7 Takeaways From Troubleshooting Life (January)
Focus on changing your life for the long term.
It’s best to spend time in a way that provides us with joy and financial freedom. Making a book, music, videos, your own business and website , can lead to long term joy and fulfillment.
“The life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.”
– On the Shortness of Life by Seneca, translated by John W. Basore
Stop mindlessly consuming media and produce your own.
It is so easy to consume massive amounts of media, both human made and generative AI. But if you are a writer, you may struggle getting words on a blank page because you get disracted by all the media around you. But when you do decide to write, you are making grass grow on a blank page.
Consider your personal media habits. How long did you spend doomscrolling today? How long did you spend on video games? What is something you can do instead of procrastinating? If you go from consumer to creator, you can avoid the “brainrot.” (Source: PBS)
“Whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
You don’t have to ride the terrifying trains of thought.
Allow negative thoughts to come and go. Especially during times of boredom, you get negative thoughts like “What if they don’t like me? What if I’ve done nothing so far with my life, except waste time? What if? What if? What if?” You don’t have to default to riding unproductive trains of thought.
Seneca often said the life we receive is not short, but that we waste it. Waste it on thoughts like these? If you think of yourself as a corporation, you can’t doomscroll and wallow in misery for 147 minutes a day!
Design your life with good vibes, not digital profiles.
When I was 10 years old, I dreamt of becoming nearly anything. An astronaut. An archaeologist. A world class athlete. An artist. For years I carried this belief that if “the plan fails” and goes horribly wrong, then my life is over. But you are more than your ambitions, job, or career. You are more than the digital profiles you have on your Instagram or LinkedIn profiles, too.
“In our lives and in our careers, whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly navigating a path by deciding between our deliberate strategies and the unanticipated alternatives that emerge.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?
No divine power asks for humans to curate their lives in social media thumbnails.
The people in Silicon Valley may want you to upload your life’s data for free, but do you want that? Digital profiles are a distraction to me, personally. As a man with a finite amount of time, and a simple brain that is easily distracted, I must be careful not to identify with my digital profiles. Or letting the profiles of others distract me from answering my deep burning questions (DBQs).
Try to answer your deep burning questions (DBQs).
In 2019, I was in LA. I finished working on a Netflix show “Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy” with Special Order, and I worked as a social media assistant to Sal Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist. I went from two part-time jobs to laid off. That’s showbiz, right? One of my deep burning questions at that moment was, “how can I find a job in tech while pursuing a career in media?” After all, many of my family members work in IT. The biggest companies in media today are YouTube (Google) and Netflix. After many answers, the best one for me was Per Scholas, where I have been working now remotely for almost 6 years. I wrote on my blog about my experience going from a film major to a technical instructor.
“Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration.”
― Robin S. Sharma
Bridge the gap between knowledge and skill.
After film school, I focused on working in film editing. I always had a curiosity about movies, not only the people in the movies but also the people who edited the pictures and sounds. In high school, I learned Avid Media Composer. In college, I learned Adobe Premiere. I learned the language of editing: shot, reverse shot, J-cuts, L-cuts, keyframes. Adobe trained an AI tool to automate some aspects of video editing. You could learn and discuss well-edited movies in class, but at some point, you will need to take the theories in you learn and apply them into actual videos and films.
Bridging knowledge and skill applies to the classes I manage at Per Scholas too. The Instructors and Instructor Assistants do lectures made by CompTIA, but they also do labs. You cannot just get a tech job with knowledge about computer hardware, software, networking, cloud computing and cybersecurity. You need to take what you learn and practice it in a sandbox workplace simulation. That way, when you do get on the job, you are ready from day one to troubleshoot devices in-person, remotely, or AWS/Azure/Google cloud services.
For 359 more takeaways like this, check out Troubleshooting Life, available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon (links below).
The book is primarily for emerging professionals in tech + media who are ambitious, self-improvement oriented, and riding the tension between career and identity.
If you are looking for small improvements that compound, a bigger purpose than your current job title, or tools to manage uncertainty and distraction, this book could be of use to you.
It could also be good for a college student looking for direction, a company book club, or self-help readers generally.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/troubleshooting-life-akash-malik/1148179004
