Houseplants.

It started with a little green in the living room and suddenly turned into a full grown, humid, highly poisonous indoor jungle that’s thirsty as fuck. And it turns out that exotic plants, fancy pots, growing lights, different types of soil for different species, fertilizers, and dozens of liters of water every day are somehow expensive…

Edit: yes, I love it

I remember the „count backwards“ trick well. What a flex.

Everyone can understand the basic concepts of stoicism. Most of them are easy to understand, but hard to apply.

Unfortunately I can not recommend any English literature, but I see Deren Browns “Happy” getting recommended a lot. The books I read all had a practical focus, trying to apply stoic ideas to day-to-day life. Most stoics will recommend to also read historical literature, like Marcus Aurelius “Meditations” - this might be a bit too much for beginners.

For me personally, the most helpful stoic idea is the “dichotomy of control”. It basically says that you shouldn’t worry about things or facts you can’t change (“externalities”) and instead focus on the things that actually are under your control. And those are VERY few things.

A trivial example: Why should I worry about the “bad” weather during my holidays? I certainly can not control the weather and by nature, the weather is neither good or bad. It’s my brain that gives a sunny day more value than a thunderstorm. So instead of complaining about the weather, I should try to make the best out of it and maybe even appreciate it.

Reading about stoicism. It’s like an ethical anchor in my life now, a guide to be happy. It’s like the upgraded version of religious belief, perfectly fitting in the 21st century (even though it’s thousands of years old).

For the moment, short term, this is a good initiative. But I don’t think it’s a sustainable approach for app developers. Any man in the middle is a potential source of failure.