Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: 3 simple questions can change your life — if you give them enough space. "Just slow down." That sounds like good advice. But it's also nearly impossible to follow when everything is late, and all of it feels urgent. It's tempting to go looking for something new when you feel this way: a new app, a new system, a book that finally explains what you're missing. But you probably don't need a new revelation....
10 days ago • 5 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: The value of your vault comes from what you leave out. A couple of years ago, I was in London for the Relay 10th anniversary show and decided to visit the British Museum. I discovered that the museum has 94 galleries and over 807,000 square feet. That’s about the size of 14 football fields, including end zones. It’s massive. And there are some genuinely fascinating displays, including the Rosetta Stone...
17 days ago • 5 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: The Thinking Is the Point Last week, I came across an interesting article by Brennan Kenneth Brown, which asked a very direct question: Has there been a meaningful increase in understanding and creation thanks to personal knowledge management systems? His answer was no. He couldn’t find a study, a body of work, or much of anything beyond people on forums reporting that they feel less anxious. What he...
23 days ago • 6 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. Last week I listened to the Deep Questions podcast, where Cal Newport warned against a concept he calls checklist productivity—the belief that if you get the right information about the steps that matter and then execute them, success will inevitably follow. The problem is that checklist productivity just plain doesn't work. Anything truly worth doing tends to be difficult. You can't break down something like writing a...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Prefer to read this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Obsidian FINALLY Shipped a Kanban View for Bases. Here’s What You Need to Know. For the last couple of years, I’ve been managing my creative projects in Obsidian using a couple of community plugins and a little bit of duct tape. So when Obsidian 1.14 shipped a native Kanban layout for Bases last week to Catalyst supporters, I got real excited. I’ve wanted this view ever since Bases first shipped. Unfortunately, it’s...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Prefer to read this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Why You Have Trouble Following Through on Things You Say Are Important. Back in June, I attended an Immunity to Change session led by Cat Mulvihill at Jay Clouse’s Lab Offline event. Then last week, Cat joined David & me on the Focused podcast to talk about her Momentum Formula and the roadblocks that keep us from following through on what we say is important. Somewhere in between, I was finally able to overcome one...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Prefer to read this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: The point of planning isn’t the plan you follow but the clarity it gives you when you can’t. Last week did not go as planned. On Monday night, I got a phone call from my sister-in-law while I was still at soccer practice. “Don’t freak out, but…” Ok, I wasn’t freaking out before, but now I kind of am… “Rachel was playing with the kids in the yard, and she broke her leg.” I was at the soccer fields 30 minutes away. But...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: You don’t have a creativity problem. You have an idea portfolio problem. You might know David Perell as the creator of Write of Passage or the host of the How I Write podcast. But he also describes himself as an angel investor in companies focused on creators, productivity, and the future of education. Recently, he was on the Nathan Barry Show (How to Stand Out as a Writer in the Age of AI), where he...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Before you let AI into your notes, make sure it knows the rules. My vault is over a decade of thinking. Book notes, sermon prep, podcast ideas, half-formed thoughts I’m still working out. Letting an AI loose in there can feel a little like handing a stranger the keys to my house. To be clear, I was never afraid that Claude would read my notes. I was worried it would change them. Those are my thoughts,...
2 months ago • 6 min read