If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here.

💡 The Big Idea: Feeling Overwhelmed? Time Surfing Might Be Able to Help.

I recently read an interesting book called I’ve Got Time by Paul Loomans. In the book, Paul introduces an idea called time surfing, which he defines as using intuition to decide what to do when. It’s an intentional time management strategy designed to combat the time pressure we all feel from the pace of life continuing to move faster and faster.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Paul on everything (I’m not about to throw away my lists just yet 😉), there were some powerful ideas that he shared which really got me thinking about my own relationship with time.

As I continue to process the book (and the conversation with Paul for an upcoming Focused episode), I realize there are a couple of big takeaways for me for the Actions level of my PKM Stack framework:

Here are three big takeaways from the book that you can apply to your own PKM Stack to help you do more of what matters.

1. Do one thing at a time and finish what you’re doing. Urgency often masquerades as importance, so be intentional about choosing and focusing on the things that are truly important.
2. Take intentional breathers. The moment you don’t know what to do is the perfect time to take a breather. Look for the impasse, and take strategic breaks to spark inspiration.
3. Convert your “gnawing rats” to “white sheep.” Things gnaw at you because of your relationship to the task. So do one thing at a time, and be ok with what you’re not doing.

If you want to dive deeper, check out the full blog post here.

(The vast majority of the feedback I got last week was that people preferred shorter summaries here with a link to read more. Let me know if you prefer the whole essay here in the newsletter instead!)

Am I a Time Surfer Now?

I don’t think so. I still like my lists too much 😂

But this book did give me a lot to chew on. Paul is a Zen Buddhist monk from the Netherlands, so some of his descriptions and terminology were a bit difficult for me, but there’s one quote in particular that really resonated with me:

I think we all could probably benefit from riding the wave a little bit more.

😎 Something Cool: Obsidian Tasks Raycast Extension

This week, a Library member (thanks Jeremy!) introduced me to a Raycast extension that integrates with the Obsidian Tasks plugin.

It’s a pretty cool extension that gives you commands to list, add, or edit tasks straight from Raycast without even opening Obsidian. There’s even a menubar item that you can use to show tasks from a specific file in your vault.

If you are a Raycast user and you manage your tasks in Obsidian, you should check out this extension.

📚 Book Notes: I’ve Got Time by Paul Loomans

If you want to dig deeper into time surfing, I’ve Got Time by Paul Loomans is a short book with some interesting ideas about time and task management. It's a short read, and it gave me a lot to noodle on.

If you want to download my mind map book notes, click here.

— Mike

P.S. Wanted to let you in on a little secret project 😉 I've been working on a brand new Practical PKM Hybrid Cohort. It's a combination of self-paced videos + live Q&A calls (so you can go through it at your own pace but still get live feedback). The last live cohort was great but a bit much to keep up with live, so I believe this will be the best version of the Practical PKM cohort yet! Click here if you'd like to be the first to know when it's ready.