ripping off the bandaid

I've been saying I want to start a newsletter for two years now. Mostly it's so that I have somewhere that motivates me to write and publish, but also because I've written about 250 book reviews in the last three years and want somewhere to share them beyond my my Goodreads profile.

I started a PhD last year. And I think it is super cool and I am so lucky to be able to do that as my full time occupation. But the thing about doing a PhD as a job is that there is no on-boarding process. And while you might get told that you need a better place for your PDFs than a downloads folder - what exactly replaces those systems is up to you to figure out. This is is both awesome and also daunting, and a lot of my time in the last 11 months have been spent figuring out how to even drive this thing.

I have had help with this - I like to read the Thesis Whisperer blog, where Inger Mewburn writes about academia and research work to an audience of PhDs all over the world and provides a bunch of handy resources for the 'DIY on-boarding' that is the first few months of a research job. In a stroke of luck for me, Inger also heads up researcher development at my uni. One of the things Inger said in a workshop last year that stuck with me was that signing up to do a PhD actually means signing up to be a writer. I hadn't thought about it this way - I knew there'd be a lot of reading and writing involved, but I didn't think of myself as 'a writer' before that moment. It was a good kick up the butt to pay attention to advice given to writers, which annoyingly condenses down to this: you gotta write.

So here I am ripping off the bandaid and writing! Welcome to 'two of three', named because I'm going into my second year of a three year program and because I needed to stop connipting about the title and just get on with it.

To kick us off with the book reviews I'm going to share my review of Ali Abdaal's self-help book 'Feel Good Productivity' which was another motivating force to get me to start this. I go on and off Ali's content, but his recent work has increasingly resonated with the way I want to work - happily, with purpose, and not at the expense of the rest of my life.

Indy

📖 Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal, 4.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

I think this was probably the first self-help book I've read that didn't irritate me a bit while reading it. The core premise of this book is that you will do more work if you find ways to make work more enjoyable, and at least when it can't be enjoyable - we can try to make it satisfying and aligned to your bigger aspirations for what you want your life to be. But it does a good job of striking a balance between the usefulness of the insights and tools offered, and flexibility and understanding that not everything works for everyone in every situatuon.

The dominant tone throughout the whole book was "this has worked for me, and I hope it works for you." but the picture it paints of where you'll end up if you do all of these steps is remarkably... normal. It doesn't ask you to not have friends, or kids, or not be able to a work a full time job, or get up at 5am, or only drink salt water, or never use your phone, etc. It just imagines someone who has all sorts of demands going on, but is able to be intentional about how they spend their time.

Given Ali Abdaal is very well off, has a whole team of people to help him put the book together (and is someone who definitely doesn't have to clean his house), it is pretty remarkable that the lessons he chooses to share are those that feel applicable to most peoples lives.

The writing isn't super sophisticated - it is pretty plain, so relatively uninspiring but definitely easy to read. If you aren't interested in productivity systems at all, then sure - this book isn't for you. But if you do like thinking about different approaches, experiments, mindsets etc that you can put in place to increase your ability to do the things you want to do, but you roll your eyes at hustle culture and some of the 'hacks' that overlook the realities of life - I'd highly recommend this book. There are lots of useful insights in it, and I really liked the framing of the three sections to pay attention too - energisers, blockers, and sustainers.

I'm looking forward to putting some of this book into play and think this is a great starting point (and very human perspective) for anyone trying to get stuff done in a distracted, time-pressured and at times overwhelming world.

📖 Nightshift by Kiare Ladner, (3.5) ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Nightshift is a manic-pixie dream girl story with a sapphic bent. It tells the story of Meggie making increasingly dark and destructive life choices after becoming enamoured with her colleague Sabine. I thought for what it was, it was executed well and I was immersed in the audiobook enough to keep coming back to it. Meggie is frustrating but in a moreish way - it does get pretty grim in the third act, so check out content warnings if you're not sure. It was an obsessive and over romanticised view of a way of being that can be either dramatic and thrilling and dangerous, or obnoxious and immature and disdainful depending on where your head is it.

Ladner has moments with Meggie feeling the latter, though on the whole she comes back to the former. The ending wasn't super satisfying, and the last hour or so of the audiobook dragged longer than necessary, but on the whole this did what it said on the tin and I liked that. Perhaps strangely one of my favourite things about this book was the accent of the narrator.

If you like shows like Skins or Euphoria and you're in the mood for something a bit dark and twisted, this would scratch that itch. It hasn't really left me with anything impactful, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless.

📖 The Lovers by Yumna Kassab, (2) ⭐️⭐️

I liked two things about this book: the cover art and that it was short. Everything else was a poorly developed and hollow portrayal of a relationship that was honestly just confusing and not very well written. I had no attachment to any of the characters, there was very little plot and it was primarily just vague, cliche and boring short pieces of text only loosely tied to one another and not making much sense as a whole.

I took this opinion to a book club about this book and they changed my mind enough to add one star to the rating. The vagueness also leaves the descriptions open to interpretation, and the lack of clarity was almost definitely intentional to try to capture some universality in the depictions. I did not resonate with nearly anything in this book - others felt it captured some of the strength of emotions when you are enamoured with a lover. It's a weird 'almost poem, almost novel' type and that was not for me, but it might be for you - who's to say?