🌌 Weekly Wondering 2023-W23

My fulfilling weekly review process, AI prompts sneak peek

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.

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.