Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Listen log (June 07, 2021)

I’ll try to make this a regular thing but also we’ll see.

In the morning I:

  • take my dog for a walk
  • work out at the gym

Aka: lots of time listening

Do audiobooks count as reading?

  • No, if you’re doing some X books a year reading challenge
  • Yes, if you’re doing some other X books a year reading challenge

Can you actually learn from audiobooks?

Now, I remember the first time I read about CrossFit and someone was describing it from an aesthetics standpoint.

Their model was something like

  • Bodybuilder split (aka bro split) + steroids = Best results
  • CrossFit with steroids
  • CrossFit without steroids
  • Bodybuilder split without steroids

The point being: if you want results naturally then CrossFit is a good route.

I then probably did LL Cool J’a 60-day workout plan for 4 days.

You didn’t answer the question at all

Okay so here’s what it has to do with reading.

The model I have in my head is (from best learning to worst)

  • Print book with notes
  • Audiobook with notes
  • Print book without notes
  • Audiobook without notes
  • Audiobook at 3X without notes to fulfill some X books a year challenge

(Notes here includes highlights)

The idea that you can’t learn from listening at all is dumb, otherwise we wouldn’t ever talk.

But I’ve listened to my fair share of audiobooks too fast while doing too much other stuff that I didn’t listen. Which is a worse kind of dumb, because it’s disguised as doing a smart thing.

So with all the listening I do, I’ll try to make writing notes a when-then habit:

  • When I do cardio
  • Then I’ll journal
  • Then I’ll write a public listen log

These are supposed to actually log what I’m listening to with some notes, but instead I’ve just written notes on writing notes.

Quick log without thoughts:

  • Bill Simmons w Ryen Russilo talking about Mayweather and Logan Paul: People care about storylines, especially in sports when it’s not the top competition. The best of the best is a good storyline in itself. Below that you need narratives. This had a couple underdogs in some sense. Logan has no experience. Mayweather weighed 40 lbs less and was 20 years older. Formula 1 is much more interesting to watch if you have the Netflix show as spark notes for who to care about.
  • Wanting by Luke Burgis: This will shape my thinking for the next month and I think for the rest of my life. Why do I want to write the notes I’m writing now? Some of it to learn, some of it to share with the world that I’m someone who learns, some of it to share the ideas with the world.
  • Talk Therapy with Alex Lieberman: I definitely listened to this through a wanting lens. Alex talks through selling The Morning Brew, which is a general career outcome plenty of other people want. BUT then seeing that he still wants other things. You can always, always compare up. And you’ll always, always compare just a little bit up or laterally.

Shaan Puri talked about something similar: it’s easier to feel good about friends’ successes when they’re not in the same field as you.)

Far less wanting that way.

Wanting: Pre-read and first impressions

Check out the full notes for “Wanting” by Luke Burgis

I have a better understanding of what I want than I did this morning.

Not specifically what I want. But the concept of wanting things at all. All from the first couple chapters of Luke Burgis’s “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life”.

Summary: I want things but should probably spend time considering why and where those desires come from.

I’d love to read books, listen to podcasts, and draw notes all day. But I also like income that comes in through my job.

Someday I’d want to make those things intersect.

But why?

(I’m guessing the book won’t tell me the answer directly, but I’m hoping it’ll give me some guidance to frame that properly at all.)

Presumably I’d have more free time to… fill with more desires more likely.

  • How’d you find out about “Wanting”, the book?

Luke Burgis was interviewed on Ryan Holiday’s podcast. I checked his book out on Amazon and remembered seeing the cover in the past.

Ok the episode they started talking about mimetic theory and Peter Thiel and Girard.

Now here’s where some of my cogs started turning.

I was in a Write of Passage breakout room and someone mentioned their enthusiasm for Girard and their enthusiasm for another member’s writings about Girard.

No first name mentioned, so I knew (1) this “Girard” person was important and (2) the rest of the cohort is much smarter than me.

After that, I’d notice his name mentioned more and more (like how you notice VW bugs when you’re playing the game where you punch someone in the arm when you see a VW bug), often in discussions about Thiel.

Which all just reminds me of the “That Funke!!!” scene in Arrested Development. Spread the name around the water cooler.

So back then I thought “okay I’ll check out some Girard stuff” and did and saw how dense it was and quickly thought “okay I won’t check out some Girard stuff”.

Back to my comfort zone of books mentioning the marshmallow study.

I was somewhat relieved listening to the Daily Stoic episode because they talk about how unapproachable Girard’s writing can be. A lot of it isn’t meant to be taken at face value.

So I was happy to hear that Burgis wrote this book with people like me in mind. Interested in learning more about memetic theory but looking for some more approachable material.

Some random ramblings before I head off to sleep (a need, not a want—though 8 hours of restful scientifically optimized sleep does creep into the “want” side of things…)

  • Ryan Holiday and Luke Burgis discuss book success. The failure in the process happens when you start thinking about how a reader might dislike or attack your writing. Success in the process is laying out the truth as you see it as clearly as possible.
  • Still, authors of modern philosophy books aren’t immune to mimetic desires. Of course it’d be great to be a New York Times bestseller. Ryan doesn’t go as far as to say he was jealous, but he does make the comparison between his book “Conspiracy” and “Bad Blood”. One of them was a runaway hit you’ve heard of. The other is an excellent book with my childhood hero Hulk Hogan as the primary pawn.
  • Similar to Daniel Kahneman (who seems to go by Danny the way teammates called Kobe 1-syllable “Cobe”) saying he still falls for cognitive traps but might be slightly better at recognizing it’s happening — Burgis hopes to help us understand our desires better, not get rid of them entirely. That’s a fruitless exercise, because at some point you’ll _want_ to _not want_.

Looking forward to reading the rest.

Notepod 16: Reading Recap (May 2021)

Talking about a few books I read in May

  • Effortless by Greg Mckeown
  • The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention by Nicolas Cole
  • Soundtracks by Jon Acuff
  • The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo
  • Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
  • 21 Lessons: What I’ve Learned from Falling
  • Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole by Gigi
  • How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman

June 2021 Goals

Here are some public goals for the month

  • Making stuff: 3 videos, 3 podcast episodes
  • Weight: 163 lbs
  • Website: Add show notes pages for previous episodes

I’ll write more about each goal in the future, but just wanted to write them down.

Purposeful repurposing (and hopping on the next ship)

Check out the full notes for The Art and Business of Online Writing

The ship has sailed for me on Ship 30 for 30 in this cohort. I’ll give the challenge another shot next month.

One great thing to come out of it was reading Nicolas Cole’s “Art and Business of Online Writing”, where he shares how he built an audience with previously written content.

However, I had been writing daily on Quora for almost three years, and had amassed a library of content at my disposal. So, I started taking all my old material and republishing it on Medium, one article per day. Between 2017 and 2020, I wrote less than 30 original pieces on Medium. All of it was previous material from my library, just with a new title and a new picture—and in my first year on the platform, I accumulated tens of thousands of followers, millions of views, and became a Top Writer in more than 15 different categories.

It’s certainly giving me some ideas for repurposing things I wrote by turning old posts into threads.

Now, my material isn’t as good as what Cole had with his Quora writing. But I have a few hundred posts across a few blogs. They can’t ALL be bad, right?

… right???

When games don’t work (for work)

Check out the full notes for How to Change

This next quote reminded me of the height of Texas Hold ‘Em hype. And having some dorm mates who would play but refused to play with money.

Most games are plenty of fun without money. Poker isn’t one of them, since adjusting bet amounts is part of the game.

These questions were designed to measure which salespeople had “entered the magic circle,” a term used to describe agreeing to be bound by a game’s rules rather than the normal rules that guide our daily interactions.

This was about a basketball gimmick to make sales more fun. (It failed.)

Maybe just swipe sales motivation ideas from The Wolf of Wall Street next time.