May 16, 2023 - Swiftlets, Bed Making, Second Brain, Space Food
Nuggets of Information: Swifties Have Nothing on Them!
Found from Southeast Asia down through the islands of the South Pacific, swiftlets are remarkable birds for two reasons. First, their nests are made completely from their own hardened saliva and are considered a delicacy – used in Bird’s Nest Soup. Second, swiftlets use echolocation to find their way around dark caves – just like bats. I can do neither of these things, but I do own a Swifter, and it is also quite remarkable.
Enrichment: First Habit of the Day
This time of year, we see a surge of graduation speeches, mostly from celebrities, industry leaders, artists, political figures and Naval Admirals. One that has been floating around the interwebs for a few years is Naval Adm. William H. McRaven’s address to the 2014 graduating class at University of Texas at Austin. He’s great to listen to - a natural orator which may not be what you would expect from a guy who was a Navy Seal /Special Ops commander for most of his life. The whole speech is wonderful, but the part about making your bed caused the video to go viral.
Workshop: Second Brain
One of my areas of interest is personal productivity. Optimizing my routines, developing habits, eliminating waste. Recently, I’ve been exploring different personal knowledge management systems, and I stumbled upon Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain.” The basic concept is that we can use a variety of digital devices and apps to create a digital brain, a place where we can capture, organize and retrieve information.
Forte explains his approach - the PARA method. Projects, Areas, Resources and Archive are the four categories that your information goes into. In these sections, you can put anything you have - lists, plans, embedded content, calendars, notes - any type of digital content - and connect them all together to form your second brain. Are you really going to trust your brain to store everything?
Forte has loads of YouTube videos - and an online class you can take. His 5-part series about how he stays organized is a rabbit hole I’ve gone down a couple times. (And yes - those videos are stored in my second brain.) He explains his own routine for clearing his emails, reviewing his calendar, tidying his digital workspace, processing his digital notes and setting his priorities for the week. All this is done in his second brain.
Forte shows how to use Notion, a productivity and note-taking web application, as your digital brain. It has a mobile app and web clipper tools which make capturing information very user-friendly. Websites, YouTube videos, highlighted sections of e-books - capture it all into your “Reading List” then sort it into your second brain.
Future Workshops will have more info on Forte’s work and on Notion. Personally, everything I do for this newsletter, for my website, and most of my personal life/home areas are all built out in Notion, using the PARA method. And I’ve only been doing this for a couple weeks. I’ve barely scratched the surface, and it is pretty exciting.
Selected Content: Floataway Café 2.0?
French company Zephalto has announced plans to open a restaurant that is suspended by a stratospheric balloon and will float at an altitude of 25 kilometers/15.5 miles above Earth. While the food should be great - “Michelin-star-level” - I’ve heard the atmosphere will be lousy. Thanks everyone - I’ll be here all week!!