🌌 Weekly Wondering 2023-W21
How to make good ChatGPT prompts, second brain maintenance, why you should document everything
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.
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
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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
Logwhere 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!