Apps for a Better Year

Smart devices get a bad rap these days. Naturally, since we blame them for everything, from our lack of focus and friends, to our low self-esteem and unrealized goals. But I think it is safer to say that our smart devices are like knives– their benefit depends on how we utilize them. (We can either chop up vegetables for a healthy meal or stab someone.)

As such, I try to use my devices as tools for productivity, gratitude, and awareness and prevent them from becoming influences of harm and waste in my life. I do this with the help of certain apps and I am bringing this list to you after a long period of trial and error, (just in time for your new year’s resolutions).

Daily Flow

Pillow – This is what I use to make sure I get enough sleep and wake up rested. It functions as an alarm and a sleep coach. Also has different kinds of naps and lots of useful information about sleep patterns.  

Elevate – This is a brain-training app that I do for 5-7 minutes every morning. There are a variety of activities to do and it helps improve memory, comprehension, lexicon, and quick-thinking.

Swipes – This is my daily to-do list app. It has a very minimal, clean design. But it’s also super functional and can be quite detailed if you like. (Online & Mac companions supported).

Productive – Beautifully designed and minimalistic habit tracker. It keeps me on top of things and has visualizations for what I am keeping up with and what I am behind on.

Lifesum – A good way to track my vegetable, water, and fruit intake and make sure I am actually feeding myself with all the stress of college life. Has good nutritional information and coaching as well!

Gratitude! – This is my gratitude journaling app. I set it so that it gives me a reminder in the morning and evening, and it takes only a minute or two to reflect on my blessings and write them down. It’s a nicely designed app that lets you attach photos and share things online as well.

Duolingo – I am sure you know what Duolingo is but I will include it here just to highlight how useful it is in keeping language skills fresh in your mind with a few minutes of practice every day.

Forest – The best app to reduce distractions. You choose a time and plant a tree and you can’t use your phone during that time or your tree dies. There are different types of trees and your minutes all add up so that you can even choose to plant real trees if you’d like.

Feedly – This is my RSS feed compiler. I have all the blogs that my friends author and blogs that I think are interesting. I check it once every few days to see if anyone has posted anything new.

Long-Term Use

Wunderlist – This is an extensive to-do list application that I use for long-term lists like blog ideas, shopping lists, gift lists, miscellaneous tasks with indefinite timelines… You can add notes and subtasks and it’s a good place to go to throughout the day. (Mac companion available).

Counter+ – This is for my daily remembrances. I have the pro version of this app so it lets me make as many counters as I want and I have them for different things I want to remember. (Usually Divine names I’d like to focus on, or prayers I would like to memorize or repeat). You can use it if you’d like to memorize anything of course. 

Really Bad Chess – This is an outside-the-box chess game that I found over the summer. Your pieces are 95% randomized – you might get 5 queens or 10 pawns. There are daily challenge boards and as you move up the ranks by winning games, your pieces get weaker and weaker as the AI gets stronger.

Mint – Budgeting is important, and Mint lets you do that in a clean and well-designed app. Also helps with bank and money reminders and gives pointers on building credit and other personal finance issues.

Citymapper – Must-have if you are living in a big city and don’t drive.

Apple Apps

iBooks – Always good to have an easy read when on transit or when you’re waiting for someone/something. It really adds up, and you get to read things for fun, that you enjoy. (Pair this with Goodreads and daily eBook deals so that you can get the books you have always wanted for 1 or 2 dollars)

Podcasts – A nother good way to spend transit time productively or long walks to class. I don’t like having too many subscriptions though so I usually subscribe to one thing, catch up or finish it, and then start another one.

Socrates and Me(no)

Ever since my social studies teacher in middle school (shout-out to Ms. Bergeron) taught me that while I took notes for class, I could have a “notes to myself” section as well – I have been using it as a technique to gather snippets of inspiration, questions, and general other musings in my journals. (My N2S headings are where half my blog ideas come from, so again, thank you Ms. Bergeron).

This quarter, I took a class called Ancient Philosophy and I have a lot of margin notes that are highlighted and circled over and over again so that I don’t forget to write about them. In this post, I want to talk about the Meno (read here) – a Socratic dialogue that tries to answer what virtue is and how it can be acquired.

Now, you might think – we get it… you are a philosophy major.  But, please bear through my pretension for a few minutes, because I want to make the case for you today, that everyone, every single person, who claims to believe in anything or has any sort of conviction, should read the Meno. Meno and most other short Socratic dialogues are pretty accessible (not accessible like, you can find them in the public domain (which you can) but accessible like, easy to understand – unlike most philosophical writings today.)

Anyway – you should read the Meno, and here’s why:

In the dialogue, while Socrates and Meno try to hash out what kind of a thing virtue is, they end up with two contradictory conclusions (not surprising in a Socratic dialogue). One argument says virtue is knowledge, and the other argument says virtue is not knowledge. Our focus here is not on virtue, but rather knowledge.

Now, we seem to be in a quandary. Socrates and Meno return to their original question of how one acquires virtue. Is it through experience or is it something that can be taught? If virtue is teachable, then it must be a kind of knowledge, but there are no apparent teachers of it – so the problem keeps growing.   

Socrates and Meno realize that perhaps people don’t need knowledge to act virtuously (or to act well). If one has knowledge, one can act well – but if one has true opinion, one can act just as well.

At the end of the day, if you are at a fork in the road, both true opinion and knowledge would be able to guide you in the right direction. BUT Socrates tells Meno that knowledge is obviously preferable to true opinion. At this point, we need to ask why? If both true opinion and knowledge can guide you to do the right thing in a situation, then why would one be preferable to the other?

Socrates explains by way of analogy. Let’s say you own a very nice house with a beautiful garden out front. And there is a majestic statue in the middle of it. True opinion is having the statue there by itself, and knowledge is having that statue tied down.

The problem isn’t that if you have the statue without a stake in the ground it’s more susceptible to disappearing (as if it will come to life and run away, or be stolen in the dead of night). It isn’t that with knowledge, you always succeed in acting well whereas with true opinion, you succeed only sometimes.

You could have the statue and it could stay there your whole life. You could always have true opinion. You could always know what to do to act well. It doesn’t seem all that important to have knowledge instead of true opinion. You still always do the right and virtuous thing! Yet Socrates insists, but if permanence isn’t the issue… then what is?

What is the difference between the statue that’s tied down, and the statue that’s always going to be there?

The answer is ownership. What matters isn’t that the statue stays in your garden, it’s that the statue is yours!

We are all living the same reality. The thoughts we have, they aren’t always ours. Sometimes, our morals (those true opinions) are shaped outside of us, they don’t really belong to us.

And sometimes, we can even lead other people with those borrowed thoughts. And we are virtuous as far as we are useful in guiding those people. But those thoughts don’t benefit us.

To have thoughts of our own, that’s hard work. But it’s the only way they are valuable.

So what’s the point? Why does it matter for everyone to read the Meno? Tie this back to the thesis Nur Banu! (this is a preemptive pun, so appreciate it in advance)

My original margin note is that this is the difference between faith by imitation, and faith by verification. We usually believe things because our parents, friends, or communities believe those things. And those things can be good but they aren’t ours until we question and inquire and prod and poke on our own to affirm or reject them.

The Meno is a must-read for everyone who claims to believe in something, because it makes you question whether your statues are simply in the garden, or tied to the ground.

PS: A serendipitous finding here is that the word for ‘creed’ in Arabic is aqeedah – and it is used to refer to the fundamentals of belief. Linguistically, ‘aqeedah’ comes from the root A-K-D which means to “tie down, fasten.” Isn’t that amazing? We are tying down our beliefs by making sure they are our own, and making sure that we are certain of them. 

Lots of balloons, 

Belle

365 Days

Today is a more remarkable day than the past 364 days. Coincidentally, today is not only the first day of Eid, but also the first year anniversary of my blog. October 15 2012 was the day I created this blog, and posted my first blog post.

This is a general thank you to anyone who has come to read, share, or comment on my posts. There were weeks where I didn't receive any page views, and there were times I couldn't summon up the will to write. I went through unimaginative phases and short-lived enthusiasm bursts. I conducted social experiments, and ranted about politics. But at the end of the day, there were always people who helped me continue and who convinced me to keep writing.

In the upcoming 365 days, I will keep writing insightful posts, update you on interesting books, and finish my Lexicon! posts. I hope you enjoy reading them and think about some of the issues I try to raise.

I have compiled my 10 pride posts from this year. I think they are a pretty good representation of how and what I blog. Leave me feedback if you can, and I will love you forever.

1. I.Am.The.Change (My most inspired and determined post, read this if you don't read anything else)
2. a.theist (My analysis and take on coexisting)
3. The Chrysalis Mystery (My biggest problem as a teenager)
4. Stand Up (Empowerment and encouragement)
5. Blocked  (When I had writer's block)
6. Would You Believe Me...? (The perfection of the universe)
7. What Makes You Feel Alive? (Purely personal take on how to not lose faith in humanity)
8. Fingertips (Some invention I will hopefully patent in the future)
9. Where Am I? (Well, what do you know about pop culture?)
10. The Bitterness Paradox (Good, better, best)

~Lots of ice crystals,

Belle