"I don't have time to figure out the right thing, because I'm too busy doing the wrong thing". This was the effective message a colleague said to me a number of years ago when I was trying to get them to think more strategically.

But yet, it's often the case with our own lives. We spend too much time just churning away at the task that we don't make time to step back and reassess what we should be doing.

That said, I also know people who only spend time planning what they are going to do, that they actually forget to do any of it.

These articles hit the same point. I was churning away at writing articles but I wasn't getting any feedback. So I reached out and asked for what you liked and what you didn't like. I got some brilliant feedback, thank you!

Here's the summary of what I learned:

1. Short emails with a specific topic is good
2. The use of AI cover images is not so good
3. More about building my own product
4. More about Zettelkasten and productivity
5. Aim for intellectually filtered surprises

I've used this a bit of an opportunity to take a break over the past few weeks. It's weird, when you break the streak, it can be hard to restart.

That said, my primary focus right now is my Atomic Note-Taking book. So in the spirit of sharing more about building my own product, I'll give a bit of an update.

I've been putting most of my energy to get the first draft of the book complete. This means all the examples are done and ready to go. I'm about half way through Part 5 which is the Student Q&A. This section aims to revisit topics but through a different perspective with the aim of giving a rounded approach to understand the system.

But writing a book is hard work. I only get to do this in the evenings. And some evenings I'm just too tired. But what has certainly helped is using Brain.fm. I used to use it a number of years ago but switched back to Spotify. But I realised I needed it to power though this book. I needed to create a cue for my mind to focus without hitting a song that I don't like and snaps me out of my focus.

But it works. I'll feel guilty before going to bed from watching mindless YouTube videos to unwind, and I'll say to myself, just 20 minutes of working on the book and then I'll go to bed guilt free. Put on my Brain.fm music and 1 hour and 20 minutes later I'm forcing myself to go to bed.

If you happen to find yourself checking it out and decide to go for it, use my code 'martin' for 20% off. Yes, I get a kickback, but it can save you some money also.

Truth be told, I'm not actually ready to restart the newsletter. All my writing time is going into the book. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, even though I know there's a lot of editing and a lot of formatting to go. I do try not to think too much about that, but just focus on what's in front of me.

I'll stop rambling here. But today's Ah-Ha moment is that you really do need to find the time to refocus. Sure, try things out to get feedback on what works and what doesn't, but learn quickly and adapt. Try to avoid the over-planning trap and the churning trap.

Creating a Growth Mindset company isn't something that happens by chance. It comes from understanding what the differences are between having a fixed or growth mindset and then educating and mentoring your employees to adopt a growth mindset.

This article is for any manager who is responsible for the personal development and growth of their employees. You'll understand what it means to have a growth mindset and you'll have a starting point to create a Growth Mindset programme for your team.

What is a growth mindset?

When we talk about a Growth Mindset, we often refer to the beliefs and attitudes someone has towards whether they (or someone else) can improve their abilities through dedication, effort and hard work. A person with a growth mindset comes from the perspective that anyone can improve their ability through hard work, while a person with a fixed mindset will often think that ability is unchangeable.

Someone with a growth mindset may exhibit the following traits:

• Believe that true potential is unknowable and anything can be achieved with passion, effort and practice, and that no-one's ability is set in stone
• Believe the key to success is long term hard work
• Willing to seek help from others to help them learn and progress
• Can continue advancing by stretching themselves beyond their current abilities
• Look objectively and are open to accurate information with a view to improve—no matter how unflattering and uncomfortable the truth is
• Value what they become, not who they are

Someone with a fixed mindset however may exhibit the following traits:

• Tend to blame their lack of success on things they feel are out of their control
• Believe that someone's ability is carved in stone
• Believe they have to continually prove themselves over and over
• Want to look smart and avoid actions that might make them look dumb
• Believe their self worth is being the best at what they do and are always striving for perfection
• Believe that smart people don't make mistakes
• Value things that are naturally easy to do that other's cannot do
• Are intolerant of mistakes, criticisms or setbacks
• When given a positive label, they fear losing it and have the pressure to keep proving it over and over
• Have an overwhelming sense of rejection and try to protect themselves from being vulnerable

As you can see, the topic of a fixed and growth mindset can be quite deep. But we want to give managers the ability to recognise both their own mindset, and then look to help their team foster a growth mindset.

Managers

As a manager your goal is to enable the best out of your team. You want to create a healthy, enjoyable working experience for your employees. You want them to have a sense of purpose and direction which can be something they value as they progress through their own career.

In order to achieve this, as a manager, you need to understand and adopt a growth mindset. This means you want to foster the attributes and thinking that lead to having a growth mindset. It's not easy, but the benefits are worth it.

In addition, you can look to your team and embrace your employees who already exhibit growth mindset attributes. You also want to recognise those who are exhibiting fixed mindset attributes and work with them to help steer their progression to being more growth oriented.

So what does it mean to be a growth mindset manager? You need to foster the following attributes:

• Embrace a growth mindset within yourself and your team
• Have a zest for learning and teaching and be a model for your team to follow
• Be open to giving and receiving feedback
• Look at problems as obstacles to overcome, and not problems that you wish didn't exist
• Reward employees for taking initiative and working hard to see a difficult task through
• Reward employees for growth, learning something, overcoming setbacks and being open to and taking action on criticism

As you can see, to be a growth mindset manager, you need to build the communication and support structures for your employees. You need to create a safe space for them to flourish and make mistakes, but have the guidance to look at adversity with a growth mindset.

As a manager, you want to foster a growth mindset team. This means you must teach your employees about the growth mindset through effective communication and provide the right support through mentoring.

Growth mindset programme

Create a growth mindset programme for your team. Make it a tangible thing that you and your team can work towards. Use it as a way to create the growth culture your team deserves.

When creating such a programme, consider the following:

1. Educate your team why it is important and how they can assess where they are on a fixed-vs-growth mindset scale
2. Help employees individually reflect on where they once had a low ability in an area, but still managed to perform well
3. Work with individual employees who you see are struggling and communicate with them how their abilities can be developed
4. Let your team reflect on times where people have overcome scenarios that they thought weren't possible, but managed to learn how to overcome it

Such a programme should help your employees bring out the discussion of what it means to have a growth mindset. Let them explore examples of where they have experienced it. You want them to learn by examples of past behaviour that shine a light on the specific traits you want to reward.

Once everyone has a baseline understanding of a growth mindset, the hard work begins. Set regular checkins with your employees and open the discussion to where they have assumptions in their belief about their performance, the performance of their peers and observe if they have a fixed mindset. Reward examples of a growth mindset and encourage them to view challenges and failures as opportunities for learning, and not a reflection of their own worth.

It's hard work, but the results will be incredible to the performance and happiness of your team. Good luck!

As a software developer who started out by teaching myself C programming when I was 11 years old, I've seen things change quite fundamentally over the years.

One discussion that comes up time and time again is: what's the difference between a junior software developer and a mid-level software developer. When hiring for roles, you really want to know what the difference is—and for the employees you do hire—ensure they have a clear pathway to progress.

However, it's hard to articulate. At a simplistic level it usually goes along the lines of:

• A junior developer has the basic competence for programming, but needs to be mentored on how to do things. They will require a lot of support from other members of the team.
• A mid-level developer understands how things works and can implement solutions unassisted based on how things have been done before. They require minimal support from the team to help them deliver.
• A senior developer can help make things that haven't been done before. They are pushing the forefront and often support the team in their deliverables.

As a senior software developer myself, it's hard to remember what it's like to be someone starting out. What should a junior developer need support with? How much responsibility can they be given without needing time from the rest of the team to support them?

For a junior developer, they want to progress, but they don't get told exactly how to achieve it. It's overwhelming and it's frustrating for them.

Then I saw this Tweet by Povilas Korop, and he articulated a point of view very well.

Being a junior developer in 2023 is very hard. There's so much to learn. Where do you start? Each topic has an endless depth and feels like you'll be stuck being a junior developer until the end of time.

Reflecting on how I managed to become a senior developer, it comes from 25+ years of learning. When I started, the technology was simpler. There were fewer books to learn from. You couldn't really go down a rabbit hole as there wasn't endless information, variations of technology, and multiple layers of abstraction.

First it was HTML, then JavaScript, then CSS, then libraries like jQuery and Bootstrap. Then it got interesting with Angular followed by React. Slowly build systems, linting, transpiling, unit testing framework and bundling came into the mix. On top of that the server landscape shifted to virtual servers, cloud hosting and now docker and Kubernetes in virtual infrastructure environments. Piece by piece, the layering of complexity was added, year after year.

But to start out today, you jump right into the overly complex landscape. Everything is an abstraction of something else. GraphQL is an evolution of REST, which is an abstraction of HTTP sitting on top of TCP/IP.

To be a junior developer, you are looking for clues for what to learn and what to experiment with. It's overwhelming. You want to do everything, because you want to be good at everything—because that's what you see with the mid and senior developers. They seem to 'know' what's what. Just one look at roadmap.sh and you'll realise how deep the network of rabbit holes can go.

So what do you do if you're a junior in this trap? As Povilas says in his tweet, start small and build something that accomplishes something simple. Don't try to build a thing with HTML + CSS + React + TypeScript + Storybook + Next.js + GraphQL + MongoDB + Docker + Kubernetes on your first go. Just build a simple HTML app with a sprinkle of JavaScript. Deploy it. Get feedback. Iterate. Take your time to do just one thing at a time.

And if programming isn't the field you're in, the same applies. Maybe you're a videographer who wants to do sound design, visual effects, storytelling, editing, camera and lighting. Do one thing at a time.

If you're a writer, focus on taking notes, storytelling, character development, prose and such. Don't aim for a masterpiece until you've mastered the pieces.

Today's Ah-Ha moment is that if you're a beginner it can be overwhelming to know how to learn what you need to learn. Break it down into small pieces that you can build upon. Learn and master those skills first. Iterate and get feedback. Take your time. Most importantly, love why you're doing it and enjoy the process.

Want to level up your note-taking and be a deep meaningful thinker? Check out my book Atomic Note-Taking.

I'm currently listening to the audiobook The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. He talks about the idea that you can either choose to plan for your retirement through a life of servitude, or opting to take the fast lane and unlock massive potential that allows you to retire in a matter of years.

One of the main takeaways from the book that has resonated with me is being mindful of what we spend our time on. The book, on it's surface is misleading. It talks a lot about the the money aspect of wealth, but really it's about the time aspect of wealth. The wealthy mindset is about having full autonomy of your time in that you don't need to trade it for money.

Passive income comes to mind here. Wouldn't it be nice to earn while I'm sleeping. Even with that, I may still need to work a set number of hours in order to maintain the flywheel of passive income. In fact, those are some of the hardest working people because there is no limit to the potential they can earn.

But go beyond that, there is a set amount of money—when managed correctly—allows the money to do the work that in turn makes more money. That's when true time freedom comes.

It has made me take stock about the activities I spend my time doing. Does the activity help me build wealth, or is it a slow lane activity which barely moves the needle in growing my wealth.

Time is the only currency we have. We can't get more of it. You want to focus your time on maximising the return of investment. Just like investing money can make more money, investing time well, can give you more time in return—or to put it more succinctly, prevent you having to use that time in exchange for money in the future.

So how do you do it? Entrepreneurship really. You want to create value in the world that gives a multiple—or uncapped potential—of what you can get in return.

Some businesses require you to be in the business for them to generate revenue. This does not free up your time. Unless that business can run autonomously—as in, you hire others to run it—or you can sell that business for a huge sum of money, you will not achieve your goal of time freedom.

Today's ah-ha moment is that if you want to retire young with wealth that means you can do what you want, when you want, then you need to take specific actions to make that happen. These actions mean creating value which has uncapped returns and aren't tied to your time.

What about you? Do you fancy the idea of being free from having to trade your time for money? Let me know.

Want to level up your note-taking and be a deep meaningful thinker? Check out my book Atomic Note-Taking.

In this blog post, we'll discuss the Zettelkasten method, a powerful note-taking approach that can help you gain insights and create content from your acquired knowledge. Created by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, this method is designed to make the most out of the information you encounter daily, making it accessible for future projects, such as blog posts or YouTube videos.

What is Zettelkasten and Smart Notes?

The Zettelkasten method, also known as the "Smart Notes" concept, refers to a system of note-taking divided into three types of notes: fleeting, literature, and permanent notes. This method aims to capture, process, and organise the information you encounter daily into a coherent knowledge base.

Note Types:

1. Fleeting notes: These are temporary notes capturing your thoughts, ideas, or highlights from different sources (books, tweets, articles, etc.). They are called "fleeting" because they don't last long; you'll soon process them into literature or permanent notes.
2. Literature notes: These are summaries of your understanding of a particular topic or source material, typically written in your own words. They can be derived from books, articles, videos, podcasts, or your own thoughts sparked by a source.
3. Permanent notes: These are single ideas on one note, written so that they are easy to understand in isolation. Each permanent note should be concise and well-structured so that it remains comprehensible even many years later.

Linking Notes

The Zettelkasten method emphasizes linking notes together bi-directionally, creating connections between various ideas. By discovering and linking related notes, you can combine different concepts to create new insights.

Example of Insights from Linked Notes

Suppose you have a note about the brain's stress triggers and another about imposter syndrome. By linking these two notes, you might discover that imposter syndrome could be caused by environmental triggers that cause the brain to consult stored memories of anxious feelings, resulting in feelings of insecurity and anxiety associated with imposter syndrome. This insight can then form the basis for a new piece of content, such as a blog post or YouTube video.

Using Notes to Create Content

1. Capture fleeting notes from various sources.
2. Process these fleeting notes into literature notes, summarising your understanding in your own words.
3. Organize your literature notes into permanent notes, linking related concepts together.
4. Discover insights from the connections between notes.
5. Use these insights to create content, such as blog posts or YouTube videos.

Conclusion

The Zettelkasten method can help you build a rich and interconnected knowledge base, which can be utilised to create insightful and original content. By capturing, processing, and linking notes in a thoughtful manner, you'll develop a deeper understanding and find new ideas to share with your audience.

Want to level up your note-taking and be a deep meaningful thinker? Check out my book Atomic Note-Taking.

In this article, we will discuss how to apply the Zettelkasten method in Obsidian, a markdown editor that allows you to connect notes together using linked thoughts. The Zettelkasten method involves a system of note-taking which includes fleeting notes, literature notes, and permanent notes. These notes get linked together to create new ideas and insights, serving as a base for your projects, including blog posts and YouTube scripts.

Setting up Obsidian

1. Create folders for the different types of notes: fleeting notes, literature notes, and permanent notes.
2. Enable the templates core plugin in Obsidian's settings and set up a folder for templates.
3. Create smart note templates to streamline the process of creating new notes.
4. Design your Map of Content (MoC) to outline various topics for a given theme in your notes.

Creating Notes

1. Fleeting Notes: Capture ideas, highlights, or notes from different sources (web articles, videos, books).
2. Literature Notes: Process your fleeting notes and add your own thoughts and insights based on the source material.
3. Permanent Notes: Organise your literature notes into a coherent and interconnected knowledge base that you can reference in the future.

Graph View

Obsidian offers a graph view that shows the interconnectedness of your notes, helping you identify gaps and find associations in your understanding.

Writing a Blog Post From Your Notes

1. Create a new folder for your project, such as a blog post or YouTube script.
2. Use your permanent notes as a source of inspiration and outline your project.
3. Create drafts, using your permanent notes as a reference point to help you get going quickly.
4. Edit and refine your drafts until your work is ready for publishing

Conclusion

Utilising the Zettelkasten method in Obsidian can help build a consistent and comprehensive knowledge base that you can easily draw from when working on projects. This approach promotes deeper understanding and better organisation of your ideas.

Want to level up your note-taking and be a deep meaningful thinker? Check out my book Atomic Note-Taking.

I love asking big questions. The type of questions that make you think. The answer is often out of reach, but that’s okay. You don’t need to answer it. You just need to find the pieces of the puzzle that can help you understand what the question means.

Let me give you an example. One of my large, open questions is “How do I help people have the skills to think more critically and use that to objectively make decisions”. I don’t know the specific answer, but I know it’s a question I like to think about.

Why is it useful to have these open ended questions in the back of our minds. Firstly it gives you something to orient your thinking towards. Like have a ‘why’, it provides a way to see if the pieces of insight you gain along the way fit with answering this question.

Secondly, it gives you purpose. It allows you to rest your soul onto something that has meaning.

By setting these types of questions for yourself, you avoid the trap of setting a specific goal. For example, I could set the goal of “I want to teach people to think critically”. It’s very similar, sure. But the moment I do teach them, then what?

I feel that by phrasing the question as a “How do I” type of question, then it doesn’t exactly have a definitive answer. I might find an answer, but I might still want to explore different or better ways that I could answer it.

So what other questions might be helpful? I personally like tricky and specific questions that help get to the nub of the problem that would often be overlooked. Here are some examples:

1. How do I stay healthy while facing the stress and challenges of my life?
2. How do I build financial freedom without sacrificing my time or values?
3. How do I inspire other people to use knowledge in a positive way and share the joy and fulfilment it brings?

With these questions, you get to break down defining what it really means. These might be:

1. What causes stress?
2. What external events change someone’s behaviour so that they avoid working towards their goals?
3. What does financial freedom mean?
4. How much time does someone need to feel free?
5. What values should someone set for themselves?
6. What does ‘use knowledge in a positive way’ mean and how do other people interpret that?
7. What does joy and fulfilment mean?
8. How do you inspire other people?

As I continue my own journey, speak with other people, work on my projects, and say yes to opportunities, I do it with these types of questions in my mind. I’m continually seeking to see if one will bring me closer to understanding this further, answer it better and take action on it to achieve my ultimate why.

Today’s ah-ha moment is to ask yourself big questions. Do it in a way that allows you to seek pieces to the puzzle, and see the world through a lens with purpose and passion.

What are your big questions? Let me know.

As I work on my Atomic Note-Taking book, I start to explore an example of how to process fleeting notes into literature notes. The book I’m using as a reference is Atomic Habits by James Clear.

In this book, he covers the three types of habits: goal-driven habits, system-driven habits and identity-driven habits.

Over the years I’ve always attempted goal-driven habits. Where you get to set a goal of achieving a specific thing (and usually by a specific time) and then do what it takes to achieve it.

But I don’t like them. And for good reason. They are subject to the Arrival Fallacy. Once you complete a goal, you lose the motivation to continue. What next? What are you doing it for?

But I even fail to reach the goal in the first place. I find that my motivation fades and when faced with the challenge of doing the work, my willpower is nowhere to be seen. This is especially true when external events disrupt my routine, such as travel, sickness or stressful events.

So much so, I genuinely don’t like setting goals because I know they are out of my hands. They are good if you like making wishes, but bad if you actually want the goal to happen.

Instead, James Clear talks about system-driven habits. These are the things you do. Sure, they can have a goal to align what the thing you do is to achieve, but they live beyond the goal. They are a habit. Which means it’s something you do frequently and preferably without friction.

Writing my book is a great example. Sure, I want to write the book and launch it. But I actually focus on the system to achieve it. That’s where I commit to writing for 30 minutes a day to keep things progressing. Not saying that’s easy, and when I do slip, all I need to focus on it reseting and getting back to the habit of 30 minutes a day.

Identity-based habits are an extension of this. Rather than saying, I write for 30 minutes a day, I can say, I’m a writer. I take on the traits that a writer takes on. It means I can look at my decisions through that lens. When faced with a decision, I can ask “does this decision align with what a writer would do?”

I’ve been experimenting with system-based habit forming for a few years now. It’s how my app Flowtelic has stayed the course to continue. It’s not been easy to say the least, but rather than look at the mountain to climb, I just look at the action I take today.

It’s doing that where the benefits compound. As the habits become more stable and easy, you get to stack them over time. You get to make the incremntal improvements. And, in time, your goals will happen.

Today’s ah-ha moment is to use goals as a way to know what’s important to you, but also think of the systems you need to put into place to do the actions needed to make the goals happen. Think longer term and when your goals complete, don’t stop your habits, continue them and build on the success they provide.

What systems do you think would help you achieve your goals? Let me know.

While listening to the book The Unfair Advantage by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba, they talk about why learning can be extremely difficult at a young age. They refer to it as you needing to be a Why learner.

Most school kids experience this. The need to learn a lot of meaningless information to pass your exams. It’s hard work when your heart isn’t in it. The reason it’s hard is because they lack a personal reason to why they want to know the subject.

Learning should be a gateway, not a goal.

No wonder why so many people are adverse to continuing their education when they enter adulthood. It brings back memories of the frustration and boredom learning material just to pass an exam.

I reflect on my A-level mathematics (what I studied in the UK at age 16–18). We would be covering pure mathematics which was abstract and confusing. I loved maths, but this was hard.

I was also studying computing, where I was spending countless hours learning the ins and outs of programming. I loved every minute of it.

What I didn’t grasp at the time was the ability to combine both fields. To use my programming to build statistics calculations or computer graphics. What I lacked was a why for my mathematics that would have been perfect for my programming.

Fast forward and there have been many times where this skillset would have been valuable. But I lacked the insight to view my learning from a different perspective.

When I approach my learning now, it always has a purpose. I know why it’s something I’m interested in. This makes it easier to invest my time and energy into learning as I have a measure of progress when I can utilise it in serving my greater purpose.

One such example is my recent curiosity for behavioural science. While I’m at the start of my exploration of this subject, my why is clear. I want to understand what makes people do what they do at the group level. This will help me become a better marketer, a better advertiser and a better communicator to helping people on my mission—to inspire a generation of thinkers and doers.

Deep down, my why is to help understand the fabric of behaviour so I can contribute to a brighter and more actionable future. With this, as I explore the subject of behavioural science, I will do so with focus on my why and passion to succeed. It makes learning a lot more enjoyable.

Today’s Ah-Ha moment is that if you don’t have a why, your learning will be dull and in turn a lot harder to succeed with.

What are you learning right now, and does that align with your why? Let me know.

Want to level up your note-taking and be a deep meaningful thinker? Check out my book Atomic Note-Taking.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”—Bill Gates

This is a quote that has come into my awareness a couple of times recently. It made me think of hard work and the value of sticking at something over the long term.

I’m old enough now to know what traditional hard work looks like—where you stick at the same job until you retire. I’m old enough to know what the Grant Cardone of hustle culture looks like—’go big or go home’. And I’m now observing the anti-hustle culture mindset where you shouldn’t do more than you need to.

I don’t make choices for other people. But I do believe in hard work. I believe in hard work where you get to set yourself a challenge that is just out of reach and where you can give intense focus, and over time, achieve it.

It’s in my DNA. When I finished my high school exams on a Thursday, I was in work on a Friday. When I was a graduate at IBM, I was building a business with my brother at weekends (which after 19 years is my day job).

When I now look at the challenge I have with building Flowtelic, I have accepted that it’s going to take a lot of sacrifice, a lot of hard work, and a lot of time. I’m already into year three of this journey and I still feel like I’m at the foot of the mountain.

In a way, I want my legacy to be where someone looks at what I’ve achieved and think it’s voodoo magic. I want to be someone who will do the hard thing, and go further than any other person is prepared to go in order to solve ‘this’ problem. However, I want to do it with reasonable sacrifice and great strategic excellence behind the scenes.

This means I will be there taking my kids to school. I will be there at their swimming lessons. I will be there to play with them. I will be there to read their bedtime story and say goodnight.

But when the lights go out, I get to work. Hard work for me is about consistency, and the exact use of my 25 years of expertise. It’s about paying attention to the things I need to learn as I go about my day, so that when the sun sets, I can maximise the output by putting that skill to use.

But it’s also about accepting that I can always do more, but I do have limits. It’s about saying no to the things that distract from the mission. And it’s about being patient.

This is why I don’t fear someone else taking my ideas. If they were obsessed enough to put the hard work in, they would have their own ideas fuelling that obsession.

Today’s Ah-Ha moment is giving yourself permission to work hard. But make sure you give yourself the head space to work smart, and with some strategic thinking supporting it. It helps when you have a why so that you know what your just cause is.

Create the illusion of doing what other’s think is impossible.

Surfing on the sun. This what I overhear a toddler say to his mother as they walk towards the school. The mother repeats the phrase as a question: “surfing on the sun?”. The child seems convinced that this is what he meant.

As I listen I hear the mother try to reframe the child’s thinking. “What about surfing on water?”. It felt automatic—the type of thing you would say without really concentrating. The mother wasn’t entering the child’s imagination with him.

The child is learning how to make sense of the world. Any adult would know that surfing on the sun wouldn’t be a desirable situation, so we naturally teach the limitations by cutting off creative avenues.

Fast forward to adulthood and we are so focused on thinking about what’s logical and sensible that we forget the art of alchemy, where we allow our minds to explore the absurd.

We’re about to enter the AI revolution. Generative AI with technologies like Dall·E and MidJourney have been awe inspiring. Looking at it in a purely technological sense, it’s incomprehensibly impressive.

It has made me realise is that these tools have given us back the crayons. We can start to be creative when those skills are lost. We can imagine what something would look like. There’s an air of mystery and excitement seeing what it will generate that will be new and novel. Think of two random things, and you can visualise it.

AI will have profound effects on society. Not everyone will like it. Some will love it. Some will even think it’s unethical. But I do believe that whatever happens, it’s not going away. So why not pick up your crayons and have some fun again.

Today’s Ah-Ha moment is that we lose our raw creativity as we get older. But embrace the rare moments where technology can unlock this.

I recorded this article in a longer form which you can watch on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAjLmpTmBz0

Having a ‘why’ is an extremely valuable thing. It’s the North Star of which you can focus your ideas and energies. It aligns with your ‘just cause’—the mission that you’re trying to solve.

By having a ‘why’ you will often find that you start to scan for new ideas and directions that can be a missing piece to the puzzle. This has happened to me recently.

I was reading the book Hacking the Unconscious by Rory Sutherland. He is an ad man, and if you’ve ever seen the hit TV series Mad Men, you would think of him as the Don Draper. He knows the behaviour people will take when they see an ad.

In the book, he mentions that a lot of his work involves collaborating with behavioural scientists. These are the people who understand the psychology of people and economics to understand why they behave under certain circumstances.

They aren’t as interested in what an individual would do, but more of what large groups of people will do on average. What can nudge them to take a specific action. That could be to buy a product, or to donate to a charity. There are many uses for this at the society level.

It was at this moment I realised this was one of the missing pieces to a puzzle I had been pondering for a while. How do I ‘nudge’ people to take action and use my products? How do I teach this nudge theory to my audience so they can succeed at their own just causes.

My long term why is to inspire a generation of Thinkers and Doers. I do this by teaching knowledge management and building my own note-taking app. That’s the ‘thinker’ part. But how do I help people become ‘doers’? How do I help them take action, inspire other people and make the world a better place? That’s where behavioural science could come in. It could help me understand how to help the next generation to create positive change.

What I have done is found a piece to my long term puzzle. It’s now an area that I can explore in more detail and see how it can be used.

That’s the value of having a ‘why’. You don’t know how to get where you want to go, but by having a why, you get to scan for pieces of the puzzle that just feel like they fit.

I like to think of this as leaning into the direction you want to go, and let the path reveal itself. Today, the path has opened up, and that is the field of behavioural science.

Today’s ‘ah-ha’ moment is don’t worry about how you’re going to get where you want to go. Just know the direction and scan for things that might reveal themselves as a missing piece to the puzzle. Without a why, it would pass you by and you would be none the wiser.

I always felt a bit of guilt. The friends who seem to be really engaged with the local community. They give their time organising and participating in events that supports aspiring young professionals in the local area.

I love to help others. I will give a lot of time to a person right in front of me to impart my wisdom and give them a spark of courage to take their own path. But I don’t seek it out. I don’t seek to help one person. I don’t give back to my local community.

It wasn’t until reading Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers. He introduces the idea of serving globally verses serving locally. It all made sense now.

He expresses that he can live in any community in the world, but his contributions are to be globally reaching rather than local. So rather than support a local event, he would rather put his time and resources into a supporting something that is global.

While on a logical level, I always assumed that supporting a global reach is greater than supporting a local—purely because you have the ability to reach a wider amount of people. But deep down, I felt a sense of guilt because I knew so many people who are happy serving their community.

Maybe it was that I couldn’t understand their motivation. After all, why limit your reach? Why serve 100 people, when you could serve 100,000?

But it wasn’t until Derek explained this in his book did I accept that we are inherently different. Some people are just locally focused, while others globally. There’s no grand reasoning. It’s just individual preference.

With this knowledge I can be more steadfast in my goals. I want to have a global reach. It means I don’t need to feel the guilt by saying no to serving locally where it comes at the expense of my greater mission.

Today’s ah-ha moment is that you are either someone who prefers to serve locally, or serve globally. Which one are you?

As I come to the closing paragraph of the book How to be a Productivity Ninja, author Graham Allcott makes the statement “We’re fellow travellers on the same journey”.

He’s referring to the fact that while his book is prescriptive on what one should do, he’s still figuring it out.

It’s easy to look at another creator and assume that they must be die hard practitioners of their craft, otherwise they wouldn’t be teaching it.

As a creator myself, I understand that if you’re still figuring it out but also teaching others what you know, you can feel like a charlatan. Sometimes other creators call out those they deem as charlatans which can call into question whether you’re doing the right thing.

I have two rules when it comes to my own content creation. The first is to share what I’ve learned as though I was talking to a younger version of myself who wasn’t in the know. The second is to treat it as a discussion as though I’m still learning.

The latter of the two means that I don’t actually have all the answers. I don’t know what someone else should or shouldn’t do. I don’t know where my understanding fails to live up to scrutiny. But by sharing and teaching, I in turn learn.

I learn from questions, the corrections and the discussions. Does that make me a charlatan? I don’t believe so. I see myself as an enabler for someone else to make their own judgements and thoughts.

At the end of the day. I’m still learning. I’m still testing out ideas. What I say today may change tomorrow. This is how we—collectively—learn. By teaching through content, I get to have the discussion where we’re both students. I believe that’s how you truly learn — and we get to advance together.

Today’s ah-ha moment is to recognise that you don’t need to be an expert to share your ideas and learnings. Use what you know right now to open a discussion with a potential audience. Be the guide you wish you had six months ago.

In a podcast episode between Steven Bartlett and Simon Sinek, the topic of self awareness came up in the context of personal improvement.

Steven says:

People can read as many books as they like, but if they’re unable to read themselves they’ll never really learn a thing

This stands out because we live in a world where information is so dense, and so easily accessible that we can become knowledgeable in almost any area, but fail to change.

I had the opportunity to work with a performance coach and in our first session he says to me that ‘I’m a very knowledgeable person’, but ‘that doesn’t mean I’ll put it into action’.

While my why is to inspire a generation of thinkers and doers, what it really comes down to is figuring out how to allow knowledge to drive change. Self awareness may be key to this discovery.

Learning a technical skill through knowledge is relatively straight forward. Start at the beginning, follow the steps, and av voila, you have acquired a new skill.

But what about changes that help us be happier, healthier and a better human being for the ones we love? This is a lot harder. It requires us to get uncomfortable with ourselves. And I feel a lack of self awareness is key to achieving this.

Permission. This is a thought that I keep circling back to. I think it’s possible that what we lack is the ability to give ourselves permission. Permission to introspect ourselves—in an honest and constructive way—to find the root cause and the root motivation of what we need to do.

So why do we lack permission? This can be for a variety of reasons. One might be our self esteem simply wants to avoid being  uncomfortable. Another might be an obligation to someone else and we don’t want to disappoint them. There may be a fear of how they would perceive it, as it would be asking them to make a sacrifice. Stress can be a signalling factor. To give ourselves the thinking space when stressed can be hard as we’re unable to clear our mind properly.

I don’t think it’s just a case to ‘become more self aware’. I think the question is deeper. Yes, we need the initial spark to introspect, but taking action and actually doing it has a lot more nuance. And we need to give ourselves permission to dig deeper.

In today’s Ah-Ha moment, ask yourself if you’re chasing new knowledge but not really putting it into action. Is it because you lack a self awareness to read a more truthful understanding of your situation? And even when you are self aware, are you giving yourself permission to change your priorities to make use of this new knowledge?

Want to level up your note-taking and be a deep meaningful thinker? Check out my book Atomic Note-Taking.