We learn a lot by trying

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well, hello. This is The Daily Five with Aurooba, that's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:16] You know, I've learned a lot this season myself. It's not like I come into this any time this season 1 or season 2 knowing and understanding everything that I eventually talk about. I've learned too. About half the season is stuff I already know. And about half of it is stuff I tried for a little while, and then when it started to work or make sense, I brought it to the podcast.

[00:00:44] I mean, don't worry. There's stuff in here I talk about, and then I eventually look back and later say, Ah, crap. That was good advice. And now I'm not even taking it myself. Let me go reapply. I am human, after all.

[00:00:58] Every day I remind myself, for example, not to do too much. Every day. And the first time I did an episode on that wasn't even this season. It was the first season. In January last year. That's how hard it is sometimes. I keep talking about it and I still haven't mastered it myself, which is also part of why I keep talking about it. Sometimes, the lessons we try to hammer home for other people are the same ones we are trying to learn ourselves even now. That's not always the case, but sometimes it is.

[00:01:33] One of the simpler things I've shared this season is the question to ask when you feel overwhelmed. The question I ask when I feel overwhelmed. A simple one, you know, what will move the needle here? What is one small thing I could do that would move the needle? When there are eight million things going on and you feel like you need to pay attention or be part of it all, that's the question to answer and then act on.

[00:01:59] For me, this podcast is part of my own learning. Not just the meta bit of showing up and doing something non mandatory every day, or the other meta thing of speaking into a mic and sometimes offering up a story that is more revealing than I might normally, or even the other meta thing of exercising a different angle of the creativity muscle than My work life often requires of me, not just all that, but also the very contents of the podcast itself.

[00:02:30] You know, thinking about how to slow down, thinking about how to be sincere, thinking about decision making. All these things we've covered in explicit and explicit ways in the podcast. Those are the things I'm learning too, in some way or another. Sometimes a series of episodes actually has an implicit arc. I'm never sure if that arc is always apparent to others or not, but there have been four or five little arcs that I've done. Sometimes there are episodes that I wrote not just generally, or for myself, but for specific people in my lives. Lives in my life, whether they listen or not.

[00:03:08] There's even one episode that was, uh, It's born of sheer anger and frustration at the ridiculousness of some people in this world. I never quite know what I think about that episode. It's a good one. But is it? Really? I don't know.

[00:03:25] We all learn a lot by trying and experimenting. In some ways, this podcast is a log of my experiments and things I've attempted. It's a teaching tool, a form of expression, a habit formation attempt, and a log, like I said. And there's a point here that I'm trying to make. When we do things, rarely are the benefits of it in just one department. Much of what we do has multifunctional and multidisciplinary impact, whether we realize it or not.

[00:04:00] Because as humans, by nature, pretty much everything we do is multifunctional and multidisciplinary. It's the default of the world we live in, the brains we have, and the way we operate. There is nothing you do that only requires a single skill. That might be frustrating a little bit, especially if you're on the younger side, or life hasn't offered as many opportunities to build different types of skills. But as your repertoire of skills builds, you can lean on the skills you already have while practicing the couple that, you know, you still need to work on in a particular situation.

[00:04:39] I didn't think I meant this episode to be quite this meta, but you know, once in a while I do do meta episodes. And, I guess with just seven more episodes left, I'm starting to sink into reflection and evaluation. So, you may see a couple more of these come out in these last few episodes.

[00:05:05] Thanks for listening, same time tomorrow?