How an iPad and a 136-Year-Old Novella Are Helping Me Figure Out What To Do With My Life
The Tools and Techniques I'm Using To Create a Meaningful Life
Around 40 teenagers sat in a room wondering why a 45-year-old Russian man yelled for three days.
For the past two weeks, my English Literature class has been reading Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, the story of a judge who reflects on his life when he realizes that his death is imminent.
As teenagers, many of us viewed death as a far off event that would happen decades from now. However, reading the novella shaped many of our perspectives on life and death.
I decided to take some time to figure out what I want to do with my life based on “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and other online resources. Here’s how I used my iPad in this process:
The Tools I Used
Rather than only relying on “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, I wanted to take input from multiple sources. Here are the tools I used to gather this information:
Notion
I use Notion to write summaries on the books I read. Whenever I face a challenge in my life, I like to look at these books to see if any has a solution to my problem.
In this case, I’ll take a look at The Unfair Advantage by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba and Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty.
GoodLinks
On top of past and present readings, I also want to take a look at online resources. Thanks to GoodLinks, I can save any link I find interesting in the GoodLinks app.
Quick Notes
While GoodLinks lets me save any links I find, Quick Notes helps me take notes on any articles or videos I see. Through Apple Notes, I can then access these Quick Notes and gather information in the next app.
GoodNotes
Whenever I use GoodNotes, I feel more creative—when trying to figure out what to do with my life, GoodNotes helps me sketch out any idea I have (I tend to be more reluctant with writing ideas when I’m typing them on Notion or Apple Notes).
In this case, I’m using GoodNotes to gather all of my information in one place (in case I want to look back on my research in the future).
My Sources
Here are the most helpful sources I found during my research:
What I Learned
After doing my research here are the best suggestions I found:
Spend Time With Your Family
This was a key point in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Ivan was focused on his work (he went to Law School at 13), and he began to prioritize it over his family.
In the end, he realized that everyone was simply waiting for him to die. And at his funeral, his friends cared about their promotions and his wife cared about getting as much money as possible.
While his son did understand him, Ivan realized this too late and spent little time with him.
The Gravestone Technique
I found this idea from Ali Abdaal’s video.
The goal of the gravestone technique is to think about what we want to be remembered as. In other words, what do we want written on our gravestone?
I came up with three general ideas:
Good Brother/Son/Family Member
Creative Mind/Person/Writer
Inspirational Teacher/Advisor/Mentor
Serve Others (Dharma)
My final observation was the repetition of the idea of serving others. I found it best explained in Jay Shetty’s *Think Like a Monk.*
In the book, Shetty emphasized the idea that serving others through your skills and interests is one of the best ways to live a meaningful life.
I’ve noticed this in my own life: when I use my skills and talents to help someone out, I feel like I’ve genuinely done something impactful (even if my work was small).
Final Thoughts
“Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible” - Leo Tolstoy
Thanks for reading!
Adi