To help you on your second brain and productivity journey, I want to be transparent by sharing my learnings from the past two years 🫡

Now you can:

• 🌌 Dive into my notes and best resources for PKM, Obsidian, productivity, and AI

• 🧠 See real examples of my notes to see how I use my second brain, create/connect notes, plan projects, and organize my knowledge

• 🚧 See the projects I'm working on (ex. my upcoming AI Assistant Obsidian Plugin, digital self-actualization)

• 🤩 And learn how to also share your second brain with the world

This can all be done with my UPDATED published notes https://notes.johnmavrick.com/ as a central hub for my personal brand and ideas 🥳

I want you to be able to explore your curiosities while visiting my corner of the internet, so if you have any suggestions for the website feel free to let me know.

Also, I have a few video ideas but would like to hear what would you want to see most. I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know which video you would most want to see:

• Create AI assistants based on your notes in Obsidian (my plugin)

• Transform your life with Cal Newport's Deep Life Stack

• Integrate Getting Things Done task system into your second brain

• How I do project, task, and time management with Akiflow

• Other (leave a comment)

Excited to hear from you :)

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future. If you want to see more of my ideas (or to learn about who I am if you're new here), you can head to my digital notes garden.

✨ In My Life

Before you read this newsletter, I have two important announcements! 🚨

Obsidian University Giveaway 🤩

Fellow YouTuber Aidan Helfant and I are doing a raffle for one student to get Obsidian University: Your Secret Weapon At School for free 🤩

Obsidian University is a premade student vault with a tag-along video course. It helps students learn to take effective notes and study using Obsidian.

In addition, all students who enter the raffle will receive an upgrade code for $25 off Obsidian University, valid through August 18th. All it takes is a simple click of the link below and you have a chance to win the raffle 👇

​To enter the raffle to get the course for free, click this interest link.

My new channel and content pursuits 🤯

As much as I love my Ultimate Starter Vault product, I feel like it's only actualized a fraction of my vision and intention for the product.

The truth is, I want to create a life operating system that does so much more.

I want to build a fully fleshed-out philosophy for productivity and life design that directly aligns with the features in the vault.

I want to share in-depth tutorials and workflows for all the other apps I use with Obsidian like Todoist, Toggl Track, Readwise Reader, and more to help people build robust productivity systems.

It's been a nice 39 posts so far on Substack, but after some contemplation, I'll be fully switching to ConvertKit to keep all my email subscribers in one place.

After my free 4-day Obsidian email course in ConvertKit, I just disappear and don't continue helping all these people starting their second brain journey.

Instead, I want to start sharing weekly insights from the content I consume related to this new vision.

Unfortunately, my current Weekly Wonderings newsletter might not be the best fit for that audience, so I'm changing the niche of my newsletter into something that better encompasses my YouTube content and next big pursuit...

Introducing, Digital Self-Actualization (name subject to change).

I will still continue re-posting this update on Substack for a few more newsletters, but eventually, I might stop and will fully focus on my ConvertKit newsletter.

I'm still considering whether it's sustainable and/or worth having one personal and one learning-oriented 🤔

If you want to join me in this new adventure and receive weekly emails related to productivity systems, digital tools, and high-performance philosophies, click here to sign up.

The Rewards of My Hiatus

I can't believe it's been 5 weeks already 🤯

To keep it short, as my last newsletter hinted at, I've been spending lots of time socializing with family and friends 😊

Although it's led to some missed objectives like my weekly content creation, it's helped me self-reflect a LOT on my character towards the people that I hold close to in my life.

The truth is, my heavy emphasis on productivity and goals over the past 2 years has stained the empathy I once highly respected about myself.

Pair that with having my emotions suppressed and discouraged by someone I held close to in my life, I just didn't feel in tune with my INFJ character.

This showed itself in many ways like responding with condescendence when people came to me for help, but I think my most apparent sign was with socializing with fellow interns during my current internship at SAP.

Initially, I used to think with self-centeredness, assuming that there wouldn't be any people to meet with the same values and interests as me that I would actually be willing to maintain a connection with long-term.

Whenever I would attend socializing events, I would just stick with the two team members I was closest to, and not bother getting to know anyone else.

But as I've been spending the past month improving in this area of my life, I have been really appreciating the personal transformations from my efforts.

I'm starting to be more grateful, I'm starting to show my listening much more during conversations, and I've been better at articulating my inner thoughts about the people I cherish.

Instead of keeping to myself in fear of "wasting time" talking to people, I approached others as my authentic self with a deep curiosity towards getting to know them.

And as a result, I've had some stupidly meaningful conversations with people I've just met, not being afraid to dive into the looming questions we're trying to figure out as we navigate young adult life.

I've been able to connect deeply with people on vulnerable topics like romantic flaws, financial anxiety and my personal mission to give back to my parents as an immigrant, as well as knowing what career to take.

I've been told this many times already whenever I talked about this dilemma of mine, but I think it's important to believe that everyone has that special uniqueness inside of them, and you can converse just for the sake of trying to find it without any expectations.

Be kind in a world where people are starved of encouragement due to competition and insecurities.

My Tools and Resources for Learning and Growth

I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favourite note-taking and productivity app. If you want to try using it for yourself, you can get my free beginner templates and 4-day email course. If you want to further enhance your system, you can also check out my ultimate guide to using AI for PKM.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can start building your second brain

Alternatively, if you're a student and want to use Obsidian for school, you can check out Obsidian University.

If you want an efficient content consumption system, I HIGHLY reocmmend Readwise Reader. You can learn about how I use it to save and read articles, books, and newsletters here.

Welcome to another edition of Weekly Wondering, a sacred time where I share the resonating links, reflections and learnings from my past week to influence your next one ;)

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future. If you want to see more of my ideas (or to learn about who I am if you're new here), you can head to my digital notes garden.

✨ In My Life

Personal update

My parents will be coming on the 13th to visit for a month, so I won't have as much time for content creation.

I am already committed to making weekly videos and shorts to promote my student-oriented product Obsidian University, but fingers crossed that I can still at least find time for the newsletter 🤞

The Ultimate Guide to Using AI for Personal Knowledge Management

The wait is finally over ;)

The goalpost kept moving for my objectives with this video and series on using AI for PKM, but I'm glad to say that it's now ready for use and download! The guide includes:

• Tutorials on using apps for AI (ChatGPT, Obsidian MD, Readwise Reader)

• 17+ TESTED prompts for enhancing your PKM workflow with use-case examples

• Further resources for ChatGPT and AI mastery

The video won't be uploaded until next week, but as a token of gratitude for sticking with me, you can see what's inside and get it for free at https://free.johnmavrick.com/ai-pkm/

I would love to hear your feedback about the overall usefulness, and I'm open to any suggestions for further improvements!

🔗 Links to Thinks

A realistic and fulfilling perspective on productivity

For the past few weeks, working on my passion projects has been effortful.

It's weird how you can be so fascinated by something, but still struggle to spend time and make progress on it.

But this week, I've recalibrated my motivation and values, allowing me to wake up in the morning with a sense of intention and meaning.

So, what did I do?

Before I would always listen to a certain playlist on Spotify that would empower me and literally wake me up from its upbeat essence.

But that would be short-lived, as once I take my earbuds out and the music stops, I'll have to face reality

Instead, I've been filling my attention in the morning with the podcast "Deep Questions with Cal Newport", and right now it's tied for my favourite ongoing series to the point where he has grown to become my favourite content creator and role model.

I resonate with his values, being engrossed with the ideas he brings forward, and take inspiration from his ability to meaningfully balance all his different identities like being a professor, content creator, husband, father, and reader.

And best of all, he challenges the common trends of modern productivity, like optimizing time, fixating on financial freedom, and even the PKM space to offer more realistic solutions.

Just take a look at the titles of his past few episodes and some of the ideas inside:

• Ep. 255 - The failure of cybernetic productivity

  • These productivity apps are supposed to allow us to get more done in less time, but as these tools become normalized, we are expected to be capable of more (this is mostly a concern for employee-based work, but this work-life balance can still be a personal struggle as outlined by the book Four Thousand Weeks)

  • An example is how with access to ChatGPT, students may now be asked to triple their page counts for submitted essays.

  • The solution is to focus on attention-based productivity, as this restlessness is caused by a lack of goals. By being intentional with your attention and what you do, you have set boundaries beyond what you do.

• Ep. 254- The laws of less

  • Simultaneousness breeds stress - do things sequentially instead

  • The slower pace is deeply fulfilling

  • You have to personally trust that your tasks are helping you make progress toward your goals or else you won't do them

  • The norm is so incredibly inefficient that if you can become calm you can push back on capitalism

• Ep. 253 - Making time for what matters

  • People who spend time with friends and family feel life is richer and more abundant, lives look more interesting, and more memories

• Ep. 252 - The deep life stack

  • A framework for designing a fulfilling life:

  • Establish discipline

  • Build a foundation of values

  • Create calm through control

  • Plan for the remarkable overhaul

• Ep. 251 - The efficiency trap

  • There are three benefits of systems or tools: they add capabilities, remove pain points, or speed up common tasks.

  • Since the knowledge worker's biggest bottleneck is the thinking process, speeding up common tasks only speeds up small margins of the work.

  • Unfortunately, this is the majority of what takes of productivity YouTube - automation, life hacks, etc.

• Ep. 250 - In defence of thinking

  • The greater historical thinkers like Von Neumann did not require a second brain, they just had a really good primary one due to constant use.

• Ep. 249 - The good enough job

  • If you diversify your identity beyond just your job, you won't feel pressured to overwork yourself and preserve energy and passion in the other parts of your life.

  • If you relate what you are doing to your values, you are more willing to endure suffering.

Being in a capitalist city and content creator where it's so easy to sacrifice balance and fulfillment in life for external metrics like money and status, it's inspiring to hear the other side so I can personally find my sweet spot in between the ideologies.

If you want to see Cal's ideas grow and become connected over time, I'll probably continue listening to a podcast or two a day to add more notes to my digital notes garden. You can check out my published notes for the series.

Using caffeine to unlock the flow state

I always thought drinking caffeine regularly would only make you a reliant zombie, but this research-backed video by Flow Research Collective changed my mind on the topic.

In reality, caffeine helps promote a flow state by:

• Enhancing dopamine (feel-good pursuit of more) and cortisol (main stress hormone)

• Promotes fight or flight via the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine hormones

• Inhibits adenosine a natural depressant

• Conditioning ourselves to associate caffeine with flow via habit (as long as we actually partake in deep work after caffeine consumption)

To use caffeine effectively:

• Don't have 10 hours before bed

• Calibrate the dose - when tired from poor sleep, ramp up to 50%

• Time the half-life of caffeine (every 6 hours) to when you want to wind down

• Experiment with different intake methods (caffeine and antioxidants, tea and L-theanine, )

• Fast in the morning and just have coffee

• Prevent caffeine tolerance by skipping out once a week, one full week per quarter year

Of course, people have different caffeine tolerances and processing times - from my 23AndMe test I found out I metabolize caffeine quicker than the average person, so I might have to experiment with doses and protocols that work best for me.

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Organizing your input notes

If you have an input system in your second brain, you might be consuming content from sources like:

• A consecutive series of episode notes on a podcast

• Multiple lectures or lessons from a course you're taking

• Weekly newsletters from your favourite creator

But with the nature of literature/input notes being separated per consumable input, I didn't really have an easy way to look for notes only from a specific input.

I was hesitant about making different note types to organize each of them since right now I only have two major series I'm paying attention to (Deep Questions with Cal Newport and Awakening from the meaning crisis).

Until I realized, I could just create a more abstract organization system for them.

And so, the collection note was born 🗄

Is it really worth having a separate note?
You can take a look at my one on Deep Questions with Cal Newport and judge whether it's needed for you.

By organizing the inputs based on status, I can just head straight to this note whenever I want to process my captured highlights, free of getting distracted from other inputs.

To accommodate for this change, I've updated my input template to also include a field for the Collection it is in.

If I make a generic link from an unrelated input note to [[🗄 Deep Questions with Cal Newport]], it will not show up on the list since the link was not categorized as a Collection type.

The best way to spend money for happiness

Humans believe that money will make us happier in the long run, but it's actually backwards.

Instead, having more time makes us happy, especially if that time is spent on things that align with our goals and values.

In the capitalist world, we live in, we over-trade money for time, so to reclaim our happiness, one of the best ways to extract happiness from our money is to trade it back for saving time. We really do live in a society.

According to Harvard researcher Ashley Whillans, spending money on time-saving purchases grants us more happiness than materialistic purchases.

• She ran an experiment where people were given $40 on the weekend to save time or materialism and were asked about their mood at the end of the day. Unsurprisingly, saving time was associated with more happiness.

• This is because although materialism can fill the insecurity of certain things (appearance, economic status, etc.), saving time reduces stress, a more biologically important inhibitor to happiness.

  • People felt less end-of-day time pressure when they purchased time-saving services, which explained their improved mood that day. According to the broaden-and-build theory (20), improvements in daily mood should promote greater life satisfaction over time.

If you want to learn more about what research recommends for optimizing your time, you can check out her book or her research paper I have yet to finish reading 😁

My Tools and Resources for Learning and Growth

I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favourite note-taking and productivity app. If you want to try using it for yourself, you can get my free beginner templates and 4-day email course.

If you want to further enhance your system, you can also check out my ultimate guide to using AI for PKM.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this or need a place to store and grow your own ideas, you can start building your second brain.

Alternatively, if you're a student and want a note-taking system for both good grades and personal enjoyment, you can check out Obsidian University.

If you want an efficient content consumption system, I HIGHLY recommend Readwise Reader. You can learn about how I use it every day to save and read articles, books, and newsletters here.

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future. If you want to see more of my ideas (or to learn about who I am if you're new here), you can head to my digital notes garden.

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

✨ In My Life

I pulled the same oopsie as last week of going home too late so now I'm writing this edition on my phone in Obsidian while waiting for the bus 😁

Stalk my podcast highlights

I started using Snipd as my app for listening to podcasts:

• Podcast chapters are automatically generated to help you decide whether certain parts are of interest to you

• It supports earbud shortcuts by double-tapping to highlight and triple-tapping to skip forward

• I can sync it up to Readwise, which will then sync to my Obsidian vault for processing

• I like personal social media apps AND I like intellectual apps as well, so being able to see what ideas your friends are saving helps foster a healthier content environment

• After snipping a highlight, it’s very easy to readjust the start and end based on the transcript of the document

If you're interested, you can add me on there @johnmavrick, but there's no guarantee I use it too often 😅

I have an ongoing dilemma where there are lots of times when I can plug in and listen to a podcast (working out, transit, walking to work, errands) but I choose not to just to let my mind wander.

But if I do decide to experiment and use it for listening, then I apologize in advance for the notification spam 🤩

Using AI in your Second Brain

My first video of the AI Second Brain series is out now 🥳

In it, I share how to set up ChatGPT in Obsidian, find smart connections that only AI can, and ask your notes anything through a chatbot 🤯

You can watch the video here:

As for the next part, I'm still pondering upon a few questions (if you're not well versed in PKM terms feel free to skip):

• What method do I organize the AI prompts and workflows under? CODE method or ARC method?

  • Organize and Distill is intertwined when it comes to Obsidian note-taking so I think ARC might be better suited

    • Code -> Add

    • Organize, Distill -> Relate

      • Relate to topics (organize), then relate to ideas (distill, following the concept of idea emergence)

    • Express -> Create

• What is ACTUALLY useful to people in practical day-to-day use, not just something that is technologically cool but not that crucial?

If you want a sneak peek, you can check out my video note at my notes https://notes.johnmavrick.com/ai-using-code-framework/

If you have been using AI yourself, I would love to hear how you've been using it in the replies or by sending me an email :)

My personally fulfilling and frictionless weekly review

Being more intentional with maintaining second brain is rekindling my connection and immersive perception of what it means to me.

As I revisit previous layers of depth and intention, It's becoming more than just a productivity tool to record relevant information from highlights.

It's a reflection of my values, my thoughts, and how I live my life. A refined second brain that grounds me in my values for when my biological brain may wander and forget.

It's a system that complements all the types of knowledge in my life, letting me offload all the unnecessary and irrelevant remembering to focus on one thing at a time.

When I did my weekly review, organizing my thoughts felt frictionless.

If you’re interested in what it looks like, I’ll forgo a bit of my privacy to see the note in its full glory here. Most of the insights are hidden in the personal notes, but I’m not willing to share anything without other people’s consent. I did end up screenshotting the graphs so you could see though ;)

• Spending a few minutes at night before bed to journal and process my ideas has helped tremendously with having an abundance of ideas to think about and write about

  • I can choose what I want to crystallize from my daily notes by turning them into permanent notes and am given time to further expand on them

  • With these building blocks, I can combine highlights and takeaways of my days into meaningful reflections and planning

  • And so, instead of just one-liner vague sentences, I have enough ammunition to link to a fully fleshed-out thought note by using the workflows part of a certain note type (thought note, brainstorm note, etc)

• It's now a sacred comprehensive ritual, ranging from habits to tracking progress to reflecting on the important thoughts, experiences, notes

• As I write it, I'm discovering little workflows here and there that I want to solidify into a video or guide

🔗 Links to Thinks

A successful but enjoyable early retirement strategy

If you don't know already, the 4% rule is a plan for financial freedom where you have enough capital to live off of average stock dividends/growth returns. You take your annual expenses, multiply them by 25, and that's how much you need saved to not work for money again.

But in this article, they mention how the 4% rule methodology is still based on a late retirement - for people planning to retire earlier, they have:
• A more flexible lifestyle with fewer fixed expenses
• The ability to pick up part-time or full-time work, if necessary
• The freedom and/or desire to live in beautiful but cheap places, like Southeast Asia or South America, to reduce expenses without reducing their quality of life
• A high percentage of their spending goes towards discretionary expenses (e.g. travel, dining, drinks with friends, etc.)

And so, they offer a more generous withdrawal rate based on your discretionary expenses and how sustainable you want it to be.

Playing around with their formula gave me clarity into what saving will help me achieve, and it was nice going into different examples based on my living conditions (renting vs living with my parents).

Instead of saving just for the rough idea of retirement, I have greater clarity on the different lifestyles I can have and the requirements for each.

If you want to look into my specifics, you can look here.

Sneak peek into the Linking Your Thinking Workshop

My good friend Aidan Helfant is taking the $1200 Linking Your Thinking workshop, sharing his learnings and experience in his weekly newsletter.

I might be a tad bit biased, but I have found his perspective very insightful - seeing as the main reason for restarting my second brain was to make more personal connections, reading his posts have been a comprehensive foundation for clarifying my own workflows.

I always had the more personal and meaningful side of PKM (Linking Your Thinking's content) on the back burner for more practical ideas (Second Brain) and technical parts (Obsidian plugins and systems).

To see the different methods, you'll have to wait until next week as I'm still processing my notes 😭

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favourite note-taking and productivity app. If you want to try using it for yourself, you can get my free beginner templates and 4-day email course.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can start building your second brain

Alternatively, if you're a student and want to use Obsidian for school, you can check out Obsidian University.

If you want an efficient content consumption system, I HIGHLY recommend Readwise Reader. You can learn about how I use it to save and read articles, books, and newsletters here.

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

If you want to see more of my ideas (or to learn about who I am if you're new here), you can head to my digital notes garden.

✨ In My Life

This one is going to be a short one since I just got home from a long day without any writing prior throughout the week 😭

My published second brain update

Nothing major has happened, I've just been slowly chipping away at it with respect to my other responsibilities (see my ramblings header for more information).

Instead, I've been working on creating my YouTube content and refining my second brain systems, which leads me to...

A 3-part series on using AI for your second brain

I know I said I would upload a video on me restarting my vault, but after attending Tiago Forte's $75 AI workshop and being highly disappointed, I've felt a personal calling to make my free content better than his paid - to work on a 3-part series on how to use AI in your second brain (more specifically, Obsidian).

It will go over:

1. A tutorial on how to set up AI for ChatGPT, AI-based connections, and a personalized chatbot from your notes

2. Prompts and workflows I use to integrate these AI tools into Tiago Forte's personal knowledge management process, the CODE method

3. A real-life, start-to-finish process of using it (still undecided on the day in the life or following the reading of a book until the end)

I started working on the video end of Friday and gave myself the unrealistic expectation to finish it by Sunday, but expect it to be uploaded sometime throughout the week (very courageous of me to not post on the weekend for optimal viewership, I know).

🔗 Links to Thinks

I'll just share what I've highlighted recently and my annotations for each (💭 was made during highlight, normal bullet points were done just now to recall why I highlighted or add onto it)

Différance: How To Think Critically In The Age of Content

I think this guy is my favorite content creator on meaningful and philosophical reading thanks to both his ideas and writing style 😅

There’s a gradual shift of focus on the internet from content to personality . Aesthetic values and the charms of the presenter, in this case, overshadowed critic al assessments of arguments. When we say we want to “watch a YouTube video on a subject”, we say, “I want my favourite influencer to tell me what to think”. Personalities have short-circuited our ability to engage critically with information, and all we’re looking for are clear-cut answers for subjects that are supposed to be confusing. (View Highlight)

• Similar to a previous video I watched where they argued that now even educational content is being prioritized as entertainment to keep people engaged and make them "feel" like they are doing something productive

when the bulk of our informational diet is fed to us by popular blog posts, viral YouTube videos, and Instagram reels, we no longer have space in our heads to assess what we’ve read or heard. Entertainment had, in a sense, masqueraded itself as truth. (View Highlight)

• Only makes me want to keep reading a a non-negotiable habit every day like in the past, I'm afraid that once I do get back into it I'll have the attention span and critical thinking of a goldfish 😭

if we always try to reduce learning to clear-cut answers, we’re missing out on the joy of embracing ambiguities and deeper insights. (View Highlight)

• 💭 The problem of reading summaries instead of the textbook

• This is why I love reading with Obsidian on the side so much - I get to log my thoughts in real-time which is supported by my Book Application Template

If we truly embrace confusion, we’ll be immune to the effects of mindless online information. We can suspend information and critically assess them before adopting them. In that sense, our reason is grounded and not easily moved by nonsense. And from that place, we can still enjoy content from our favourite creators, yet we can take a deeper pleasure in shades of subtler thoughts, reaching new insights that will allow us to live intelligently. (View Highlight)

• 💭 Argues for staying in confusion to think critically instead of conveniently searching for a quick solution

• Once again, the importance of reading and

31 Lessons I’ve Learned About Money

Pretty self-explanatory, just some personal lessons from the stoic author Ryan Holiday that made me think.

I had this idea that I wanted to be a millionaire by 25. Where this number came from, I don’t know. I made it up, it was ego, and I didn’t hit it. But you know what the difference of getting there a little later was? Nothing. No one throws you a party. Accomplishments don’t change who you are. (View Highlight)

• I think it actually is nicer to hit it early, but that's only if you have a purpose that will last longer than simply

• The further away you are, the less the small difference will matter. Since I'm still 19, I have a long ways to go and shouldn't beat myself up if I don't exactly hit my goals

“Ryan,” he said, “What do you do with your money?” Basically, I just put it in the bank, I told him. “Then why are you doing so many things you dislike to earn more of it?” he replied. This insight changed the course of my business as well as my life. Making money is easier than most people think—knowing why and what for, and not being driven in the wrong direction to get it? Much harder. (View Highlight)

• Obviously circumstances differ, but if you have the skills and history of making money online then it's important you be more picky with what offers you take since money isn't scarce anymore

  • In my case, even though consultations may pay a lot and people have been asking me for it, I don't want to do it just for the income, and would only want to start it again if I have the time and energy to immerse myself into it

  • I satisfy my fulfillment from volunteer work by just replying to comments and emails hehe

the money I was spending on ads made basically no positive impact on the world (if any impact at all), but articles and videos could at least be enjoyed by people (for free no less), even if they didn’t drive the same amount of ROI. In the long run, this content will be around forever and have a bigger and more meaningful reach.

• Focus on playing positive-sum, long-term games that give people value

• This has been especially fruitful in my own content through my efforts to respond to every comment and make my content available regardless of country

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Infusing AI with my voice-to-text rambles

If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, you're probably familiar with me using voice-to-text on my phone during walks to empty my mind in a stream of consciousness.

Recently I've been trying to do so by using Audiopen, and it's revolutionized the proccess.

Instead of pure text with no puncutation, you can choose the size of the summary in relation to the size of the raw transcription, and you can also choose the style of writing you want it to adopt (bullet point, creative, simple, etc).

I've just been using it to dump the events of a day for my daily summary, and it's done a good job of retaining information.

Of course, it won't be able to completely read your mind and know what to keep vs extract, but it was super convenient to have my thoughts cleaned up for me to just simply paste for the cost of one missing detail I noticed it left (but that might even be fixable by adjusting the settings).

I'm currently using the free version and find it useful, so I won't link the affiliate yet. You can check it out at

https://audiopen.ai/

😤 My Ramblings

Trying to balance everything all at once

I'm really driven to do a lot of things in my life, but the problem is the fact that I'm so passionate for a lot of things in my life.

I have:

• my full time developer internship at SAP

• my personal brand (YouTube, weekly newsletter)

• my digital products (Ultimate Starter Vault and Obsidian University) and everything associated with it

• the daily maintenance I want to do on my vault for writing, processing, and journalling

• my fitness goals of going to the gym 5 times a week

• my never-ending newsletter, YouTube, podcasts I save for later

  • all the notes and content I already have that I need to process

• the old keystone habit of reading for an hour a day I want to bring back

• my animes and games I want to play

• the people I hold really close to in my life I try to make time for through activities and conversations since it was something I neglected a lot during my productivity no-life phase (friends, family, and you know who you are!)

• the AI notes app I'm chatting and ideating on

• the endless am

And on paper I think it's manageable, but lately I've just been having poor energy levels during the afternoon.

It might be because of a glucose spike after eating, or it might be because of me not taking actual, restful breaks, I'll be experimenting throughout the week to find causes and solutions.

I've been trying my best to rise to the occasion, with this week being the lowest for "unproductive" leisure:

• 7.5 hours of gaming (which was still with friends!)

• 2 hours of entertainment youtube

• 1.5 hours of mindless scrolling

It feels really good to have been so intentional and meaningful with my time, but it's just a weird feeling to know that it's still not enough to stay on top of everything I want to do.

As I was going through my old Weekly Wonderings to pull up an example of me mentioning voice-to-text, I came across this previous rambling on the importance of doing nothing and being mindful so I can focus on what I've already achieved.

I mentioned my usual tendencies of hyperfixating on goals and work, and how I need to balance it with more wandering and leisure like going on walks, paying attention to my surroundings in great detail.

But as I've had the past few months to do just that and "compensate" for my workaholic phase, I'm ready to get back into things.

It just feels weird being so fluid in my beliefs, to completely rearrange my values from relationship-oriented and Eastern-esque to more ambitious and deep work.

But I guess that's part of my goal to self-actualize? To continue experimenting with the different decisions I can make, whether it be a daily habit or long-term vision, to see how it has a butterfly effect on the rest of my perception of the world.

To mould into the version of myself that can best fit my current opportunities and situation, to treat life like a game and min/max it like I usually do.

Because to overcome my current situation, I can go different ways:

• I can follow principles similar to “Four Thousand Weeks” so I can not feel the pressure and incentive to optimize my time and efforts

• I can follow principles similar to “High Performance Habits” to grind it out and

• I can follow principles from “Essentialism” to reduce my wide net of interests and focus on a core few things that are most important

Gotta love the paradox of choice 😎 I’ll probably continue trying to push through it as I miss this feeling of trying to balance it all hehe

But yeah, until next time since it’s past my bedtime and I had no intention of even writing this in the first place…

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future. If you want to see more of my ideas (or to learn about who I am if you're new here), you can head to my digital notes garden.

I haven’t been consuming much content and have instead been working on things, so this week’s edition will mostly be a personal update 😅

✨ In My Life

What I'm working on

For the past few months, my periodic reviews have been surface-level, which has made it hard for me to clarify my weekly goals or focus areas.

Thankfully, a sudden surge of internal drive has made me spend extra time on my monthly review to break things down and not feel so overwhelmed when I'm executing my day-to-day tasks.

For June, I have three main areas I want to work on:

My Personal Knowledge Management Transformation

• Continue building my second brain philosophy

  • Going to continue documenting my processes and uploading them onto my published notes/starter blog. This will let me see the gaps in my workflow to expand upon, making my day-to-day note-taking seamless.

    • What mindsets am I going to adopt when taking different kinds of notes (inputs, thoughts, daily notes, etc)

    • What methods am I going to use to maintain my vault? (daily learning, weekly newsletter, etc)

    • What tools am I going to use (ChatGPT/AI, Readwise, Google Keep, etc)

    • Just having that “ideal” philosophy to strive towards just helps me tremendously with following it 😅

Cleaning up my productivity systems
After consuming productivity porn by watching Ali Abdaal's Trident time management system (a.k.a watching a video about something I already know), I decided to revise my current systems:

• Using my periodic and daily notes to regain clarity and intention in what I'm doing

• Structuring my time via an "ideal week" Google Calendar I have as my default schedule

  • Right now I just have a basic outline which includes necessities like my morning/night routines, working out, and work, with gaps here and there for me to include my project tasks

• Clean up my Todoist tasks

  • Right now I've had the same tasks on my "Today" tab for a while 😭

  • Have a lot of tasks that have not been touched in a long time, which I'll move to a "Maybe" section that I can browse during my periodic reviews

Making YouTube videos again

• With the butt-ton of new stuff I'm trying to do, it's giving me an opportunity to get back into the experiential learning-based content I used to do 🤩

• The plan is to make at least 3 videos based on what I'm doing or learning:

  • Restarting my Obsidian vault

  • How I'm implementing AI in my note-taking / useful prompts (using my learning gamification as an example)

  • And whatever else I'm interested in

And yeah, for this week specifically

• Demystifying my gaming addiction by learning about gamification via actionable gamification

• Integrating AI into my note-taking and USV, using my deep dive into gamification as a test run?

  • I'm still unsure whether I want to document my experiences as I'm learning, or if I want to do a more authoritative tutorial-style video

• Uploading 📹 I restarted my Obsidian vault

  4

I'm hoping I can get all this done on top of my internship, but we'll have to wait and see 😅

🔗 Links to Thinks

Why Documenting Everything is Changing My Life

I track a lot of things: my workouts, my time spent, my energy levels, and pretty much anything that's measurable for the sake of analysis and optimization.

But lately, I haven't been doing much documenting and reflecting on actual experiences, so, this video really resonated with me and reminded me to do so.

I liked his mindset of also capturing the little moments since that's the foundation and precursor of all of our other shenanigans. In doing so, he records the most random things like finding a dog, sleeping outside on his balcony, or even doing laundry 😭

In combination with a time where optimization and productivity are slowly taking focus, having more personal forms of documentation give space and attention to cherishing these moments.

A picture is so cheap to take but can capture so much, it’s a reminder of some of our most important memories.

After watching this video, I decided to look back at all the photos and memories I took so far this year.

Ever since I started growing up, I stopped taking pictures with me or the people around me in it. Instead, I sneakily take pictures of the event itself, which now in retrospect I kind of regret doing.

I purchased a camera to take pictures as I started my University adventures when moving to a new province, but now I've been too timid to bring it around...

But if you think about it, as much as people may try to hide from the camera or cover themselves, a few years from now they'll be greatly appreciative of people who capture those memories and preserve them through pictures or journals.

Sure you can just try to immerse yourself in the moment and document it later, but eventually the details fade and you'll only be left with a one-sentence summary of the event.

If there's a part of your day you enjoy, consider writing a small journal or taking a picture of the event 😊

Next time I'm going out, I'm going to make sure my camera's charged 😁

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Maintaining your second brain

The more I think about how I ended up restarting my vault because of how chaotic it was, the more I realize how it was simply due to neglecting small housekeeping habits and mindsets.

When I first started out, I had habits to help me gain clarity and maintain my vault, and for some reason, I just stopped...?

And so, I'm going to bring those habits back on a daily basis so I can go back to more writing and note-making:

Daily time block for writing

• During the start of my Obsidian journey, I would always start my morning off by reading and taking notes side-by-side, helping me actively think about the content I consumed.

• And so, I'm going to bring that habit back by spending an hour after my morning routine to partake in some deep work to explore my curiosities.

• Each week I will have a set intention for my learning, and during these periods I'll work towards it, either through active note-taking or making connections between already existing notes.

• Not only will this help with maintaining my vault, but also with fixing my goldfish attention span 😅

Throughout the day, I'll have a consistent habit of logging anything significant that comes to mind

• After each work period, I'll spend some time in my daily note to write down any thoughts or experiences

• This is done in a header called Log where I just write a bullet point sentence of what I did, then sub-bullets on the detail

At the end of the day during my night routine, I'll do some housekeeping for my daily notes

• I have different prompts for journalling which lets me organize and clarify my thoughts at the end of the day

  • For more valuable insights, I'll upgrade them into conceptual notes or add them to existing notes

During my weekly review, I'll then look at my weekly notes (both daily journals and the rest of the notes made throughout the day) and spend time connecting them with the rest of my existing vault.

If you want to learn about the systems that let me do all this, you can check out my periodic reviews video.

Prompt engineering

After treading through clickbait Twitter Threads on how "99% of people are using ChatGPT wrong", I've collected a few useful practices to make better prompts for ChatGPT, which you can read about in my digital garden.

Revisiting past journal entries

• I've been reading through my newsletters and previous thought notes / journal entries, and it's been monumental in helping me remember my previous mindset and drive

  • It's one thing to know that hedonism is bad, but it's another thing to read about your previous self going into why they believe so in vivid detail, exhibiting it through their actions

  • Having that underlying sense of needing to make the most of your time in this world, to contribute to something greater, to break out of following societal norms for safety and embarking on a journey most fulfilling to you

  • Lately, I've been rushing my nightly journaling to only cover the surface-level events, which has been preventing me from achieving second-order thinking and further introspection into my thoughts. But seeing how profound re-reading them has been, makes me want to start doing it again not just for my current self, but also for my future self who may need a lending hand

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favourite note-taking app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

If you’re new, you can learn more about me on my work-in-progress digital garden.

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

✨ In My Life

I'm restarting my personal Obsidian vault!?!? 🤯

The series would be about me starting a new notes base from scratch, which would also announce the publishing of my notes :3

This gives me accountability as an obsidian content creator to apply my practices and showcase my personal interpretation of PKM through newsletters, input notes, etc

It’s a huge decision to make considering two years of my learning and personal experiences are in those 5000 notes, but after thinking it through I’ve came to the following factors:

The positives

• I think a problem with personal knowledge management tutorials (or at least for mine) is the lack of in-depth, raw examples not just made for the camera. I don't mind forgoing a bit of privacy so I can share the majority of what I take notes on, which can maybe help people with their own. This leads me into...

• Publishing my notes online! My only concern with my current vault is I'm not sure where some overly personal notes can be hidden, and I can't be bothered to look through 5000 notes, so at least this new vault will have publishing in mind from the start. For future videos where I end up learning something new, I can link viewers to the related area within my notes.

• This will keep my content evergreen. Newsletters and videos can continue to grow outside of their mould when published and will connect with already existing notes in my vault.

• Can give more examples of how to use the Ultimate Starter Vault, which lets me establish a highly opinionated use case combining everything I've learned. My current system can't keep up with my product since it's hard to update systems for an already existing large knowledge base 😭

• I'm not that happy with my current note-taking practices. For a while now, I've been collecting highlights more than I have been connecting notes or doing my own thinking and linking. It's a constant struggle since in some ways I think it's okay to do so as long as you can find it when you need to use it, but in other ways, it’s deteriorating my capacity for critical thinking and the introspection I highly admire about myself. And as I want to make the switch to more intrinsically driven content creation like my initial videos, having a strong sense of myself and my experiences is more important than ever. Additionally, not processing your notes prevents the main value of note taking which is being able to compound your knowledge across different sources.

• By starting fresh, I can map out a second brain philosophy to enforce practices and mindsets that keep the vault maintained over time, and carve out my own understanding of PKM. Inspired by Nick Milo, one of these core principles will be to focus on my own thoughts, rather than just having a generic Wikipedia of copy-pasted highlights and dulling paraphrasing. I'll put in the extra time to add my own personal reactions, adding my unique perspective and understanding to what I consume. But of course, this could just be a transient phase, and who knows when I might be perfectly okay with my generic thing.

The negatives

• Two years of notes will be archived. I know Tiago Forte recommends you to archive your notes when moving to a new system and move them in one by one as you need (which I might do).

• It feels kind of disappointing knowing that this all could have been preventable if I had put in the consistent effort to maintain my vault. All the lost sparks of ideas are laid to rest forever, and my old notes will be treated as a diary to look back upon.

• I will have to set my custom settings again that are in my vault (note templates, hotkeys, etc), but that's probably the least of my worries

This doesn't seem right, I feel like there should be much more negatives of discarding two years worth of notes 😭

🔗 Links to Thinks

Is summarizing with AI worth it?

During my phase of learning AI and seeing its potential from an idealistic perspective, it's nice to see some practical examples of it not living up to what I had imagined. In this article, Tiago tries to use ChatGPT to make a book summary for a book he read years ago, even feeding it his own highlights and giving it overly specific prompts, just to realize that doing it himself is not only more effective but efficient.

I conclude that reading books is still worthwhile, even in an age of Artificial Intelligence. Besides the personal enrichment from the experience of reading, there are key details, subtle distinctions, and gestalts of meaning that come from reading and notetaking that can’t (yet) be reproduced by even the latest language models

Considering the fact that these large language models are trained off of data from the internet, all nuance and outliers from extensive research papers have been drowned out by whatever writings and ideas are most common like the average blog post.

And so, it's even more important to have our own unique collection of notes full of personality and creativity.

Taking notes won't be replaced, but will be even more sacred and valuable.

Philosophical, introspective writing

Part of my sudden inspiration to get back into introspective content has been thanks to Lawrence Yeo's email series on philosophical writing. He has a similar style to Tim Urban's Wait But Why, taking complex life questions and conversationally breaking them down using silly analogies and diagrams.

I really like how he encourages philosophical writing to be purely for yourself - you aren't writing to consciously solve the problems of others, you're just using it as a more structured journal to help yourself understand the world.

Each piece that answers a certain question is another part of your overarching perspective of the world.

But if we were to write for the sake of others, we need to remember to...

Use fewer quotes as people want to hear your unique perspective

Using quotes is a form of impostor syndrome - we are unsure of our own ideas so we try to validate them by crediting someone else

People can easily search for what different important figures said about certain topics, and there's nothing novel to these ideas being brought up. What matters is being able to vividly describe your own understanding of it. Why would you turn to someone for an encyclopedia of quotes?

Reframe ideas in a way that feels fresh
In an age of ChatGPT-driven content, being creative has never been more important.

Much like how you create your own niche through the intersection of your interests, we need to connect things in unique ways (hmm, sound similar to a certain note-taking principle I follow...)

This can be done by thinking of the overarching implications of ideas, like how our fear of death is because of the constraints it gives us.

Create your own train of thought and personal revelations take over your writing, overcoming cliches to best illustrate your thought process.

🚀 Actionable Tingz

LYT Conference

Experiences like these reignite my passion and obsession with personal knowledge management and productivity.

Out of the conference, there were two that really woke me up to reflect upon my current PKM practices.

First was Nick Milo's note making session.

What is note making?

• Sensemaking is the natural way we understand the world, while note making is deliberately doing so during sessions or carved-out times.

• Instead of letting others think of "why" for us, think of it ourselves

• Use "because" to prompt ourselves to think more critically

• If we only continue highlighting, our own sparks will fade. Instead, we should capture those magical moments and start fleshing them out if we have the time. Notes serve the purpose of capturing a snapshot of our thinking, and if we wait until the end of the day to recall these revelations, who knows how much we'll actually be able to articulate.

• The structure should be earned - do not quickly go about making structures, do it after you take notes

Some prompts while note making include (add because after each prompt):

• It's a part of

• It's different to

• It's similar to

• That reminds me

• That's interesting

• It's important

• It's good

• It's bad

I highly recommend checking out the video and partaking in the sensemaking sessions :) If you're interested, this is what I came up with using the prompts:

Kintsugi

• Important since it can relate to the idea of antifragile, how things benefit from chaos

• Reminds me of just writing in general or anything content-related, in the sense when you add that gold patch it becomes something new and unique

• It's good because you are retaining the previous history

AI

• AI is interesting since we can offload dull and repetitive tasks

• Different to critical thinking since the AI will think about what is average

• It's important because it will only heighten the importance of good thinkers that can think outside the box and the norm

• It's bad because people might turn to these as truth and will neglect their own critical thinking

• Similar to asking people for advice and for herd mentality as we follow the norm

Anyways, the second presentation I found insightful was Bianca's on Why Linked Knowledge Doesn't Work

Some insights included:

What should a note contain?

• Instead of saying that notes should only contain one thing, notes should only focus on one idea

  • It's okay if there are other ideas in it as different or else it might be too restricting and you won’t be able to support the idea

  • Treat it like a photo, you know what is the focus and what isn't

  • Other ideas are present but turned down

    • Them being washed out only makes the focus more emphasized

Write in ideas, not documents

• When writing in documents (ex. literature notes with lots of ideas in the same note), it's hard to free it from the existing structure and retrieve it.

• Even idea notes can turn into documents if they become too big

Doing a dopamine detox

My attention span has been deteriorating to the point where I start doom-scrolling and procrastinating to chase dopamine under the disguise of "catching up on my no-life productivity grind" days 😭

As I'm writing this, there's a heartfelt relationship apology happening with a guy bawling his eyes out in front of me, why did I think it was a good idea to write on the train again (this is also a perfect example of the attention span I mentioned above)

And so, after indulging in this for way too long, it's time to incorporate some good old self-help advice from James Clear on habit formation B)

The main habits I want to break are:

• Doomscrolling short-form content on Instagram and Tiktok

• Consistently choosing entertainment content over educational content

And so, I'm going to make my ideal habits more appealing, and my bad habits less so.

Doomscrolling

1. Make it invisible

   • I installed both apps, no longer making it a default option when wanting to be stimulated on my phone

2. Make it unattractive

   • Usually, I am turned off by wasting my time because of all the things I have to do, but I've been neglecting my deliberate goal-setting and don't have much clarity in my vision 😅

3. Make it difficult

   • If I really need to use it, I'll be able to open it up on my desktop (I don't have a history of doing so for leisure so I'll be fine hehe)

4. Make it not satisfying

   • This one is a bit harder because of the personalized nature of algorithms, I'm hoping the other 3 will be enough

Consistently choosing entertainment over educational content
I've recently

1. Make it invisible

   • I have recently been watching everything on my main account since it has YouTube Premium and my old player app no longer works

   • Instead, I'm going to continue separating my algorithms across channels so one is more on learning and the other is more on entertainment and gaming so I don't get distracted

2. Make it unattractive

   • I think just a constant reminder to correct our bias for immediate gratification is enough to keep me on track - it would take away time for more fulfilling leisure or content consumption so it's just not the best decision to make

   • Instead, I'll make Readwise reader my default option, as I want to focus more on improving my attention span again

3. Make it difficult

   • Having to make the conscious decision to switch to a new account is enough friction for me to not do it mindlessly

4. Make it not satisfying

   • Since I don't have YouTube Premium on my other account, I'll have to watch ads which I absolutely despite 😭

So yeah, I'm going to follow through on this plan and give an update for next week :)

🤔 Food For Thought

My reflections after 2 years of PKM
I'm too lazy to organize this brain dump

• I have not been the best at practicing what I preach

  • I've been lazy with my zettelkasten as I focus on productivity over the joy of learning and writing

    • Lately, I've been feeling directionless, and since I haven't consistently been giving myself the time at the end of the day or throughout the week to wind down and reflect, it's been hard for me to have a solid foundation

      • So my plan is to learn in public, which is why I'm setting up my vault

        • I just want to solve my problems and share my experiences so other people can learn

• I never thought I would have gotten an audience for something I was still learning for myself

  • I kind of documented by entire learning process from start to the never-ending finish, and it's something I want to continue doing as I get back into content creation

    • I am still learning things about obsidian, but now I want to branch into new ventures like my personal life and answer my own questions

  • It's just hard for me to get back into the groove as my first videos were purely intrinsic, but now with my products and need for financial stability it's a constant struggle

    • I think my mind has been brought back to a more personal and introspective content style thanks to people like Paul Millerd and Lawrence Yeo

      • It's refreshing to know that people who are so authentic and sincere are discovered and spread through word of mouth rather than algorithms

    • I should probably start using polls, and set the options to things I want to do so it's a healthy mix of what I want and what my audience wants

      • I was reading through my friend Aidan Helfant's digital garden and saw his competitor analysis for Nicole

        • One of his critiques was how she doesn't have much of a personality for her channel, which can make her fragile if she decides to switch niches

        • When I compare his channel with Nicole's or my own (which I'd argue has been more commodified in comparison to my previous videos), there is a clear contrast in personality between the channels, but it seems like those who focus on optimization come out on top

• Okay those were reflections on YouTube, not PKM bruh

• I think my biggest problem has been note making vs notetaking

  • As mentioned prior, I have a stupidly large backlog of content to process, from books to articles to videos

  • I need to Write in ideas, not documents

    3

    so I can compound my learning and not re-highlight the same generic stuff 24/7

  • I'll take a more active approach to content consumption where I have my notes near me as well, so I end up seeing whether I already cover what I'm about to highlight, or if I can actually use it to build off of what is already existing

• The biggest use I found was my daily and periodic reviews

  • Just having such clear intentions paired with deep work made me unstoppable towards reaching my goals and working towards them. better self, but lately I've been neglecting it and it's been showing in how I spend my day to day

    • It just feels so weird to go with the flow and not have some overarching vision, as it allows for lots of distractions to occupy my mind which in turn makes it harder to focus

• I tend to not revisit my notes - which I'm sure the principles of LYT will help me solve

• To be fair, I've been focusing more on Obsidian systems than I have been too much on the mindset

• By holding myself accountable and making my journey public, I'm excited about where it can take me :)

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favourite note-taking and productivity app.

Want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights? Set up your own second brain.

Are you a student wanting to take better notes in school? Check out Obsidian University.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

✨ In My Life

Integrating AI into learning and note taking
Using AI integrations like ChatGPT and Obsidian's Text Generator Plugin take learning and note-taking to a whole new level, and I feel energized by the possibilities associated with the above.

Tiago Forte's BASB methodology with PARA and the CODE method already help substantially with information overwhelm, but just imagine how much better it could be if AI was also integrated alongside it.

Even if your organization isn't the best, you can let AI do all the hard work and resurface relevant things to you in a chat-like manner.

It would greatly reduce the friction of processing notes (but at the same time that is how you learn so it's a double-edged sword), making super old information resurface-able beyond what a manual Zettelkasten could.

And so, this week I'll be experimenting with using AI in my learning and note-taking, finding the most useful practices and implementing them in my Ultimate Starter Vault.

I'm also in the ideation process for an AI-integrated note-taking app that will hopefully have the essential features of Obsidian but with a fraction of onboarding complexity and overwhelm.

The goal is to create something so mainstream and accessible that it could rival Google Docs and Evernote.

If you're interested, you can be notified of any updates by signing up for the email list here: https://free.johnmavrick.com/betatest-ai-notes

Continuing new versions for my Ultimate Starter Vault
For the past 5 months, I've been complacent and satisfied with my current setup (on top of other priorities), so I haven't had the need to set up anything new.

But recently, I was talking to a friend and he mentioned how the biggest pain point of Obsidian is the learning curve and complexity required to set up your own vault.

Thanks to the combination of this new fascination with AI-infused personal knowledge management with the personal mission to make the onboarding setup better, I'm going to be working on some new things on the vault, which you can see on the notion roadmap if you have purchased it. Future plans include:

• Enhancing existing workflows with AI

• More kinds of notes (meeting, people notes)

• An updated use case of different plugins (implementing make.md)

• Adding actionability to the vault by repurposing kanban boards

• Better onboarding and teaching through more content (note explanations)

• More USV philosophy on how to use the workflows (more example videos, principles, etc)

• Revamping the exclusive discord channel so I can easily share how I use the vault on a day-to-day basis

The plan is to make the vault less open-ended and to be more opinionated on how to do things.

🔗 Links to Thinks

A powerful way to overcome laziness

Lately, I've been getting lazy.

I've been self-indulging more than I used to, and it's been reinforcing a tendency to favor dopamine over long-term effort.

In fact, today's workout was a perfect illustration of it 😭

I work out my upper body 4 times a week (2x push and 2x pull) and am happy to do it each time, but when I have to show up for my weekly leg day, I can't help but complain and feel agony.

And one specific workout pains me the most: Bulgarian split squats.

I already have normal barbell squats in my workout routine, but on TOP of that, at the end of every workout, I also have to do one-leg squats.

I feel bad for my cousin that I work out with, as I don't think I went 20 seconds without complaining about the exercise 😅

So, how did I manage to overcome my laziness when both my body and my mind wanted me to do otherwise?

I'll let this Reddit story explain it:

I’ve tried different ways of dealing with the urge. And for the past year one simple reminder has been a game-changer for me: I’ve never regretted doing good work.

I’ve never prepared for an exam and said, “shit I wish I didn’t study for this.”
I’ve never left the gym after a workout and said, “man what a waste of time.”

So any time I’m staring at a blank page, or I’m scared to crack open my textbook I tell myself, “you’ve never regretted this before.”

It’s always hard to start, but it’s always worth finishing.

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Tightening security on your online life

Current two-factor authentication practices like SMS and even your authenticator app aren't enough to protect your digital life.

They work on a TOTP (Time-based One-Time Password) authentication method that uses a time-based code generated by an algorithm to authenticate a user through unique codes that either expire or refresh.

And as a creator who has the majority of their life's work stored online, knowing how easy it is for someone to steal it all away from me feels scary.

I'll let ChatGPT explain how these systems are vulnerable:

SMS:

1. SIM swapping: An attacker can contact the user's mobile phone service provider and request that the user's phone number be transferred to a new SIM card in the attacker's possession. If successful, the attacker can receive the SMS authentication code and gain access to the user's account.

2. Intercepting SMS: SMS messages can be intercepted and read by attackers using various techniques, such as SMS spoofing or man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. If an attacker intercepts the SMS authentication code, they can use it to gain access to the user's account.

As for device authentication like Google Prompts or your Authenticator App:

1. Phishing attacks: MFA can be vulnerable to phishing attacks, where attackers trick users into entering their MFA credentials on a fake website or application. If the attacker can obtain both the user's password and the MFA code, they can bypass the MFA authentication and gain access to the user's account.

2. Social engineering: MFA can also be vulnerable to social engineering attacks, where attackers use psychological manipulation to trick users into giving up their MFA credentials. For example, an attacker might pretend to be an IT support person and ask the user to provide their MFA credentials for "security reasons."

3. Device theft: If an attacker steals the device used for MFA authentication (such as a phone or security key), they can use it to authenticate themselves and gain access to the user's account.

4. Weaknesses in the MFA system: MFA systems can have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. For example, if the MFA code is generated using an algorithm that can be predicted, an attacker might be able to guess the code and gain access to the user's account.

So, to tighten up my security, my mentor at work suggested I use Yubikeys to store my data, which are physical keys you can plug into your devices to authenticate logins.

This type of authentication falls under the FIDO2 security protocol.

FIDO2 provides a more secure authentication method than TOTP because it is based on public key cryptography.

With FIDO2, a private-public key pair is generated unique to the user, and the private key is stored securely on the user's device. This makes it difficult for attackers to steal the private key and impersonate the user (unless they can magically transport the key from your hands into theirs).

And so, I ended up getting the Yubikey 5C NFC which lets me use the key via USB-C and close-range wireless means. For my computer, I purchased a usb-c to usb-a adapter so I can also use it there.

If you're interested, you can find out which key works best for you here.

Once I got mine, I set it up with my primary Google account, as well as my password manager Bitwarden (it does require a $10/year subscription to use the physical key though).

Using Bitwarden as my password manager lets me easily create and store randomly generated passwords, as well as store TOTP methods for accounts where my Yubikey isn't supported, which replaces the need for Google Authenticator (GA sucks anyways since if you lose your device you lose access to the codes...)

Now for some additional notes about the key:

• Since these keys are required for signing in, people highly recommend you get a backup key in case you lose the first.

• The key can only store a limited amount of FIDO2 and TOTP, but having a password manager kind of ensures that the master key requires your Yubikey.

Now, insert objections:

• $50 for a key is too expensive!

  • I treat it like insurance: I would much rather purchase this initial investment (the $10/year is optional) then to lose my entire digital identity

• What if someone just steals my key?

  • They would still need to know what your login information is (username/email, password). This mostly prevents digital attacks.

  • If they do end up stealing your key and knowing your details, it's going to be in the case of a targetted attack by someone local to you, which means there are much bigger areas of concern 😭

🤔 Food For Thought

Since I took a lot of time obsessing over security, I'll just leave these Reddit discussions and my notes:

People against the idea of banning fun and an extreme dopamine detox

I quit everything "fun" for 2 months to see if it would make me happy like they say... here's what happened.

Just a friendly reminder to not obsess over work, to find a healthy moderation in between.

Comments included concerns for burnout based on personal stories, including things like:

This is one of the more depressing things I've read today. Thanks.

I practice balance and moderation now because I realized that it's not sustainable long-term. I was actually super miserable and it didn't produce any tangible results for it to even be worth it.

Seriously, I hate hustle culture and I hate how much it brainwashes us in our youth. I had a similar drive in my 20s - focused on working hard, said no to "frivolous" spending and lived a goal oriented life. I fell into toxic positivity/good vibes only. It's easy while things are good, but as soon as life hits you (and it will, hard - deaths, loss, health issues, financial troubles, whatever it is) you kind of crumble and think to yourself why did I focus on all this, this can't be what life is about. I'm a decent earner, debt free, solid investments and assets, very much ahead of the curve compared to the average 30 yo, and I honestly wanna relive my 20s and focus on connection and experiences and fun. At the end of the day, balance is what matters. Things that bring you joy. Life in moderation - if your habits are somewhere in the middle (regular physical activity, eat a diverse and nutritious diet with occasional splurges, limit screen time, socialize and connect with people, financial literacy, practice hobbies you like), you'll do great. Throw in some therapy and you're golden. A militant lifestyle doesn't make you better than everyone else, nor does a hedonistic/instant gratification lifestyle.

Congratulations, you've managed to train yourself into a lab rat and like it

This made me remember that such extreme levels of hyper-focus should be deeply rooted in intrinsic motivation. Upholding this work ethic as a consistent expectation is unhealthy and inhumane. You could even argue that any form of hyper fixation is unhealthy in the first place.

What life is like post-FIRE (financial independence, retiring early)

https://www.reddit.com/r/leanfire/comments/135c64p/post_retirement_life_whats_it_like/

• Interesting how people are still willing to work despite being retired

  • Part-time, volunteering

  • one went back to their own job after 6 years, was difficult with a big gap but I was actually a better employee because I wanted to be there so I got promoted.

• You now have lots of time to determine how you want to spend your time

Makes me realize that the goal is to work on finding long-term passions or missions I am able to pursue once I do retire before I actually do, or else I'll end up wasting my life and overworking my previous self for no reason.

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

✨ In My Life

I should be working on the announcement video for Obsidian University, but I didn't want to miss two weekly wonderings in a row 😭

Getting confronted because of my content

Back in January, my team was asked to fill out a PowerPoint page about themselves to help other coworkers know more about us.

I thought to myself, what better way to get free publicity for my content creation?

And so, I shared some books I liked, the fact that I was interested in content creation, and other generic stuff about me.

I was hoping to have someone new to chat to about my interests, but no one reached out to me ;-;

Now fast forward to April, where my team got moved from the 3rd floor to the 2nd to cram everyone like sardines and encourage social interaction.

As I was working away, someone suddenly came up to me, and called for my attention.

I looked up, was expressively confused, and he ended up apologizing saying it was the wrong person.

But then later on, he does the same thing, but this time asks me for my name...

Turns out, he looked into my content, more specifically my newsletter 🤯

My intrinsic drive for content creation sparked aflame.

Patrick commended me for my focus on exploring my inner self, focusing on intrinsic satisfaction rather than the external rewards commonly chased by my age group through money or fame.

To put that energy into reinventing yourself and spending time on what was more important.

As a creator, it's easy to grow an ego and feel "superior" to your fans because they lack an audience themselves.

But I think that's an insecure perspective.

When you create content, you're shining a lighthouse for other like-minded people to resonate with and have a path to follow.

For me personally, someone having an audience is admirable since it demonstrates a lot of other qualities like self-expression, entrepreneurship, and discipline.

But at the same time, those qualities can be expressed or compensated for by other means.

For example, he's exhibiting all of those traits by working on an app that makes accepting cryptocurrency much more accessible for shop merchants.

Just being able to foster those meaningful conversations fuels me to continue on this path, and I'm really appreciative of the experience

If you're reading this Patrick, thank you for your courage, and hopefully we can play league soon 😎

🔗 Links to Thinks

Navigating uncertainty as a creator

If I were to share a video that best illustrates my personal philosophy behind the beauty of content creation, it would be this podcast appearance by Paul Millerd.

Paul Millerd is an ex-strategy consultant that quit his 9-5 to write about the ongoing "pathless path", going against traditional norms by pursuing an independent career.

Essentially, he breaks it down into three points:

• In the pathless path, fulfillment and autonomy is the main focus

  • content creation should not become another rat race or path

    • if you are

  • do things you will be able to do for years on end, not just trends

  • focus on finding what you're passionate about first, then try your hardest to keep it sustainable

• In a society built around following expectations and traditional systems, we're constantly forced to suppress our dreams and inner desires

  • It's time to bet on ourselves

  • be an inspiration for others to do the same

• Know the pros and cons behind this new change of life

  • Pros

    • Pure autonomy

    • Are not forced to wake up to work for someone else, have the most time freedom

  • Cons

    • Just the constant uncertainty that comes with having to bet on yourself

Weekly dose of Sivers

• Derek sivers mini snippets of book

  • https://sive.rs/nice

    • I just really enjoy the reminder to be nice, even if it's the little things. It's easy to take people's efforts for granted, and such simple gestures can profoundly strengthen the meaning and connection of the people in your life

  • https://sive.rs/nor

    • Just an interesting read about being indifferent to people's reactions as a result from one's strong self-image

  • https://sive.rs/aim

    • Sometimes it's good to overestimate, as it will land you a more realistic result after being re-corrected by biases

      • Counteracting irrationality with irrationality

Most relationship problems are unsolvable

According to John Gottman's research, 69% of relationship conflict is unsolvable.

Chances are, you and your partner are not the exact same person 🤯

Whether it be values, hobbies, or social circles, some things are just different, and that's perfectly acceptable considering the fact that you know, you are two different people who have lived a whole life before getting together.

These differences will last an entire relationship, and that's okay.

What's important is that you don't end up in Gridlock, where both people are stuck in their stances without willing to comprise or budge to compromise for the other person.

To do so, we need to accept reality and learn to perpetually handle these problems, or else it will only bring resentment.

Decide whether it's worthy
Sometimes it's not about the problem itself, but more so how important it is for both of you and how much they are willing to share the effort to overcome it.

First, the responsibility is on you for clarifying this problem from your own perspective:

• Is this a minor annoyance, or is this a deal breaker?

  • How often does it happen?

    • Just because it's constant doesn't mean it's a deal breaker

• Have you been able to empathize with them, or are you being selfish with your needs?

  • If not, having a conversation about it might not be productive

Detach yourselves from the situation and cooperate
When bringing something up, always preface the conversation with cooperation and love.

Change how you relate to the problem; you don't cut off a friendship because of one thing, instead, you learn to accept and deal with it.

It's not a “you” and “them” problem, its a “we” against “it” problem.

This also affects how you communicate about the problem, as instead of hinting to them to do all the change, "you should do x", it should be a collaborative effort "what can we do to overcome this?".

The goal is not to eliminate the problem completely but to turn it into a problem you can live with.

Recently I felt like my needs weren't being met in the relationship, but as I tried to communicate this feeling, it only led to more problems.

Instead of appreciating their efforts, I didn't realize them and focused on the deficiency in other areas (which feels awful from the other side since not only are your efforts not being noticed, you’re being asked to do something extra, something that’s not really part of who you are).

Instead of viewing it as an external problem, my insecurity led me to believe I was the victim and expected a change in their behavior, while in reality, I was imposing something unreasonable.

It wasn't until later when things got escalated that I realized I hadn't been fully listening and accommodating.

After really putting myself in their shoes did I realize it was all just built on false assumptions, and there was nothing wrong 😭

🚀 Actionable Tingz

After a little over a month of following the physical fitness plan I mentioned last newsletter consistently, I've been starting to see results 🤯

I first weighed myself on March 16:

• 126.4 lbs total weight

• 59.5 lbs muscle mass

• 15.9% body fat

And just today, on April 23rd, I've jumped to

• 133.7 lbs total weight

• 62.6 muscle mass

• 16.6% body fat

Aside from feeling tired after my workouts, I've really enjoyed incorporating this into my daily routine. It's lewt me:

• Be more carefree about my calorie intake (as long as I hit enough proteins!)

• Start a new shared activity with my cousin that isn't gaming

• Find fulfillment in optimizing another part of my life

It does take a lot of time (8-10ish hours a week), but I think it's time I make up for my past life of sitting down 24/7...

🤔 Food For Thought

Fiction like anime and gaming isn't unhealthy escapism or a waste of time if used responsibly. It lets you dream in a world where people are just following a traditional path, to fuel your creativity and experience things that you normally might not have in a lifetime.

I also shouldn't look back at previous times of obsession towards these hobbies with complete disappointment.

I got to form close bonds with friends and embark on adventures in an environment where I wasn't able to because of overprotective parents and mundane surroundings.

It's a weird thought so bear with me, but some games or media can provide a sense of awe and purpose that can compete with a person's entire lifetime.

Sure most of these stories are not realistically attainable, but I think that's the beauty of fiction.

You get a break from your daily routines and complacency to get a glimpse of what other things human potential has to offer.

Without it, I'm not sure if I would have the inspiration to dream and imagine what I'm capable of myself.

😤 My Ramblings

How I first got started into productivity
Recently a viewer got into productivity, and came across my Habitica video.

Upon joining my discord, he was curious as to how I personally got into productivity in the first place. And to answer...

i think it started because of three things: i feared death and wasting life, and due to personal problems i worried about finances

• i used to have really strong fears about the idea of losing your consciousness after death, and it made me scared about being forgotten from the world, that i wouldn't be able to cherish the things i value in my life right now, and that i wouldn't be able to do the things i want to do in the future.

  • and as a result, during my senior year of high school i had a bold desire to try and leave a meaningful impact on the world through some creation just so i would be remembered past my death. that i would optimize and make the most of my days so i could do as much as i possibly could.

  • financial freedom sounded alluring, as i could focus less on survival and more on my hobbies and self-actualization.

  • and obviously the above takes time to cultivate, but i used this surging motivation to become workaholic, being able to apply the productivity practices i learned without having to worry much about the mental friction associated with deep work sessions or doing hard things. the idea of a regretful death where i wouldn't be remembered was scarier, and being productive seemed like a happier alternative.

  • and so i read a book or two a week, i started learning a lot and doing a lot on my own time (self-learning code, content creation, etc), and at the time i found an accountability buddy @Leoh to help me stay on the right track and bounce ideas with :p

  • at the same time i made content on what i was learning just to share my experiences, which led to my obsidian and habitica videos

  • so yeah, very selfish reasons but now i've learned to find a healthier balance thanks to just reading more grounding books like four thousand weeks: time management for mortals

  • also wanted to note that this feeling of urgency and drive/motivation came from viewing my history of gaming and passive content consumption and hedonistic socializing as negative and unfulfilling, so i wanted to make up for the years of my life I "wasted". but now i would say doing so is a bit extreme (but undoubtedly did work)

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I write and collect my newsletter content all inside Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

✨ In My Life

My second podcast appearance 🤯
I just realized I haven't actually shared this yet despite it being released a while ago, but I was featured on Aidan's podcast on Personal Knowledge Management.

In the episode, we talk about:

• Why I dropped out of college to pursue a more autonomous and entrepreneurial path, and whether other people should also do the same

• Why most students are bored and inefficient with their school and learning

• The power of Obsidian for self-learning and note taking in school

• ChatGPT and it's implications on school and learning

• My favorite books and why

I don't really have much to write about this week, so feel free to see what I'm like off-camera by watching the podcast ;)

Obsidian University Pre-Release Out Now!
Aidan and I are excited to announce that our course, Obsidian University: Your Secret Weapon At School, is two weeks from launch!

Obsidian University is a premade student vault filled with school templates, Obsidian plugins, and a tag-along course that explains how to use the various aspects of the vault as well as training you in the core concepts of personal knowledge management for students.

In the two weeks up to launch, we will have a pre-launch sale for the course before it rises in price by 100%.

In addition, we will be sending out a few free snippets of the course content over the following few weeks as a thank-you for expressing interest in the course.

Check out the Obsidian University Pre-Launch Landing Page to learn more at the official product page.

If you want to hear more about the course but don't want to purchase it just yet, you can sign up to receive some free content related to it directly in your inbox here. You'll learn:

• How to break out of the cookie cutter student mindset

• Why Obsidian is the right tool to supercharge your school learning

• The four-step MOC creation process Aidan uses to bolster my learning in college

🔗 Links to Thinks

I have been consuming a good amount of content and have been improving on something, but that something has been a video game so I don't have much to share with everyone 😭

One YouTuber I've been interested in has been Ana Psychology, as she talks a lot about love and relationships. Some of my favorites include:

• Sound relationship house theory, a model on the foundation and levels of a relationship's progression

• These four relationships will end your relationship, which talks about identifying and dealing with criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stone walling

• The reason 80% of long-term relationships end, showcasing that a relationship can just die out through a slow dissolution rather than fiery crash

• The "ideal partner" and why it might not matter, on how we often choose someone who doesn't follow our ideals

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Reigniting my passion and purpose for content creation
I've miraculously started my outline for my next video to advertise the course above, and being able to explore different video hooks and outlines has been super fun :) Hopefully the video will be up within two weeks!

I am starting to remember the impact I want to have on the lives of others just by sharing my authentic self and curiosity, so thank you to my fellow content creator friends for helping me rekindle that intrinsic drive within.

But of course, there was a reason why I needed that rekindling in the first place (other than my break to just focus on other parts of life).

A big roadblock I'm facing right now is the fact that my most energizing videos were reflective ones where I deep dive into trying something new like Obsidian and typing on a split keyboard.

Unfortunately, the things I'm currently trying are more related to the real world (fitness, nutrition, etc), and I haven't had as much footage for it (or do I feel like it would be something my audience would be interested in).

For the smaller things I do try and learn, I feel like they might be too long for a standalone video, so I'm going to share these ideas through shorts to see how that goes?

🤔 Food For Thought

A popular definition of success is “being able to live your life in your own way, doing only those things that you want to do, with the people who you choose, in the situations you desire.”

Would you say you're currently successful? If so, what parts of your life are successful and what parts aren't?

For me it feels weird since my previous criteria of success would say that I haven't been as productive and thus haven't been as successful as I could be, but by this definition of success I have been nearly autonomous.

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I record everything I mention in my newsletters in my Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

✨ In My Life

Where I've been
Have been gone from late Feb to mid-March to go on vacation and visit a special someone, and had to just get back into the groove of things first :) It's definitely changed my future plans and priorities, so expect that to also be reflected in the content I consume and write about 😅

What I've been cooking
Finished the landing page and finalized things to prepare for Obsidian University, a course + vault for students wanting to use Obsidian to supercharge their learning and note-taking.

We're still finalizing the last promotion details and are waiting for a business account approval to properly split the revenue, but once that's finished expect some videos on it in the near future ;)

🔗 Links to Thinks

Overcoming jealousy and desire
Lately, I've been taking a break from my career and online grind to focus more on other areas of my life like health, happiness, and relationships.

But lately, something's been starting to creep back in.

Seeing friends accomplish impressive feats like bootstrapping a startup to $100,000 in a month, to having my Twitter feed full of success stories, I've slowly developed feelings of jealousy, comparison, and self-reflection.

In the video, one of Dr. K's viewers is struggling with a feeling of desperation as their goals of freedom (trying new things, socializing, and learning new skills) are hard to balance and prioritize because of their requirements for survival and working a 9-5 job.

And so, they're envious of their friends who don't have to worry about survival and basic needs as they've had unexpected good fortunes come their way, giving them the freedom to pursue whatever they want.

Thankfully, we can turn to Buddhist principles to regulate these negative emotions and be grateful for what we currently have (which is important for western capitalist environments like mine 😅)

He counters his gloominess by claiming that if it weren't for the presence of his friends, he would be much more appreciative of his current situation.

In reality, he's not living true to his values, but to the lives of others and his personal comparison against them.

Even if he were to suddenly become rich and have that freedom, such happiness would only be temporary as he would then find another area he's inferior in or lacking.

He doesn't want to be content.

He isn't really prioritizing his happiness.

Instead, true freedom and happiness lie in not letting jealousy or external influences dictate our desires and perception of our situation.

If you received a silver medal for being one of the two best people in the world at something in the Olympics, is it really worth feeling discontent and frustration because a singular person is better than you?

Social media enables comparisons with a small sample size of extremely high-performing people in various areas like appearance, career advancement, accomplishments, and more.

Instead of just competing against people in your local city, you're competing against anyone with access to the internet.

Sure it's motivational to believe you can do it because someone else has, but at the same time, it can be a delusional double-edged sword that chips away at your self-esteem.

Fortunately, I've been relaxing to just appreciate the progress I have made over the past 2 years, which is something I never really had the time to do as I kept chasing one thing after another.

To combat my own feelings of jealousy, I just need to internalize that no one has a similar life path as me, and there are no absolute goals or expectations of me except for my own.

I need to stick to my own personal theme for this year of finding balance and making up for other neglected areas in my life like health and relationships, without letting external influences disrupt my intentions.

Other cool content
I'm slowly getting back into content creation, so here's just a causal link dump of cool things I've watched:

Drowning in entertainment

• entertainment is made to not make you think, but lots of people are defaulting to consuming entertainment as their choice of content

• the constant switching of different types of media hinders us from processing it properly. ex) random ads in the middle of serious news

  • this puts these serious things in a weird situation where

• Olivia asks how much does her persona have to matter with what she says? when we think of public figures, we may tend to take note of their appearance more than their opinions

  • our appearance and vibes are known more than what we actually say

• why are we adding subway surfers and Minecraft parkour videos onto controversial or serious topics on short-form content? are we that lacking in attention that we need such irrelevant stimuli to focus and listen to chill content?

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Working on my physical self
Thanks to a certain individual, I've decided to put less emphasis on my digital persona and more on an area of my life I've neglected the most 😅

Ever since I shaved my head to not care about what other people think, I only did the bare minimum.

I would get the recommended 21 minutes of exercise a day for optimal brain power and do pull-ups for fun, I would eat enough meals to keep me not hungry, and I would have a basic skincare routine that didn't really do much towards healing the scars of countless years of picking.

But now, I've been spending time working on these three areas.

I've been going to the gym 5x a week, separating my workout sessions via the push/pull/legs split and tracking my progression using the Hevy app.

If you're interested, you can see my routines for push, pull, and leg day :p

I think I have been seeing gradual improvements for each session and have been learning a LOT about proper form and technique thanks to my personal trainer, so it's been invigorating to be a beginner at something new.

On top of this, I plan on doing stretches before bed to wind down and make up for the years of slouched backs and horrendous computer posture.

Seeing progress, in the long run, is going to be fun, but I'm still trying to figure out how to not feel as dead

Now, the second area I'm working on is my nutrition.

For some reason, I've always strayed away from carbs thanks to The Four Hour Body's Slow Carb Diet, and have been trying to eat in a calorie deficit because I felt like I was too fat (when in reality, I'm dead middle in terms of the average BMI for my height).

And so, I've been tracking my calories with My Fitness Pal, and it's helped me be more intentional and optimal with what I eat.

Right now I'm eating at a caloric surplus where I have 500 more calories a day than what I need to, and those calories are coming from a 50%/20%/30% split between carbohydrates, protein, and fats (protein may seem low but I just need 0.7-1g per day per pound of my 130~ bodyweight).

Of course, it's hard to track every single food, especially if someone else cooks for you, so I just try to estimate portions and ingredients used. Once I do consistently hit my goals, I can probably be less methodical about keeping track.

But yeah, it feels really weird knowing that as I'm able to eat much more than I used to, and that as I build more muscle that maintenance level will only increase which will let me eat even more... maybe working out is worth it after all 🤩

Lastly, I've taken some time to also work on my hygiene through skincare and mouthwash.

She's really into skincare and dentistry, so I was set up with a routine that covered the foundations while also healing my scars.

She also broke countless beliefs I had prior - I had no clue you were supposed to wear sunscreen every day, and I had even no more clue that it's best to brush your teeth before eating breakfast.

But yeah, I've been going at this for a few weeks now and have been pretty consistent with all three new responsibilities. At first, I was a bit hesitant because of how much money it would cost to maintain a membership, bulking meal plan, and skincare routine, but I'll worry about that another time 😎

Prior to these new priorities, I didn't have much clarity and direction for something new to pursue and work on, so being able to plan projects and execute them in these areas has helped me reignite my passion for self-improvement.

Making changes to my content diet and workflow
On Youtube, lots of recommended and viral videos have a storytelling aspect to keep the viewer engaged.

And most of the time, it's the same general advice over and over again, just told through different stories, without much emphasis.

I personally prefer density in knowledge and what better way than books diving deep into a topic?

Right now I've been using Shortform's text-to-speech reader at 2-3x speed to listen to book summaries relevant to my current challenges whenever I'm doing something not mentally taxing like working out or doing test cases for work.

And through this, I have three layers of effort in my content consumption:

In the first layer, I can easily skim through irrelevant parts as I have it on 2x speed.

When something interesting comes up, I can pause and highlight that part of the book summary in the app, and those highlights will be synced to my Obsidian vault.

After I'll go through my highlights and see what areas are most interesting or need more research, to which I can get the actual book and do more highlighting via Readwise Reader.

And at the end of the day, I'll spend some time as part of my night routine to process everything.

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I record everything I mention in my newsletters in my Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.

✨ In My Life

Hiatus

I've just been slowly getting back into things, intrinsic motivation and discipline has been super good with working on the student vault, and it even gave me motivation to work on my next video :) It was just frustrating since I somehow lost a finished script, but hopefully the video will be out by next week today :)

Click here to learn about a new plugin that makes using Obsidian easier and better, the Make.md plugin ;)

Semi-successful streams

Streaming was fun! I managed to say hi to some familiar faces I haven't talked to in a while, and record some fun experiences that happened throughout the day :p

🔗 Links to Thinks

Ambition without burnout

From the deep work master himself, Cal Newport shares his personal philosophy for the right mix between productivity and fulfillment: pragmatic ambition.

To ensure that our efforts are relevant, he recommends to have projects that take less then a year to complete so we can make necessary pivots without pivoting too late.

For time and energy management, he splits his responsibilities up into two kinds:

• Habits, which are foundational things he can already consistently do that gradually generate results

  • These can be an unlimited amount since it requires little motivation to do them

• Projects, which require a lot more mental energy

  • Surprisingly, he recommends to just focus on one at a time in comparison to spreading yourself thin across multiple projects. Although time is the same, he thinks the focused effort will compound and be more effective.

Next, to help combat the never-ending treadmill, he sets his goal outcomes based on a continued benefit or satisfaction, no matter how small, so the effects of his work can be remembered for a longer period.

For example, he grew and monetized his blog to fund his book purchases, so whenever he buys a book (which he reads 5 of a month), he is grateful for the source and the opportunity.

In today's side-hustle world, my goals were also focused around monetization, but now I'm starting to emphasize more intrinsic reasons.

How to find purpose in our current world

In a world where external influences like algorithms dictate what we should value and focus on, we rarely spend time listening to our inner selves, working towards a facade end goal that we may find no fulfillment in.

People may be inspired to pursue financial independence to retire early, but then feel empty with nothing to do as they still don't know their identity.

To get back in touch and find our purpose, we have no choice but to cut all external senses.

Yes, that means experiencing... boredom.

Whether it be going on a long hike or practicing mindfulness meditation, do an activity that inspires boredom.

Practice mindfulness, acknowledging but letting go of all the external desires and thoughts that may impulsively come up.

Once that isn't fed, then your boredom will start to take over and will try to make you really uncomfortable, suggesting you to revisit the ideas you passed by, or your usual tendencies to overcome boredom.

After there'll be a new phase in which you get very fast thoughts that gradually slow downnnnn....

...and at the end of that is when you finally find your own intrinsic desires.

I personally haven't reached this because my default mode network is always on and am easily persuaded by impulses.

Thankfully I've been aware and have been slowly rebuilding my discipline in a similar fashion to the first phase, whenever the feelings do come up.

But I'm planning on taking things one step further, to revisit my book notes on { Mindfulness in Plain English

2

and practice Vipassana Meditation16 in the morning to set the tone for the rest of the day.

🤔 Food For Thought

Downplaying personal leisure and enjoyment for achievement

High performance isn’t about more for the sake of more, just because you can. It’s often about less—zeroing in on just those few things that matter and protecting your time and well-being so you can truly engage those around you, enjoy your craft, and confidently handle your responsibilities. Focus on just a few things and the people and priorities you really care about, and you won’t fall prey to overreaching.
-- High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard, resurfaced using Readwise and my self-made chrome extension

I used to believe that breaks or any form of leisure or maintenance should be capped at the length of my pomodoro session breaks (5 minutes or the occasional 20) to make sure I was spending all of my limited brain power and energy on productive, achievement-oriented activities (school, work, content creation, reading, and self-learning programming).

I used to believe that gaming, relaxing, and socializing, and being mindful for it's own sake was a waste of time because of the opportunity costs associated with indulging in the activities.

Instead of hanging out with friends, I could have finished an entire book.

Instead of playing an hour of games a day, I could learn a new skill.

Why spend time on personal enjoyment when you could improve the world?

Why go on a bike ride path you've done countless times with the same people when you can have a more tangible output like a new video uploaded?

I mean now I can say that my accomplishments, effort and dedication paid off through my current career path and living conditions.

But was that mindset really healthy? What is the point of doing more?

What happens when you've lost the initial vision you once had that pushed you to such hyperfixated extremes in the first place?

I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out right now as I selfishly fulfill my own personal needs first, trying to make up for neglected socializing and leisure, finding a balance in between it all 😅

I think there is value in rigidly structuring your day so you focus on what's most important to you, but I'm also starting to realize that those important things don't necessarily have to be productive.

😤 My Ramblings

Long distance relationships

In a local dating market flooded with short-term intentions, long distance relationships seem to be an effective antidote for people seeking serious partnerships.

Lacking opportunities for physical touch, initial attraction and intimacy is largely based on your character.

Only getting a glimpse of what they share online, chances of affairs and deception put both parties in extremely vulnerable positions,

but I think it's what also makes it an eye-opening and beautiful experience.

Time zone differences and different environments facilitate individuality and separation, allowing each person to live their own lives without excessive codependence, space to work on their own ambitions.

I appreciate the emphasis on the mental and emotional connection due to environmental limitations, especially since I value these traits much more for long-term compatibility.

Local proximity is a privilege in traditional relationships that becomes a memorable event for long distance couples.

My transit home from work during Valentines Day was filled with couples and flowers, and I got to feel different in the sense that I wasn't able to share the same traditional experience.

But once I got home, I called her, and realized that I don't really feel I'm missing out of anything :)

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I record everything I mention in my newsletters in my Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

✨ In My Life

Live streaming my deep work sessions

As part of intrinsic content creation, I've decided to live stream my deep work sessions as an open floor for live communication, and an act of accountability for getting back into being more disciplined.

Since I'm getting into the groove of things there won't be a set schedule, but if you follow me on Twitch or are in my discord server, you'll be able to see when I go live.

I'd be following a pomodoro timer to which I'll only have time to chat during the 5-minute breaks.
Sessions can include:

• Reading

• Note making in my Obsidian vault

• Working on scripts / videos / products

• Whatever else is on my to-do list

• Just hoping nothing too personal gets leaked 😅 I might also just do a side-view angle of my monitor setup to compensate, still not entirely sure

Will have a discord channel open if you want to join along to study or do other things!

My new content creation arc

I've had a content creation block for a while, but now I'm doubling down on what worked for me in the past.

My first videos were me simply sharing my journey as I learned new things for other people with similar problems. For my past few videos, it's been more towards creating my ideal Obsidian setup.

Content creation was a true form of intrinsic self-actualization, one that helps others in the same situation as me.

But since I'm now satisfied with my current system, I no longer have a similar drive.

Having to create would only further burden me in the creation process as I would feel drained by an extrinsic reason to learn, which is the very reason why I stopped taking university courses.

And what's most sustainable is just sharing what you're learning in your day to day life, whether it be a new note taking app or keyboard style.

So, that leaves my experiences and current problems, as well the content I'm currently consuming.

But most of this uncertainty continues to stem from worrying about the external statistics.

I'm too lazy to record and edit in b-roll for long-form video content for decent retention.

But wait, why am I trying to find a niche?

I am the niche.

My intersection of interests, experiences, content consumed, and environment is my niche.

It's not as easily defined as Obsidian and productivity.

Most personal messages I receive aren't necessarily from people who admired my Obsidian workflows, they're people around my age who want a life of purpose and effort.

My videos rarely mention that aspect of me, yet it's what resonates the most with people.

Algorithms have evolved enough to deliver content to those who want to watch it, so realistically, all I need to focus on is creating good content.

Content for the person who I was two years ago.

By not creating content during times like this in my life, I'm kind of falling prey to the traditional usage of social media that I despised, only capturing the highlights and not being truly authentic.

🔗 Links to Thinks

The truth about success

• 3 most dangerous lies about success

  • Self-discipline is not as important as passion

  • Hard work is not as important as leverage

  • Success is not being part of the game

Transcend

• Finished the actual book part, still have some lingering ideas and actionable advice to go though which is roughly 1/6th left of the book

• I know people say to not highlight much, but I literally highlighted 22,000 words of it, and I'm not even done 😅

  • I used to bash myself for not making as much connected notes as I should considering the amount I read, but for book that's personally satisfied me as much as this one, I have no choice but to

  • I think it's okay to highlight a lot if it's something you're super passionate about, it covered a wide variety of new terms and topics so I think it's justifiable to do so as long as I'm ready to deal with the insane amount of processing time required

• Not sure why I've only heard of this now despite my interest in self-actualization

  • Inner journals from Maslow himself, being able to see his resolve and humanity

  • Suggestive answers to some of the higher-order questions I've been trying to answer in relation to goals, peak performance, relationships, and security

  • Honestly could be a personal textbook on how I should live life, similar to The Practicing Stoic or How to Live

• Going to be a lot of fuel for future videos and content, and this might single-handedly get me to start my more essay/introspective breakthrough in content creation ;)

Passion in anime

I finished watching Blue Period, an anime about a high-school delinquent that gets by with good grades without really feeling fulfilled.

That was until he finds himself in awe of a piece of artwork from a fellow student, introducing him to the world of art.

Inspired by the expression and depth, he creates his own painting for an assignment through a snapshot of the quiet, blue morning of Shibuya.

It was pretty relatable to my own personal journey out of a typical student, and his obstacles along the journey toward mastery just made me appreciate the anime even more.

Themes included:

• Having to undergo that shift in identity as you involve yourself in your new passion- the new environments, people, and ideas that await

• Effort versus talent - having to catch up with everyone else who's had more experience or is more talented, and the growth mindset required to do so

• The effects of comparison - feeling a sense of impostor syndrome as you continue to pursue something that's uncertain and improbable (acceptance rate was 0.5%), and the battle against the self that comes with it

• The beauty of art as a form of expression, noticing the importance of certain design choices and personal influences

Just a relatable anime at a pretty relevant time :)

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Playing games for 11 hours in one day

Having to play VALORANT for a tournament kind of fractured (haha) the discipline I had for the rest of the day.

It's quite interesting to witness the regression, from going all-day gaming to all-day productivity, back to a glimpse of it.

Not many insights other than that it just didn't really feel good after the fact, and I probably won't do it again for a while.

🤔 Food For Thought

Looking at old weekly reviews

Wanting to find inspiration from myself from a year ago, I decided to look at the 5th week of the year 2022.

Unfortunately, they also found themselves in somewhat of a rut 😭

Here are some main points of interest:

Willpower and discipline, I feel like it's a mix of long-term sustainability, but at the same time I want to get to the point where I can do what I want to, just tolerate and get used to it I guess?

• At the time was just watching streamers, feeling nostalgic for the games and people I used to be following during my gaming past

• Now, I've realized that such ideal levels of productivity are only healthy and attainable with a deeply resonating purpose, one that I'm having trouble turning from intention to action

• Tolerating was in terms of the school system, to find a solution to my scholarly repulsion" as I began questioning whether I really did want to finish my degree

• Now, I guess my answer to that has been content creation and getting work experience, but now those have unlocked even more questions on what the next steps should be. Is my career and channel direction the right one for me?

I need to address my social life

• Was conforming to societal standards and working on my appearance for the sake of other people, dating and content creation wise

• Now, I'm definitely in a better place thanks to the magnet my online brand has become for other like-minded people online, but now I need to take this authenticity one step further in my content. Sure I am doing so in my newsletter, but not so much in my videos

😤 My Ramblings

Anxiety

It's interesting seeing how my anxiety acts as a double-edged blade.

On one hand, it's made me:

• Plan things out so things for a higher probability of a desired outcome

• Care more about what I do by realizing my mortality

But at the same time, it's why I:

• Am insecure in a relationship

• Struggled to present in front of my class

• Choke in competitive games

And specifically on Thursday, it took a toll on me.

My growth mindset turned into a fixed mindset.

I didn't feel greatly overwhelmed, but little things started chipping away at my self-esteem that usually shouldn't, and I was just left in a state of contemplation on how to get back to a healthier headspace for personal growth.

Thankfully, someone helped me snap out of it and guided me toward confronting this controlling side of my brain :)

It’s weird how much more manageable things are once you’re simply aware of it.

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I record everything I mention in my newsletters in my Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain for free using Obsidian.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

So many ideas, but so little time :(

✨ In My Life

Newsletter housekeeping

I originally posted on Sundays, but to match the timing of my personal reflections and Sunday weekly review, I'll probably be changing my upload time to 6 AM PT on Monday.

Reimagining education in Obsidian

The current mindset students have toward education is disheartening.

School should be a time to effectively explore curiosities and have fun while doing so, not a time for worrying over mere numbers to determine your future.

And so... Aidan Helfant (https://www.youtube.com/@aidanhelfant) and I are creating a new approach to help people reignite their joy for learning through a video course + interactive Obsidian vault. We're currently accepting beta testers (limited spots!) who will get full access to it for free, and be part of what can be a new movement ;)

If you're a student interested in learning more or know someone who might be, visit https://tally.so/r/n9N4b4 for more information.

A break from videography

I'm going against my desired weekly uploads, but I'm starting to consider the tradeoff between consistency and quality.

It might be my perfectionism, but the videos on my ran wanders channel take effort to ensure conciseness and relevance, much more than a simple plugin tutorial might require.

And having a taste of the comments I've received regards to such a style of content has made me further reconsider the style on my main channel.

Although people admire the straightforwardness of the tutorials, I feel like I've filtered away my personality in the script for the sake of retention, and that's a big no-no.

Sometimes it feels like it's missing my own thoughts, which is an entire debate in itself on whether that is a problem or not.

So for the moment, I'm still figuring out the right mix between knowing what I know will guarantee views like the content on Obsidian canvas or matrix-style content that I'll talk about later, or if I'm willing to sacrifice external measurements to start sharing my story.

Oh wait, I just happened to find a fleeting note I took earlier:

stop making these obsidian content, there's more value found in you opening up people's minds

wlep

Maybe it's the way I approach my video content.

I've been emphasizing the "how" under the assumption that people already have their "why", but I feel like considering the average demographic of people who are interested in personal knowledge management, sharing my "why" is also as important.

I've only recently realized how effortlessly integrated the second brain ideology and systems have been into my life.

My Obsidian vault and systems have molded into a highway for my content consumption, ideas, thoughts, and life as a whole.

I could also just make amends by preceding said lifeless videos with something akin to general self-help videos to emphasize the importance of these practices.

I'm just rambling at this point lmao

🔗 Links to Thinks

Never be finished

Aside from anime characters, I can't think of someone with a stronger mental fortitude than David Goggins.

Despite proving himself through impressive feats like prestigious military awards or Guinness world records, he never stops pushing for more.

Recently, I've been reading his latest book Never Finished which goes into exploring his inner philosophy; his unparalleled mindset forged through fiction-like trauma, resilience, and pushing himself to the extremes.

Like, I've already known quite a bit about him, but some of his feats are just beyond human rationality, a massive "fuck you" to himself and the world.

And I love it.

For example, who decides to take inhuman hate comments, read them out loud, and turn them into a recording or mixtape to listen to again and again?

I'd like to think I've acquired thick skin through my time spent in gaming lobbies, and I think it's inspired me to continue doing dumb things like this to reignite my previous masochistic tendencies.

To be unphased by the negativity of the external world.

On a side note, it's interesting how relevant the books I read seem to be to my life.

Maybe it's because I find myself just naturally connecting different snippets into actionable mindsets and advice for my own life, or there's some hidden level of serendipity that leads me to read books that are most relevant, I'm not sure.

Playing with ourselves...?

Thank you, internet serendipity, for letting our paths align 😭

So I chatted with Dennis Xiao for the first time after he reached out to me on Twitter, and it was quite the reawakening.

Starting with his unconscious self-improvement through games and fitness, he became the epitome of a successful college gigachad by achieving the epitome of ideal physical, career, and social life expectations.

But of course, such a level of perfection stems from something as equally taxing.

Insecurity and expectations, are extrinsic reasons that deprive you of your own identity.

Hearing his story resurfaced a lot of personal realizations originally discovered from my deepest times of self-reflection.

As mentioned in my newsletter profile, I indulge a lot with the self.

Hearing such conviction and extreme perspectives about the human potential from someone else unearthed the archived self-actualization guidelines I had for myself.

His perspective on self-awareness and serving others reminded me of the ultimate mindset I had during my peak productivity phase.

Am I truly optimizing my life as much as I can to get the most out of the limited time we're given?

Do I comprehend the severity of mortality in my daily life and living?

Am I being entirely selfish in my values and desires, doing fulfilling things that are not extrinsically but intrinsically rewarding?

Is my personal conviction so strong that I realize the waste associated with not spending every second of my day working toward my ideal self, vision, and purpose?

Am I okay with the sacrifices part of the ongoing responsibilities in my life, like working at my internship and indulging in leisure, that prevents me from leaving the output and impact I desire?

When I say my purpose, do I feel it so deeply in my heart?

Much like the YouTube New wave encouraged by authentic film and lifestyle YouTubers like Ryan Ng Films, I think content related to the self needs to be spread more.

Some extra tidbits I'm too lazy to expand include:

• the effect trauma has on daily decisions

• mere seconds of joy after realizing his full-time job, all the effort put into it just for absolutely nothing due to the extrinsicness of it all

  • realized he had no idea who he was, that he literally wasted his life

• realized the gravity of death, recommends when breath becomes air

• realizing the insignificance of a corporate job

• relationships are the most important thing in his life

  • honestly same, looking back at gratitude journals

• values mentorship

  • joy and fulfillment, wise man giving advice

  • misalignment with what he currently was doing

• ikigai tattoo

• uplift others through genuine connection

• sacrificing every second for fulfilling your purpose in life

• work to fulfill past insecurities and lack ofs

  • me and financial abundance

  • him and personal identity

• traditional jobs meet survival needs but not internal, self-actualization

  • no non-entrepreneurial venture will fully fulfill him

• experience is like trying a pair of pants

  • live it through first

  • one thing to learn or say, experience is something else

• finds it hard to balance the two, inevitably will fully commit to content

• very risky, no backup plan situation he's found himself in has come out successful due to the different

• I should not do my current internship to enslave myself for corporate life, just fucking listen to what I've been thinking and play the cards in your favor

  • tolerance of risk depends on self-esteem, and I guess there's some lack of confidence I need to deal with first

• intellectual loneliness because no one relates, seeking writing online to fulfill that need

  • had parasocial relationships through role models, but needed something

• lack of dreams and self-actualization is limiting beliefs

If you're reading this, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the chat :)

🚀 Actionable Tingz

I've been note-making this entire time

At times I question whether I put in enough time to reflect and play with my notes and ideas, but as soon as I start writing this newsletter, I realize that I just cram it all into this one sacred time block of my week

I should probably start meditating

I was waiting for burger patties to cook in the air fryer and tried using the time to quiet my mind, but couldn't even do so for more than 10 seconds before thoughts flooded back in.

I continued thinking about the future, anticipating the timer finishing, and just feeling a sense of restlessness for both my tasks and ambitions.

I think my previous English teachers would be proud of me for using the same starting word five times in a row.

🤔 Food For Thought

Escaping the matrix

I might just be pulled into a niche algorithm, but I've been noticing a wave of "escape the matrix, take the red pill" style content.

Escape from traditional expectations, and work towards a lifestyle of freedom from society.

Iman Gadzhi is combining it with the idea of a digital renaissance and capitalism to encourage personal freedom in starting an agency.

Hamza emphasizes body aesthetics for borderline-NEET and lonely audiences.

Dan Koe incorporates spirituality and human potential to sell his entrepreneurial products and lifestyle.

Elon Musk doing the usual, sharing memes on Twitter about somewhat controversial and thought-provoking topics.

And of course, Andrew Tate created products like "The Real World" to advocate for the same lifestyle.

I'm sure this is just a recent wave of principles and ideologies related to entrepreneurship and self-improvement that have lasted for some time now, but it's interesting to see the recurring theme nonetheless.

Because I do adopt the same beliefs and want to help others realize the same, but am unsure about the associated traits like toxic masculinity, especially since it doesn't fully fit my personal branding.

I'm also not sure how to feel about it.

I would prefer for such content to exist since it does open people's eyes to their inner potential, but also concerning considering the considerably loyal following audience they have and the morally questionable things they say.

My content creation philosophy

I've also been grappling with what it means to be a content creator in my own life.

Ultimately, I believe content creation should be a form of intrinsic self-expression to serve an audience that you define yourself.

An expressive, creative outlet for your self-actualization.

The moment you're captured by their audience, not accepting you unless you conform to their expectations and beliefs, you begin losing yourself.

They won't accept the natural curiosities and changes that accompany human evolution, which begin to carry the same baggage as living an extrinsically driven, unfulfilling 9-5 job.

Thankfully, we can prevent this by viewing content as art.

Your profile is your personal art gallery, and people have different lenses through which they perceive your content.

It's entirely subjective, which goes against the retention-driven practices Youtubers and Tweeters try to play the algorithm with.

Your ideas and presentation may not resonate with everyone due to the variety of the human experience, but what matters is catering to the people you personally want to impact.

The emphasis isn't on the originality, but on the delivery to your audience.

All self-improvement videos consist of the same advice, just packaged in different ways to resonate with different audiences.

Take a look at Ali Abdaal. He's not some innovative productivity expert, he's just someone who's curated the best ideas he's learned and experienced from others smarter than him.

Yet people follow him because he understands what his audience is and wants.

The same could be said for channels like mine.

Nothing I share is new.

I'm merely following the knowledge paths that others have already paved, just adding my own experiences and personality into the mix.

My channel and life purpose is to be a vessel for helping people achieve my personal interpretation of self-actualization.

This is the philosophy that most speaks to me, as an altruistic yet selfish perfectionist that worries about current role models and societal values.

If you think about content creation this way, then what's stopping you from sharing your ideas with the world?

If you still don't, you're selfish.

This is the philosophy that most speaks to me, as an altruistic yet selfish perfectionist that worries about current role models and environments.

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I record everything I mention in my newsletters in my Obsidian, my favorite note-taking, and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

✨ In My Life

I've been undergoing a lot of journalling and conversation as this year comes to an end.

Appreciating the memories and experiences, the conversations and people I've met, and the accomplishments and learnings throughout these quickly passing yet sentimental months.

If you haven't already, I would recommend starting your own weekly review.

Track habits and data in Obsidian
To prepare for the new year, I set up some different trackers (line graphs, summaries, calendar views) in my periodic reviews to keep track of my energies and habits.

You can watch the video here.

Saying goodbye to Gumroad
Gumroad, the platform I use to sell my products, has changed their pricing model, so now I'll have to pay 13% per sale instead of my 5% tier.

That's a disgusting amount, so I'm switching to Convertkit and potentially Webflow to manage my email marketing and products.

🔗 Links to Thinks

So Good They Can't Ignore You
With my dilemma on choosing a future career, I found Cal Newport's ideas in the book to be reassuring for my future direction.

Instead of reading the Shortform summary though, I followed Thomas Frank's advice and just read the conclusion of the book.

To sum it up:

If your goal is to love what you do, I discovered, “follow your passion” can be bad advice. It’s more important to become good at something rare and valuable, and then invest the career capital this generates into the type of traits that make a job great.

Instead of trying to find an ideal job, we need to prepare ourselves with the right skillset so we're qualified for the rare jobs that are fulfilling, or identify an opportunity to create your own job in a good ol' entrepreneurial fashion.

To be independent regardless of the situation, as the real value lies in yourself and your capabilities.

In my case, I have an interesting intersection of skills thanks to my different projects, ranging from content creation, product management, productivity/life design, programming, and entrepreneurship.

Sure you can just be good at management and outsource all the above, but I feel like getting experience in these different skills has helped me refine my learning skills and capitalize on opportunities like my Obsidian and PKM/productivity knowledge.

How to Live
A beautiful book on exploring the extremes at which one can live their life.

It rivals Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in terms of value density.

27 conflicting rulesets amplified to great lengths, all to make you realize the breadth of choices you can make when choosing how to live your own.

As I was reading it, I found myself resonating with a lot of the ideologies, which helped me realize that I won't be strictly locking in on one philosophy for the rest of my life.

It helped me clarify my current values and offer new ones to slowly adopt as well.

It's also reminded me of some of the biggest takeaways from the books I've read. For example, my 3 memorable quotes from the book were:

No matter what you need to do, there’s a playful, creative way to do it
If you can’t remember something, it’s like it never happened.

You could have a long healthy life, but if you can’t remember it, it’s like you had a short life

Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it.
It will be a constant state of experimenting and slowly adjusting my values to find something satisfactory.

On top of that, I had one major takeaway from each way he suggested to live:
Commit

• Especially in a relationship

Fill your senses

• Being immersed in the moment

Do nothing

• Contentment from the present

Think super long-term

• Remember the compounding effect of small habits and choices

Intertwine with the world

• Explore cultures

Make memories

• Related to filling your senses

• Make life memorable rather than repetitive, unless repetitive is memorable

Master something

• The irreplacability of mastery thanks to the required effort

• Intention of what you're doing

Let randomness rule

• Learning to accept the outcome

Pursue pain

• Finding transformation

Do whatever you want now

• If we don't want it bad enough then it might not matter enough

Be a famous pioneer

• Share your story for inspiration and imagination

Value only what has endured

• Resisting the bombardment of recency bias in social media and art

Learn

• Importance of true understanding

Follow the great book

• Having a set of unbreakable rules to regulate impulses and emotions in a disciplinary way

Laugh at life

• To laugh at something is to be superior to it.

• Humor shows internal control

Prepare for the worst

• appreciate as if it's your last time, prepare for death and end

For others

• treat everyone like they're dying tomorrow

Get rich

• View money as value, it is only a means to an end

Love

• Need for independence and lack of need

Create

• Dying with everything inside

• Contrast it with a disciplined full-time

Don't die

• Mindfulness of death makes you view the world seriously

Balance everything

• View life areas as parts of a wheel

• Balance your knowledge

I would highly suggest reading it for yourself to review or curate your own set of beliefs for the new year.

On a side note, I should probably start turning these into content for one of my channels, but I'll get to that later on 😵

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Gamifying Life
This video by Aidan, a fellow 19-year-old PKM Youtuber, on gamification has made me realize the parallels between my experiences gaming and my self-improvement journey.

In a way, it's the time I spent obsessed with games that have allowed me to progress at the same unhealthy rate as my games and hours in video games.

By using gamification frameworks like the Octalysis framework as a reference, he deconstructs both fulfilling activities through their fundamental parts.

I'm too lazy to explain it myself, so if you're interested you can watch his jam-packed 3-part series.

Now we're in the talks of creating something to systematize the process for anyone else needing help doing something similar.

If you think you meet the target demographic, someone who used to be competitively or nerdily addicted to games, and want to transfer it to the real world, reply to this email I'd like to hear your story and potentially get on a call.

🤔 Food For Thought

Is it good to easily trust people?
I find myself trusting people and being vulnerable much quicker and deeper than what it should be traditionally.

Sharing my inner thoughts, my insecurities, and my secrets, with people who can easily use it against me. It's an interesting position to be in.

I'm able to foster deeper connections with people, but at the price of my own safety for those who may try to exploit it for their own gain.

As my friend told me recently,

Stop trying to see the potential in someone and see them for what they are

Obviously, I'm not going to since I feel like it's a crucial part of who I am and how I view relationships, but it's nonetheless nice to be aware and have the capability of flipping the switch when I need to.

Codependency
Seeing as I'm codependent at times and show qualities of a lot of insecure attachment styles, reading Derek Siver's How to Live provided some reminders for me to follow for my relationships:

• Instant obsessive love is a bad sign that you’re thinking of someone as the solution.

• Projecting perfection onto someone is not love.

• You say “I love you” but really mean “I love this”.

• When one of you is being childish, the other needs to be the adult.

• You must both be free and able to live without each other.

• Be together by choice, not necessity or dependence.

• Love your partner, but don’t need your partner.

• Need is insatiable.

• Need destroys love.

My Tools for Learning and Growth

I record everything I mention in my newsletters in my Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

✨ In My Life

Learning to Code using Obsidian
After using Obsidian for learning to code for school, landing an internship, and learning on the job, I shared my process and notes in my latest video, which you can watch here

🔗 Links to Thinks

Breaking the habit of being yourself
Breaking the habit of being yourself means breaking out of complacency, of the self you've imagined as a result of your environment, thoughts, and body.

By surpassing such limits, you become one with the world through your capabilities and power:

How much further can we go? There is no end to this adventure. We are only limited by the questions we ask, the knowledge we embrace, and our ability to keep an open mind and heart.

It's kind of the mindset I've been in recently, so it was nice elaborating on the ideas in a more

How to know what you really want
Once we have our fundamental needs met like food, shelter, and hunger, we look for more things to work towards.

But with the vast amounts of things in this world, we need some guiding light we can refer to so we can narrow the scope.

Thus, our desires are externally influenced.

The nice-to-haves in our life are merely mimetic desires.

I found this article useful for acknowledging the different social influences, and how we can slowly take ownership of what we pursue.

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Planning for 2023
Last time I shared my annual review reflections and have been chipping away at those, but recently I've been struggling to figure out what my goals should be for the next year.

In fact, I'm not sure if I want any concrete annual goals at all.

My priorities this year drastically changed from the beginning, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing as I was exploring new opportunities.

Instead, I think I'll opt in for a shorter timeframe for goal-setting, to break it up into quarterly goals via the idea of a 12 week year.

For each quarter, you have 12 weeks of tasks, and on the 13th week, you reflect and reward yourself for your efforts.

So, how can you create your own?

First, come up with a vision for what you want to make progress towards.

Find out what's being neglected in your life lacking by rating different areas of it (ex. personal, work, physical, community, family, spouse/partner, spiritual), then choose the areas that are lacking the most.

Next, it's time to plan the goals 😈

I usually stick with only 3.

My first goal is to stay consistent with my content creation as a vehicle for self-expression and passive income.

Second is to adapt to my new internship so I can seek new opportunities for growth and organize the rest of my life's responsibilities around it.

Lastly, I want to get into physical fitness for the health benefits and to practice effortful discipline :)

Next, it's time to create an action plan by:

• coming up with 1-2 keystone actions that will generate the most results which will be the highest priority, as well as other possible

• Acknowledging the opportunity cost of all of them, only following through with the ones you are fine with

• Integrating these tasks into your productivity system, whether it be tasks or time blocking

• Finding a way to measure your progress (habit tracker, pages read per day, etc)

Content creation

• Ship 30 for 30 during January

• Weekly video, alternating between John Mavrick and Ran Wanders

• Weekly newsletter

Adapting to new internship

• I only have to come into office once a day, so I'll have to create a new time-blocking schedule :)

• Have a similar dynamic with my current internship, get close with a fellow intern and a mentor like my supervisor

• Learn any new technologies or practices

Fitness goals

• Max 1800 calories a day with a cheat day

  • Max 80g carbs, 40g sugars

• During a 15-min pomodoro break after work:

  • Calisthenics - Mon, Wed, Fri

  • Walk - Tues, Thurs

• Gym with cousins Sunday (unless my work will have one)

• 15-min stretch on weekends

Everything will be tracked with a habit tracker I'll build in Obsidian, as well as just checking in every week.

🤔 Food For Thought

Approaching limitless self-actualization
The main selling point of BTHOBY is to let go of your physical body and environment to tap into the power of your mind's infinite capabilities, to ultimately lose your sense of self.

Similar to quantum mechanics, we can influence our minds with our thoughts to access infinite future realities:

Like clay, the energy of infinite possibilities is shaped by consciousness: your mind. And if all matter is made of energy, it makes sense that consciousness and energy are so intimately related that they are one. Mind and matter are completely entangled. Your consciousness (mind) has effects on energy (matter) because your consciousness is energy and energy has consciousness.

Referencing the past through our thoughts makes your future determined and repetitive, so leveraging the limitless potential of our thoughts and imagination can help us reach new heights:

If your thoughts determine your reality, and you keep thinking the same thoughts (which are a product and reflection of the environment), then you will continue to produce the same reality day after day. Thus, your internal thoughts and feelings exactly match your external life

You rely on your environment's stimulus and feedback to formulate your own identity, but it's also important that we take time to not need a sense of who we are:

When your life is over and you cannot rely on your external world to define you, you will be left with that feeling you never addressed. You would not have evolved as a soul in that lifetime.

Unfortunately, these points aren't entirely backed by science.
Sure he provided proof through experiments, but it's not hard to cherrypick and exaggerate findings when it comes to more psychological concepts.

Ultimately though, is there harm in believing if it can potentially lead to a greater life for yourself?

I've had a similar experience of losing my ego with psychedelics, but it was more enlightening towards just re-experiencing the world for the first time rather than tapping into a higher vision.

And after switching my social groups and online environment I've definitely seen an improvement in my lifestyle and self-esteem, so I think there's some truth in there as well.

One thing stood out for me:

We should never wait for science to give us permission to do the uncommon; if we do, then we are turning science into another religion. We should be brave enough to contemplate our lives, do what we thought was “outside the box,” and do it repeatedly. When we do that, we are on our way to a greater level of personal power.

Do I really need to make more money, or is there more important things I should attend to?
After reading Your Money or Your Life and The Minimalist Entrepreneur, do I really need to make more money? Or have it as my primary motivation?

• I do like minimalist entrepreneur's approach atm, how it's only a means to an end, the main objective isn't to grow some disgustingly big company, it's to do something you enjoy that you slowly grow without external pressure that eventually helps towards paying bills and allowing for time freedom

• Income is 15-20x higher than my expenses... 8x from just the internship alone sooo

• Probably only gonna spend like 500ish each month

• Leveraging does come with risk, but if you have good systems then it's worth

😤 My Ramblings

2 weeks until the end of my first internship
I really enjoyed being with the people there.

• Sure remote would have been nice but I think being forced to socialize is important for an online hermit like me 😅

There were also different social dynamics I was exposed to for the first time:

• Supervisor/mentor for supportive learning on new tech and best coding practices

• Fellow intern that thinks rationally to contrast my impulsive and head-in-the-cloud tendencies

• Wise coworkers and people more ahead in the tech industry than I am to clarify my future path

I also learned a lot.

• Coding

  • Constant feedback from code reviews

• Conversations about life

  • Mental health

  • Social media usage

  • Relationships

• Teamwork

  • How a general startup operates

I'll miss the

• Enjoyed the relaxed culture of a startup

• Snacks and foosball hehe

• work, somewhat

  • it was a love-hate relationship in terms of efficiency, but ultimately having such freedom was good for being comfortable with more responsibilities as a programmer

But yeah, I was planning on fleshing this out more but I got home super late and didn't have the hour I planned 😅

Happy holidays, and until next week! :)

I've been having writer's block recently, so just a dump on my main takeaways from these links is all I can offer 😅

I'm considering using voice to text to maybe make the conversational process faster though.

✨ In My Life

Something cool happened recently, more on that in my rambles :p

Ran Wander's first video !
I finally uploaded a video on my second channel more tailored towards anime and my generation, using these mediums for social commentary and advice for self-improvement.

This video focused on the anime Chainsaw Man's portrayal of desire, exploring topics ranging from fufilling goals to overcoming exploitation from external manipulation.

Conversations
Just a friendly reminder to chat with the people you hold close to you before the year comes to an end. I did get distracted from my tasks because of it, but I caught up with people I haven't talked to in months or years, and it's sparked some new ideas and insights that I wouldn't have come across otherwise :)

🔗 Links to Thinks

Taking risks leads to security
A little motivational video I watched on Earl Nightingale's thoughts,

• you have to think the most when you're life is on the line, not when you have some secure paying job

• risk taking is what leads to security, there's more potential opportunities since other people are not willing to make the same risks

• don't look before you leap, the only thing that certain is the past, just make sure it's something progressive towards your goals and we have experience in the field

• The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage

The fake entrepreneur epidemic
An interview with a business management professor exploring the effects of a rising interest in entrepreneurship

• It criticizes the people who try to help others become entrepreneurs as they pay for their online courses, since they're encouraging people who may actually not be qualified or compatible with the lifestyle

• entrepreneurship quality is declining despite the increase in education and resources

• the more you consume these entrepreneurial content, the higher your confidence will be, but the lower your success will be

And I found the comments on the video to be very thought-provoking as well:

I would like to add that all of this entrepreneurship culture wouldn't be as popular today if the majority of the population was doing well financially. This culture to me is just like the beauty industry which targets people's low insecurity of how they look and the same idea with gyms and being out of shape. Now you got a bunch of people selling this entrepreneurship thing and hustle culture to thousands of financially insecure people.

This is key. There’s a ton of mindset coaches out there selling anyone the idea that they are special and just need to feel more confident. But they’re not really asking whether people possess the necessary skills or training. They are there to encourage people of all skill levels to try and make it on their own. I see this a lot in the social media coaching industry.

Although I'm chasing this lifestyle, I do agree with it's message, it's an interesting line to be on, between delusional ambition and security

The meaning of life
The meaning of life should just be...

Because.

It's more open-ended and the real value lies not in the actual answer but what we gain from pursuing the quest to find it, like the idea of logotherapy in man's search for meaning.

People are deprived of encouragement
From Why Reading Decreases Happiness

• people are deprived of encouragement, thousands of people go up to Jordan saying that he changed his life and they're looking for the smallest hint of encouragement of validation for their efforts and they just light up when he gives anything

• explores miserable wisdom versus happy ignorance

The Inner Compass
Being a creator always makes you question whether you should create for personal fulfillment or let monetary or fame influences come into the equation.

A little reminder I found useful from More to That's post was:

To put it simply, I was investing a lot of energy into fulfilling my desire to be validated by others.
The reality is that if I redirected that effort into the music itself, that would’ve increased the chances for it to be heard.

🚀 Actionable Tingz

Annual review
Out of boredom, I went over my previous annual review for 2021 with a coworker

My recorded reflections are still relatable to now, makes me question whether I made much progress on my systems and mindset 😅

But now, I've been looking into ways to spice it up, and started crafting an ideal annual review

Here are some of the reflection questions I added to my existing one, feel free to steal what's thought-provoking!

What big questions about my life am I asking myself?

If I knew I couldn’t fail what would I focus on?

What do I know to be true that I'm not acting on?

What do I want for myself?

What would I love to learn?

Wisest decision

Biggest lesson

Biggest risk

Biggest surprise

3 Most influential people

3 People You Influenced

Not able to accomplish

Most important thing I did for others

How would l love to grow?

Forgive yourself for

Let go of

What attitudes, beliefs and behaviors do I want to shed?

What activities do I want to walk away from?

What do I need to say no to?

What do I want to say no to?

What habits and behaviors do I want to start?

What habits and behaviors do I want to stop?

What habits and behaviors will I continue?

How will I challenge myself?

What permission do I need to give myself? (e.g. it’s ok to walk away from that relationship that isn’t serving me, it’s ok to slow down, it’s ok to put myself first, etc.)

What internal obstacles do I need to break down? (e.g. limiting beliefs, creative blocks, etc.)

What external obstacles do I anticipate facing? How will prepare? (e.g. layoff, pandemic, tough boss, etc.)

I outsourced for the first time

• I see why a video styleguide and just general systems to teach new employees is so important 😭The vision and video vibe I had was completely off from what he had in mind

🤔 Food For Thought

Neglecting content creation is selfish
This video showcasing the determination and impact of mrbeast, comprehending the scale of only 12,000 people, makes me realize that I am doing more than just neglecting my own personal expression when I'm not creating my content.

People's lives can change from delivering them the right words at the right time, as people are deprived of encouragement.

It's why people who pour raw emotion and depth into what they say are growing massive audiences.

But with AI writing like ChatGPT becoming more accessible, the standard for quality ideas and writing has grown.

I dream for the day where innovators rather than imitators dominate the social media landscape.

😤 My Ramblings

Am I happy?
I don't know why I openly share these thought dumps to strangers on the internet, but I think that's what makes it fun 🤪

A thought dump from 2022-11-27

I'm surprised I haven't asked this question to myself in a long time or maybe at all throughout this past year.

I was inspired to think about this because I was just looking through some Instagram profiles of people that went to my school and it was really intriguing to see someone starting own mindfulness and wellness Instagram page.

I think it is a good message, both for themselves and for other people who may need it.

But anyways, this question that I find myself pondering was the question they asked.

I'm just trying to figure out how I should approach this question, do I go with my initial response or do I think things through on a rational scale accounting for different aspects of my life?

if I were to think in 5 seconds and answer whether I was happy I would say no. considering the state that I've been in recently, there is a lot of room for me to spend my time working on the things I want to and just overall improving my physical and mental wellness

but if I go maybe in the scope of the way I felt and the things I've done the past year, I would still probably say no

and that's because I have high expectations I guess for my quality of life, and right now there's lots of things that are being neglected like my physical , health and the relationships I have

internally I guess you may say I'm happy as the art of self-improvement has made me strive to do things that I might have never done before, and that's really only possible when you have the intrinsic motivation

but at the same time it'd be nice maybe stop focusing solely on this aspect of my life and more on the other ones as well

because lately I've been realizing that I've lost the ability to think

at work I struggled to do things independently and solve problems that take more effort due to new problems and solutions

when thinking of content to create and spending the time to write my scripts, I struggle to come up with meaningful takeaways that are my own instead of others

and when I consume content, I barely spend time reflecting and connecting it with my own life

I mean now that I know about this what could I do I guess? I still have a month before this year ends and it'd be nice to do something to make sure that 2023 is happier

I think I just need to regain my discipline for the most part.

Update as of 2022-12-10: I found something, or should I say, someone 😊

Having someone to be authentic with on all aspects of my unique disposition, from my future ambitions to nerding out on productivity and improvement to being cozy with anime and games, just being appreciated in general, it's nice :)

My days are returning to ones of intention, and I've discovered a new deeply rooted reason to pursue my best self.

It might mean I won't be as no-life productive as I'll have to attend to this new area in my life, but I think if i were to continue in my isolating path i'd be neglecting something so crucial for a personally fulfilling life.

I can't help but be reminded of Montag from Fahrenheit 451's transformation thanks to the people around him, since I think I just found my Clarisse :)

My Tools for Learning and Growth

If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.

If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!

If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.