Driving through rows of auto repair shops this summer, we arrived at a quirky ice cream shop in Ayvalık. Tasked with picking flavors for the family, I defaulted to my usuals—chocolate, vanilla, coconut, blackberry. But the owner interrupted, suggesting tahini as one of his favorites.
Tahini? Not a flavor I would have picked myself but out of politeness and a bit of spontaneity, I said yes.
Back home, as we sampled the flavors, tahini turned out to be the clear winner: perfecly balanced, nutty and creamy. If I had stuck to my classics, I would have missed the best flavor.
When it comes to practicing gratitude, one approach is thinking of people less fortunate. I try to avoid comparing myself to others — it doesn’t resonate with me because I struggle to empathize in that way. Instead, I’ve found it much easier to use myself as the reference point.
I also find it difficult to identify positive aspects of my life. For me, it is easier to think of the negative: what could be worse!
In my 20s, I would brush my teeth twice a day and still get cavities. This went on for years and was incredibly frustrating. By my 30s, I learned that brushing alone isn’t enough, food can still get stuck between your teeth. When I started flossing every night, the cavities stopped. It made a huge difference.
Cavities were gone but I would wake up with morning breath and a bad taste in my mouth. Professional cleanings every six months helped for a while, but the problem always came back. Towards my 40s I learned that I need to brush and scrape my tongue as well, because the tongue acts like a bacteria sponge, collecting residue from everything I eat. When I started using a metal tongue scraper every night, it significantly reduced my morning breath.
One practice I’ve incorporated in my life from Getting Things Done framework and Inbox Zero philosophy is creating a section in Gmail for emails that I need to revisit and can’t process right away.
I label them with a [todo] tag and they appear at the top of my inbox:
Automatically works on mobile too! This way, I don’t need to keep emails as Unread. Here’s how you can configure this:
I’ve learned the hard way that some lifestyles I desired were not my own desires, they were things I absorbed from others. These ideas were planted in my brain without me noticing like they do in the movie Inception.
There is the idea of mimetic desire by French philosopher René Girard. He argues human desires are not entirely individual but are imitative by nature — we desire things because we see others desiring them. For example, a child might not want a specific toy until they see another child playing with it. I’ve absorbed desires from the internet and those around me, and I’ve realized how difficult it is to separate mimetic desires from intrinsic ones.
Reflecting back on my career, the most significant benefits I gained at each step were often far from what I anticipated. In many cases, they were things I couldn’t have predicted going down that path. This realization challenges the idea of planning life solely through logic and reason.
When I started my master’s degree at Georgia Tech, I assumed the biggest advantage would come from the knowledge I gained, the connections I made, or the credential boosting my job prospects. Instead, the most profound impact was on immigration—not to the U.S., but to the UK. My graduate degree allowed me to meet UK’s point-based immigration requirements for a work visa. Working in the UK eventually led me to Facebook, a major turning point in my career. Interestingly, when I applied to graduate school, I had no plans to move to the UK or pursue immigration elsewhere.
Bazen zihnimiz bize tüm elverişli şartların bir araya gelmesini beklemek gibi bir tuzak kuruyor. Ve çoğu zaman, bir engel gördüğümüz için harekete geçmekten vazgeçiyoruz. Oysa yol, yola çıktığımızda beliriyor. Geçenlerde yaşadığım sıradan iki olay bana bu gerçeği hatırlattı:
Kanyon’da üç arkadaş kahve içeceğiz. Kahveci tamamen dolu, oturacak tek bir masa bile yok. İnsan, böyle anlarda “Boş ver, başka yere gidelim,” diyebiliyor. Öyle yapmadık, “Bir şekilde hallolur” dedik ve sıraya girdik. Siparişimizi verip kahvelerimizi alana kadar iki masa boşalmıştı.
Sümerolog Muazzez İlmiye Çığ’ı yakın zamanda 110 yaşında kaybettik. Bu nedenle geçen yıl aldığım, Büşra Sanay’ın kendisiyle yaptığı söyleşi kitabı “Yaşadım Demek için Ne Yapmalı?“yı okudum.
Bu kitapta, yaşamın anlamını bulmak, hayatı nasıl yaşamalı, kendini geliştirme, insan ilişkileri, kariyer, kadın olmak, Türkiye’nin gelişimi ve Sümeroloji gibi konular üzerine bir söyleşi okuyoruz. Büşra Sanay sorularıyla derinlemesine bir sohbet gerçekleştirmiş ve ortaya çok iyi bir iş çıkarmış.
“The Good Enough Job” by Simone Stolzoff is a critique of today’s work culture, where work is the central source of identity, purpose and fulfillment. He encourages readers to diversify their sources of meaning and fulfillment, by investing in relationships, hobbies, and activities outside of work.
Here are some of my highlights from the book:
Jobs have become akin to a religious identity: in addition to a paycheck, they provide meaning, community,
and a sense of purpose.
The notion that we should always love our job creates outsized expectations for what a job can deliver.
In order to build a more resilient sense of self, actively invest in your nonwork identities. Finding meaning from multiple parts of your life means that when a setback comes in one aspect, it doesn’t sting as much.
Play is a natural antidote to workism. It indexes not on utility, but on curiosity and wonder. In art, there’s crafting. In music, there’s jamming.
Employees with friends at work report higher levels of productivity, retention, and job satisfaction.
Brain scans show that idle time and daydreaming create alpha waves that fuel creative insights and innovative breakthroughs.
We seek status because we don’t know our own preferences. When we don’t trust our own definition of what is good, we let other people define it for us.
If our self-worth is tied solely to external rewards, we can spend our whole lives chasing carrots without ever feeling full.
Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were once at a holiday party thrown by a billionaire hedge fund manager when Vonnegut asked Heller a question: “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” “Well,” Heller responded, “I’ve got something he can never have.” “What on earth could that be, Joe?” Vonnegut asked. “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
His interview with Paul Millerd was also fun to listen to:
“Good Work” is Paul Millerd’s second book, following Pathless Path, which I read last year during my sabbatical. In this new book, he shares his journey from being a strategy consultant to becoming a writer and creating a life centered around work he truly enjoys.
He mentions how he was job hopping over the years, searching for the perfect job and never feeling fully satisfied. His realization is:
