• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

  • About
  • All Posts
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Book Notes

Sam Parr: The playbook for a 21-year-old

June 21, 2021

  • Podcast
    My First Million
  • Episode Title
    Greatest Hits #6 – Sam Tells All, Again – Selling for 10s of Millions after Making Millions with an Email Newsletter
  • Episode links
    Apple Podcasts • Spotify

“If they’re 21 today, start blogging. And when I say start blogging, I would say: learn one new, interesting thing each week. And then just blog about what you learned. Do that every single day, every week for a year. Try to get 2000 to 3000 people a day coming to your site through search.

The way you find out what to write about is you go to ahrefs.com and you buy a subscription. And that will teach you what to write, because it will tell you what people are searching for.

Try to rank for those words, build up an email list of 5,000 people, and then create a course and sell it to them.”
— Sam Parr

Okay so this episode got me fired up to… keep blogging. But to do it with a little more thoughtfully.

It also did give me some solid numbers to hit. Which basically would mean finding a way to increase daily traffic by 100x by next year. Sam was a high school and college track athlete and that reminded me of the whole 4-minute mile thing. If he put those numbers out there, then I have it in my head that it might be a reasonable thing to hit from scratch in a year.

I also am wayyyyyyyyyyyy past being a 21-year-old. And not in a “Gary V telling a 23-year-old they’re still young” way past. I’m more on the “it’s time to switch to the less risky ETF” end.

Still, there’s enough time to go for the long game.

One post at a time. (But hopefully a a slightly smarter post per day.)

  • Podcast Notes
Blogging About BloggingMy First MillionSam Parr

Building my second brain

June 21, 2021

I started going through the material for BASB and thought I’d try to share some of the concepts as I go through the modules.

Information overload to information exhaustion

UntitledImage

The world’s information is at our fingertips. That’s not always a good thing. The cost to share thoughts has gone to zero so… a lot of people share their thoughts. Not all of them are going to be as refined as a great book from 50 years ago.

Processing the firehose

We carry a portable firehose with us everywhere and the default is set to full blast. It’s worth taking the time and energy up front to build a system to process this information.

First, by being more selective with information sources coming in.

Second, making sure that everything has its place and then automating the flow of information to the proper places.

Third, by practicing connecting and synthesizing information for sharing, when necessary.

Firehose of information

Casting nets instead of being a spear fisherman

You can take the slow way of building your systems and enhancing the background processing of your first and second brains. This is like slowly weaving a fishing net together. (Which is nice because it works well with Charlie Munger’s latticework mental model analogy.)

Or you can try to spear a specific fish every single time. Much harder. (But, hey, prety satisfying if you can do it!)

Spear fish

  • Course Notes: Build a Second Brain
Build a Second BrainTiago Forte

Making this blog my default

June 21, 2021

Check out the full notes for How to Change

The ideal solution to any problem stemming from our inherent laziness is a single-dose solution—a default. If you can “set it and forget it,” whatever change you’re trying to create will be quite easy to make.*

“How to Change” by Katy Milkman

===

My goal with this blog is to make it my default for creative output. The issue I run into most frequently is wanting to work on different things in different states: podcast episodes, videos, filming b-roll sawdust for later (that I rarely use), Twitter threads, and making visuals on my iPad or Figma for all of these things.

That creates a lot of indecision.

UntitledImage

I want the blog to be the launchpad for my work.

  • If I’m making a video, I should start with writing a blog post that doubles as a rough script or outline.
  • If I’m doing a podcast, I should start with a book notes page or from recent blog posts
  • If I’m making a Twitter thread, it should be some version of a blog post

The exception might be Instagram, where I’ll just try to schedule out different desk photos and things like that.

UntitledImage

In any case, the default can always be:

  1. Grab a quote from recent reading or listening
  2. Write about it

If I do that day in and day out, good things will happen.

  • Book Notes

Todo: Write a post about quake episodes

June 20, 2021

There are quake books: books that change your view of the world.

Ryan Holiday mentions it in a blog post:

My reading was much different when I was younger. I would more likely intensively engage with some important book totally full of new ideas. Hayek. Parfit. Plato. And so on. There just aren’t books like that left for me anymore. So I read many more, to learn bits, but haven’t in years experienced a “view quake.” That is sad, to me at least, but I don’t know how to avoid how that has turned out. So enjoy your best reading years while you can!

I don’t read nearly as much as Ryan Holiday, so there are plenty of quake books left for me to uncover.

A couple that come to mind: Getting Things Done for helping me understand the importance of next actions before starting my career, How to Win Friends and Influence People for teaching me not to try to change minds of friends who argue for sport, Moneyball so that I could understand why people always mention Moneyball.

Here’s what Tyler Cowen has to say about quake reading:

Maybe Rene Girard was the last “view quake” author I read.  On the upside, greater context means that many more books are interesting than was the case before.

Which, of course reminds me of Luke Burgis’s Wanting, which is an approachable overview of Girard’s mimetic theory. (Check my notes out here.)

And the best quake book that also happens to involve Quake: Masters of Doom.

ANYWAY, the reason I mention all that is that I want to write a post about quake podcast episodes. There are probably a few podcast episodes that changed my perspective or actually got me to take action on something.

One that comes to mind: one of the Naval interviews, either on Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss’s or The Knowledge Project, but it’s where he talks about just jumping between books, doing lots of skimming. I started doing this and it was both good and bad for me. Mostly that I started buying a ton of books and reading more broadly but at the same time somewhat sabotaging my ability to actually focus on any single book while reading.

Okay yah so this is the pre-post where I share that idea and I’ll follow up (someday) with an actual list of 5-7 podcast episodes. (Another that comes to mind: Bill Simmons’s ESPN.com 20th anniversary episode where he just talks through his career progression that grew as the the internet grew.)

  • Read, Watch, Listen
Masters of DoomQuake BooksRyan HolidayTyler Cowen

One week with the Fuji X100V

June 20, 2021

Just going to write some notes here and share some photos. Summary: I love it so far.

  • I’m loving the touchscreen’s tap-to-shoot shortcut: At first this seemed like a gimmick, and it might be, but it’s a good one. (I’m also guessing a bunch of other cameras have this but this is my first time using a camera with it.) You can tap the touchscreen preview and it will do the spot focus AND take the photo right there. One less step but that’s big if it’s usually a 2-step process. Just tap instead of tap + press shutter release.
  • Close focus is great: In my previous post which was sort of a “first day with…” post, I mentioned the close focus and touchscreen shortcut, so this is repetitive but I can confirm that I’ve used both a bunch this week. It makes it…
  • …a perfect casual food camera: Makes it so easy to take super close shots of plates of food. Which probably aren’t the best kinds of food photos but I’ve been taking them.
  • Loving the dials: I’m coming from the original X100 so it feels like coming home. Easy to switch to a fast shutter speed if I’m taking moving shots of Booster pouncing on a chew toy.
  • Video seems pretty good!: Again I’m a casual shooter. I’m not throwing it on a gimbal or putting an external mic on it. I don’t miss the a6400’s selfie screen configuration, but it’s crucial if you do talking head vlogs.
  • I still love the body: It feels a little bigger than the original X100 but it’s still such a nice, compact package. It feels better over the shoulder than the a6400 with a prime on it. I think I’ll be much more likely to take it out with me all day.

After one week with it, I only wish I got it sooner to capture the first few weeks when Booster was a tiny puppy and retroactively wish I got the X100F to capture my last few years in New York.

Okay some sample photos.

First, Booster retrieving my shoes.

DSCF0636

Trying to layer some random thing in the frame. (The iPad notes are supposed to be 10 quick tips to stay in flow in Procreate.)

DSCF0648

Okay like I said, I got this mostly to take photos of Booster, so here’s another (won’t be the last)

DSCF0633

Or even close to the last.

DSCF0627

Okay maybe I need to not just use f2.0 all the time…

DSCF0587

Perfect camera for moments at home.

DSCF0535

You’re too close man

DSCF0488 2

One of the top things about moving to SF is oyster happy hour availability

DSCF0412

Seems to have handled this nicely.

DSCF0319

  • Gear
Fujifilm X100V

A little daily reflection

June 20, 2021

Check out the full notes for “Off the Clock” by Laura Vanderkam

“You can also tend your garden by looking backward. At night, take a few moments to write a daily reflection in a journal. Answer a few questions:

  • What did I like most about today?
  • What would I like to have spent more time doing?
  • What would I like to have spent less time doing?
  • How can I make that happen?”

— “Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done” by Laura Vanderkam


The thing I liked most about today was recognizing it wasn’t going well, knowing there was plenty of time left, and putting the effort in to turn the day around. It’ll be good to know that as long as there’s 1–2 hours to work with, it’s enough time for some mind work and body work.

What I would have liked to spend more time doing… I just wish I was more present in the middle of the day. I was so frustrated with myself from a wasted work session. I’d love to get to where that kind of thing would only mess up, say, the 10 minutes following it instead of the next few hours.

I would’ve liked to spend less time… wasting time with wasted movement. Setting a timer was a good idea. Not having something clear to make was a bad idea. I’ve written more on my phone sitting outside on a break from this hike than I did during that time block. There are a few different factors: I can multitask really well on a MacBook. Aka I can’t actually get anything done recently on my MacBook.

I start editing a video then open a podcast clip then start rendering something then remember I had something rendered from the day before that I need to publish so I open WordPress and then think I have a quick post I can write but I’ll start with a visual so I turn on my iPad but I want to capture the sawdust so I set my overhead camera up so I…

I started writing that paragraph as an exaggeration but then realized it was pretty much what happened earlier today.

I can have more finished sessions by writing in the editor (and maybe in the middle of a hike) This combo seems to be working. Take a hike, listen to some stuff on the way. Sit at the top and use my writing Shortcut:

  • Turn a 12 minute timer on
  • Turn a Spotify writing playlist
  • Turn on Dark Noise for coffeehouse sounds
  • Open Drafts

Then I grab a highlight and type up some thoughts. I need to steer it to have fewer examples of myself and more examples from other sources. But it’s a start.

If I just kept this practice going I could realistically do a post a day and get some cardio in all in an hour.

Not bad!

(Now just to actually do it…)

  • Book Notes
Laura VanderkamOff The Clock
  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 36
  • Page 37
  • Page 38
  • Page 39
  • Page 40
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 106
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to the channel

Focusing on making videos in 2023.

✍️ Recent Posts

Switching it up: CrossFit and the welders of Rogue Fitness

Musashi: the age we live in (or something)

The Four-Pack Revolution: What sets off your snacking?

Program hopping… into CrossFit (and realizing I’ve been qualified age-wise for “Masters” divisions for a few years now)

“Tiny Experiments”: The 1-1-1-1-1 pact

🎧 Recent Episodes

Takeaways: “Someday is Today” by Matthew Dicks | #126

125: Creativity x Fitness – Consistency, Classics, and Crane Kicks (3 links)

118: The Psychology of Fitness: 1, 2, 3

Popular Posts

  • Book Notes – “Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality” by Anthony de Mello
  • Lightning Round Questions
  • Kobe Bryant: Every day math
  • Journal: The first 8 weeks of Active Recall
  • How to succeed as a writer (What I’ve learned by reading Bill Simmons)

By Francis Cortez

  • About
  • YouTube Channel
  • Instagram (@activerecall)
  • Twitter (@activerecall)

Categories

  • iPad Pro
  • Podcast
  • Book Notes
  • Podcast Notes
  • Weblog
  • Videos
  • Fitness
  • Creative Pages
  • iPad
Back to homepage • By Francis Cortez (@activerecall)