šŸ•°ļø The Benefits of an Analog Lifestyle

Printed newspapers, magazines, pen to paper and camcorders

Author

Azam Malik
February 18, 2024

Dear you,

I missed last weekā€™s letter because of yet another packed weekend. On Saturday, my childhood friend married a Greek revert adopting her 2 year old daughter and on Sunday I caught up with my closest school friend who just proposed to his girlfriend of 3 years in Edinburgh to kick off the new year.

So much has happened in the past couple weeks - valentineā€™s day, the Super Bowl, my bossā€™ baby shower, but today I wanted to talk about what I call ā€˜analog livingā€™ minus my use of select apps namely Goodreads, Audible, ReciMe, LifeSum, LifeCycle and the Salam Prayer App.

As I started mentioning my interests and hobbies around film photography and camcorders (sadly at a Quran Khawani for someone who turned 93), it was my friend that pointed out ā€œthatā€™s so analog.ā€ Thatā€™s when I realized that the common thread amongst most things that make me happy are truly analog.

ESFJ - You are organized and conscientious in your efforts to help other people. You feel a sense of responsibility for other peopleā€™s needs, and are usually eager to get involved and help out. You value loyalty and tradition, and usually make your family and friends your top priority. You are generous with your time, effort and emotions.

I recently did the MBTI personality test using Truity after 2 years and Iā€™m actually proud that I went from an ESTJ (Executive) to an ESFJ (Consul) because I have one sticky note on my monitor that says ā€œDo, Donā€™t Think.ā€ And the T stands for Thinking whilst the F stands for Feeling.

Everything from printed Wall Street Journal PDFā€™s that I typically read on the train to physical magazines of The Economist that I read on the beach, I canā€™t help but hold on to the old ways and stay as disconnected as possible from the digital world. Iā€™ll always carry a notepad around at work and write notes from pen to paper and Iā€™ve been in the office every day these past 2 weeks.

Iā€™m also convinced the only reason why Iā€™ve started reading the actual daily newspaper is because I donā€™t have a social media feed to doom scroll.

āœļø Newsletters I subscribe to

I thought Iā€™d share a list of the newsletters that I read regularly. I also follow the ā€œinbox-zeroā€ strategy which is basically archiving emails once Iā€™ve read or actioned them to the point where I have zero emails in my inbox at the end of the day/week. In other words, I read all these newsletters and donā€™t just leave them sitting in my inbox as unread with the blue dot.

Iā€™m mostly inspired by Jamie Dimon whose daily routine consists of waking up at 5am and spending 2 hours pre-dawn reading tons of stuff. This includes five major newspapers (WSJ, Washington Post, NYT), analyst reports and even speech transcripts.

Iā€™d say a typical day in finance is 7am to 7pm adding up to 60 hours per week. 5am is usually to fit in a 45 minute workout.

āš–ļø This past week in numbers

āŒ›ļø Screen time

Top 3 were Safari (1h), iMessage (45min) and Mail (29min)

šŸŽ Step count

Pretty happy how balanced my time is between work, sleep and home - 10,050 steps on average last week

šŸ•‹ Prayer count

Could be better - I usually pray Fajr but get caught up the rest of the day

šŸ’¬ Made you think

Today we think of happiness as the pursuit of pleasure. But classical and Enlightenment thinkers defined happiness as the pursuit of virtue - as being good rather than feeling good.

Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness

Thatā€™s all for this week. Do hit reply and let me know what resonated with you. Always open to feedback too as I keep iterating the format of this newsletter.

Till next time,

Azam

Reply

or to participate.