My mission is to use the internet to facilitate the spread of interesting ideas.

What follows is a collection of my favorite books, blogs, podcasts, and videos. I’ve spent years and years collecting these links and now, I’m excited to share the best of the best with you.

In this collection, I brought together my favorite things on the internet and sprinkled in my own work too. It contains some of my own links like a blog post or YouTube video if I made something related to it. I hope this page will help you spend more time learning and less time searching.

I marked the things I found particularly interesting as well as beginner-friendly with an asterisk so you won't make the mistake of starting with a book like Thinking Fast and Slow. That book is dense.

I marked things that are both incredibly insightful and more advanced with two asterisks for anyone who is up for an intellectual challenge.

I share a personal essay and the top-four links I discover in a weekly newsletter called “The Learning Logistic.”

📚Books

📖Nonfiction

🧠Psychology

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan: Psychedelics have long been seen as a failure of academic research. Apart from a period in the 1950s, most scientists have never delved into their wonderful properties and uses. Until now. Michael Pollan unveils the history of psychedelic research in this book alongside his own adventures in the use of three psychedelics. After reading this book, you will never see these substances in the same negative light again. Rather, you will understand their powerful properties for psychological transformation and medicine.

Think Again by Adam Grant: One of my favorite books on the psychology of rethinking. It gives actionable advice on how to persuade ourselves, others, and society as a whole to change fundamental world views. I loved it so much I wrote a 43-minute blog post book summary and even created a YouTube video summarizing it. (Blog Post) (YouTube Video)

Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke: We live in a modern-day Dopamine Economy. Almost everyone is addicted to something: food, video games, sex, drugs. In this book, Anna Lembke explores the science behind addiction and how we can take steps to stop our addictions. (YouTube Video)

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Why are some people able to enjoy seemingly all parts of their day and go towards everything in life with a sense of vigor and energy? Csikszentmihalyi explores the flow state as the answer in his book. According to him, Optimal Experience is the state in which someone does something as an end in itself and derives intense enjoyment as a result. The book answers not only what the flow state is, but how and where we can attain it in our lives. *

Games People Play by Eric Berne: Without realizing it most people are acting out scripts in their daily actions. They are like actors in a play. Berne breaks down the unconscious games we play with others in our social interactions and gives us insight into how we can take back control of our lives. In other words how we can build awareness. This book opened up my eyes to how most of the world is asleep. They are like robots acting out a code.

Smarter Tomorrow by Elizabeth R. Ricker: Our bodies are incredibly unique to each other. We can't expect ourselves to react the same way to one drug or test as another person. Through neurohacking, we can learn the individual nature of our bodies without intense outside testing from doctors. In her book, Ricker gives us a set of protocols and tests we can use to improve the four parts of neurohacking: Executive Function, Emotional Intelligence, Memory and Learning, and Creativity.

Influence, A New Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini: A fascinating account of the seven underlying rules which influence our behavior. Car salesman, real estate brokers, and advertisers have been using these persuasive techniques for thousands of years to try and get us to buy more of their things. But they don't just get used in the advertiser agency; they get used everywhere.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniele Kahneman: This book is dense. But if you can manage to slog your way through it, you will come out the other side with a fascinating look into behavioral economics and psychology. I wouldn't recommend you start with this book if you don't have a reading habit. Set it aside and leave it for later. You won't regret that you did.

The Hidden Psychology of Social Networks by Joe Federer: Many people live as much on the internet as they do off of it. And people act differently depending on what type of social networking platform they are using. This book explores the different ways we act in our offline and online selves depending on the context. At the same time, it gives advice to marketers and creators on how to use this knowledge for better marketing.

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold: Lucid dreaming is like dreaming except you become aware of the fact that you are dreaming. You can do anything. Fly, captain a pirate ship, or go to outer space. This book gives detailed protocols and advice on how to prime yourself to get into the lucid dreaming state. Unfortunately, I never was able to get into one but maybe you can make it work!

❤️‍🩹Health

Food Rules: An Eaters Manual by Michael Pollan: There is a total and inexscusable saturation of fitness and health content out there. Some are true, some are not. Food rules is a no bullcrap book chocked full of rules to follow if you want to live a long lasting healthy life.

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker: It's insane to me how many wear there terrible sleeping habits like a badge of honor. If you don't get more than seven hours of sleep, you are living incorrectly. Period. Why We Sleep sheds light on not only why we sleep but gives actionable protocols to get better sleep as well.

💖Communication/Relationships

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss: If you are human, you have to read this. Chris Voss, FBI Hostage negotiator is an expert in communications. Interestingly, the things he learns while out in the field can be used in our everyday communications and negotiations. I have used it myself to get a monthly allowance for a YouTube editor in the Philippines. (Don't tell them I said that) *

How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: The quintessential book on communicating with people outside of a hostage negotiation environment. This is a great book to combine with Never Split the Difference. it goes through some of the most charismatic people in history and discusses what they did that made them so charming. At the end of each chapter, it gives an actionable tip to utilize the principle discussed in your own life.

🤔Philosophy

Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle: Few people today are truly happy. This is ironic considering we knew how to achieve happiness all the way since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle outlines what Happiness is, how we can attain it, all while delving deep into the ethics of humankind. I wouldn't recommend you start with this book. I had to read it twice and write a blog post book summary before I understood what Aristotle was saying. (Blog Post)

Four Thousand Weeks Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman: The average human has 4000 weeks to live on this planet. Time management is all life is. It's easy to get stuck on the idea that life will get better a week from now or two weeks from now or after we read about a large milestone in our lives. Thoughts like these stop us from truly living and appreciating the life we have now. Burkeman gives a truly insightful philosophy on how to stop living for the future and reject toxic productivity. *

Happy by Deren Brown: What makes some people happier than others? When it comes to contemporary society, we seem to be terrible at answering and carrying out this question in our own lives. Deren dives into the Stoic philosophy on life and how we can implement its principles into our own lives. (YouTube Video)

Seneca's Letters from a Stoic by Seneca: In the last two years of his life, Seneca spent an enormous amount of time writing letters to the great Roman Knight Leucippus. He was trying to convince the man to adopt the philosophy of Stoicism. In his letters, he goes over a great many ideas and insights we can use in our own lives today. It's crazy how the words of someone dead for thousands of years can still have such an effect during the age of the internet.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: Every morning, even during the Marcomannic Wars and Pantomime Plague, Marcus Aurelius, the Last Great Roman Emperor, would sit down in a chair and, journal. Yup, journal. It was the single habit Marcus believed he had to do to have a good day. In his journals contains some of the most insightful and wise insight into the world you will find in any text.

Confessions by Saint Augustine: This book enlightened me on the power of religion has in the lives of many. I have grown up atheist for all of my life and never went to church. Saint Augustine describes in painful detail his path from Manichaeism to Christianity and his mistakes along the way. It is a remarkable text on religion, philosophy, and existentialism.

🔁Systems Thinking

Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Some systems thrive on disorder. Systems that improve in some aspect from disorder of any sort are called Antifragile. Contrastingly, systems which get worse with disorder are fragile and systems which are indifferent are robust. In this dense and thought provoking book, Nassim Taleb explores deeper into the concept of Antifragile systems and the implications their effects have on many other aspects of the world. It's hard to read and Taleb can be condescending at times but his genius is unquestionable. **

📅Productivity

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen: If you are into productivity you need to read this book. This is what every modern productivity system is based on. It's the OG. There are better productivity systems out there but they will give you a basis for how to live life more actively. I read it about a year ago and it completely changed the number and quality with which I could do tasks in a day.

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Berkeman: You have on average four thousand weeks to live on this planet. Likely, there are over a million things you want to do in that time frame. Oliver Burkeman's central argument is that there will never be nearly enough to do anything you want to and expecting anything less leads to aimless chasing of productivity improvements for its own sake and unfulfillment. Instead, you should savor the time you do get to use. Arguably time management is all life is. Most of the book deals with this issue but it also gives insight into why this perception of time exists and how we can take steps to overcome it. All the while, Burkeman gives some great personal anecdotes to aid in the book's message. *

🪄Storytelling

Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks: Before the printing press, most things were told orally. Storytelling is ingrained in our genes. And yet, most people are abhorrent at telling stories. I still shudder at painful nights hearing my mom attempt to tell a story from her day. Storyworthy gives us actionable advice on not only how to tell stories but the hidden power that comes with doing so. All the while, the book has countless of Dick's own stories in between making for an incredibly entertaining read. *

✈️Traveling

Vagabonding by Rolf Potts: The ultimate philosopher text to traveling abroad. Vagabonding is different from other traditional traveling books because it deals with the art of long-form travel. Vagabonds don't tour areas in a number of days or a week but rather travel there and deeply embed themselves in the culture of an area. This book explores further into what Vagabonding is as well as how you can take the steps to travel effectively around the world. Throughout the book, Potts shares the stories of some of the most famous travelers of history as well.

📝Studying

Make it Stick by Peter C. Brown: Have you ever wondered why some people seem to remember things so much better than others? How some people can go through college and school as if it's nothing. This book outlines the protocols we should follow to make it stick. Learn about why your studying techniques are terrible as well as principles such as spaced repetition, interleaved practice, massed cramming and so so much more. *

Ultralearning by Scott Young: Ultralearners are expert self-directed learners. Through understanding the way memory works, they learn things at seemingly incredible speeds. Young learned an entire four-year MIT master's degree in just 12 months by using Ultralearning principles. And you can too. In this book, Young explains his 9 step framework for becoming an Ultralearner. It won't be easy. Are you up for the task? *

🕊️Spirituality

Awareness by Anthony De Mello: Most people are asleep. They are having a nightmare during the day—every waking hour of their lives. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. Awareness is the only way to stop this. Mello slaps us, readers, in the face as we read through his text. And it works. We start the book unconscious and exit more alive than ever before.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle: The only moment there is and will ever be is now. And yet, most people live for the future. They say statements like, "once I get my assignment done," and "when the weekend hits." Statements like these are what cause us to be miserable right now. Tolle gives us some great advice on how to insert this idea deep into your soul and live a more present life.

Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl: What was it that led some people to survive the horrible containment camps in the holocaust while others couldn't take it. What in general leads some to seemingly get stronger in the face of obstacles and strife? Frankl believes the reasoning is meaning. A man with a good why can endure almost anyhow. *

The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer: What is the soul? What makes our thoughts so crazy and hard to understand? Why do some people seem to have insane energy and peace towards life while others don't? All of these questions are answered in this amazing spiritual text.  

💻Technology

The Inevitable by Ken Kesey: The future will be chaotic and hard to predict. The internet has changed the way society functions at the deepest level. However, in his book, Kesey defines twelve technological forces that will all stand true in the uncertain age ahead of us. It's a fascinating look into what the future might have in store and what we should do to prepare for it.

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport: Digital minimalism applies the belief that less can be more to our relationship with digital tools. We live in an age of information abundance but still have the genes we did as humans during the neolithic revolution. We weren't meant to keep track of hundreds of people on social media at once. Digital technology is ruining many people's lives. In his book, Newport describes some actionable protocols we can use to take back our lives. *

😎Self Improvement

Personal Socrates by Mark Champaigne: At any moment you are one question away from a life worth living. The ultimate dogma of life is then to find the questions worth asking. Fortunately, you don't have to. March Champaigne compiles some of the best questions he has ever asked or been asked when talking to some of the most inspiring and successful people in the world on his podcast. Champagne believes in the Socratic Method which models itself on teaching by asking questions. And if you truly answer the questions posed in the book, you will almost certainly have your life changed because of it.

Deep Work by Cal Newport: The most scarce recourse today is the ability to focus. Most people are completely incapable of sitting still for more than five minutes. Attention-grabbing technologies like social media, email, and even other people have taken over our lives. Newport describes how we can take our lives back and cultivate an ability to focus that will be crucial in the future. Newport explains the people who will succeed in the future are those that can work with access to capital, those who can work with machines, and those who can produce at an elite level. *

The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday: What makes some people wither in the face of obstacles and problems while some seem to get stronger? Holiday explains a three-part philosophy to how we can fight through the problems in our lives: perception, action, and will. The obstacle in the path becomes the path, the impediment to action becomes action. (YouTube Video)

The Road to Character by David Brooks: Since the end of World War 2 there has been an unsettling and steep drop in character among the older and younger generations. Especially in Western society, people have become more individual and independent thinking only in terms of their own wants and goals and never even asking the question of what would be better for society as a whole. Brooks gives examples of some of the most prominent characters from history and what we can learn from them to begin harboring character ourselves.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey: This is THE self-improvement book. Everyone should read this at some point during their reading journey. It defines seven habits that separate effective people from the rest of society. Reading this book won't tell you how to build these habits, but it will make you aware of them so you can take steps to build them in the coming months and years. *

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield: Resistance is what keeps artists from completing their craft. I still feel resistance every single day. Sometimes while I'm writing I think, "why the heck am I writing this, who is listening?" This is resistance. This book is a must read for any creative out there who wants to understand how to fight this mindset and come to work anyway. You can create great things. You just need to have the dedication to do so.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson: Many people go through life like they have a spotlight on them. Like everyone is watching their every move and whim. This leads them to staying in their comfort zone and never taking the leap toward their dreams and goals. Manson teaches us how to not give a fuck. How to live life unapologetically as you. Not to say you should do whatever you want and hurt others, but many shy people could use a little more confidence.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller: Life is like one gigantic story. Except most of the story is incredibly boring and nothing is happening. Years can go by and yet when you see an old time friend and they ask what you have done you say, "nothing." Miller came to the realization his life needed to change when a film crew asked to make a movie about his life and he realized it was utterly and totally monotonous. He embarked on a journey to make life more meaningful by crafting stories much the same way one makes a movie entertaining. His insights and stumbles along the way made me reflect on my own life and how I could make it more story like. *

Atomic Habits by James Clear: A enormous amount of what we do in life is unconscious behavior. In a sense, the small atomic habits we do every single day make us up. If our habits suck, our life will suck. Clear gives insight into why habits are so important and actionable advice into how we can build good habits and break bad ones. It's the best book on habit I have ever read. I even gifted it physically to two friends to help them with their habits and have taught a course on habit change to a high school class using this book as a backdrop. *

🏦Business

The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris: This book changed my outlook on money. Jane Doe makes $100,000 per year and is thus twice as rich as John Doe, who makes $50,000 per year. Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and time, usually hours. The whole “per year” concept is arbitrary and makes it easy to trick yourself. Ferris explains how we can craft a life of our own choosing by building passive income and freeing our time with his DEAL framework: Delegate, Eliminate, Automate, Liberate. *

Traction by Gina Wickman: The EOS framework is a business operating manual implemented by thousands of businesses across the globe to drastically increase their effectiveness. It doesn't just work in traditional business. I implemented this framework into my YouTube side hustle. If you are interested in business or want to improve on a business you already have, check out this book. I even got to meet for a free 90-minute session with a professional EOS implementor to discuss the EOS system in my YouTube side hustle. If you ever meet him, say hi to Stas! *

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber: The Entreprenuerial Myth  is that if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does technical work. This isn't true. A failure to make the distinction between these two things is why both businesses fail. This book changed the way I thought about business as a whole. Learn more about how to create a business the right way by reading the book.

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers: Stop saying yes to everything. If you don't want to scream "HELL YES!" to something, you should probably say no. We have too little time on this planet to do things we don't enjoy. Even better, out there is someone who loves doing what you hate. This means you can say no to things in your business if you have someone else who loves doing the task you said no to take over. You truly can have anything you want. (YouTube Video)

⛪Religion

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins: Dawkin's argues Religion as a whole is a sham. He goes through some of the most common religions of contemporary society, most namely Christianity, and dismantles their arguments, exposes their logical flaws, and emphasizes their pure ridiculousness. As an atheist, I agree with many of his points but still believe religion is a good thing if practiced responsibly. Many of my best friends are religious. Despite this fact, the book provides a fascinating argument for why we should get rid of religion.

💵Finance

Your Money The Missing Manual: This is the personal finance book you have been missing. It goes over everything from debt, credit, bank accounts, budgets, retirement, and so so much more. The best idea I got from this book was automating your finances. Instead of manually pulling some money from your checkings account and putting it into savings, set aside a percentage that goes in no matter what. This makes sure you start saving early without having to use willpower each time you do so. Also pay your credit every month for goodness sake!

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki: Kiyosaki grew up with two dads, one rich and one poor. One had a Phd and one dropped out of high school. In his book, he gives the wisdom he learned from both dads and tells the reader his best advice for creating wealth. The most important idea he shares is the importance of building assets over liabilities. Assets grow in worth over time without you having to do anything; in other words assets are passive income. Liabilites, however, cost you money over time without building any money in themselves; in other words liabilities are 95% of what people buy.

🎓Education

Nimble A Coaching Guide for Responsive Facilitation: Facilitation is the art of providing structure for people to make better decisions. "Everyone has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth." Anyone who runs meetings, coaches clients, teaches classes, or does any group work will love this book. It helped me not only with my teaching at Cornell but also gave me insight into how to have better class discussions as well.

Teaching Adults in Public Places by Edward W. Taylor: Adult learning is becoming much more prominent in the United States and other countries. Adults learn much differently from students. Generally they need to be told the why before learning something and have more of a diverse background compared to students. This book gives insight into how to teach adults in public settings compared to children inside of a school.

🔪Cooking

Betty Crocker's Cookbook by Betty Crocker: The ultimate guide to cooking every single type of thing imaginable. I used this book to learn how to cook in my cooking class at Cornell. We went through every type of cuisine from quick breads, to vegetables and fruit, to pasta, to meat, and much much more. It's chocked full of recipes you will love. Try some out at a dinner party!

🎒Academics

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised by Thomas C. Foster: How do English Professors read literature differently from laymen people? What allows them to get so much more out of a text than we do? Thomas C. Foster defines three things: memory, symbol, and pattern. By learning to find these three things in literature professors enjoy books more than the everyday person. But this doesn't mean you can't learn how to. Reading literature effectively is a skill that you can harbor over time.

They Say I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing by Berkenstein and Graff: Most people have no idea how to write and even more can't write academically. But academic writing can be taught and practiced. In this book, you will get actionable advice on how to write effectively and with style. You will also get a variety of useful templates you can copy and paste in your own writing to help get your started. Even if you aren't writing academically, this book could still be quite useful for you. I found it gave great insight into my blog post writing even though they are much different.

How to Win at College by Cal Newport: College is a big time in your life. This doesn't mean it's for everyone but if you are deciding to go out of high school or as an older adult, you should be ready. I found this book incredibly insightful into some thigns I should know before going. I came into Cornell with a large head start compared to most students and can confidently say I figured freshman year out before the end of the first half of the semester.

The Transition to College Writing by Keith Hjortshoj: College writing is nothing like high school writing. In high school, prompts were often clear and most people wrote the same structured essay over and over again, the footstool essay comprised of an intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. This won't cut it in college. Not only will your essays have to be better written, insightful, and structured differently, but you will also have to understand how to read and write differently for all of the classes you are taking. No more writing only English essays.

🌍Environmentalism

The Third Plate by David Barber: When most people think of climate change, they think of the land. Animal products like beef, cows, and chickens, as well as airplanes and fossil fuels. Barber argues a lot of harm to the planet is being done to the oceans. And the problem comes from seeing the oceans as separate from the land. The systems are interconnected. You will enter this book not putting much thought into the oceans creatures, and might exit as the next big environmental activist.

🌦️Weather

The Secret World of Weather by Tristan Gooley: Everyone experiences weather on a daily basis. Most of the time we check our phones and see what the weather report is like for the next week. But meteorologists only know what the weather will be like at the macroscale. Only you can know the secret world of weather happening right in your surrounding location. This book teaches you how to use the signs all around you from the sky, land, sea, and animals to predict with uncanny accuracy what the weather will be in the next couple of days. *

📚Notetaking/Reading

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler: You can't read. Most people can only read at an elementary level. But reading can be so much more. By implementing the four levels of reading into your reading habit, you can derive vastly more value from the routine. You will remember more, enjoy it more, and better able to find good books to read next after finishing this marvelous book. This book genuinely changed the way I thought of reading. I couldn't recommend it more to anyone serious about adopting lifelong learning. If you want to learn more about building a reading habit, check out my course, Building a Reading Habit (BRH) (YouTube Video) *

How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens: Most people don't know how to take notes. This book goes in depth into notetaking principles that will allow you to capture insightful ideas and give them time to grow for possible use down the line. This book was the precursor to the modern day second brain movement and should be respected as such. Although I do think How to Build a Second Brain by Tiago Forte is much more concise and useful, everyone who wants a glimpse on the past should read this book.

Show Your Work by Austin Kleon: My learning speed and quality changed once I made a commitment to learn in public; Showing your work is all about the power that comes from doing so. By creating a catalog of your work online you open yourself to opportunities you never knew existed. You can use it as resume material for jobs as well as for proof of your expertise in your area. You will attract likeminded individuals to your work and forge lifelong friendships. You can create a podcast, book, YouTube Channel, Blog, newsletter, or a million other things. This book should be read by anyone serious about starting a lifelong learning journey. *

The Art of Reading by Damon Young: This is the best book on reading I have ever read. It's not as actionable as How to Read by Mortimer J. Adler but delves deep into reading philosophy. What makes reading beautiful? How are we shaped by the books we read? Young fits the various positives and negatives of reading under Aristotle's quintessential virtues: patience, courage, pride, temperance, and justice. Each chapter is devoted to one virtue, and he delves deep into how reading is its emulation. It's an underrated book that provides a fascinating view into the art of reading. You have to be up for the task before starting as it's quite dense and difficult to read. However, the value you will derive if you do so is incredible. *

✍️Writing

Intuitive Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin: Revising and editing. Ehhh. Most creative writers, if they even edit, treat this step as the worst part of the process. But editing is often where the writer's writing blossoms. I often spend five times as long on the editing step than on the rough drafting step. Martin goes over her creative editing flow by looking at her story on a macrolevel scale, microlevel, and finally a line editing scale. This creative editing process won't just enlighten your creative writing skills but help you in other creative arts as well.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser: Writing is an ancient and relatively unchanging craft. This is why the biggest asset you have as a writer is yourself. Zinsser explains how you can use your unique voice to write well in every type of non-fiction medium like a memoir, sports, family history, etc. He also goes into some of the most important laws of writing good prose. Interestingly, he explains writing non-fiction isn't that far off from writing good literature. Non-fiction should also be interesting, storylike, energetic, and humorous. There is no reason why non-fiction has to be boring to read.

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose: Creative writing is easy to get into but incredibly difficult to master. Once you get to the top level teirs the game completely changing. Specific word choice matters, sentence placement, paragraph structure, dialogue, details, narration, worldbuilding, plot, all become integral to the enjoyment value of the story. In this book you will learn exactly what goes into writing fantastic fiction and get brought through excerpts of some of the greatest literature of history.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott: Beginner writers often make the mistake of trying to write a finished essay first draft. This is not how effective writing works. Many of the greatest writers of history took years to write and rewrite their books. In Bird by Bird Anne Lamott brings forth a writing philosophy which advocates for taking things bird by bird. Instead of trying to force out a glorious piece of prose off the bat, create the shittiest rough draft you have ever seen and rewrite it later on. This advice applies not only to writing but to life in general.

🧑‍🦳Biography

Daily Rituals by Mason Curry: What were the habits of some of the most creative and inspiring artists of history? All of this and more is answered in Mason Curry's book. I found some of the routine and habits of creatives incredibly insightful for my own creative pursuits. You will also learn some things you wish you hadn't. Søren Kierkegaard, the great danish philosopher, filled his coffee cup to the brim with granulated sugar before adding in his black coffee in the morning. I will never be able to look at his work the same. (YouTube Video) *

Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance:  Love him or hate him, this man is on a mission. In this epic biography we learn about Elon from a whole different lens. Instead of hearing about him through media trends like shouting at his workers during meetings, we learn about his life philosophy and entire backstory. You might still hate him coming out of the book, but you will also feel an overwhelming sense of inspiration. Go save the world!

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard: After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt decided to embark on a journey down an uncharted tributary in the Amazon Rainforest. He and his unprepared crew faced pirhanas, indians, and most dangerously the jungle itself. This book battles not only with the danger of exploration and the fear of the unknown, but sheds incredible insight into the human psychi. I honestly can't believe this is a true story. *

Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro: Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.

🧙Ficton/Fantasy/Sci-fi

🗝️History

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari: A comprehensive recount of the history of homo sapiens. It covers the Cognitive Revolution that made us smart enough to make tools and fire which brought us to the top of the food chain. It covers the agricultural revolution that skyrocketed the population around the globe and unified the human race together. It goes over the Scientific Revolution starting with the printing press. Finally, it ends on the modern electrical age of the internet and the future. Interestingly, I found the book gives profound insights into human psychology, economics, and a ton of other disciplines other than anthropology through its historical recount. This makes it worth it to read even for people not invested in anthropology. **

The Lessons of History by Will Durant: A short entry into anyone who wants to dip their toes into history. It goes over some of the most important universal lessons we can learn by analyzing the civilizations of history. Perhaps more interesting than the lessons from the past is how we can utilize them now to make better decisions in the future.

🦄Fantasy

The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson: By far my favorite fantasy series I have ever read. It's no understatement to say this is the modern day Lord of the Rings. The series begins by focusing on a small area of the continent of Roshar in Alith Kar, the Shattered Plains, and Kharbranth. We follow Kaladin, Dalinar, and Shallan as they trek through a dangerous land pelted with recurring high storms, mythical creatures, and magic of many kinds. As the series goes on, however, the reader quickly realizes the scope of Sanderson's masterpiece and the ramifications it has on not only all of Roshar but the entire Cosmere as a whole (every one of Sanderson's books are part of a large universe called the Cosmere. They are all interrelated in small subtle ways). *

Three Blade Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie: This is the darkest series I have ever read. You will find something to hate in every single character in the books. Every character brings something unique to the table and each one is part of a completely different strung of the social ladder. My favorite character is Glockta, a retired war general turned cripple turned torturer. The book is a fantastic commentary on the nature of humans and social class. *

The Gentleman Bastard Trilogy by Scott Lynch: This series has the most real friendship I have ever seen in a book. Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen make each other whole. Lock is a sneaky, conspiring, devilishly intelligent thief while Jean is a kind hearted, honest, physical specimen. The series largely explores the grand plots the friends accidently and purposefully tie themselves into and then have to get out. *

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo: The story follows a thieving crew and is primarily set in the city of Ketterdam, loosely inspired by Dutch Republic–era Amsterdam. I'm Dutch so of course I loved this book. And what's even better is it's a heist plot. Kaz, one of the main characters and criminal masterminds, is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson: What if the world was almost entirely devoid of color? And what if some select people in the world had the power to see color and use it for magical devices through breath? This is a question Sanderson explores in another one of his fantastic Fantasy novels. Warbreaker tells the story of two Idrian princesses, Vivenna and Siri. They both have completely different personalities which leads them to trouble inside the city of Hallandren; the residence of the God King. The plot is a phenomenal commentary on politics.

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski: Geralt is a Whitcher, a trained monster killer hired to protect the world from all sorts of magical creatures. Except, most of the world despises him and doesn't think they need his help. The story follows Geralt on a series of adventures as he meets some of the most memorable characters in fantasy.

🚀Sci-Fi

The Skyward Series by Brandon Sanderson: Spensa's world has been under attack for decades. Now pilots are the heroes of what's left of the human race, and becoming one has always been Spensa's dream. Since she was a little girl, she has imagined soaring skyward and proving her bravery. But her fate is intertwined with her father's--a pilot himself who was killed years ago when he abruptly deserted his team, leaving Spensa's chances of attending flight school at slim to none. This series is an amazing commentary of courage, finding your path, and relationships.

The Martian by Andy Weir: Imagine if you were sent with a crew of highly trained astronauts to be the first on a mission to Mars. In the first couple of weeks after landing a terrible storm hits and forces your crew to abandon the mission early and escape off planet. But you didn't make it to the ship in time and got trapped on a uninhabited, dangerous, and barren wasteland while waiting for rescue from a crew you didn't even have a guarantee would turn back and come get you. Well you don't have too! The Martian follows Mark Watney, plant biologist, as he uses his unique skillset to survive alone on Mars. *

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: The sun is getting hotter. And if nothing is done to figure out why or how, the world will become an uninhabitable wasteland in the next 40 years. Luckily some evidence of the source of the disaster has been spotted in a far off galaxy and there is a conveniently placed wormhole to take humans there. Project Hail Mary is an epic adventure following Ryland Grace, a high school teacher turned astronaut, as he tries to save humanity. *

The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: A cult classic. This book is an incredible commentary on what it means to be human and what the purpose of life is. It is an adventure that takes place on a small ship but at the same time spans the galaxy. The humor in this book is so unique I can't translate it into words. *

⌚Fiction

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster: For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason. This book reinvigorated in me my childhood curiosity and love of learning that seems to be gone from most people of society today.

Novella

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig: Two chess masters from completely different social classes come together to battle on a ship. On the outside, it's a book about a game of chess. But when you look further, Chess Story reveals itself to be an expert commentary on class division, education, monomania, trauma, and so so much more.

Novel

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Do some people deserve to die? It's a hard question but is explored in this classic novel. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft all in the name of doing something greater with the money from the person he kills. The novel is an incredible commentary on redemption, guilt, and sin.

Manga

One Piece Eiichiro Oda: Pirates. Need I say more. One Piece follows the adventures of Luffy as he tries to forge a pirate crew from the ground up during the Golden Age of pirates. He is in search of the One Piece, an ancient treasure hidden by the legendary pirate Gold Roger. It's the most popular Manga ever written and especially relevant in the East. *

Vinland Saga Makoto Yukimura: Fifteen years ago the Viking commander, Thors Snorresson, deserted and commenced a peaceful life in Iceland with his wife Helga. Now, in the year 1002, their young son, Thorfinn, longs to see the paradise called Vinland. It's an epic commentary on anger, revenge, and friendship with a tinge of Viking tied in.

Memoir

Educated by Tara Westover: Tara didn't grow up with an education. She lived with her parents in Buck's Peak Idaho on their peaceful isolated mountain. Her family was incredibly religious and believed all sorts of things most people in modern society would find ridiculous. For most of her childhood, Tara was fine with this life. But as she got old enough for college, she hungered for the outside world. The bulk of the story focuses on the conflict that occurs when she decides to go shed ties with her parents and go out for education. It is an insightful commentary on religion, education, and behavioral psychology. *

📝Articles

🌏Society and Philosophy

Teaching Like a State: The education system has stagnated because of the increase in standardization. As Tyler Cowen showed in The Great Stagnation, there has been no significant improvement in the average reading score for 17-year-olds since 1971 or the average mathematics score since 1973. One of the main reasons is because of the grade metrics we measure students off. Goodhart's Law states when a metric becomes a goal it fails to be a good metric. Students prioritize raising their grades instead of actually learning. Instead, we should teach like a state. Take Amsterdam for instance. It evolved over centuries and has some of the most chaotic and strange roads in any city in the world. Instead of being an annoyance, it's what gives Amsterdam its heart and character. Rigidity and uniformity destroy curiosity in the classroom. We should teach like a state. Allow students to start their own self-projects and be willing to go against the mold.

Chapter 1: A Theory of Agency: The defining characteristic of humanity is mimesis: the capacity to imitate. Rene Girard, the founder of this Mimetic theory, takes this single psychological capacity and treats it as constitutive of a seemingly endless array of social phenomena. Mimesis is everything to humans because it almost always acts unconsciously. Often we imitate the desire of others without even noticing. Understanding the power of mimesis won't necessarily solve our mimetic desires but it let us put ourselves in situations where we are less likely to fall for negative mimetic impulses. In other words, it allows us to craft our environment more mindfully. **

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Maslow defines growth and deficiency needs in his hierarchy. Deficiency needs are things that we will be worse off without. Growth needs often come about after deficiency needs are satisfied and we have the capabilities of pursuing other rewards. Interestingly, some people will follow the hierarchy differently depending on what they prioritize as more important than others. But the most interesting need for me is self-actualization which is at the end of the list. This is where we try to find our meaning, reach our potential, and self actualize ourselves

The Future of Education Is Community: The Rise of Cohort-Based Courses - Forte Labs: The future of education is changing with the rise of online cohort courses. Before online education was a thing, universities had a monopoly on education and college degrees were practically required to get a worthwhile job in anything. Now, the internet has expanded the number of ways you can learn things. Throughout its history Massive Open Online Courses came about, followed by the Marketplaces, followed by Toolkits, and finally, now we have online cohort courses. Online cohort courses are likely to become larger and larger in the education scene because of their ability to harbor four attributes so well: impact, accountability, community and interaction.

Peter Thiel's Religion - David Perell: A fascinating account of Peter Thiel's religion which can be summed up in one sentence: don't copy your neighbors. It delves deep into Mimetic Theory first posed by Rene Girard which theorizes that all humans are master imitators. We imitate others in the pursuit of finding what we want to do in life. Through this imitation, we fall for short-term thinking and adopt aspirations that are less than inspirational. We don't lack genius in society, we lack the courage to follow outwardly audacious goals and the long-term thinking necessary to do so. Too many of our best minds are going to college and falling into fields such as investment banking, business consulting, and law. What can we do to build toward a positive future? How does Christianity fit into Thiel's worldview? What is the secret to success through collaboration rather than competition? All of this and more are revealed in this groundbreaking article. **

Considering Considerateness: Why Communities of Do-Gooders Should Be Exceptionally Considerate - Centre for Effective Altruism: This article makes a case for why all communities should hold considerateness as a cardinal virtue even when it sacrifices short term progress. The main argument is that by being overly considerate, we foster a culture of altruism that leads to long-term benefits. In the short term, helping others in our community can be detrimental. However, by fostering a culture of altruism we build relationships with others inside and outside the community, increase our communities' social capital, and increase our communities' individual members' career capital. **

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System: Everything in life is built up of systems. The point at which it's most effective to intervene in a system is a leverage point. But some qualities of a system are more often leverage points than others. In this article, you will learn about the twelve different common leverage points in order of increasing effectiveness. I found it incredibly insightful in my own life because it reminded me how much of life is a combination of systems coming together. The effectiveness of a person in one sense is a direct correlation with the number of feedback systems in their life. **

The Myth of the Myth of the Lone Genius: This article is so self-aware that it's not even funny. The first half of the article explains the myth of the lone genius which falsifies the perception that geniuses are all hermits who come to amazing ideas that change the world through thinking in solitude. This is gobbledegook. The second half of the article, however, explains the problems with overly spreading the myth of the lone genius. It stops many would-be geniuses from solving groundbreaking world problems as they don't believe working on their own is possible. We need a balance. Most people will not solve things on their own and should instead work through things collaboratively. This being said, we also need to have moments where we can sit in our own thoughts in deep focus. The best of both worlds.

Doing Good Together: How to Coordinate Effectively, and Avoid Single-Player Thinking: This article taught me how important it is to drop ones ego when thinking about a community. Most problems in life are miscommunication errors. This article delves deep into how we can organize and build effective communities by utilizing some of the most time-tested economic principles. Some of the main takeaways are the importance of being kind to others inside and outside your community for the sake of being kind, the importance of specialization, setting up clear communication channels, and avoiding the cancer of single-player thinking when making choices that could affect your community as a whole. It's a long read but fantastic for anyone interested in helping out their community or communities in a more effective way. **

The Audio Revolution: What type of media do you consume the most of? Text, Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. What if I told you the media you consume the most is audio. And it comes from YouTube listening with headphones on. In this article, the author argues consuming the amount of audio we do is creating a low thrum of anxiety throughout people's lives. And after discovering this for himself, he stopped listening to podcasts. During the journey to get to this point, he goes through some fascinating literature on cognitive science, information theory, and many other things.

Should You Go to College?: The cost of college tuition is only getting higher and higher. And the number of people with one is only increasing. Is it still worth it to go? This paper argues that for most the answer is still yes. However, college is no longer the default path. Entrepreneurs, businessmen, or artists, won't get nearly as much out of college as someone like an engineer. Going to college requires a careful weighing of decisions from what college you are going to, your major, and what interests you.

Peter Thiel's Religion: Peter Thiel has one of the most interesting life philosophies I have ever come across. There are four major parts to his philosophy. First, he believes in Mimetic theory which states that we are imitation machines and we shouldn't copy our neighbors. Second, short-term thinking brought about from the construction of time brings pain. Third, the future is not guaranteed. And fourth, there are secrets yet to discover that will change the world. The entire essay blends together Christian thought, with David Perell's (the author) own unique taking on Thiel's thoughts. It's long but well worth it. You won't exit the same person. **

🤖Business and Tech

Career Capital: How Best to Invest in Yourself: Career capital is your unique set of skills, experience, knowledge, and connections that primes you for quality work in certain careers. One of the larger problems faced by college students today is whether to build transferable or specialized career capital. Specialized career capital means you build connections, experience, knowledge, and skills in a specific area you can't necessarily use in another discipline. Transferable career capital is building career capital that can be transferred across a wide range of disciplines. Which one sounds like the right fit for you? Both are legitimate options. The article gives a variety of strategies you can go by to invest in either strategy.

The Price of Discipline: Most children grow up hating school because of the endless set of obligatory activities with no self projects. Instead of learning things for their own sake, the most driven, talented, and smart people, get pulled to generally low impact jobs like management consulting, investment banking, and law; these jobs can be high impact but they usually aren't. This is the price of discipline.

How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You) — Wait but Why: Tim Urban never fails to bring some humor to a hard topic like a career choice. Your work is a massive portion of what you do in life. Because of this, you need to make sure you do something which you love and you feel you have an impact on. Urban defines some ways you can do so by creating imaginative and fun ideas to frame his actionable advice. Read more of the article to learn about the yearning octopus, the want box, the shelf of prioritization, and so so much more.

💡Creativity and Learning

Introducing the MESA Method: Creating the Ideal Work Experience: The MESA method is a fascinating work method where 12-16 exerts gather in a small room with a table for five days and work on crafting a deliverable for some sort of project. Every part of the process is set with intention. The room has the bare minimum aesthetics, the food is healthy, each person gets a certain amount of paper based on how much was pre-estimated to be used, and there are no clocks. The work experience is built to be an intersection of commitment and pleasure. The term "MESA" itself means table in Portuguese and like the MESA method, a table is often also an intersection between commitment and pleasure. I highly suggest people check out further parts of this brilliant five-part series from Tiago on the MESA Method.

Supersizing the Mind: The Science of Cognitive Extension: Our minds utilize the external landscape to save energy by keeping things out of memory. Tiago argues one big bottleneck on human performance is context. We need to stop focusing so much on more digital notetaking tools to help us externalize information. The tools are not the problem--we are. Instead, we should build mental models, practical techniques, and training, to improve epistemic skills.

The Fractal-Summary Method: How to Digest Great Books: David believes to truly understand great books you have to engage with them on a deeper level than most are willing to go. For David, this means going through his Fractal book summary method for sometimes over 300 hours on a single book. It involves summarizing while reading the book from the level of the book to the chapter to sometimes even every sentence. He works off the philosophy you should be actively summarizing long before you finish the book. I agree that book summarization is a fantastic way to derive insights from a book but personally don't think 300 hours is necessary unless it's the best book you have ever read.

Schopenhauer: On Reading and Books: Reading requires thinking. The person who spends all day in intervals of thoughtless diversion will not have original and useful thoughts of their own. Outside of your reading habit, you must think upon what you have read and connect it to other ideas.

The Wiki Strategy: How to Grow Your Blog to 100k+ Monthly Visitors - Nat Eliason: Write your blog as if it's a personal Wikipedia. Ideally, you want to get to a point where anyone who comes to your site gets the best articles on the internet in your niche and can stay on your site for a long time as they go down your preset question-and-answer rabbit hole. One thing I love about this article is it goes against the classic advice that you should spend 80% of your time on marketing and 20% on creation. That's a horrible idea. You shouldn't try and promote shit writing. Don't worry about promotion if you feel you are wasting people's time by reading your article. There are too many good things on the internet to distract someone with your shit post. Aside from this, the article gives a great few tips and strategies for setting up your blog.

The Yoga of Eating: Food as a Source of Information - Forte Labs: Like your body, your brain needs continuous healthy sustenance to perform effectively. Just like how you are what you eat you are what you consume on the internet. This article goes over a monk-like way of thinking about your eating as well as what you consume online. It also talks about listening to what your body is telling you. As yourself questions before working. Do you want to do this work right now? Do you want to keep using this productivity technique? Be fine with it if you shed the habit to open a new you.

The 4 Identities of a Teacher: Reporter, Expert, Mentor, Role Model - Forte Labs: Tiago defines four modes of teaching we can go through in our lives. Most people only go through the first two, if that. The first is a reporter in which you are a beginner in your field of study. The second is an expert in which you begin giving people the best information rather than just what you know. The third is a mentor in which you transition from accumulating knowledge for yourself and start focusing on helping others in your growing field build systems to become experts themselves. Finally, we have the role model in which you scale your mentorship to the level of thousands or millions by becoming an online influencer.

Podcast Time Travel: What I Learned From Listening to 100 Episodes of the SPI Podcast - Forte Labs: In our modern internet economy, people tend to prioritize the NOW. Tiago decided to fight against this trend and listen to 100 old episodes of the SPI podcast hosted by Pat Flynn. He gained a ton of insights like the importance of building relationships with others in your niche, the value of removing yourself from the time urgency of now, and the power of immersing yourself in someone else's body of work. Even more interestingly, however, he came to some philosophical conclusions on how to live a good life as well.

What Should You Write About?: Don't feel like you have to know what to write about before you get started. David often figures out what he wants to say weeks after writing a piece. But writing is a fantastic way to learn. The pressure of trying to distill something to be useful for others will make you understand it much more.

Your Infinity Machine: You are more unique than you could possibly imagine. Everything you consume is filtered through your background, family, education, and place. Nobody will ever consume the same things as you and even if they did they would get different things out of them. It's easy to forget your brain is a supercomputer. The internet allows us to express our uniqueness in the most wonderful of ways.

The Beginning of Infinity Part 1: Naval explains we are at the beginning of an infinite pool of knowledge. This is because anything that can be understood can be understood. Using the four fundamental theories from science and outside science: quantum theory, the theory of computation, evolution by natural selection, and epistemology, we can understand anything. Knowledge is power. Through knowledge, we make up resources that didn't even exist like turning Uranium into nuclear power and solar rays into energy. But progression isn't guaranteed. To continue adding to our knowledge we have to create more and more explanations for phenomena while continuing to question the theories we already have.

The Three B's of Creativity: Creativity tends to come in periods of relaxation proceeded by focused thinking. There are three Bs to this process. Bed represents sleep. Bath represents leisure. Bus represents movement. With all three you will have more inspiration in your work than you ever thought possible.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online - David Perell: My favorite idea from this article is writing online creates a serendipity vehicle which is a magnet for ideas, opportunities, and connections you didn't even know existed when people start to read your stuff online. The best way to start a writing career is to build a personal monopoly on one type of information and discuss every aspect of it. The food, psychology, history, culture, etc. I highly recommend this article to anyone serious about writing online. *

Why You Should Write - David Perell: People are starving for good quality ideas on the internet. We are experiencing a paradox of abundance. The quality of great content is getting higher while simultaneously more terrible content is being spread as well. One of the content streams particularly starving is writing. But why should we write? Writing well is like weightlifting for the brain. Some of the coolest people David has met have been through his writing. But most importantly, when you know you're going to write, you change the way you live. You no longer sleepwalk through life. *

How to Cure Writer's Block - David Perell: Writer's block is fixed simply by starting with abundance. Have so many ideas on the screen that it's impossible not to write. David accomplishes this by collecting notes outside of his writing. This can be from things he reads, conversations he has, or views he sees while traveling. When he sits down to write, he uses a two-screen strategy with a blank page on the left and an entire catalog of ideas organized in an outline on the right. Writer's block is the last of his problems.

Riding the Writing Wave - David Perell: A comprehensive account of the steps of writing. My biggest takeaways were writing and editing should be separate, be concise with what you say, and focus on the process, not the outcome. For anyone who struggles with writer's block, David's writing framework creates the opposite problem; you have too many ideas! This article gave me the writing process I use today. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to write better essays. *

21 Tactics to Help You Become a Better Writer - Nat Eliason: Some of the coolest ideas I learned was the use of a banned words list to get rid of unnecessary words in your writing, the idea that writing well is often a case of figuring out what to subtract rather than add, deleting your adverbs, and making sure you don't use the same word too many times in a row. I also heard something I had never heard anywhere else. If you are writing and get stuck on a certain section, add a TK and move on to a section you know you can still write about. TK isn't a part of any word in the English language meaning you can ctrl+f after when you're ready to go back to the section you were stuck on and find it easily. Likely, your subconscious worked on it while you were writing another section and your writer's block is gone.

304: What You Should Write About: You don't have to know everything about the topic you are writing about. Writing is in itself an act of thinking. By distilling the information in a way others will resonate with you are forcing yourself to come to a deeper understanding of the information yourself.  

50 Ideas That Changed My Life - David Perell: A collection of 50 of the most interesting ideas David has come across while writing and conversing about the things he is interested in. I would recommend going through this list and finding the things that pop out to you. Then search up some more resources related to those things and read more about them. This article can serve as a home page for learning more about some of the world's most interesting ideas. *

Imitate, Then Innovate - David Perell: Most aspiring creatives have the originality disease: a pervasive plague that makes them feel scared to imitate in any way. David argues that people are scared of innovation because of the dreaded plagiarism hammered into us during high school. But we also value originality because it's promoted by modern science, the self-centered western society of today, and we believe creativity comes from thinking about original ideas. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Innovation most commonly happens through imitating someone you admire and bringing in new ideas to the work. *

The Price of Discipline - David Perell: Most children hate school as they grow up because it gives students an endless set of obligatory activities without any self-projects. And yet, parents still send kids to College as the default course in life. Many boomers think it's the "safe" option. Unfortunately, the most driven, talented, and smart students are often getting pulled into generally low-impact jobs like management consulting, investment banking, and law; it's not that these jobs can't be high impact but that they usually aren't. This is the price of discipline. *

What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?: Design thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand underlying motivations, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and attempt to identify alternative strategies. It works in five stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. The essential difference between design thinking and other scientific methods is it puts importance on the psychology of why we do things. Human beings are confusing creatures. Sometimes I don't even know why I am doing what I am doing.

Fiction vs Non-Fiction, a handful guide for better reading: There has long been a fight between non-fiction and fiction in the reading community. It's misguided to think one comes out over the other. Like your hands, both are necessary to function throughout your day. While you might prefer one hand over the other if you are right-handed, for instance, it would be a great disservice to ignore fiction or non-fiction entirely.

The Case for Reading Fiction: The quality of our reading stands as an index for the quality of our thought. Reading great fiction makes you think. But it also builds qualitative skills. Skills like self-awareness, self-discipline, creative problem-solving, empathy, learning agility, positivity, rational judgment, generosity, and kindness among others. The characters, plots, and settings help anchor difficult discussions. Employers often find it hard to evaluate these skills and there are few better ways to show you have them than through your love of reading fiction regularly.

Reading Fiction Improves Brain Connectivity and Function: Reading fiction builds empathy. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the characters who are often facing completely different struggles in their life than you do. Fiction also builds theory of mind which is the ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, intents, desires, pretending knowledge, etc.--oneself and the understanding that others can do this too. However, some people misuse fiction. In combination with non-fiction, it can balance out a reading diet. But some people use fiction as a way to escape the world. This can be easily seen with fiction being vastly more popular in the reading space than non-fiction.

How to Better Remember What You Read: Truly great books should be read multiple times over your life. Every time you pick it up it will seem different to you. You yourself have changed as a person and come at it with an entirely new perspective. Another insight I enjoyed from this article was the idea of context matching. The strategy works by asking yourself what would be relevant to you right now before picking up your next book.

Hyper Publishing - David Perell: Hyper publishing is becoming the new best way to succeed online. If you repurpose and reuse old content, notes, emails, conversations, etc, you can start to create more and more quality information at an ever-increasing rate. The internet allows us to build trust at scale. Once you get big on one distribution channel it allows you to publicize another which only makes you bigger. This is hyper publishing. Becoming a Thought Leader on the internet by utilizing the cardinal principle of Economics: attack the market where demand is high and supply is low. The internet is starving for interesting ideas. Be the person who gives it to them. *

Why Books Don't Work: You read a book for weeks on end almost to remember none of it a month or two later. What happened? This is the question this article answers. It also delves into why lecturing as a mode of teaching is terrible for much the same reasons books don't work. The solution is metacognition: thinking about your thinking. While reading you have to purposefully ask yourself questions to engage with the text. Much of this is talked about in my video on How to Read by Mortimer J. Adler.  . Andy and a co-author also bring up a new way of reading books they think is better than this method. They wrote a book called Quantum Country which goes into Quantum Computing. Instead of reading this book passively as most people would do, they added in fun questions asked during the reading process which test should promote active reading. *

What Are Some Tips for Advanced Writers? How Do You Push Your Writing Into "Excellency" Territory?: A fantastic article if you are at all serious about writing. The best insight I got is the quality of your writing doesn't come from how much you write but from how much you rewrite. Great writers spend 50-90% of their work rewriting especially if it's a work they want to be great. In addition, there are four types of writing: idea first non-fiction writing, writing first non-fiction writing, idea first fiction writing, and writing fiction writing. Idea first writing is your ability to express a whole variety of ideas in an interesting and cohesive manner. Writing first writing deals with your ability to write things with the precise wording and phrasing necessary to deepen the complexity of your writing. You have to choose one to prioritize. It's almost impossible to be both at an expert level without insane levels of practice. I'm definitely an idea first writer. Most of my essays follow a blog post style where I try and say things as simple as possible while at the same time talking about interesting ideas. *

🔬History, Science, and Math

What the Hell Is Going On? - David Perell: Commerce, Education, and Politics as industries are all going to shit at the exact same time. What the hell is going on? This is the question David answers in his fascinating article. He explains this is largely happening because of the transition from a state of information scarcity to information abundance from the internet. As big brands in commerce, universities, and political parties lose their power, entrepreneurs and influencers who create micro brands targeted at individuals will take over the world. **

🎧Podcasts

🗣️Conversational Podcasts:

🔦Tim Ferris Show:

First, we have The Tim Ferris Show, the most popular podcast other than Joe Rogan, and it's not hard to see why. Even though I have only listened to 20 podcast episodes, every single one changed my life in some way. It's less about the information it gives and more about the wonderful people you meet. Tim doesn't have a defined topic he talks about. He simply invites the most successful and interesting people from all areas of life and has a conversation with them.

One of my favorite episodes is 555 with Oliver Burkeman on his book 4000 weeks. This came at a time in my life when I was struggling with Toxic Productivity. Reading this book helped immensely. I also loved episode 554 with Jerry Colonna and his thoughts on relaxation through sabbaticals. Finally, you should check out episode 544 with Debbie Millman, who explains how to design a life worth living.

Tim Ferris himself is also fascinating. He has some episodes talking to the camera alone and spouting his wisdom. I particularly enjoyed his episode on taking a yearly review. It helped me fill 2022 with things I love doing and retract from stuff I hate. Outside of the podcast, he has written some of the most influential books I have ever read, like the Four Hour Work Week.

🧠Hidden Brain:

Next up we have Hidden Brain which is hosted by Shankar Vedanta. Hidden Brain is unique to other conversational podcasts in its use of storytelling. Can we stop and admire this man's name as well: Shankar Vedantam. I love saying that name.

I have listened to 10 episodes of Hidden Brain because Shankar's talking style is so engaging. He uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns driving human behavior. He and his guest's use of storytelling is an integral part of the podcast making it one of the most entertaining to listen. Some of my favorite episodes of his were "What Makes Relationships Thrive," "Creatures of Habit," and "The One-Room Commute.

⭐The North Star Podcast:

Next up we have the North Star Podcast which is hosted by David Perell. David interviews creatives and online educators to try and come to an understanding of what goes into a creative habit and how we can make online education better. He is also great friends with Tiago Forte and sometimes they will make episodes of them talking to each other about notetaking and life. Out of all of the podcast I listen to I find myself highlighting this one the most; especially the episodes between David and Tiago.    

Some of my favorite episodes:

Andy Matuschak: Designing Education: Most people don't complete educational courses even if they buy them. It's up to the people who design the courses to make them as fun and engaging as possible so this rate goes up. Three of the ways David accomplishes this in his course are through raising costs, integrating catch-up mechanisms, and adding accountability mentors.

Ryan Holiday: Timeless Lessons From History: Writers work out their issues by writing about others. If you look at what much of writing in history has been about it often has deep ties to the problem the author is going through at the time. During this episode, David and Ryan explore how their writing reflects this idea and discuss other lessons from history as well. They explain why following current news is frivolous, tips for writing, and also give us the unnecessary fact that Winston Churchill used to dictate naked.

Tiago Forte: The Future of Education: Online cohort courses could be the future of education. They allow you to find others who are interested in what you do and connect with them. The problem is producing online courses at scale. It's hard to scale transformation. But Tiago and David discuss a plethora of ideas they have to make it work. One is using the theory of constraints to reveal problems in their courses and fix them. Another is utilizing their second brains notes to create things at a much faster rate than anyone else they know. Along the way, they discuss fascinating concepts in information science, business, and a whole bunch of other useful life philosophies.

📨The Nathan Barry Show

Next up, we have the Nathan Barry Show, with Nathan Barry. Nathan is the owner of the newsletter platform ConvertKit which is the same newsletter platform I use for my email newsletters. He interviews other creatives on their journeys to becoming successful creators. Along the way, you learn many valuable tips and tricks you can implement into your own creative side hustle.

Some of my favorite episodes are:

051: Sean McCabe - Launch a Successful Business by Starting With Writing" from The Nathan Barry Show: You need to change what a day's success is based on the day. As a writer, it can be easy to get caught in the mindset that you always have to be writing. But this is a quick way to get burned out. In fact, Nathan argues as a writer you should be in therapy. It helps you uncover the motivations for why you do things, the things that give you drive, and the psychological phenomena which operate under the surface.   Apart from this enlightening advice on writing, there are many other great tips given in this article on building a creative side hustle.

💡The Knowledge Project:

Next up, we have The Knowledge Project, with Shane Parrish. He interviews world-class doers and thinkers so you can utilize what they have learned in your own life. I have listened to 12 episodes of the Knowledge Project. I love it because Shane often interviews those doing creative things like me: writing, reading, or creating of some sort. In addition, Shane tends to talk more about philosophy than some other podcasts. So often we idolize those that are intelligent and creative, but what are their lives really like? This podcast gives insight into how it feels at the "top."

One of the episodes I resonated with was "Ryan Holiday: The Stoic Life.” Ryan talks about his book creation process and how he organizes his day for deep work. I want to write a book at some point and this episode gives some insight into what it's really like. I also loved his episode on "Curiosity Fuels Creativity" and "William Irvine: How to Live a Stoic Life.

Some of my favorite episodes are:

The Angel Philosopher: One of the best podcasts I have ever listened to on Naval Ravikant's Life philosophy. He talks about the art of reading. Read books that excite you while treating them like blog posts. You don't have to read everything. He talks about happiness. Happiness and meaning are different for everyone. Suffering comes from a desire for what we don't have. He talks about education. The problems with education are we still work off a scarcity of knowledge and school doesn't teach kids some of the most basic parts of life. Finally, he talks about Economics. Macro anything is almost always a sham as the world is too complicated to generalize. I highly recommend people check this one out.

🦈Deep Dive:

Next up, we have Deep Dive with Ali Abdal. In this podcast, fellow YouTuber and Entrepreneur, Ali Abdal delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people. He has conversations with guests from wide-ranging areas around the five pillars of a good life: health, wealth, love, happiness, and impact.

I have listened to 11 episodes of Deep Dive and Ali Abdal has been the most significant influence on my entire life. I started my YouTube channel back in March of 2021, primarily due to his video on showing your work. I took part in Cohort 4 of his Part-Time YouTuber Academy which revamped my entire YouTube process to what it is today. More recently, I started listening to his new podcast.

Some of my favorite episodes are:

Bonus Episode: Originality, Writing and Career Fulfilment With Brandon Sanderson: Brandon Sanderson is one of the most prolific authors in history. He claims it's not because he is some writing genius but rather he spends a lot of time writing. He writes for 8 hours every day in two-four hours blocks. He convinces himself to write for this long by gamifying the process and keeping track of his word count. He also schedules all of his publicity and other content marketing tasks for Thursdays. This way he can spend most of his day doing what he loves.

🕊️On Being:

Next up, we have On Being by Krista Tippet. This is THE existentialism podcast. Existentialism is the study of being human for those who don't know. Every episode has Krista invite a guest to talk about big questions of meaning, spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and the arts. I have listened to six episodes and every single one makes me look at the world in a different lens.

Some of my favorite episodes include:

Oliver Burkeman – Time Management for Mortals: The more things we try to focus on the fewer things we focus on. You can only truly work toward solving a world issue by choosing one or two problems you care about and striving to fix them. But with the technologies of modern society, this is becoming harder and harder. "Wasting time" in any way, waiting at the bus, brewing coffee, or walking outside, is becoming more and more offensive. If we don't learn to manage our time wisely, we will become slaves to its nature.

🏡The Ezra Klein Show:

Next up, we have the Ezra Klein Show by Ezra Klein. Ezra likes talking through difficult problems: Climate Change, Blue Collar Workers, and Political strife. More than any other podcast, some of the episodes make me think hard about the world's issues. I particularly love the episodes where Ezra invites someone he doesn't agree with.

One episode coming to mind is the "Case Against Loving Your Job." Ezra is aghast at Sarah Jaffe's belief we shouldn't feel like we have to love our job. However, these arguments never get out of hand and make the podcast more interesting as a result.

By far, my favorite episode of his is "Timeless Wisdom for Leading a Life of Love, Friendship, and Learning. Ezra speaks with Leon Khast about how to live a good life. I remember listening to this podcast with my family in the car back from Boston. It was so good I immediately listened to it the next day using my podcast highlighter Airr.

🪱Bookworm:

Next, up is Bookworm hosted by Joe and Mike. They read a book or two every other week and discuss their thoughts as well as giving a rating out of five. I have listened to three podcast episodes and discovered a new book to read every time. One of my favorite books is Daily Rituals by Mason Curry. I even made an entire video book summary linked up above. Two of the other books I have discovered through their podcast are Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks and Personal Socrates by Mark Champagne. I suggest using this podcast to figure out if you want to read a book get another perspective on the main takeaways.

👀Focused:

Next up, we have the Focused Podcast hosted by David Sparks and Mike Schmitz. Mike is one of the co-hosts from Bookworm. If you like Bookworm, you should check out this podcast. I have listened to 13 episodes of this podcast.

They tackle how we can become more focused in our daily lives. Interestingly, I find David and Mike talking a lot more about the philosophy of life and technology than solely focusing. I think it's more of an anti-productivity podcast. Instead of asking questions like, "how can we get more done in our days?" they ask, "what can we neglect to leave more room for the other things we want to do?"

Some of my favorite episodes are:

150: Optimize for Intentionality: Productivity isn't the art of getting more done. It's the art of saying no to the things you don't want to do so you can do more of the things you do. David explains he feels better on days not when he is most productive but when he is most intentional with what he does. To be more intentional, he schedules things into his calendar and to-do list by adhering to predefined roles for himself. For example, the three roles I prioritize in order of importance are health, relationships, and teaching. When I am scheduling things into my week I make sure I schedule things that exemplify these roles for myself.

122: Linking Your Thinking With Nick Milo: Overcollecting is the bane of personal knowledge management. Every idea seems lifechanging when you first come across it. You have to give it the space it needs to sit before you can see if it truly is lifechanging. By giving ideas "space" you allow yourself the time to think about what those ideas mean to you.

🎒The School of Greatness:

Next up in the conversational podcasts tier, we have the School of Greatness hosted by Lewis Howes. Lewis interviews some of the most successful people in sports, science, health, and literature from around the planet. I love this podcast so much because of how genuinely curious Lewis is. He routinely asks questions not on script every interview. Because of this curiosity, I have listened to 10 episodes.

This podcast helps me most with my relationships. I now understand the problems which typically arise in relationships and what conversations you need to stop them. Now, I'm not dating someone right now, but soon.

The major roadblock would be if they didn't like peanut butter. Deal-breaker.

Some of my favorite episodes include Episode 1205 with Thomas Frank, Episode 1221 with Faith Jenkins, and Episode 1185 on Fasting.

The episode on fasting was one of the main reasons I began doing so a few months ago. I now have 45 extra minutes to spend on whatever I want throughout my day. Without breakfast, I feel more focused in the morning. My body is extraneously focused. When I sit down to write, my hands turn into beams of glistening light as I lift into the air and transfer my soul toward the ancestral plain. Ok, I don't feel that good, but it has improved my writing.

💻The Informed Life:

Next up we have the Informed Life by Jorge Arango. This podcast explores the way people organize information to get things done. It reminds me of the modern day second brain movement which focuses on personal knowledge management. In the information age, everyone is constantly dealing with information overload. By interviewing many information architects, Jorge hopes to come to a consensus on the best ways to organize information.

Some of my favorite episodes are:

Veronica Erb on Annotating Books: Veronica draws in her books to remember concepts better. She will often draw frameworks or pictures which remind her of a passage's main points when she sees them. Interestingly, despite her annotation habits she believes writing itself if people aren't careful can make your memory worse. This is because many writers begin to rely on their writing as an external storage system. This is why dyslexic people often have some of the best memories in the world. I find the solution to this is to think outside of your writing habits.

📖The Readers Journey:

Next up we have The Readers Journey hosted by Alex Wieckowski. Alex interviews some of the world's most inspirational people and asks them about their journies through life. Through his podcast, you will meet amazing authors, discover brilliant books, and learn valuable lessons along the way.

My favorite part about the podcast is how reading-focused it is. Many of the questions Alex asks revolve around the books the authors read as well as how their reading workflows work. Books make up roughly 1/2 of the success of a person. The people in their life make up the other 1/2. By talking to these inspirational people we enter into the author's soul.

Some of my favorite episodes are:

Howard Berg: Super Reading Secrets From the World's Fastest Reader: Most of the time, speed reading is useless. It brings with it a false sense of comprehension. However, it's handy when you want to find out if you should read a text in the first place. Berg shares some fantastic speed reading tips, like explaining how much easier it is to speed read if you know the schema or background information of a text. He also explains we remember 10% of what we read and 90% of what we say and do. Humans can also remember pictures easier than they can numbers.

⌛80,000 Hours Podcast With Rob Wiblin:

Next up we have 80,000 hours hosted by Rob Wiblin. Rob interviews career specialists and asks them about how they came to be who they are. He also asks them to describe their job to the audience and explain what types of skills it takes. Through these conversations, he hopes to give a better view not only of the careers out there but what cool things are happening inside of them.

Some of my favorite episodes are:  

109 – Holden Karnofsky on the Most Important Century: The 21st century is looking to be the most important century in human history. In this podcast, Karnofsky claims three things will happen in the coming century. We will become a galaxy-spanning civilization, there will be unprecedented economic growth, and it will happen sooner than we could ever realize. Apart from these big claims, there is some insightful talk on philosophy, ai policy, and the future of humanity as a whole.

💓Health:

🧫The Huberman Lab:

First, in the health podcast category, we have Huberman Lab hosted by Andrew Huberman. Huberman Lab is a podcast hosted by professor of Neuroscience Andrew Huberman at Stanford. He focuses on how neuroscience affects our brain and its connections with our body control, perceptions, behavior, and health. I have listened to 36 episodes of Huberman Lab because of his uncanny ability to distill complicated science into actionable advice.

He spends the first half of the episode discussing the complex science of what he is discussing. Then, in the second half, he always gives actionable interventions you can use to live a happier and healthier life.

Many of his episodes end up becoming videos in my Mind Hack Sunday Series. A series where I distill the current neuroscience literature from books I read as well as this podcast and give you the core ideas.

I also use many of his episodes to help create my newsletter the Learning Logistic.

Some of my favorite episodes include:

Dr. Andy Galpin: How to Build Strength, Muscle Size & Endurance | Episode 65: This podcast is great even for advanced lifters or endurance athletes. I have been training for a while and got little nuggets throughout the talk packed with insight. One of my favorite points is the exercise itself matters less than the application. For instance, if you do a deadlift but you go very high weight low reps, you train for strength. If you do a deadlift but go very high rep low weight, you are training for hypertrophy. The driver in strength is intensity where as in hypertrophy it's volume. Galpin gives some tips on how to train specifically for strength, hypertrophy, power, and endurance. He also explains the importance of getting your heart rate to a maximum at least once every week. This can be done in a 20-minute quick HIT workout once a week.

🧬Lifespan With David Sinclair

Next up, we have Lifespan with David Sinclair. Dr. Sinclair is a world-renowned aging research doctor who works at the Harvard Medical School Center for Biology and Aging Research. His podcast discusses the science behind why we age and how we can slow and even reverse aging.

I have only listened to one episode, but I know I will love this podcast since I listen to Huberman Lab. Dr. Sinclair and Huberman are great friends. Huberman helped Sinclair set up his podcast with a similar theme to his. Huberman and his team have created an entire business model around distilling expert knowledge into podcast content. They plan to expand further in the future and get more experts to host their podcasts under a similar theme. I'm ecstatic to see which other researchers will finally be able to give their knowledge in an understandable way to the common public.

Some of my favorite episodes include What to Eat and When to Eat for Longevity, Exercise, Heat, Cold, and other Stressors for Longevity, and the Science of Keeping the Brain Healthier.

💸Business Podcasts:

💰Smart Passive Income:

First, in the business category, we have Smart Passive Income or SPI hosted by Pat Flynn. SPI focuses on revealing online business and blogging strategies you can use to grow and prosper on the internet. I have listened to five episodes of SPI, and apart from Ali Abdal's Deep Dive, this podcast has been super helpful in kickstarting my online presence.

The biggest realization I have learned from Flynn is how long it takes to succeed on the internet. He started blogging 15 years ago. Initially, he blogged to hold him accountable for studying for his architectural exam: It didn't have a wick to do with passive income! But, slowly, over 15 years, he found out what he wanted to do with his channel and now spends his time trying to help others find out the same.

My favorite episodes are 474 on Pat Flynn's first hire, 551 Why lying to yourself helps you become a better communicator, and 248 The Art of Giving Gifts.

📽️Video Creators Podcast:

Next, we have the Video Creators Podcast. The Video Creators podcast focuses on helping you learn cutting-edge YouTube growth strategies. I have listened to 5 episodes and used this podcast to help me with many of the issues I have come across on YouTube. The earlier episodes deal with much more standard questions like how to get views on Youtube.

The later episodes are where I find the juice of this podcast. They detail less-known metrics or strategies. My favorite episode is 16 Questions That Will Double Your Channel Growth in 2022. This episode asked me to figure out the journey I was trying to give on my channel. Then I needed to figure out what implementing each step of the way looks like for someone with no idea about the topic. These questions led to me discovering 15 new video ideas in five minutes. One of them is this video you are watching right now!

🤔History/Philosophy Podcasts:

💭Philosophize This:

First, in the history category, we have Philosophize This hosted by Stephen West. Philosophize This goes over the entire history of Philosophy in chronological order. Episode 1 starts with Presocratic Ionian Philosophy and goes all the way to modern philosophy as we know it.

I have listened to nine episodes and love the journey it brings you on. You don't just hear about various philosophies in isolation but how they interacted with each other. Before listening, I knew a good amount about philosophy but didn't know much about when and where they started in relation to each other. My favorite episodes include his episode on The Buddha, Confuscianism, and Socrates.

⌚Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

Next up we have Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. Dan Carlin is a journalist and broadcaster and it shows on his podcast. He tackles history but through a storyline lens. This isn't the history you are used to learning in school where key dates and events are regurgitated. Dan makes every historical event seem like some epic movie.

His episodes are long. REALLY long. Some of them run upwards of six hours. I have listened to three episodes, and it was all on his King of Kings Trilogy. It goes into depth on the fall of the Assyrian empire and the Persians and Greeks, which took over afterward.

📸Videos

🌏Society and Philosophy

RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms: Most kids at a young age are capable of incredible divergent and convergent critical thinking. They have bountiful creativity. However, with the current education system, many children are losing this ability when they go through school. The education system in many countries still operates on principles ingrained during the enlightenment and industrial revolutions. The system benefits those who see themselves as academic while hurting those who don't.

The Game that Can Give you 10 Extra Years of Life: What if we turned life into a game? It seems like a stupid concept but for Jane, it saved her life. After going through brain trauma from an injury, she didn't want to live anymore. Then she turned it into a game adopting a secret identity, recruiting allies, and getting power-ups from things like petting her dog. Jane believes we can do the same and in her TED talk explains the plethora of other benefits games bring.

🤖Business and Tech

How To Start a YouTube Channel - Beginner’s Guide to YouTube: Teaches a three-step framework for how to start a YouTube channel. I took the Part-Time YouTuber Academy Course during my fall semester of 2021 at Cornell and I can say this has a good chunk of what I learned in the course summarized. The first step is simply starting and uploading whatever crap you can. Quantity over quality in the beginning so you can get better. The second step is when you start making decent videos. Your videos pass the cringe test as you are willing to show them to someone else. The third step is where you start treating your channel like a business.

3 Money Habits I Swear By: 1. Build an emergency fund and cash buffer. 2. Invest as much as you can into tax-advantaged retirement accounts. 3. Be a deadbeat. Another idea I loved was automating your finances. This makes sure your credit cards and other payments are made every month even when you forget to do so.

Why Obsidian Will Overtake Roam: Nick delves deep into the philosophy of notetaking. While it's true we shape our tools, it's equally true our tools shape us. What does using Roam, Evernote, Notion, Obsidian, or other notetaking software say about who we are as people? Obsidian looks like it will overtake Roam because while Roam is a connector databaser, Obsidian is a connector writer. Roam trades free flow writing short-term for friction later on and rewards connecting ideas without.

💡Creativity and Learning

Nick Milo: The Joy of Thinking and the Rise of the Note Maker: When second brainers capture information with no means of expressing or integrating their own insight, they lose the joy of thinking. Their system becomes filled with the thoughts and ideas of others rather than their own. But the joy of the knowledge management system comes in the act of thinking through things yourself, not through capturing bunches of information. Instead of "notetaking" as traditional second brainers are taught to do, we should "notemake" and add our own thoughts to ideas.

The Knowledge Loop is ENCODED: Nick defines the fundamental knowledge loop we use for acquiring knowledge as encountering something which makes us express in turn shaping our future encounters. The problem is most people spend too little time in the between step: thinking. Thinking happens with noting, connecting, organizing, developing, and finally expressing. And without this crucial step, most people's ideas are carbon copies of others. This isn't to say your ideas need to be original as almost all aren't but they should have your unique perspective applied to them.

8 Tips for Reading More - How I Learn From Audiobooks: One of my favorite insights is the importance of switching up reading speeds based on the type of reading you are doing. For instance, when Ali reads for fun on Audible, he usually goes at about 2.5x to 3x speed. If he's reading to learn something deeply, however, he goes at 1x or 1.5x so he can absorb enough to tell a friend later. Ali also uses Audible as a way of testing out books before he reads them on Kindle. He listens to about 30 minutes and then sets them down if he doesn't enjoy it.