain felt odd or rather sugar deprived. Now the month is over, I suppose it’ll help me question how much sugar I need to take it.

You should try the challenge, in February I’ll most likely focus on Meditation and mindful breathing.

Highlights of the Month

• I started cooking more for myself this year.

• I’m back to exercising regularly; Skipping and press ups on most days and Saturday morning jogging.
• I’m done with the first phase of the Mckinsey Forward program.

Helpful stuff I came across

Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive – Marc Brackett

“Until the 1980s, most psychologists viewed emotions as extraneous noise, useless static. Our feelings slow us down and get in the way of achieving our goals. We’ve all heard the message: Get over it. Stop focusing on yourself (as though such a thing were possible!). Don’t be so sensitive. Time to move on.”

An excellent book on how to understand and regulate your emotions. I learnt so much from this book, but one thing that stood out is me realizing I didn’t know the difference between Jealousy and Envy until I read this book. A reminder that by wrongly describing emotions, we’re starting off on the wrong foot.

Life’s Work: An Interview with Jerry Seinfeld – Harvard Business Review

Can you teach someone to be funny?

Nope. You can teach someone aspects of making it in the comedy profession, but you can’t teach someone to be funny. I didn’t realize how genetic it was until I saw my daughter—I couldn’t believe how funny she was. I didn’t teach her to be that way, and I know my dad was funny, so now I see that there’s a huge genetic component. You just pop out with this thing.

Tesla’s African expansion is imminent but is it reasonable to drive one in Lagos?

“In a regular car’s engine you have about 200 moving parts, so if you take this out because it doesn’t exist in a Tesla, that’s 200 fewer things that can break. When you look at your automatic transmission, that’s another 800 fewer things that can break. So you’ve reduced your problems by like 1,000,” Ismail said.

Elon musk didn’t retweet or comment but it’s still one of my favorite articles. It stretched me to learn more about cars.

Neymar: The Perfect Chaos

A beautiful documentary on the Brazilian Footballer Neymar’s life and sporting empire. Fun fact: About 250 employees are responsible for managing Neymar’s image and career.

Notable quote: After the 2014 incident, the doctor came in and told me, ‘I have two pieces of news. One good and one bad.’

“And I was like, ‘The bad one first.’

“‘The bad news is that you’re out of the World Cup.”

“And I’m like, ‘What’s the good one?’

“‘If you had been hit an inch to the side, you won’t have been able to walk again.”

+ WWII in Color: Road to Victory: I love history, for the first I heard an explanation of the United States’ decision to detonated two nuclear weapons over Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that made sense.

”I knew I was depressed, but I refused to accept it’ Toyin Abraham sits #WithChude

I enjoyed watching this interview because when celebrities open up to share stories of their dark hours, it reminds us that they’re humans. There’s also another episode with Jimi Agbaje[paywall] that I enjoyed watching.

+ Talent, Guts and Success ft Bovi.I also enjoyed watching this interview.

Lessons from my first year as a journalist

About a year ago I made a career change from Accounting to Journalism. As I like to say, I moved from obsessing over numbers to obsessing over narratives. Why? Among many reasons, it was an opportunity to learn about an aspect of life I wasn’t too familiar with: storytelling.

This article has been in draft for a few months, glad it finally out.

+ Learning Curve 2021: Some of the most helpful books, articles, podcasts, videos I came across. As usual, here’s 2021 list.

Favorite Quote

Doing your best might look different every day.

Thank you for reading!

See you on the last Saturday or Sunday in February 2022 – so help me God!

Did you come across anything helpful or something that got to you? Please share with me. Also If you have any feedback please reply via email

Have a terrific February!