👋 Hey, I'm Haikal.
Thanks for stopping by my home on the Internet.
I'm a 5th-year medical student at the University of Malaya. I also write content for Ness Labs.
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Slothtivity: the Secret to Happiness with Sloth-paced Productivity
Our brain is wired to conserve energy whenever possible. In that sense, everyone is lazy. This is called the Law of Least Effort, which states that people will naturally gravitate towards the option that requires the least amount of work when facing two possibilities. We are motivated to be lazy.
How a simple transaction changed my life
My world changed forever at the Duty-Free located in Terminal 3, London Heathrow Airport. I had some extra cash to burn, and I was looking to spend it on a keyboard for my iPad. However, my eyes lit up when I saw something else. It was the Kindle, and I’
The problem with schools
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain Schools suck. Let me explain by telling you how a typical day in school looks like. “Let’s now proceed to how this bacterium will look like under a microscope, and try to identify the anatomy”, said
What do you do?
I’m a medical student. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Medical student/writer would probably be a more accurate answer. How I got here I didn’t start my life wanting to be a doctor. When my primary school teachers asked me about my ambitions, I
Notes Raft: How to Build a Habit of Writing Evergreen Notes
How can one become a productive writer with little effort? Enter Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist who published 58 books and hundreds of articles in 30 years. While his productivity is impressive, he claims that he achieved this with almost no effort. “I only do what is easy. I only
How To Read More Books
When Warren Buffett was asked how to get smarter, he held up a stack of paper and said, “Read 500 pages like this every week. That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many will do it.” Reading is
How To Use the GTD System as a Student
Being a student these days is stressful. We’re bombarded with incoming deadlines, exams, meetings, and my favourite one - rescheduled classes. How can we keep up with all these inputs and not get stressed out? These inputs clutter our mind and stress us out. We can’t focus on
Go From Procrastination to Studying
I've been procrastinating on my studies recently, thanks to the coronavirus situation. Uncertainties about medical school and exams made my personal productivity go down. I wake up with plans on my to-do-lists, but I end up in bed, watching Netflix. I wasn't doing anything, but I was more tired than
Make Learning a Game - A Beginner's Guide to Anki
Research proves that standard studying practices like lectures, re-reading, highlighting are ineffective. They're boring and frustrates students daily. So what does work? What if there's a memory card game that allows you to remember anything? I've been playing it for three years since I entered medical school. By playing this
Plus Minus Next Journaling in Roam Research: An Easy Method for Weekly Review
One of the best habits I picked up recently is doing a weekly review. I'd feel lost and agitated whenever I miss doing it. Instead, doing one primes me for the next week and allows me to learn from my mistakes and successes in the previous week. Everyone knows that
Imitate, then innovate
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn. —T. S.
Are you burnt out?
I'm writing this a day before I sit for one of my last written papers for my third year of posting, and I suddenly realized why studying for my final paper has been such a slog - I'm burnt out. It's been a very long year, probably my most extended
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