February Week 1 Review: Updates and Plans

Hey friend!

I hope you are doing well.

I have just seen that “We are already 10% through the year.” from Dickie Bush’s LinkedIn post and wanted to share an update from the first week of February.

General Life Updates&University

This week was a really hectic one, our second semester at my master program started. I still have some assignments from the first term and am working on my thesis proposal.

Also, I started a new newsletter, Effective Humanitarian, for my thesis journey. I’ll be focusing on the effectiveness (of professionals, organizations, and policies) in humanitarian action; I’d be glad to see you if you’d like to accompany me in this. I’ll be sharing my readings, learnings, and writing process; I hope that keeps me accountable and will be useful for readers as well!

I’m still in Germany and couldn’t resolve my visa issues. So our plan to move to Sweden for the second semester seems a bit difficult now. I’m working on a few alternative plans and different countries; I hope that works out!

Books

I have finished reading the book “Doing Good Better“ by William MacAskill. This book is an inspiration for my thesis topic, so I’ll be sharing a lot from this in Effective Humanitarian in the upcoming weeks; stay tuned!

If you’d like to read or have a look you can check from GoodReads, Storytel or Blinkist.

I’m also listening “Know Yourself, Know Your Money: Discover Why You Handle Money the Way You Do, and What to Do About It!” from Rachel Cruze from Ramsey Solutions team on Audible. If you are interested in psychology and personal finance (which I think we all need), I strongly recommend you to check!

Videos and Youtube

Last week, I started a challenge to post short videos every day. I was good at shooting videos, but the upload part was not so consistent and well-planned. I published the videos on YouTube in English and Turkish, on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. If you are on these platforms, I’d be glad to connect and hear your comments!

I was just trying a few different things and learning how to do them. As I was doing both English and Turkish and uploading separately to each channel, I was doing the shooting and editing two times and uploading and publishing 7-8 times each day. As you can understand, it’s a bit challenging to do this every day, especially if you are just beginning.

This weekend, I’ll try to streamline my processes and work on a standard procedure and workflow. If you have any suggestions, I would be glad to hear them!

Running, Health and Fitness

After a few weeks of sprints and long runs on Sunday, this week, I take a bit of time off from running and gym. I went for only 1 day and ran for 3 kilometers.

I tried to balance it with walking regularly every day, but I’m still planning to compensate for the gym and running part this weekend!

Writing & Business

I couldn’t progress on the writing and business front this week as much as I wanted, both on the weekend and in the next few days. I’ll go to the library, chain myself to the chair, and work on this part, as I’m not doing well financially. I'm hoping to resolve the issues and see some progress next week!

That’s all from this week; thanks a lot for reading! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

And now it’s your turn: How was your week? What was your biggest challenge? Just reply to this e-mail or comment below!

Have a great weekend!

Regards,

Selim