Note #61: Are you getting the best deal?
(Plus, why having friends at work is a special gift)
What’s up?
I was talking to my brother this week about work and he was asking me what I like about this job compared to my last. You know how you hear something come out of your mouth and you realise that first time you’re hearing it is also the first time you’ve thought about it?
That’s what happened.
I heard myself say, “I have something in this job I didn’t get to have in my former job: friends.” And I meant it. In my old job, I was alone, literally—I was in an office by myself, in a location that away from the main hospital, which meant limited contact with other doctors and nurses. In this job I’ve made friends among the doctors and nurses that I’m actually happy to see and I get to see them everyday.
We spend so much of our time at work, it’d be a crying shame for that time to be a terrible experience. I’ve had my fair share of that, and I’m grateful for this and do not take it for granted.
Do you enjoy being where you work? If you do, what do you enjoy about it?
Trading smart (essay)
This week’s essay is kind of about medication side effects, but it’s really about trade-offs and a way to think about the decisions we make as we engage with reality all our lives.
Here’s an excerpt:
Most people don’t particularly like having to take medicine—doctors included.
People not taking their meds regularly is one of the biggest issues any doctor has to deal with. And there are all kinds of reasons why. For many, it’s the very act of taking medicine at all: having to add a new routine to their days. For others, it’s that medication makes them feel somehow weaker, like they need some stupid tablets just to do what others do without thinking. If you’re in a country like Nigeria, it might be that it costs too much to keep taking it.
But perhaps the biggest reason of them all is side effects.
You can read the rest of the essay here: What are you willing to trade?
Practical ethics (quote)
This week’s quote is also from favourite author Nassim Taleb and it’s related to how we decide in perhaps the most important trade-off we make regularly: the choice between doing the right thing and doing something else.
Basically, abstract ethics might be interesting to think and talk about, but in practice, we have to make decisions and trade-offs, and we have to do it every day. It’s easy to think that abstracting it would make it simpler, but that can easily lead us to wrong answers—or worse, as I discuss in the essay—to taking the wrong deal without even realising it.
From Jesus to hardbacks
This tweet (and the thread that follows it) might have been my favourite all week. Check it out, it’s fun. And like some of my favourite things to read, it connects a bunch of things you wouldn’t have imagined had anything in common: in this case, drawing a line from hardback books back to cheese and Jesus. Go on, check the whole thing out.
By the way, speaking of Readwise, they just dropped the hottest new update this week and I’m as hype for it as I am for the new Matrix: Resurrections trailer! And the title is just as cool: The next chapter of Readwise. Basically they’re making their own read-it-later app—think apps Pocket or Instapaper that let you save articles to read later (and offline!) but with the amazing highlights integration Readwise offers. Check it out at the link earlier, and if you want to Readwise, you can sign up for an extra free month with my link.
Don’t lose (proverb)
And to close out this week’s note:
You can’t engage in two trades without losing one.
Look, I don’t make the rules.
Talk soon,
Doc Ayomide
PS. The Being Human website and the weekly Notes on Being Human are both completely free, but if you’d like to buy me a coffee—or more!—you can use the button below.
This week note is of paramount importance when it comes to relationships(making friends) at work place.When you are/fall into the right environment,you won’t hesitate to make friends as much as you can,but when you find yourself in a gathering of gossips and it’s not your kind of nature,it’s better you stand on your lane than sit in the midst of mockers.In this case,your friends might not be more than one or two which will end up being beneficial.I think 🤔 this gives the greatest peace one needs.
Moreover, being at peace will be the best for one’s good health!!!🧠😊🥰
Nice write up this week.👍👏🤝
Lots of interesting stuff here Doc. I read the whole Twitter thread on the production of books, fascinating.
I'm just about to start a new job helping disabled college students, and it'll be interesting to see how I find it socially. Obviously social interaction will be involved, but it'll probably be almost exclusively with people a dozen years younger than me, so I doubt I'll make friends as such. Better than nothing though, and I do love the academic environment, always have.
I write a bit about Nassim Taleb here, in the context of paving a pragmatist middle way between the politically charged poles of "facts" (pure objectivity) and "feelings" (pure subjectivity). You may be interested! https://smalldarklight.substack.com/p/facts-and-logic-and-lived-experience?r=8z5zd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy