Stay calm and be (self) centered 🀄️

Dear Friend,

Hey there, how’s it going?

I hope you had a wonderful beginning to a new year, and if not — don’t fret. Lunar New Year is right around the corner 😛. As someone who has a November birthday, it means every year I have three separate chances to reset, set goals, and to lock down my habits — once in November, again in January, and a final time whenever Lunar New Year rolls around. I know it’s a bit silly, but new year resolutions themselves are arbitrary and silly anyways.

After decluttering in December, I spent January recalibrating my life in a number of ways. I’ve long been a dabbler of Bullet Journal (the actual method, not in making my journal super fancy), but mostly to quickly capture my daily to-dos and nothing more. But after re-reading the Bullet Journal Method last year, I’m going deeper and things are really clicking for me — feeling a lot more centered this time around. With the method focusing on periodic reflections and iterative progress, BuJo also happens to be such a complemental way to my work as a Program Manager. (I will likely write a separate blog post as BuJo is definitely one of my Roman Empire.)

• Recommended: I Was a Bullet Journal Skeptic, but I Hate to Say It Works

Another thing I was doing is just upping my privacy on the Internet. I’m already pretty good with turning off all the personalized ads settings and rejecting targeting cookies, and that’s on top of not having any social media apps on my phone, but my results from the Cover Your Tracks test was still pretty jarring. It’s wild how easily trackable we are not just from their IP addresses, but how identifiable we are based on things like the browser we use, the time zone and language settings on our devices, and more. My Cover Your Tracks test result is faring much better after tinkering with a couple settings on my Mac and iPhone (see below), as well as signing up for a VPN plus a couple of 3rd party tools.

• Recommended: Take the Cover Your Tracks test yourself and if it worries you, check out a few native settings you can make easily on your mac / iPhone:
  • Wifi: Limit IP address tracking = On
  • Privacy & Security:
    • Tracking > Allow Apps to Request to Track = Off
    • Analytics & Improvements = Everything Off
    • Apple Advertising > Personalized Ads = Off
  • iCloud: Private Relay = On
  • Safari:
    • Prevent Cross-Site Tracking = On
    • Hide IP Address = Trackers and Websites
    • Advanced > Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection = All Browsing

I was first introduced to Dr. Laurie Santos’s “Science of Well Being” Yale course in an episode of Apple News In Conversation last year. Basically it’s a course (the most popular in Yale’s 300-year history) on how to be happy based on science-backed data, and the episode’s main takeaway wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but just how much I liked Dr Santos. I recently found out her entire course is available on Coursera and is completely free.

I’m on week 3 (of 10) so far and I’m really enjoying the course. The main thing that’s been sticking with me so far is that knowing is NOT half the battle, because (as I encapsulate her point) knowing how floss and actually flossing are two different things. It’s one thing to know and understanding how to be happy, it’s another to actively practice to make happiness part of my life.

Recommended:

• Take the FREE Science of Well Being course on Coursera
• Listen to the FREE The Happiness Lab (Apple Podcast) on any podcast service
• Listen (FREE – Apple Podcast) or Read (Paid – Apple News+) the interview with Dr. Laurie Santos

And here’s the rest of it:

• The photos I took this month
• What’s worth remembering in January 2024

Thanks for reading on this and being with me on this journey. You can check out past issues of Dear Friend, on my website.

Love wins