📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Simple Success Strategy

“Success is about doing cool stuff, and then teaching others how to do that cool stuff.” 🔗 / Jodie Cook & Ali Abdaal /

Non-Fiction Takeaways

“People don’t remember books, they remember sentences.” 🔗 / Morgan Housel & David Perell /

Inner Congruence

When a person’s ideal self is consistent with their actual experience — when our outside actions match what we feel on the inside.

💡 My Favourite Fun Fact of the Month

Oldest Population

🔗 / Dense Discovery 266 /

“For the first time ever, more than one in 10 people in Japan are now aged 80 or older. The country has the world’s oldest population, measured by the proportion of people aged 65 or up, the United Nations says.”

🖼️ My Favourite Visual Artist of the Month

🔗 / Jason Limon’s Instagram /

🤔 My Favourite Reflection of the Month

Personal Marketing

What would it look like if we used the power of marketing on ourselves?

I recently came across the perspective that vision boarding is essentially the process of marketing to ourselves. It got me wondering what the world would look like if we had full control over the marketing in our lives. What if we were able to sync up the marketing we are constantly exposed to with our vision boards?

If the goal of marketing is to nudge us into making decisions that benefit companies, what would it look like if we were surrounded by subliminal messages that nudge us into making decisions that push us toward living our ideal lives?

I’m envisioning a mixed reality powered world where we walk in front of a fruit stand and our lenses remind us that we haven’t yet reached our fruits and veggies quota for the day. And when we encounter the choice between and escalator and a flight of stairs, our lenses market to us how taking the additional steps will bring us closer to our fitness goals.

How cool would it be if the future of vision boarding gave us the ability to be the marketing managers of our own lives?

🎬 My Favourite Videos of the Month

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month

Total Recall – A Notion Template for Improving Memory

🔗 / Notion Template /

This spaced repetition Notion template has been my new favourite memory tool.

Essentially, it’s a flashcard deck that holds our favourite words, concepts, quotes, etc and automatically places the cards that need to be reviewed each day at the top of the deck.

💪🏽 My Favourite Exercises of the Month

Memory Trigger Optimization

What if your flashcard deck was optimized for memory triggers over memory recall?

Level 1 strategy for creating flashcards — The Destination Method:

• Create a card for every word you want to remember.

• On the front of each card, write a concept.

• On the back of each card, write a definition.

The goal is to solidify the memory we want to retrieve.

Level 2 strategy for creating flashcards — The Journey Method:

• For each concept you want to remember, create multiple cards that you want to trigger your memory of it.

• On the front of each card, write a trigger.

• On the back of each card, write a concept.

The goal is to multiply the triggers for the memories we want to retrieve — when do you want remember a concept — what topics do you want to trigger your memory of a concept.

The more paths we pave to a memory, the easier it will be to retrieve that memory when we want it.

Internalizing Measurements

How long it would take you to walk/run 1 kilometre?

How accurately can you guess what a centimetre/meter/foot/inch looks like?

I’ve been trying to internalizing measurements lately.

Looking at things around my home and comparing my guesses of their lengths to their true measurements, walking through trails and timing how long it takes me to walk their distances.

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Biggest Tradeoffs

A good question to ask to get to know someone better: what’s one of the biggest tradeoffs that you’ve made in your life?

🤔 My Favourite Realization of the Month

Podcast Questions

I'm realizing that one of my favourite takeaways from listening to podcasts is getting ideas for fun questions I can ask in my own life. I love the idea of becoming a quality question collector.

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

Bad Good

Are you getting too good at the wrong thing? 🔗 / Nat Eliason /

Practices for the Sublime

How can I experience more of the sublime in my life?

The philosopher Edmund Burke on the Sublime. He noticed that when we’re made to feel small in some ways, we become large in others.

What would it look like to routinely expose ourselves to things that make us feel insignificant, in order to minimize the importance we give to the negatives in our lives?

UI Personified

Do I as a person have ux/ui?

I’ve been tasked with thinking more deeply about strategies for improving user experience through design at work lately. And it’s got me starting to see the world through a lens of interaction psychology — how do we interact with things and how can we improve those interactions.

My favourite application of psychology is figuring out how to use it to improve my own life, so I’ve been wondering: If I looked at myself as a user interface or piece of software, how could I improve other people’s experience of interacting with me?

Tell-all Docuseries

If you could watch a tell-all docuseries on one person right now, who would you want to learn about?

Diversity Scores

What if you gave your life diversity scores?

I’ve been hearing more and more about the benefits of expanding the amount of diversity we have in our lives. For example, this month I learned that “the diversity of kinds of social interactions someone has is a predictor of their well-being.” 🔗 / Clearer Thinking /

I wonder what it would look like to measure our diversity score across all aspects of our life: social interactions, nutrition, fitness goals, interests, spaces we spend time, etc.

🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month

Benjamin Keep, PhD, JD - YouTube

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

Accused (2023)

💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Change of the Month

Conversation Queues

My best conversations lately have been thanks to conversation queuing.

How it works:

I maintain a daily log of my favourite sparks of inspiration and motivation, and discoveries, and thoughts.

Then, at the start of each week, I assign each of those sparks from the week before to the specific people in my life I plan on chatting with.

When it’s time to hangout, I’m prepared with a queue of conversations I’m eager to hear their thoughts on.

How I organize my weekly spark log:

🙋🏽‍♂️ Biographical

• List of unique things that happened to me

🧠 Thoughts

Reflect

• List of my favourite internal conversations

Memorize

• List of my favourite definitions and quotes

Imagine

• List of my favourite daydreams

💃 Actions

Research

• List of topics I’m interested in deep diving into

Play

• List of projects, exercises, and experiments I want to try

Do

• List of goals I want to accomplish

3 Benefits I’ve noticed:

• The protégé effect

  When teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information helps us learn that information.

  I’ve noticed that new and interesting topics become even more memorable and exciting when I plan on getting a particular person’s perspective on them.

• Life in stories

  The most predictable questions in any reunion are “how are you doing?” and “what’s new?”. Having easy access to our most unique recent stories, minimizes the embarrassing amount of time it might take us to remember a single interesting event of our past week.

• Third things

  A lot of my favourite conversations are about third things — the topics two people talk about when they’re not talking about either of themselves.

  Listening to and talking about life stories can be fun, but they often lean to being one-sided conversations. Conversational cuing has been a great way of optimizing for the “third thing topics” that allow both sides to meet in the middle.

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

The Art of Alter Egos

🔗 / Cardi B interview with Elle / Hot Ones /

“To me music is art. And fashion is art. But fame… fame isn’t art. But the person you become when your famous, your alter ego, that’s art.”

I don’t know if it’ll ever actually be possible to be free from a personality shackled by some degree of social shame.

But I love a reminder to be more surreal.

To become a carefree caricature of ourselves, to consider their costume design and to come up with their character traits.

We are a canvas and our alter-egos are our art.

Seijaku

🔗 / Dense Discovery Issue 256 /

The Japanese word and concept for finding serenity amidst life’s chaos — stillness in the midst of activity.

Elastic mood

🔗 / Haley Nahman Substack / Dense Discovery Issue 256 /

“When a mood is so overwhelming you mistake the intensity of it for the longevity of it.”

🧨 My Favourite Spark of Motivation & Inspiration

Reality Creation

“Not every day contains a story-worthy moment for me, but I found that the longer I did my homework, the more days did contain one.” 🔗 / Storyworthy Book / Ali Abdaal Video /

The homework mentioned refers to the act of writing two sentences at the end of every day about the most story-worthy thing that happened to you.

The author’s practice reminds me of when I started to keep a dream journal; the more I attempted to take note of my dreams, the more dreams I was able to remember.

How we shape our mind, shapes how we see the world.

The reality we’re looking for is just waiting for us to clearly define the reality we’re looking for.

🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Liking Lenses

There’s no topic we can’t like as long as we look at it through the right lens.

Maybe our lens for liking chemistry can be found in the study of molecular gastronomy.

Maybe our lens for liking history can be found by studying our family ancestries.

Maybe our lens for learning to like our fears can be found by studying fear itself.

Human Farming

What does farming mean in the context of “people produce”?

Humans being herded into social media platforms.

We are animals in an attention economy.

Farmed for our data.

I wonder in what other ways we are being farmed?

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

What would you invest in today assuming you had to hold the investment forever?

🔗 / Sahil Bloom Newsletter /

My impersonal approach

The Lindy effect — a statistical tendency for non-perishable things with longer pasts to have longer futures. 🔗 / Samuel Pedro video /

I figure the most resilient investments will be the ones with a proven track record of longevity.

My personal approach

Unless we’re investing for someone else, forever only lasts as long as we do.

It’s worth considering which elements make up our life.

My life blocks are body, environment, finance, mind, operations, recreation, and social. And one of my main goals in life is to consistently invest into each of those.

In my opinion, the sooner we define our life blocks, the sooner we ensure that we have a well-balanced life portfolio. And the sooner we can be more intentional about where we invest our time, energy, money, and attention.

What is the central question of your life?

🔗 / Danny Miranda /

I think my question could be “how can I turn my imagination into reality?”

It would be really interesting to hear how other people would go about approaching this question.

Creative Reading

🔗 / Writing with Andrew Video /

“Creative reading is just as important as creative writing.”

How can we go about reading more creatively?

Planned Obsolescence with a Twist

When do companies intentionally exasperate the problems they solve?

If I was an evil genius working for an air freshener company, I would fill every bottle with several drops of a slightly bad after-smell. Just like oil in water, I’d engineer the after-smell layer to float to the top of the bottle, so that it was the last thing customers sprayed into their home. Subtly making them want to buy more air freshener after finishing each bottle.

I feel like this dark pattern has to exist in real life and it’s got me wondering where?

🌈 My Favourite Daydreams of the Month

Exhaustive Shinigami Eyes

What if we had the power to predict when anything will perish?

Just like with death sense where we’d have the power to see a person’s death date and time, it would be neat to extend that power to seeing all sorts of expiration dates.

The expiration of places, and relationships, and items, and ideas.

🧠 My Favourite Innovative Ideas of the Month

Auditory Interfaces

I think it would be such an interesting challenge to design an auditory interface.

I listen to videos like this:

And I realize the fascinating potential for immersive sound interfaces. It’s got me wondering what it could look like to make these even more interactive and responsive to user input.

Educational Rollercoasters

Inspired by an immersive space exhibit I went to this recently, I’ve been wondering what the future of immersive and educational rollercoasters could look like.

Who’s going to invent the Magic School Bus of the future? And what’s the closest experience we have to that today?

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month

Frequency Dictionaries

Frequency dictionaries showcase an ordered list of the most used words in a language.

Arguably, one the most effective tools for learning a new language. So I’m surprised it was never a recommended book in any of the dozens of language courses I’ve taken in my life.

Megastudies

🔗 / Pete Judo Video /

Megastudies as a way of solving for the fraud that’s been going on in research. Megastudies are collaborative projects targeting a certain outcome.

A team of dozens of different researchers propose different study designs to test different related hypotheses. Then each of those studies are pooled into a single megastudy.

💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Change of the Month

Feedback Reception Audit

What if every time we got feedback, we rated ourselves on how well we took the feedback.

When someone gives us feedback, they’ve already evaluated us.

The main thing they’re judging post feedback is how well we’ve taken it.. whether we were open or defensive.

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Knowledge

🔗 / Socrates /

“All I know is that I know nothing”

Value Tradeoffs

🔗 / My First Million Podcast /

“A value is useless without acknowledging it’s tradeoff”.

Consider Facebook’s “Move fast and break things”. It acknowledges the sacrifice it’s willing to make.

Perhaps our list of personal values should, at the very least, be ranked in terms of which ones we’d be willing to sacrifice over the others.

CIA’s MICE Framework

🔗 / Show: Painkiller /

According to the show Painkiller, when the CIA wants to flip someone they attempt to figure out their core motivation using some combination of MICE:

• Money: how much do they want

• Ideology: what do they believe in

• Coercion: what scares them

• Ego: what makes them feel powerful

Punctuality

🔗 / Movie: After the Dark /

“Isn’t punctuality the virtue of the lonely?”

💡 My Favourite Fun Fact of the Month

Infinite Monkey Theorem

🔗 / Movie: After the Dark /

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare.

🧨 My Favourite Sparks of Motivation & Inspiration

Just In Time vs Just In Case Learning

🔗 / Ali Abdaal Video /

Just In Case Learning: When we learn something just in case it becomes useful further down the line.

Just In Time Learning: When we learn something at the moment it becomes useful and necessary.

Just in case learning is like the first day of school. It’s the orientation where we gain a general overview of what’s to come.

But some of us get trapped there, spending too much time trying to anticipate what we’ll need.

Surface vs Deep Lexicon

🔗 / Joseph Tsar Video /

When it comes to the words we use, we all rely on a surface lexicon and a deep lexicon.

Surface Lexicon: the words we instinctively default to. It’s comprised of approximately 1500-3000 unique words.

Deep Lexicon: the words that we recognize, but rarely use. The average native English-speaking adult has a deep lexicon of approximately 20,000-35,000 unique words.

Assuming that a more robust surface lexicon would give us the ability to communicate more accurately, creatively, and effectively, how can we increase our surface lexicon?

According to Joseph’s video,

A study from Yale found that it takes using a word 38 unique times for our brain to instinctively default to that word in our speech. In other words, 38 times in order for that word to register in our surface lexicon.

Show & Tell Opportunities

Step 1: Show & Tell the world what you’re interested in.

Step 2: Look & Listen out for the random opportunities it sends you.

Success Patience

🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Heavy Baths

You ever remain seated in a bathtub as the water drains out?

The lower the water gets, the heavier we feel.

I like to think of it as a symbolic reminder of the weight we were carrying before the bath and how effectively a good bubble bath can relieve us of that weight.

Second Brain Laziness

There’s a popular second brain credo that claims that our minds are meant for coming up with ideas, rather than for storing them.

I’ve noticed myself operating under the limiting belief that our cognitive capacity has a limit. But what if we’re more limitless than we believe?

I used to always take a lot of pleasure from memorizing things for fun. It’s something I want to return to again, rather than succumbing to my current default of delegating memorization to my Notion.

Language Persona

🔗 / Iñaki Godoy Interview /

In this interview with Iñaki Godoy about his role in the new One Piece live action series, he mentions how the depth of his voice changes depending on whether he’s speaking English or Spanish.

Other people describe how their personality changes with the language they’re using.

I’ve never thought about language as a path to deeper self-discovery, but perhaps a new piece of our personality puzzle can be found in every language we learn.

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

Predictable Questions

A question worth asking ourselves: What predictable questions should a person with my goal expertise be able to answer with ease?

Becoming Untethered

I’ve been feeling very anchored in reality lately. I want to figure out some strategies for becoming a little more untethered.

Replication Crisis

Context

A growing number of studies in psychology are now being denounced as either fraudulent or flawed because their results have not been replicable by other scientists.

My assumptions

Research psychologists are falling victim to pressures from:

Fame: they want the book deals, the Ted Talks, the business, the media tours.

Corporate sponsors: they feel pressure from the organizations sponsoring their research; they research biased questions with favourable results and they manipulate the data to support their investors’ vested interests, in order to increase the likelihood that they’ll finance future studies.

Academic institutions: the more their research brings attention to their school, the more money they’re likely to make.

My thoughts

Fields like social psychology, behavioural economics, and UX essentially ask the questions “I wonder if most people would do this thing in this scenario?” and “to what degree?”

It’s rare to come across a study that finds conclusive results for 100% of its participants. So the research-based advice that we often hear in public discourse only applies to a subset of us.

If we put too much emphasis on the majority, aren’t we constantly neglecting findings that apply to individuals in the minority?

The Bunker Problem — What do you bring to the bunker?

It's an apocalypse. There's a bunker that can only hold 10 people. You are one of 20.

Everybody in the group must go around one by one naming the three biggest assets and the three biggest liabilities that they would bring to the bunker.

What would your three assets and three liabilities be?

Your Best Characteristic

What’s your best characteristic?

Perfect Match Curiosity

In a world where the perfect algorithm for finding a romantic match exists, would you use it (or would you crave to use it) even if you were already happily married?

🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month

🔗 / Rian Doris /

Rian Doris is the Co-Founder & CEO of Flow Research Collective, the world’s leading peak performance research and training institute focused on decoding the neuroscience of flow states and helping leaders and their teams unlock flow states consistently.

🥗 My Favourite Foods of the Month

Nerds Gummy Clusters

Mezze Platters

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

King Richard

Life

On the Line

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Young Justice

Survival of the Thickest

Fate: The Winx Saga

📚 My Favourite Read of the Month

Giving Back 🔗 / Relentless Curiosity Substack /

Outside of charity, think about the group MADD (mothers against drunk driving), and all the time and money that was spent. If instead of lecturing children that time and energy went into starting a ride-sharing company, drunk driving deaths could have plummeted decades sooner.

What matters most is optimizing systems to have the right incentives and processes to let innovation, creativity, art, love, and life flourish.

🛠️ My Favourite Tool of the Month

Pick Up Limes App 🔗 / link /

It’s a plant-based meal planning app and it’s the most beautifully made app I’ve ever used, both functionally and aesthetically.

💪🏽 My Favourite Exercise of the Month

The Twisted Cliche 🔗 / Todd Brison Post /

I call it “The Twisted Cliche.”

The Twisted Cliche is a device that takes a well-known cliche and swaps out one word. This minor “twist” on a trite phrase can land an emotional punch far more effectively than the cliche itself.

…

“Literally, look up a list of cliches, and then start swapping words out.”

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Education vs Learning

Don’t let your education get in the way of your learning.

Sword of Damocles

The Sword of Damocles is a tale from ancient Greek lore about a courtier named Damocles. He envied the tyrant Dionysius and praised his luxurious lifestyle, leading Dionysius to offer Damocles a chance to experience his position. Seated on a golden throne, Damocles noticed a sharpened sword suspended above him by a single horsehair, symbolizing the constant danger faced by rulers. Fearful, he quickly realized the burden and vulnerability of power. The story warns against the perils of envy and reminds us that with great authority comes great risk and anxiety. Thus, the phrase "Sword of Damocles" is used to signify an impending and ever-present peril.

Good Problems 🔗 / Tintin Smith Video /

Next time you have a not too serious problem, try shifting your mindset to “this is a good problem to have”.

Why, Not What

Anchor yourself to why you do what you do, rather than what you do.

🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Susceptibility to Awe

I’ve been thinking about why I love the topics I do and I realized that at some point for most of them I felt a sense of awe. I wonder if uncovering where we’re most susceptible to awe could be a good north star for figuring out what we should focus on in life.

💭 My Favourite Reflection of the Month

Nicknames

I once signed up for a high intensity training bootcamp. I was the youngest person in the class and the instructor bestowed upon me the nickname, Playstation. I’ve never really played many video games, nor owned a Playstation, so the title didn’t resonate.

Remembering that got me wondering: what nickname would you want to get upon a first impression? What’s the one most obvious trait that you want people to know you for?

Life or Something Like It

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Beef

Good Trouble

🖥 My Favourite Website of the Month

Space Elevator 🔗 / Dense Discovery Issue 243 / Space Elevator /

“The newest neal.fun project takes you on a ride up to space and explores Earth’s atmosphere, wildlife and planes along the way. As with all of Neal’s projects, it’s highly educational and skillfully executed.”

🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month

TwitterGPT 🔗 / TwitterGTP.com /

Give TwitterGPT a Twitter username and it’ll give you a mini report about what that user is into.

I plugged my Twitter handle into it and the part of its analysis that I thought was the most interesting was the final paragraph where it suggests a gift that I would like:

“If you were going to get @lamarelimbo a gift, you should consider getting them the book "The Architecture of Happiness" by Alain de Botton. This book explores the relationship between architecture and human well-being, which aligns with @lamarelimbo's interest in the impact of spaces on individuals.”

Sounds super interesting, so I quickly added that to my Bookshelf.

I love how the implications of AI are going to have world bending impacts and I’m just amazed at the idea that it’ll make gift giving easier for me 🤷🏽‍♂️

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

The Liar’s Curse 🔗 / George Bernard Shaw /

“The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”

Helped, Heard, Hugged 🔗 / Tweet /

The Impact of Acts of Kindness 🔗 / Tweet /

Acts of Commitment 🔗 / Tweet /

Introversion Definition

I really like this definition of introversion I came across: “someone who mostly builds and directs energy internally”.

Financial Security 🔗 / Ali Abdaal Podcast with Sahil Bloom / 1:00:37 /

Financial security vs financial confidence. Where financial security is having a safety net, financial confidence is knowing that regardless of what happens, you have the skills needed to make money.

Energizing Responses 🔗 / Ali Abdaal Podcast with Jemma Sbeghen / 48:21 /

If someone shares news with us, there are 4 ways to respond:

• Active Constructive: Encouraging them to build off of what they said

• Active Destructive: Discouraging them to build off of what they said

• Passive Constructive: Neutral “oh that’s cool” response

• Passive Destructive: Switching the attention onto yourself

Scepticism of the ‘Eat Local’ Movement 🔗 / Dense Discovery Issue 241 /

“While local (food) economies are great in theory, there is extreme inequality in the numbers: only around a quarter of the world’s people can be fed within 100 km of where they live. Global food security can not be solved by ‘going local’.”

How is My Environment Influencing My Reality? 🔗 / Sahil Bloom’s Newsletter /

Every so often it’s worth looking around and asking ourselves: Is my environment actually in sync with the reality I want to create?

Reality of Our Creation 🔗 / Sahil Bloom’s Newsletter /

A question worth asking ourselves: How am I complicit in creating the conditions that I don’t want?

💡 My Favourite Fun Fact of the Month

Ecosystems

The earth has 103 ecosystems and 84 can be found in Peru

Lifespan vs Life Expectancy

I’m a little embarrassed that up until a couple weeks ago, I believed that the majority of people in “the olden days” were likely to die at like 40 years old or some similar young age.

I learned recently that this is a common belief because we tend to confuse the terms lifespan and life expectancy.

“Sometimes, when we tell kids “the life expectancy was 48 in 1900,” they think that means that at age 48, people were old and decrepit instead of understanding that 48 was an average, and the high child mortality brought that average way down.

Consider the example of our Founding Fathers. When they were born in the 18th century, life expectancy was below 40. Yet the average lifespan of the 56 signers to the Declaration of Independence was 66 years, and a quarter of them (including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin) lived to 80 or older.”

🔗 / Article /

🧨 My Favourite Sparks of Motivation & Inspiration

Cover More Surface Area

A piece of advice that I find a ton of motivation in is: When you don’t know exactly what path to take in life, do a lot of different things.

Recently, I was reintroduced to the most creative depiction of psychic powers I’ve ever seen, in this clip of Nicolas Cage’s character in the movie Next.

[Mild spoilers]

I think it’s a fun visual interpretation of the “cover more surface area” advice. Each new path we experiment with, opens up a bunch of new branches to explore.

Inspiration Mimicry

A question I’ve been asking myself lately: What content do I wish I had created?

Sometimes I’ll come across a brilliant and creative YouTube video and think to myself: “damn, I would’ve loved to have made that”. Or, if I’m in a spicy mood: “damn, I could’ve made that.”

I’m realizing more and more how motivating it can be to have a specific model to look to and mimic for each new subject we’re interested in .

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

🔗 / Rich Webber’s Instagram /

🔗 / Instagram Post 1 / 🔗 / Instagram Post 2 / 🔗 / Instagram Post 3 /

🤔 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

Valued Compliments

I think that a good strategy to uncover our values is to ask ourselves: What compliments do I want to optimize for?

Life Urgency

What if for one week every year, we lived it as though it was our last?

💪🏽 My Favourite Experiments of the Month

Using AI to Write My Life Story

🔗 / Perplexity.ai Profile /

A fun experiment to try: head over to Perplexity.ai’s profile section, answer their prompts, and then you can then ask it to write a story based on you.

I tested it out and it gave me a peek into a potential future career path I could be interested in and some of the steps I could take to get there.

Here’s my experiment if you’re curious 👇

Prompts

“Write a story based on me”

Title: A New Path: From Software Developer to Architectural Psychologist

Once there was a frontend software developer at a wellness startup in Toronto. He had always been fascinated by the subliminal influences of different spaces on human psychology. He spent his free time crafting creative and affordable interior designs, imagining hypothetical worlds, and pondering the potential of mixed reality in blending fantasy and reality.

One day, he stumbled upon an article discussing the impact of architecture and interior design on human behaviour and emotions. This sparked a desire to pivot his career towards architectural and environmental psychology, focusing on designing spaces that positively influence people's thoughts, feelings, and actions.

The journey began with extensive research on architectural psychology, reading books and articles that explored the interaction between people and their surroundings. He also attended conferences and workshops, learning from experts in the field. One such event was the NABShow 2022, where he discovered the rapidly evolving world-building opportunities for mixed reality in live broadcast productions.

Inspired by his newfound knowledge, he started experimenting with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies to create immersive environments that could influence human behaviour. He began sharing his creations on Instagram, showcasing his unique design style and the stories behind his projects. This attracted the attention of like-minded individuals and potential clients, gradually building a reputation in the industry.

As his expertise grew, he was invited to collaborate on various projects, ranging from designing therapeutic spaces for mental health facilities to creating immersive mixed reality experiences for live events. He even started consulting on the design of virtual worlds, blending his background in software development with his passion for architectural and environmental psychology.

Over time, he established himself as an expert in the field, attracting high-profile clients and speaking at international conferences. He also founded a research-based lab that conducted experiments on the effect of surroundings on human psychology, fulfilling his long-term goal.

In the end, our protagonist successfully pivoted from a career in software development to one in architectural and environmental psychology. His dedication to understanding the impact of spaces on human emotions and behaviour led him to create innovative and transformative environments, both in the physical and virtual worlds.

🎙️ My Favourite Podcast of the Month

🔗 / Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman /

Inner Cosmos explores the relationship between our brain and our experiences by tackling unusual questions that illuminate novel facets of our lives and our realities.

Does time really run in slow motion when you’re in a car accident?
Can we create new senses for humans?
What does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet?
Why did you eat that cookie even though you’re trying to diet?
What do you do when someone breaks the law because of a brain tumor?
What’s the real reason hunters wear orange?
Why is everyone with a different political opinion from yours misinformed?
Why did Pythagoras think numbers had genders and personalities?
Will you perceive the event that kills you?
…and dozens more

🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month

🔗 / Dodford /

🎬 My Favourite Video of the Month

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

M3gan

The Invention of Lying

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic

Sweet Magnolias

The Morning Show

Jury Duty

(Thanks for the recommendation !)

Cunk on Earth

📚 My Favourite Read of the Month

Do the weirdest thing that feels right.

Castles in the Sky

Do the weirdest thing that feels right.

While agonizing over what to write last week, I tried to reverse engineer my writing wins. In the process, I discovered that the decision which separated my good writing from my bad writing expanded to my whole life, and was the dividing line between my triumphs and my regrets…

Read more

3 years ago · 129 likes · 40 comments · Charlie Becker

🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month

Combo Punctuation

My favourite linguistic tool of the month is the interrobang. A combination of a question mark and a quotation mark used to pose an emphatic question.

Interrobang

Since I’ve been writing more lately, I’ve been enjoying taking linguistic liberties and breaking some of the grammatical rules I was taught in school.

I like to add a question mark to statements that start with “I wonder”. And I like to start sentences with And. And I’d like to play with fun punctuation like the interrobang. It’d also be fun to play with the question comma and exclamation comma some more too.

Exclamation & Question Comma

✏️ My Favourite Personal Creations of the Month

🎪 Spaces Designed for Better Breathing, Scratch and Sniff Photo Albums, & Caffeinated Corridors 🔗 / My Substack /

Mind your step as you enter the worlds of wide-eyed wonder, better breathing, and green medicine.

🎪 Spaces Designed for Anti-Socialites, Lamborghini Homes, & Treasure Rooms 🔗 / My Substack /

Mind your step as you enter the worlds of candy stores, branded homes, and anti-social architecture.

🎪 Enter the World of Spaces that Strip Identities & Possess Personalities 🔗 / My Substack /

Mind your step as you enter the worlds of Place-Personality Pendulums and Anonymity.

🎪 Enter the World of Battery Powered Places: Spaces that Restore our Energy 🔗 / My Substack /

Mind your step as you enter the world of unlimited energy 🪫→🔋

💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Change of the Month

Immersive Hobbies

This month I asked myself what it would look like if I applied my life blocks to my interest in environmental psychology.

Exploring environmental psychology has been my academic obsession of choice lately 🧠 But I’ve been wanting to find more creative ways of engaging with it. And I found a fun solution!

You know how some of us organize our life into blocks: Body, Environment, Finance, Mind, Recreation, Social, Spiritual…

I wondered what it would look like if we branched our hobbies into other blocks. …If we added a social block to our writing habit or a mind block to our favourite sport.

I felt like I was spending too much time in my mind block, so I wanted to venture out.

So, these past few weeks I’ve toured local architecture studios, attended talks, played with architectural photography & woodworking, and I’m trying to learn to sketch like an industrial designer 🤹🏽‍♂️

I feel like I’m in uni again, rotating through a bunch of related classes.

I’ve even reframed my days into a curriculum filled with field trips, projects, practice, studies, & extracurriculars.

If a hobby needs a little jolt of novelty, try getting creative with the approach 💃🏽

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Role Models 🔗 / Tweet /

Validation 🔗 / Tweet /

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

🤔 My Favourite Realization of the Month

Immortality

We can’t really know whether or not we’re immortal until we die.

What if you woke up in a world where 50% of people were immortal.

Nobody knowing whether they lucked out in longevity. And nobody ever aging to look older than 50.

How would that change your approach to life?

💭 My Favourite Reflection of the Month

My Codified Plant Based Function

How my software developer brain tackles his food philosophy:

🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month

The Embark

🧠 My Favourite Innovative Ideas of the Month

Auditory Illusions

Shadow Boxes

Popup Books

Multiplying by 11

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

No One Lives

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Ted Lasso

Physical

Defending Jacob

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

✏️ My Favourite Personal Creation of the Month

Are Super Spaces the New Super Foods? • 🔗 / Mind Your Step Issue 10 /

The more I learn about the subliminal influences of our spaces and about the mental health benefits of things like park prescription programs and schnozelen rooms, I wonder if there will be an increase in environmental medical interventions — place prescription programs.

📚 My Favourite Read of the Month

I Created My Own Meditation • 🔗 / George Mack’s Newsletter /

“I tried every meditation and gratitude exercise.

It was ok but nothing game-changing.

So I designed my own via first principles -- I find it 10x better.

Here's how it works…”

🏋️ My Favourite Practices of the Month

Nutrition Diversification

Asking myself: what’s one more ingredient I can add to this meal?

I’ve listened to some podcasts about nutrition recently and one piece of advice I’ve heard come up a few times is that we should strive to consume at least 30 different natural foods per week.

It seems like a daunting task, but “natural foods” includes all spices, plants, grains, etc. So it’s surprisingly a lot more achievable than it seems.

Spring Aromatherapy

Paying attention to the smells of spring.

There are a couple of magnolia trees outside of my window and they smell amazing. It’s convinced me to take the time to appreciate the springy smells around me. It’s even got me treating myself to flowers lately.

💪🏽 My Favourite Words of Encouragement of the Month

Assume There Are Others Like You

Darkness Mindset Shift • 🔗 / Sahil Bloom Tweet /

“Sometimes when you are in a dark place, you think you have been buried, but actually you have been planted.”

The Hidden Value in Our Ideas • 🔗 / Janis Ozolins Tweet /

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Our Unique Smartness • 🔗 / TedTalk /

“It’s not about how smart you are. It’s about how you’re smart.”

Life is a Pen, Not a Pencil • 🔗 / / No bitterness, no sneering, no cynicism /

Paradox of Effort • 🔗 / Sahil Bloom Tweet /

You have to put in more effort to make something appear effortless.

On Fighting Back • 🔗 / Ted Lasso /

Don’t fight back. Fight forward.

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Savouring a Moment Like Food

We savour our food in the moment because we don’t really have many options for preserving and reliving its taste in the future, aside from attempting to recreate the moment itself. I wonder how can we appreciate the rest of the world that way?

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

Life Blocks & Natural Rhythm Cohesion

How can you neatly organize your days into the flow of your natural rhythms?

In my case, I’ve noticed that my mind is most active before I eat breakfast at 3pm. So I’ve been scheduling all of my dense thinking tasks in the morning and early afternoon.

I also know that social activities tend to tire me out. So I’ve been starting to think about them as part of my optimal sleep routine and scheduling them in the second half of my day. So that I’m nice and tuckered out by bedtime.

Tool vs Trait

Do you care about the tool or what the tool enables you to do?

I’ve noticed that I can save myself a ton of time by asking this question. When I first started to learn to code, I watched introduction to computer science videos. It felt like the logical place to start. But the reason I wanted to learn to code was because I had an idea I wanted to build. I didn’t actually care about how computers work. So I didn’t remember most of what I learned from those videos. The only time my programming skills improved was when I started building.

I think this can be applied to most skills we want to learn. We don’t need to know how a camera works to take a good picture. We don’t need to read great writing in order to write well.

Sure, learning the basics can help. But I think formal school systems have misled me into believing that prerequisites should be religiously adhered to. When in reality, we can often create our own paths to our goals.

Our Goal Compliments to Get

What would be on your list of goal compliments to get? What compliments would you love to receive?

20 Questions to Help You Figure Out Your Next Step

A pretty consistent theme in my life is stressing over the ambiguity of my potential future paths. What should I be focusing on now? Am I setting myself up for a success I’ll want in the future?…

Usually I come out of these panic periods with some intense spark of motivation and inspiration, so I tend not to let the weight of the stress reach soul crushing proportions. And this time was no different. I’ve been on a question appreciation binge lately, so I decided to come up with a list of questions to help me find clarity in the fogginess of my future.

🎬 My Favourite Videos of the Month

👭 My Favourite Societal Reflections of the Month

Against Optimization • 🔗 / / Issue 148 /

“When you get a kid, the vast majority of the focus on yourself disappears automatically. My unpopular guess is that the rise of extreme optimization is a consequence of people delaying/not having kids”.

Multiverse of Minds

I feel like we’re already living in an undeniable multiverse. Every person and every creature living in their own version of reality. Each slightly different from each other. Whenever two people have a fight, Person A believes Person B is at fault and Person B believes Person A is at fault. Each person experiencing a slightly different branch of reality unfolding in unique ways.

Media vs Our Worries vs Reality • 🔗 / George Mack’s Tweet /

Click into the link above for a really interesting data viz on the discrepancy between the focus of our worries vs the focus of the media vs reality.

🧠 My Favourite Innovative Ideas of the Month

Confronting the Harsh Realities We Benefit From • 🔗 / Michael Ligier’s Youtube video /

I watched this video and I love what an awe-inspiring experience it looks to be.

What truly inspired me was an idea at 6:18. The idea of embracing hypocrisy to make a meaningful difference.

“The act of literally freeing a caged chicken in order to enjoy your dish, while images of tons of caged birds are all around you is actually quite powerful.

Look at this chicken leg. We’ve freed it from the cage. Now we have to eat it.”

It reminds me of an episode of Malcom in the Middle, where Malcom swore at his dad. And as punishment, his dad wrote up pages of insults about himself and forced Malcom to look into his eyes and read those insults to his face. The idea being that we can be truly repulsed by our negative instincts if we confront them through intense immersion.

I think that the path to true integrity is confronting the harsh realities that we blindly benefit from.

I like to think of integrity as the alignment between our actions and our beliefs. The opposite of hypocrisy. In my opinion, both the hero and the villain of a story are people of integrity if they live in harmony with their internal code of ethics.

I think most people would think of themselves as having integrity. But I don’t know if we’re being honest with ourselves if we don’t attempt to acknowledge or mitigate how our utopias benefit from and contribute to dystopias.

Unless we can abstain from or guiltlessly take an active role in the dark realities we contribute to, then I don’t know if we can claim the label of integrity.

In the case of food, for example, perhaps the only ways to honestly claim we have integrity are by either distancing ourselves from the animal cruelty dystopia by becoming plant-based or by showing that we have the ability to kill an animal for food without feeling guilty about it.

Bespoke Match Holders

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

Promising Young Woman

Come Play

Tetris

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Erased

WeCrashed

Devs

Loot

The Night Agent

📚 My Favourite Read of the Month

Dharma-Vision • 🔗 / / Post /

Do you soak in a moment at full-saturation, forgetting it forever? Or do you reach for your device, knowing your future self will want to relive it?

🖥 My Favourite Website of the Month

Squardle • 🔗 / link /

Squaredle is a daily word building game where you swipe connected letters in the grid to create as many words as you can find.

🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month

Perplexity.ai • 🔗 / link /

Perplexity AI is a conversational search engine I’ve been using to help me with research for my posts.

✏️ My Favourite Personal Creations of the Month

Dear Mind Wanderers, Reminders of Resolve, The Non-Space Paradox, & Leaving Legacies • 🔗 / My Substack /

Reminders of Resolve: A Quick Fix for Focus, The Paradox of Non-Places: A Cure for Culture Shock, Land of Legacies: Where to Preserve Your Soul…

Dear Voyeurs, The Curiosity Gap, Anatomy of Creepy Places, & Objectifying Vampires • 🔗 / My Substack /

The Curiosity Gap: Spaces Designed to Lure our Gaze, Sensing Psychopathy & the Anatomy of Creepy Places, Objectifying Vampires: Finding Motivation by Identifying our Energy Assets & Liabilities…

💪🏽 My Favourite Practices of the Month

Speechify Proofreading • 🔗 / Link /

My inner voice loves filling in blanks. I re-read my writing multiple times, only to finally hit publish and discover missing words in sentences.

So I'm starting an experiment where I listen to my longer posts in Speechify, in order to auditorially proofread them more easily.

Escaping Meta-Twitter

I accidentally got lost in meta-twitter.

I started using twitter more consistently at the start of this year and I wanted to understand how other people use it as a tool, what benefits they get from it, and how I can best take advantage of it.

So I followed people who tweeted about how to twitter and wrote about how to write.

My entire feed turned into a revolving door of the same advice from bigger creators and trends slightly reworded in dozens of different ways.

A lot of it was helpful advice. But it was my first time experiencing the inner world of an echo chamber. Where what starts as a bigger creator saying “this worked for me” quickly translates into a smaller creator definitively prescribing what works to their peers.

I realized that I had immersed myself in this community of tweeters and writers, because that’s technically the new hobby I was playing with. But, to them twitter and writing was a lifestyle. And, it took me some time to realize it, but to me they were really nothing more than tools to help me communicate and find people with similar interests.

I decided to take a step back and reflect on exactly what I want from Twitter right now and which of the accounts I followed were fulfilling that need.

In the end, I realized that right now my favourite accounts are the ones:

• within a main area of my interest (ex: environmental psychology, environment design, personal psychology, lifestyle design, education, futurism, imagination/creativity),

• which offer unique insights,

• which ask thought provoking questions,

• which value originality and creativity, or

• whose authors I could see myself befriending.

I created a new twitter list of my favourite accounts, so that I have a go to aspiration column. These are some of the accounts in my favourites right now:

https://twitter.com/theKevinShen

https://twitter.com/david_perell

https://twitter.com/nathanbaugh27

https://twitter.com/AdamMGrant

https://twitter.com/george__mack

https://twitter.com/dltnio

https://twitter.com/OzolinsJanis

https://twitter.com/SystemSunday

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Quote

On Meta Cognition

“We are not people looking out at nature. We are nature reflecting on itself” — Then & Now

Concept

Semantic Satiation

A psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

Unschooling

Unschooling is a form of homeschooling, which is the education of children at home or other places rather than in a school. It involves teaching children based on their interests rather than a set curriculum.

Tweet

🧨 My Favourite Sparks of Motivation & Inspiration

Optimizing for Non Regrettable Minutes • 🔗 / Danny Miranda Podcast #323 /

How much better would our world be if the people who were creating things wanted people to not regret using them, consuming them, or living in them by the end of it.

Interesting to think about the ones that don’t focus on this: fast/junk food products, wasted time on bad social content, wasted money on degrees that don’t lead to a job…

Details vs Perfectionism

I’m really vibing with the idea that being detail-oriented doesn’t necessarily mean being a perfectionist. Not sure how this looks yet, but I’m pretty confident it’s possible and it sounds like something worth attempting.

Metaphor Responses

It’s a great experience when you’re telling someone about something you’ve learned and they respond with “ooh so it’s kinda like…”. Introducing you to a fun new metaphor you hadn’t considered.

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

My favourite photos of the month

🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Mindfulness Meditation

I don’t believe mindfulness is the only powerful psychological state.

There are so many discussions and studies on the benefits of mindfulness meditation. There are also just as many different meditation practices. And just as many different anecdotal descriptions of people's mindfulness experiences.

And just as many people claiming to have tried mindfulness meditation, only to be disappointed by or confused about what they were “supposed” to experience.

In my opinion, it's been a game of broken telephone. People started touting it as a life-changing practice, so it became a popular concept, and everyone started to add their own little nuances to its description, to the point where it's now a poorly defined method.

Its popularity has also pushed it into one of my biggest pet peeves — one size fits all solutions.

Assuming that we all have unique goals, points of view, and baseline states of mind, then I can’t believe that something like mindfulness meditation is going to be beneficial for everyone.

Long story short, I want to see more people talking about how they’ve created practices around other beneficial psychological states. Where are the discussions on practices that elicit joy, bliss, flow, wonder, comfort, nostalgia, pronoia, optimism…?

Balance in Baselines

This month I spent a lot of time reminding myself about how the key to balance can be found in the basics.

I pride myself on being a creative person. When I meet a new topic I want to explore I make it a habit of trying to ask 50 questions about it, so that I’m bound to find a unique perspective.

One of my most tightly held values is uniqueness. And one of my biggest pet peeves is someone doling out one size fits all advice as gospel.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest drawbacks of my mindset is overlooking and neglecting the obvious in favour of the complex.

Balance is one of my biggest ambitions.

It’s something that I’ve had to put a lot of work into. Its practice doesn’t come naturally to me. There have been way too many times where I’ve neglected baseline parts of my life in favour of optimizing another. For example, not allowing myself to date or socialize until I was able to reach a certain degree of success in my career.

So I’ve implemented a new practice into my routine to ensure that I’m not skewing my scales too sloppily to one side. The baseline checkup.

The idea behind baseline checkup is that by figuring out the most basic cause of happiness in each of the major areas in my life, I’ll be able to recognize and react more easily if one of them gets neglected.

Having a baseline checklist is a way to remind ourselves to confirm that our baseline needs are being met, before attempting to strategize new solutions.

The question I’m now making more of a habit asking myself: “what is the minimum viable requirement for…”

• my healthy life blocks (mind, body, environment, social, finance, recreation, and operations),

• effortless consistency,

• a good day,

• …

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

Questions over Answers

Reminder to self: you don’t aspire to be a person with all of the answers. You aspire to be the person with all the most interesting questions.

Intentional Experiences

How do I create the best experience for myself and for other people at {insert event}?

The Pressure of Turning it into a Side Hustle

I need to start internalizing the goal of exploration, experimentation, and fun when it comes to Mind Your Step.

I need to start thinking about it within my recreation block, as opposed to a potential future contender of my finance block.

I want to stop thinking about long term goals and focus on short term joy. And I want to drastically reduce the amount of content I consume about creators aiming to make a living off of their work. It’s aspirational, but clouds my true current goal of playing and exploring within my niche.

I’d love to stop thinking about posting as a goal and start thinking about it as a byproduct of my explorations.

I really want to figure out how to re-cultivate the curious, playful, and adventurous spirit of my inner child. And completely forget about the trending goal of positioning oneself as an expert.

The Art of Introductions

Introducing yourself is a skill. And I’d like to brainstorm a quality way to do it better.

When Revisiting Goals

When restarting hobbies and goals (ex going to the gym) try asking yourself why you never fully succeeded with it in the past, so you can avoid the same frictions.

Embodying Wholesome

What does it look / feel like to embody the word wholesome?

Pre Interviewing Authors

Consider conducting a fake interview with a non-fiction author before reading their book, so you can prime yourself with what you hope to gain from reading it. Find what you’re looking for by having an idea of what you’re looking for.

Who Do You Want To Be

When thinking about your ideal future, try out the statement: “I’m the kind of person who…”.

Rather than “I want…”

🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month

Alexander The Guest

🎬 My Favourite Videos of the Month

🧠 My Favourite Innovative Ideas of the Month

Our Second Brain 3.0

What if we could train an ai throughout our life to replicate our brain. 15 minute conversation everyday, with prompts from an ai, so that it can learn about how we think.

What if we could send out this copy of our brain to engage with social media, so that it filters in only the most interesting information for us.

What if all of the writing we put out into the world (text messages, newsletter posts, tweets…) can be used after death as a search engine for our thoughts and opinions.

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Molly's Game

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Ally McBeal

One Punch Man

Lookism

Sister Sister

Pam & Tommy

📚 My Favourite Reads of the Month

The psychic industrial complex • 🔗 / / Post /

“Most people (98% according to this one survey from 1991) will tell you the paranormal is horseshit. If no one believes in it, why the hell is this profession booming (at least 2.2 billion) despite entering the age of information?”

The most ridiculous question of all-time • 🔗 / / Post /

“Want to hear the most ridiculous question of all-time Before I tell you, it’s my duty to warn you that you’ve probably heard it so many times that it seems perfectly normal. But it’s not.”

🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month

SuperCook • 🔗 / link /

Supercook is a recipe search engine that lets you search by ingredients you have at home. Find thousands of recipes you can make right now.

AutoDraw • 🔗 / link /

Fast drawing for everyone. AutoDraw pairs machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help you draw stuff fast.

✏️ My Favourite Personal Creations of the Month

Panopticon Mind Prisons, Breaking into World Building, & Desire Path Trailblazers • 🔗 / My Substack Post /

Enter the world of the world builders.

I'm hunting down Cupid's big baby butt. And I know exactly where to find him. You in? • 🔗 / My Substack Post /

There are 7 desires we lust after when it comes to love. And I've got a list of places no one ever talks about where we can fulfill each of them.

💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Changes of the Month

Bombastic Branching

I started this new reflection practice, where I visualize the most audacious and impressive potential branches in my future.

I noticed that all of my reflection practices look at my most immediate past, present, and future. But I haven’t been giving myself any space to daydream about the big picture — what the most ideal future branches might look like.

So far, it’s been a really effective source of motivation ⚡️

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Reminders

On Giving

Rule of thumb: Give more than you get.

Quotes

On Support • 🔗 / Charlie Becker’s Substack Post /

“One candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.”

On Planning • 🔗 / Danny Miranda Podcast /

“Plan on the plan not going according to plan.”

Tweets

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

🧑‍🎨 My favourite artists of the month

Tsukune Craft 🔗 / Instagram account /

📸 My favourite photos of the month

🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Zone of Competency • 🔗 / Danny Miranda Podcast /

“Good questions are within your own zone of competency”

Straight A Students

Students who get straight A’s get them not because of good teachers, but in spite of bad ones.

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

Being Truly Great

If you could be truly great at one thing, what would it be? And how will you know that you have succeeded?

🎙️ My Favourite Accounts of the Month

Danny Miranda: Conversations with creators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers to make you happier, healthier, and wiser.

Enrico Tartarotti: Behind the scenes of tech and ideas for a better future.

🎬 My Favourite Videos & Shorts of the Month

🧠 My Favourite Innovative Ideas of the Month

The anti-talent show • 🔗 / YouTube video on psychological safety /

A group picks something that they can’t do. They practice it for 2 weeks and they hold an anti-talent show to show off what they’ve been able to learn.

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

The Take

I Love My Dad

Underclassman

Shotgun Wedding

The Invitation

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

📺 My Favourite Show of the Month

Welcome to Chippendales

📚 My Favourite Reads of the Month

The Strawman, the Steelman, and the Gold-Plated Man

🔗 / Étienne’s Substack Post /

Turn other people's arguments into the most interesting version of themselves.

The Thousand Griefs of a Left-Behind Place

🔗 / Charlie Becker’s Substack Post /

Nothing makes me miss home like that feeling when the crisp “newness” of a hotel room has worn off. On arrival, hotel rooms are immaculate: they smell fresh and everything is clean. Within a day, you’re in an uncanny valley where the room is as lived in as any other room, except it has nothing homey in it. …

🖥 My Favourite Websites of the Month

Clearer Thinking 🔗 / clearerthinking.org /

Clearer Thinking’s mission is to close the gap between insights from research about human behaviour and actions in the real world. We start with the best research we can find and perform our own original studies in order to build best-in-class, interactive tools and mini-courses that you can use to change your habits, make better decisions, and achieve your goals.

Literature Clock 🔗 / Dense Discovery 223 / Clock Link /

A website that shows the current time using time quotes found in random pieces of literature.

🛠️ My Favourite Tools of the Month

Email This Browser Extension 🔗 / emailthis.me /

Allows us to save articles & web pages by sending them to our email. EmailThis removes ads & distractions and sends us the formatted page with just the text and images.

Readwise Reader 🔗 / https://readwise.io/read /

The first read-it-later app built specifically for power readers.

✏️ My Favourite Personal Creations of the Month

A Guide To Finding Lucky Locations 🔗 / My Substack Post /

The world around us is full of fortune waiting to be found. So, where can we go to increase our surface area for serendipity?

The Dark Side of Joyful Spaces 🔗 / My Substack Post /

Dark joy aesthetics are the angsty siblings. They still provide all the feelings of joy, but they are more likely to appeal to the Addams Family than the Brady Bunch.

Mind’s Eye: Powers 🔗 / My Substack Post /

Can you see your inner world? How vast and vivid is is it? If you have a mind’s eye, then this post might let you in on some superpowers you didn’t even know you had.

The Comfort Zone Credo 🔗 / My Tweet /

A reminder that seeking discomfort isn't the only way to expand our comfort zone. Seeking novelty works just as well.

💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Changes of the Month

Writing vs Editing Mode

Choosing between writer vs editor mode during any given writing session has been a major speed hack for me.

Handwriting 1st drafts curtails my instinct to fiddle with what's already down on paper.

Writer mode: unfiltered written thoughts.

Editor mode: organized digital thoughts.

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

💬 Reminders

Everything’s a Vote

Every day, we vote for what we want more of in the world.

💬 Quotes

The Price of Love

🔗 / Movie / A Boy Called Christmas /

“Grief is the price we pay for love. And worth it a million times over.”

Judgment

🔗 / Youtube / Introduction to Mimetic Theory | René Girard's Mimetic Theory / John Boyd paraphrased /

“Superior fighter pilots use their superior judgment to make sure they get into situations where they never have to use their superior judgment.”

Solitude

🔗 / Twitter / Visakanv / Oscar Wilde /

"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."

💬 Concepts & Definitions

Apricity

The warmth of the sun during winter.

Psychopomps

Psychopomps are creatures, spirits, angels, demons or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife.

💬 Tweets

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

🧑‍🎨 My favourite artists of the month

Kilo Blimp 🔗 / Instagram account /

Adso Piñerúa 🔗 / Instagram account /

WHITEGHOST 🔗 / Instagram account /

Simone_rgm 🔗 / Instagram account /

James Shedden 🔗 / Twitter account /

📸 My favourite photos of the month

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🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Attention to Distractions 🔗 / Rob Walker’s Substack /

“Making a list of what “distracts” you is an interesting spin on paying attention to what you pay attention to.”

Falsification vs Proof 🔗 / Nat Elison’s Substack /

“It’s important to highlight the difference between falsification and proof. The scientific method does not prove anything. It only fails to falsify.”

Fat vs Water Flavour Experiment 🔗 / Charlie Anderson’s Video [2:14-316] /

The effectiveness of fat at storing the taste of spices.

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

Negative → Positive Energy

Perhaps all negative energy can be turned into something positive by finding the appropriate environment to put it to good use.

Life Modes

As with writer vs editor mode, I wonder if there are other areas in my life where we mix up modes that should/could be separated.

🎥 My Favourite YouTube Channel of the Month

🔗 / Cryo Chamber /

🎬 My Favourite Videos of the Month

External Affirmations

If you’re in the mood for an external affirmation that’ll make you smile, the first 30 seconds of this video should do it.

Permission to do less

Aim for 80%. Few others know what your 100% looks like.

“Getting it done is success. Getting it perfect is not. Especially because perfect doesn’t exist.”

Social Mobility & Economic Connectedness

The ability to move up the socio-economic ladder.

🧠 My Favourite Innovative Ideas of the Month

Walking Groups

Around the world walking groups that posts one pretty picture from their walk - build appreciation of beauty and vigilance - nice habit tracker idea.

🥗 My Favourite Recipes of the Month

Kimchi on flatbread with honey

Mug Cake: Banana Bread 🔗 / Recipe /

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

The Menu

Words on Bathroom Walls

The Resident

Argo

Those Who Wish Me Dead

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Dash & Lily

Bleach

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War

📚 My Favourite Reads of the Month

A Free Source Of Energy You Might Ignore 🔗 / Szymon Sosulski’s Substack /

What if I told you that every one of us has a free source of energy that we often overlook? …

Philosophy, Not Science 🔗 / Nat Elison’s Substack /

Scientific research is a tool for epistemology. It’s an attempt to create a framework for claiming what we know and do not know. Like most tools, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Its effectiveness depends on the artisan using it and the craft they’re using it on. …

What is beauty for? 🔗 / Taylor Foreman’s Substack /

There are places where people yearn for other places.

…

They are the most aesthetically hateful places I have ever encountered. But, like a horror movie, I seek them out. I can’t look away.

They are not just ugly. They are anti-beauty. They are transcendent ugliness.

These places beg the question: what is the opposite of this?

What is beauty for? …

More stories, please 🔗 / Arman Khodadoost’s Substack /

The challenge is that we underestimate our storytelling capabilities. We’ve been bamboozled into thinking a select few of us are natural born storytellers. But not us. It’s a false belief. Storytelling is a skill that can be improved. …

On the Usefulness of Photography 🔗 / Simon Sarris’ Substack /

Taking “a photo a day” (as a diary, as practice) is a common concept among new photographers, but it’s really worthwhile for everyone. There’s an aesthetic component to this: Searching for a good photo in the every-day of life teaches us to notice our surroundings more. …

✏️ My Favourite Personal Creation of the Month

I died for beauty, but was scarce adjusted in the tomb 🔗 / Instagram post /

💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Changes of the Month

Gut Instinct Translators

There’s a love song that I adore. Since I was a kid, I’ve imagined sharing it with someone who I fell truly in love with — having it be our song. I discovered this month that I can use it as a tool to translate my gut instinct. If I’m dating someone great and I can’t think of a logical reason why I wouldn’t want the relationship to continue, I’ll double check with my gut by listening to that song and imagining sharing it with that person. It’s proven to be a quick and easy way to bypass logic and tap into my true emotions.

Building Buffers

I feel a lot more free and clear of mind when I have buffers setup (meal prep, twitter, instagram reservoir…). I want to take some time to think about where else can I implement buffers in my life.

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Quotes

On Art 🔗 / Helena Bonham Carter /

“I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.”

On Ambiguity 🔗 / Movie / Words on Bathroom Walls /

“Being ambiguous doesn’t make you profound.”

On Being Profound 🔗 / Show / Dash & Lily /

“Your clothes are your inside on your outside. And you shouldn’t leave that to mass manufacturers.”

On Competition 🔗 / Kevin Kelly /

“Don’t be the best. Be the only.”

On Friendship 🔗 / Kevin Kelly /

“Friends are better than money. Almost anything that money can do, friends can do better. In many ways, a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.”

Concepts & Definitions

Congeries 🔗 / Todd Brison’s Substack /

“A congeries is essentially when you decide: "to hell with the items in a series! I'm just going to keep listing things!”

Tweets

🧨 My Favourite Sparks of Motivation & Inspiration

Mission: Voiceover

The idea of easing myself into video creation by first getting comfortable adding voice overs and ad libbing my blog posts.

Connecting Ideas

For great ideas, be just as interested in finding connections between your existing ideas as you are with discovering new ones

• Connection ideas is a skill

• Pattern finding / making

• Using language, images, metaphor, and stories

Questions Over Answers

I feel such a jolt of pure inspiration by reading lists of thought-provoking questions and prompts on topics that interest me.

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

My favourite artist of the month

Pascual Rodríguez 🔗 / Instagram account /

📸 My favourite photos of the month

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🔗 / Tweet /

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🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Introversion vs Extroversion

Interesting interpretation of introversion vs extroversion: each is the more automatic preference to seek for stimulation / input from the inside vs the outside world.

Delayed Legacies 🔗 / vlogbrothers video /

Really interesting idea about how we don’t always get to know our legacy before we die.

On Purpose

Curiosity and interest is all the purpose you need for now.

The Paradox of Speed 🔗 / Sahil Bloom’s Newsletter /

Sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up.

Passion

I’ve tended to think of romantic passion (kissing, sex…) as different from occupational passion (hobbies, sports…), but they are both the act of doing something for the sake of doing it, without the necessity of reward.

💭 My Favourite Reflections of the Month

On Regrets

In one year’s time, what will I regret not having started today?

Moral Exemplars

Who would make up my mental board of advisors?

Communicating Incomplete Thoughts

Learn how to communicate incomplete thoughts as a skill.

Writing vs Editing

Strategise a way to make a habit of separating your inner writer from your inner editor. Perhaps this is hard to do because these to processes aren’t usually separated in conversation and that’s what we’re most used to.

🎬 My Favourite Video of the Month

🧠 My Favourite Innovative Ideas of the Month

Sample Stores

There should be sample stores that only sell sample sizes of products, so people can test things out before buying something and potentially wasting it and their money. Where can I find more samples of stuff?

Random Tongue Twister I Created

There once was a goat afloat on a boat in a moat

🥗 My Favourite Recipes of the Month

Granola 🔗 / Recipe /

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month

🍿 My Favourite Movies of the Month

Sleepers

Spiderhead

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month

Inside Man

Stay Close

Safe

Wednesday

📚 My Favourite Reads of the Month

Discovering Joy Through Embodied Exercise

🔗 / The Long Game 129 /

I see a lot of discussions about what is “the optimal” exercise routine or what’s the “minimal effective dose” of this or that…

These conversations surely have their places, but what about the greater discussion about finding joy and happiness through exercising? Wouldn’t it be better if instead of “having to exercise,” you were excited every day to get to exercise?

In my opinion, many conversations around finding the “optimal” miss that aspect, and finding what a person likes is often the most powerful factor in ensuring long-term consistency. So maybe, just maybe, the ‘80% optimal’ that you love ends up being ‘THE optimal for you’.

…

✏️ My Favourite Personal Creations of the Month

Writing

Designing Spaces to Influence Our Sense of Time

🔗 / My Substack / Deep Dive /

Our lives are immersed in a world riddled with temporal illusions. We cast a final blink each night and awaken to find ourselves teleported 8 hours into the future. We wait what feels like an eternity for the bus scheduled to arrive in 2 minutes. We play a quick game to pass the time, only to look at the clock and realise an entire hour has snuck by unnoticed. What if we could take control of our temporal perception? If we could fast forward through unpleasant experiences and elongate the moments of bliss which we crave to last a lifetime.

…

Crafting

Instagram post • An eye for an eye.→

💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Changes of the Month

The experiencing self’s gratitude practice

Recently, I discovered a new trail near me and it’s got me really loving going for afternoon walks lately. When I went on my first couple hikes I was a total glutton indulging in and appreciating all the new sights and sensations. Since I had my notes app in hand, taking the occasional note of any interesting sparks of inspiration kindled by the podcast I was listening to, I decided to jot down all of my favourite aspects to my new favourite trail.

Most references to gratitude journaling that I’ve come across suggest taking some time out of the end of our day to reflect on what we’re grateful for.

But jotting down my list of favourite observations got me thinking about how much gratitude has become a practice for my remembering self (the part of me that reflects on the past). It had me questioning whether I’ve been neglecting giving my experiencing self (the part of me that is awake to my current surroundings) the chance to practice gratitude as well.

Now I’m working on making a conscious effort that when I know that I have a special moment coming up, I should consider setting the intention to pay attention or even actively list what I’m appreciating in that moment, rather than waiting to reflect back on it later.

💬 My Favourite Words of Wisdom of the Month

Reminders

On Potential 🔗 / Arman’s Antics #025 /

You overestimate what can be accomplished in a day and underestimate what can be done in five years.

Quotes

On Murder Show: Inside Man

Everyone’s a murderer. All it takes is a good reason and a bad day.

On Perspective 🔗 / Anna Akana Video /

It doesn’t matter what we’re looking at, it matters what we see.

On Entitlement Proverb

The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

On Meaning

By the time I die, I just hope that it mattered that I lived.

On Generalists 🔗 / A Bit of Optimism /

A Jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.

Concepts & Definitions

Defenestration

The act of throwing a person or thing out of a window.

Senius Brian Eno, musician

The genius of a scene. When environment can encourage creativity.

For example, there was a time when Paris was the scene for artistic genius, because there was large community of people there focusing on their art.

🧨 My Favourite Sparks of Motivation & Inspiration

Where are you the most you? 🔗 / *My First Million Ep. 364 [15:46-17:34]* /

Finding the medium where you’re the most comfortable.

The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking 🔗 / The Long Game 130 /

A reminder on some of the benefits of walking.

🖼️ My Favourite Visuals of the Month

My favourite art of the month

Cartoon Cakes

Instagram post →

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My favourite artists of the month

Do Ho Suh • Instagram hashtag →

My favourite photos of the month

Instagram post →

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🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month

Hopeful Fantasies

The value of creating hopeful fantasies for framing things in life. So much of the world is built on arguably helpful fantasies (defining fantasy as a framing of “reality” that most people would have unique perspectives on): religion, true love, spirituality, purpose, meaning….

I think it’s interesting to consider the amount of problems that arise when people mistake their fantasies for universal reality.

Persuasion Languages

Similar to love languages, I wonder what it would look like to come up with a list of persuasion languages: the things most likely to persuade different types of people.

🎬 My Favourite Videos of the Month

The Three Little Pigs and the Not That Bad Wolf

The Non-capitalist Solution to the Housing Crisis

How To Multiply Your Time | Rory Vaden | TEDxDouglasville

9 tactics to build a stronger mind | Lisa Genova

How Liquid Death's Founder Started A $700 Million Water Brand | Founder Effect

🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month