Health, Wealth & Happiness
I thought I’d share my thoughts on how the Coronavirus situation will be affecting the world in the coming weeks and months from different perspectives.
The key takeaway from all that is happening, in my opinion, would be this:
Don’t panic, but don’t stick your head in the ground like an Ostrich either.
Over the course of the past couple of years, I’ve learned to identify myself as a multipotentialite. I’ve known since my childhood that I was different from most people in that I had an insanely varied and ever-changing range of interests, but I never knew how to explain why.
Reading recent books like Refuse to Choose and regular psychotherapy has helped me understand my characteristics better.
There were many times why I wondered what was wrong with me for always having too many things I wanted to do and seemingly never going to the very end in any project I undertook. There seemed to be some hidden finish line where my heart would suddenly decide that I’ve done enough of this thing and it’s time to move on to the next. My heart and my mind used to be at odds as I would interpret this as a failure and struggle to understand why I’m finding it so hard to continue investing time and energy into something I was obsessed about just a few months ago.
In the light of multipotentiality, this all makes sense, so here’s some more information about multipotentialites, scanners, or renaissance souls; all these terms refer to the same kind of person.
Typical multipotentialite traits:
Do you identify with the above? It can be a revelatory moment to understand that you’re not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you. I highly suggest working with a psychotherapist once you’ve identified as a multipotentialite, so you can get past any negative emotional feelings about yourself and flourish.
Some further resources that will help:
I frequently get asked why I blog so regularly, especially in the age of Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and all the other social media platforms that are all about short form and quickly digested content.
In this post, I’ll explain why blogging is by far the most rewarding activity for me online.
Since my early childhood, I remember loving to read and write. To me it seems like a natural process to read, digest the information, and then come up with my conclusions and write them down. Writing things down helps me organize my thoughts better. At any point in time I am usually reading about several different topics, and unless I take the time to write things down, I feel like things are all jumbled up in my head and I can’t make the best out of the new information I’m consuming.
As I grew older, with the introduction of the internet and computers, I found myself extremely comfortable storing my writing electronically. There was no longer a need for diaries and the risk of my writing getting lost. Online and in electronic form I could take backups, easily edit my writing, and organize it in a logical way.
The real game-changer for me, however, was the introduction of the internet and the fact that I could put out my thoughts to the whole world. I feel much more comfortable writing about something than speaking about it, and feel that I can communicate better using this medium. By putting my thoughts out to the world, I got the opportunity to meet like-minded people and get feedback on my ideas.
Ever since my son was born, I also feel that by recording many of my thoughts and decisions on this blog and other private journals (I use Day One for that), my children will have a nice record of what their parents did and why they did it. It’s a kind of autobiography of sorts.
Blogging about different topics helps me learn. Whenever I’m learning something new, you can be sure that I’ll also be writing about it at the same time. The act of organizing thoughts and into cohesive content that can be published is a great aid in the learning process. In fact, I started the WordPress blog WP Mayor for this same reason, and that was its sole reason for existing before it grew popular and became a business in its own right.
From my experience, one of the crucial factors in a successful venture (in any area of life) is how many great connections one manages to make. There are many ways to connect with people, be it by attending conferences, running a podcast, attending meetups, etc. However, I’ve found that blogging helps create some really strong connections with people. I find it much easier to write about complex topics than explain them verbally, so when I blog, readers have the chance to experience what I think and then connect in a meaningful way based on whether they agree or disagree with what I said. I guess the perfect example of this is my post about Malta. Basically, blogging helps connect you with like-minded people and establish deep friendships.
Many times I also get the chance to meet a person briefly at a conference or meetup, so I don’t have a lot of time to talk about certain topics. I have a habit of speaking briefly about a subject and then sending the other person a deeper article on the same topic that I would have previously written on my blog, so he can then read about my thoughts on his own time and reconnect with me later if he found the content intriguing and would like to discuss further.
Readers of my blog sometimes disagree with my analysis of certain topics, and that’s a great opportunity for me to experience a different opinion and refine my thoughts. Sometimes readers will change my way of thinking about things, but even if not, it gives me the opportunity to strengthen my conviction by having to answer their challenges. I am the type of person who has a lot of strong opinions that are weakly held. So I deeply enjoy writing about something and then having someone more knowledgeable come along and make me realise that I was wrong. Unlike many people, I enjoy being proved wrong, because that means that I would have stepped up my game and now know something more than what I did yesterday.
Blogging is a great way to become a thought leader, and while this is not something that I seek actively, I’ve experienced this effect through many of my articles. There are few better ways to becoming an influencer or sharing your leadership lessons than by writing about them on a blog. When you write consistently about a topic, readers start seeing you as an expert or authority in that area. Whether you are actually an expert or not, you will see a lot of doors open where there simply were none before, and that’s a tremendous plus point in favor of maintaining a public blog.
At this point, I think it’s also worth addressing one of the most frequent criticisms I get. Many people just don’t understand why anyone would want to talk publicly about investing successes or personal challenges, saying that it might attract jealous eyes or make people see you as a weak person due to some struggles described. The answer is that yes, it will have that effect on some people, but that slight negative effect is far outweighed by the quality feedback and new connections that I enjoy through blogging.
One last but very important benefit of blogging. It’s a great means of daily therapy. Some people like to draw, others sing, while I find my therapy through writing. When my head feels like it’s exploding with negative or positive thoughts, sitting down and writing about whatever’s on my mind always brings me back to a state of homeostasis.
One of my favorites quotes from Socrates is the one above.
It might be the best summary of why I love writing, journaling and blogging so much.
An unexamined life is not worth living simply because it is so important to get to know yourself and then examine the interaction between yourself and the world around you. Subject your own thoughts and ideas to examination, rather than acting on impulse. Knowing yourself will help to strengthen your knowledge and won’t allow you to get pulled by feelings so easily.
Our mind is often subconsciously dragged by the popular opinion or “doxa” as the Greeks called it. Writing is my way of sitting down, examining my thoughts and experiences, and then learning the lessons I need in order to achieve progress in my life.
What are your thoughts on blogging? Have you tried it yourself?
When bloggers succeed in making money, or just happen to generate enough traffic that income becomes inevitable, there usually comes a point where the urge to make more and more money gets quite strong.
Let’s face it, making money online is one of the best feelings. It still feels hard to believe that it is possible, and when you actually achieve it you feel great and want more of it.
Where some bloggers go wrong is that they get greedy and start looking for higher ticket items to promote and become less authentic.
I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times over the twenty years that I’ve been blogging.
Some people start off with money as their main goal and the arts of persuasion and manipulation as their tools, but the vast majority start out with a passion for writing and sharing their stories and opinions, and eventually slowly lose their way when money gets involved.
Before the arrival of our son, we used to cook at home a lot and also eat out very frequently. In Barcelona, you can find lots of great options for lunch since most restaurants have a menu del dia, which means a set menu for a fixed price that is usually excellent value for money.
Given that we both worked from home, it was a nice break from work to go out and have a nice lunch somewhere before getting back to work.
Around the last year or so, a new trend seems to have arrived in Barcelona. The trend consists of kitchens instead of restaurants. So the kitchens would cook dishes and concentrate on selling them via delivery apps or by customers picking up their orders at the kitchen. This minimizes the costs of having tables and staff serving those tables.
As a customer, I love the idea. It’s a trend that has been picking up steam in the United States as well. What we’re seeing is essentially the nascent era of cooking as a service. In much the same way as we have outsourced a lot of our daily chores to specialized services, cooking seems to be the next chore that is going to be outsourced in developed nations.
I think cooking will, by 2040, be a niche activity like e.g. gardening or sewing, not something which one would reasonably expect from substantially every household.
It's getting squeezed by a combination of long-running social changes, cultural norms, and…
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) May 5, 2019
Cooking has traditionally been the role of the woman, and it takes up quite a lot of time to shop for the ingredients, cook and then clean up after. If you have a family with a few kids, it takes even more time. If you calculate it, it could easily take 4-5 hours a day once you factor in everything. Since more women are heading back to the workplace, it makes sense for them to outsource this chore.
In my opinion, leaving the cooking to a specialized chef will also most likely result in you eating a healthier and more varied diet. A kitchen with a good chef will be churning out many different dishes, while if you cook at home you will most likely eventually stick to a small variety of tried and tested dishes. Unfortunately, we are also living in a period in history where food has become very processed, and good raw materials are not easy to come by. A chef who buys raw material in bulk has the expertise of being able to distinguish between poor and great quality fish, poultry etc, and he can even buy it at a cheaper price due to his contacts and the amounts he is buying.
Even without calculating the monetary value of time spent on cooking, food is easily the biggest monthly expense for my family after rental payments. Since switching to purchasing most of our food from one of the kitchens, our costs have remained equal, but we have gained a lot of extra time and eat way better since we have a professional chef with years of experience cooking for us.
Here are some reasons for giving up cooking your own food:
Another benefit for me specifically as I pursue athletic excellence for padel is that I can have my dietician coordinate with my fitness coach and chef to make sure I am getting exactly the right fuel for my workouts and upcoming tournaments. If I had to do this myself I would definitely get it wrong and it would be too time-consuming.
Cooking at home on occasion is of course still a nice idea, especially when it involves all family members and serves as a relationship-building activity. It’s also great to go out for a nice meal at a restaurant every once in a while.
Here are some related services in the US and Canada. I hope to see more of them opening up in Europe.
In Spain, we have the following healthy food delivery services available in major cities so far:
There also some kitchens focused on healthy cuisine in Barcelona, which I’ve listed in another post.
What are your thoughts on the subject?
Online Entrepreneur. Global Citizen. Padel Player.
Founder of WP Mayor & WP RSS Aggregator.
