Book Surgeon No. 29

As you may have noticed, the book of this week, Tu Futuro Lo Eliges Tú: Una Guía Para Empezar a Diseñar Tu Vida Profesional by Adriana Carvajal, is written in Spanish. I have been saying for too long at this point that I want to improve my Spanish. I always came up with excuses, whether it be school, work, sports, etc. However, I am reviving this goal and am determined to expose myself to more Spanish. Reading in Spanish is definitely a slower process, but I hope a more rewarding one as well. Now, let us talk a bit about Tu Futuro Lo Eliges Tú, which has tons of advice for anyone looking to improve their work prospects whether now or in the future. 

For instance, in the section Elijas Lo Que Elijas, Exprímelo al Máximo, Carvajal lets us in on a powerful secret: “muchas veces es más significativo lo que haces con lo que has elegido que lo que eliges en sí.” For most of the decisions in life, what you do with a decision is more important than the actual decision itself. In other words, rather than agonizing over whether you have made the right decision, simply move on and make the most of your choice. Do not waste your energy hypothesizing about alternative realities. Rather, use this energy to improve yourself and follow down the path you chose, which will be infinitely times more rewarding than getting hung up on the potential outcomes of the choices you did not make–and are thus irrelevant to your life now.

Yet, while we should make decisions in a timely manner without looking back, this does not mean we should make our choices without careful consideration. When evaluating choices, it is best to make as informed of a decision as possible without endlessly delaying making a choice in the name of research. And an important way to improve our confidence in our decisions is to learn more about ourselves–to introspect and constantly ask ourselves new questions. A strategy we can use to accomplish this goal is by writing about our perfect day–or perfect week. The New York Times bestselling author and YouTuber Ali Abdaal also advocates for this strategy, arguing that visualizing our ideal schedule can help us make decisions today that can move us towards that goal. In order to build our ideal week, we must ask ourselves what we want from the day we are given: What time do I want to wake up? What time do I want to go to bed? When do I want to eat? Do I want to go to the gym? How many times a week do I want to meet up with friends? How long do I want to work each day? By building our ideal week, we come face-to-face with our life’s goals and aspirations and can create an ideal calendar that we can compare to our current calendar. If you currently use Google Calendar, you can create a second calendar within your account, which will make it easy to compare your ideal and current schedules. If there are significant differences between the two calendars, you can ask yourself what changes to your current life would bring the most positive changes to your life. What activities in our current schedule can we drop or shorten in order to make room for the activities we would ideally be doing? Perhaps there is nothing concrete that can be done at the moment, but an awareness of what we would ideally change allows us to look for opportunities to change our current schedule to look more like our ideal schedule. Ultimately, one of the biggest takeaways from the book–and something I have learned in recent years–is to strive to take action with intention. Being aware of the consequences of our actions is liberating, not restrictive; intentionality in our lives allows us to make more educated decisions, so we can move towards the life we aspire to build.

Share with others if you enjoy! Thanks for reading and see you next week!