Why do clouds turn pink?

Went out to get ice cream today for the family and saw a beautiful sunset. Saw several different colours like yellow, red, orange, and pink.

I thought to myself, ‘why do clouds turn pink?’

Actually, clouds never change colour.

They only look like different colours to our eyes depending on how much light they refract from the sun. They reflect different waves of light depending on how dense they are. So grey clouds have a large amount of water. This is why we see grey clouds when it rains. But when the clouds are lighter, they have less water to refract the sunlight. When you see these lighter clouds, it looks pink.

Fascinating stuff. I would’ve never tried to learn about that if I didn’t look around and admire the world once in a while.

Look at specific things and ask questions. Understand why things are the way they are. Get off your phone and look at your surroundings. Stop distracting yourself and giving you a temporary hit of dopamine. It turns you into a zombie. Imagine how many people couldn’t function without their phone. It’s almost everyone with a smartphone.

If you did an experiment with people around you and said ‘I bet you can’t use your phone for an entire day’, they would think you’re crazy.

Most people can’t because of work and email and many other things. But imagine you were on vacation, could you go without your phone for a day? Most people would say they could, but when you take away their phone, after a few minutes they don’t know what to do. They start fidgeting and distracting themselves.

This is how most people are these days. Whenever there’s a lull in conversation, it’s immediately to your phone. When you jump on your phone, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Twitter is not helping you.

Sure it’s distracting you, but it’s also destroying you. It’s destroying your brain. It’s destroying your ability to think clearly. It’s ruining your ability to be in the physical world.

Many people would argue our world is going digital, but most of life still happens in real life. Yes you can be anyone you want to online, but you’ll always be you in real life.

My goal is to figure out how to hack life.

How do you do the most with the least amount of effort?

How do you get the farthest while doing the bare minimum?

How do you hack the systems?

I did it in high school.

Did pre-IB and had heavy workloads during my first two years of high school.

Then switched out into the regular public school education my last two years and nailed all my classes. A lot of concepts were just repeats of things I had already learned.

Got to university and did the same thing.

In first year, I was a good kid. I went to all my lectures. I did all the required readings.

Then I met my friends and they were fooling around every day doing the same thing. Because our exams were worth 100% of our grade, you just had to be a good test taker. Thankfully I was, but I still kept my discipline. I put in the time every day, because that’s what worked for me. It paid off with a first class degree in medicine from the University of St. Andrews.

Then I got to the University of Edinburgh for my postgraduate degree and it was the same; exams were worth 100% of our marks. Again, I was a good test taker but this was all practical. The medical knowledge we already learned in our undergrad. Because our school was so lax on it’s policies, I did the bare minimum. I went to class when I had to, but mostly didn’t show up. The incentives were based on exams.

Also you can’t do as much as a medical student in the UK. It’s not like what it is in Canada and the US. In North America, you’re worked like a dog. The system depends on you. You’re given real responsibility.

They don’t do that for medical students in the UK. They start to in your final year but even then, it’s nothing compared to foundation years. Foundation years in the UK are the 2-year equivalent to the final 2 years of medical school in North America. So when you’re in university as a medical student, you don’t do as much.

Medical students also had one of the most notorious reputations around UK universities. They were the biggest partiers. Based on my experiences, I would agree with that. The parties we used to go to were like you used to see in the movies. There are some stories I can never talk about because they seem so ridiculous.

My friends and I were at the center of that scene during university. But what I loved about my group of friends is we all knew what was important. Everything was about getting the degree. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy and have fun during university. So that’s what we did.

Then I got out of medicine and started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. One of the early decisions was reading, and it was one of the greatest decisions in my life. To go back to books and learn from some of the brightest minds in the world is incredible. It’s hard to replicate what books can teach you with podcasts or Youtube videos.

Then I started thinking, how do you hack life? How do you become successful while doing what’s required?

Invest in yourself.

Once you work on yourself, you realize how much farther you can go. If you believe you can do anything, you will go so far.

There’s a lot of noise that influences the way you think. Parents voices, friends in your ears, what you see on Instagram and Tik Tok, the news you watch, all of it. If you change the way you value those opinions and start putting yourself first, you’ll understand how to be happy.

You’ll begin to question yourself a bit more. Why are you living the life you are? How did you get here? What are the decisions that got you to where you are? When you start to answer those questions, you’ll understand how brainwashed you are. How much other people influence your decision-making and way you think.

There’s a reason propaganda works. The news makes you believe the narrative they want you to believe. Not what’s really happening in the streets. Traditionally information got distributed through radio and television. Now it’s being done online and this has completely shifted the power dynamic with information.

Gamestop and AMC are a great example of this phenomenon. Reddit is more trustworthy than a lot of sources on what’s really happening. (Side note: if you ever want a recommendation on anything, type “the name of that topic – reddit” and you’ll get more information than any other source). People online are honest. They’ll tell you like it is. The news won’t. They’ll tell you what they want you to believe.

So do your own research. Think, ‘why do clouds turn pink?’

You’ll learn more about the world than anything the news will tell you.