January Roundup 💫

hey guys, welcome to the new Scaling Up with Sana for 2022! ⭐ If you read last month’s newsletter, you’ll know that this is now going to be a monthly recap of my thoughts, media I’ve enjoyed and a couple of self-development tips I’ve learnt along the way 🪴

If you’re new here, it’s lovely to have you! My name is Sana, I’m an MArch student in London, creator of :scale blog and advocate for healthy habits for architecture students ✌🏻

January started off slowly for me, having been in the middle of Christmas break, I could feel myself getting complacent and bored with the work I was supposed to be enjoying. I think I just needed that slight pressure of showing something every week at uni to propel me back into a proper routine. Apart from one too many late nights, this month has been pretty decent in terms of how I feel about uni work and blog committments.

It’s been a while since I picked up a book, the last one I read was Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon which I’ve also made a post about. This month, I read Empowered by Vee Kativhu I first heard of Vee through Ali Abdaal’s Deep Dive podcast and sure enough, 2 hours of intense listening later, I found myself ordering the book and finishing it in a couple of weeks.

This was also the first time I actually wrote some notes whilst reading a book which was interesting but also difficult because I genuinely just wanted to read it without any pressure to make notes or save the good bits. Read my summary of the book here.

I’ve come across Alain de Botton and The School of Life before on YouTube but nothing ever clicked for me. I quite like the way Alain speaks and presents himself because he keeps you quite engaged throughout and drops in bits of humour which almost makes you feel like you’re watching stand-up comedy. An interesting point he made at 26 minutes was that the top reason for insomnia in adults is due to the fact that you forget to have all those thoughts during the day.

Something immedietly clicked for me when he said that because I find myself trying to stay focused on whatever I’m doing and try not to get distracted or overthink on stuff that’s happening in my life. Perhaps a way of approaching this in a healthier way is simply to take the time to disconnect from everything and just have those thoughts instead of avoiding them. I’m going to try do this a bit more from now on.

This video was recommended to me from another newsletter I think you should definitely subscribe to. Shoutout to Mike LaValley who has been creating some amazing content!

Anyway, this video was pretty interesting and although I haven’t really delved into much of Tim Ferris’ content, it is definitely making me think about it.

🔮 Other videos I watched if you’re looking for some entertainment:

I read this great article called 100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying and picked out my favourites below:

This month I tried two new habits, small experiments lets say. The first was skipping. If you know me, you’ll know I am extremely lazy and have been relying on my metabolism to avoid exercise. It’s catching up with me now which is why I needed something easy to get into, thus skipping. This was great the first few weeks I was home during the holidays but I need to find a new space and routine to help me continue it.

Second was to wake up at 6am for a week. Let’s just say, I’ve now confirmed I am a total night owl 🦉 and that there really is no benefit to being a ‘morning person’, it just depends on when your energy is the highest.

Two amazing lessons I took from this very underrated movie. Embrace your inner child. Trying new things is good, but being aware of what you do and don’t like is how you stay true to yourself.

The joy of achieving your goals is only worth it when you have someone to share it with.

This was an awesome movie with its wonderful lessons that have actually been written about in a post by Khe Hy. It’s called The crushing weight of expectations.

I think sometimes those expectations come from ourselves. I went through a solid creative block the first few weeks of January because I told myself I should be working towards something or that I haven’t done enough to feel satisfied yet. But in the end, things worked out and it’s really no big deal.

I’m on my 3rd re-watch and usually these episodes are on in the background, but this episode in particular really stuck with me.

(from Wikipedia) The episode ends with Ted, now Professor Mosby, in front of a class of students. Future Ted tells his children that despite being the year where he was left at the altar, knocked out by a crazed bartender, fired and attacked by a goat, it was the best year of his life. It was all worth it, because not only did it lead him into the best job he ever had but it also began him on the journey that would lead him to his future wife.

Take the leap 💪🏻

Hopefully that wasn’t too intense of a newsletter and perhaps next month I’ll bring something totally different to the table! As always, if you’d like to have a chat or suggest something just hit reply 😉

have an awesome month ahead! 🤞🏻