Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Dan Shipper & Visakan Veerasamy: The Future of Note-Taking Systems

All right, I guess maybe some of the Notion guys might be interesting. I wonder what they're thinking.

It would be interesting to have someone that basically— because there's so much information being produced in the salons and over reading and stuff like that, I find usually it's useful like after the fact. So some way of some system keeping track of Yeah.

And Nat in the comments mentions, uh, Björn. Yeah. From the Rome Book Club. That is interesting. I actually, yeah. So I, I have my own Discord where people are doing a book club of my book, which is very nice of them. And it's so interesting to watch how they've adapted the Rome Book Club, uh, format to do so. They do, they take like notes on the book while they're reading it. And one of their systems is like, they write down the first sentence of every paragraph, which is a very interesting thing to see. It's like very, uh, like for me as an author, having written the book and then like, not, I haven't looked at it in a while and seeing the first sentence of every paragraph, like it's, it's an interesting way to capture the vibe of a whole book without, you know, I mean, so again, it's not a perfect summary, but It's an interesting summary. Like it just, it gives you a, it lets you navigate where you are in the book. And yeah, it's just interesting to watch. And so that was a format that emerged out of Roam Book Club. So it'll be interesting to see how they do it. And it's also interesting to consider how that is a norm that can develop in one space, which is originally Roam Book Club, and then it can be passed along to other communities. So like somebody from somebody can be like, oh, we did this in Roambook Club. And so we're going to do this somewhere else. And then it's like, oh, it's like a, it's like a, you know, it's not, it's not the app, right? It's a way, it's a style or an approach, a way of doing things that can be condensed into a set of instructions and then passed on to the next person. And then, but even so, I think you would want someone who has experience to kind of guide the process. But yeah, you know, once, once you've experienced being a part of such a book club thing, you can then lead another session and then that can spread and people can learn from it. And it's just interesting to witness.

How does it work again? So basically it's like each paragraph of the text that they write out the first sentence and then talk about each, each, each paragraph that way. What's the format?

Yeah.

So I don't actually know how they're going to talk about it yet, but so they have like a pre— so this is like the pre-chat or pre-session prep. So it's like, uh, I'm actually, I'm not actually sure what exactly they're doing, but it's interesting to witness. Maggie Delano wrote a system. Yeah.

How does it feel to have such close attention being paid to like every single piece of your book?

I mean, I enjoy it. So that's the thing that I— that's part of why I wrote a book is, you know, to be read and the more people read it, the better it feels. I mean, I was anxious and agonizing about it during the writing process. So during the writing process, I did not know how much attention people would pay to it. And You kind of prepare for the worst in this. I mean, I guess it depends on your personality. Some people might not really, might just not care, but I was, especially since this particular book is very, uh, it's, I mean, it's not, I mean, it's, I wouldn't say it's super personal for me, but it's, it's, uh, invasive in a sense. Like it sort of gives people suggestions on what to do with their personal lives. And that's very intimate. And so I want to make sure that I don't get anything like horribly wrong. And I signposted throughout the book, like, I'm not totally sure, this is just my experience. That's what I think, you know, don't take it as gospel, but it's very cool to see something that you've written, something that you've done, be re-expressed and re-shared by other people elsewhere. And then you get to see like what they focus on, what stands out to them. And it really, you know, I didn't know this starting out, starting out, like maybe intellectually I might know a little bit, but like, um, you know, let's say you've been tweeting for a long time or something like you've just been doing something publicly such that you have an audience. When you ask your audience to kind of like sing back the song to you, sort of like, uh, I'm betraying my musician background. Um, like, so recently on Twitter, I did a thing that was like, uh, You know, what do you remember? What do you see about my— which of my tweets do you remember? What do you remember about me? And like the responses I've gotten from people has been so useful in helping me see how people see me, which is like invaluable if you're like a creator or a performer or something. And you're trying to just, you know, instead of operating blind, not knowing, or deaf, or like just, you know, just inhabited and not knowing what the audience thinks, and then you don't know how to adapt to that. Like once you see and hear what people are seeing and hearing, you may not necessarily want to completely inhabit the role that they're creating for you. So I think there's some navigation there that you have to figure out yourself as a creator. But once you have that information, it's like, oh my God, how did I ever, you know, do what I do without that information? You know, it's like really, you can't hear yourself. In a sense, I mean, you can hear yourself, but you can't hear how people are receiving it.

Yeah. So it's definitely always surprising to me. Like, I tend to agonize over sentences and like try to make sure that everything is like right. And the stuff that I think will stick out to people that I'm really worried about, like almost never does. And then they always pick up on something else that like I didn't even think about. Yeah. It's really hard to predict.

Yeah. And it's part of the fun. It's part of the frustration. Like you don't quite know, but yeah, when you kind of accidentally make stuff that other people think is surprisingly good, I think that's a very, uh, it's a very, it's humbling. And I think, yeah, it's humbling. It really is in the sense that you realize that what you had like gained, right? Like what your, your, Plan was, it might not necessarily be the best thing. It's like, sometimes it's just your presence and you're just hanging out and what came naturally. And so then, then that makes you take yourself less seriously in a sense. It's like the best thing that comes out of your work might not be what you thought.

So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's actually really good. Cause like sometimes it's this, it's this like heavy burden where you're like, I need to make this perfect. But then once you're like, I have no idea what perfect even looks like.

Yeah, exactly.

Then I should just like have fun with it, you know, and do whatever gives me energy. Because like, that's the best way for me to keep putting stuff out into the world. And like, something's going to resonate probably if I'm having fun. Yeah.

That's so true. That's so— it's somehow still underappreciated. Like the— I would say it probably applies to note-taking as well. Like just, again, if you agonize about, oh, I should take the most useful possible notes. Like you don't know what useful is now yet. Like, oh, now, like 6 months from now, you look back and like some stray nonsense note that you wrote out of fun, like, oh, this reminds me of some other thing or whatever that you, in that moment you thought was like a passing stray thought. And you look at it 6 months later, you're like, oh shit, this is the most important connection I could have made.

Totally. I've got to say, like, I've gone through so many different note-taking systems and some of them are more complicated than others. And I'm just in the chillest note-taking phase of my adult life, probably.

Like, nice.

I still take notes. On everything, but I pretty much just take them in Apple Notes and I don't worry about the organizational system at all. And so far it's working out all right. I definitely still use Roam for book notes. Like it's synced with Readwise and that I find to be really nice. But any like meeting notes or just like other stuff that's on my mind, I just like, just throw it right into Apple Notes. It seems to just work for me so far. I'm sure I'll go back to something more complicated at some point in the future, but for where I am right now, it's, That's the right move.

Yeah.

I think there's like this, this cycle of like increasing complexity and then you reach some threshold where it's too much and then you just discard everything and you start from scratch again. And then, but you don't truly— so even though you're now writing on like a blank sheet of paper or whatever, you bring your understanding with you that you picked up from the scaffolding that you build up earlier. And then from there, you may then find that you start building from scratch again. And then there's like new stuff that you pick up and then it's like, it oscillates back and forth. But it's not, it's, it's not wasted oscillation. You learn each time.

This just, it goes to this thing that I've been at this, like this, this hobby horse that I've been on for the last like week, which is how many things in life work on an inhale-exhale kind of way, inhale-exhale kind of way. Like you inhale and you're adding complexity, you're adding stuff to the, to the system. And then you exhale, you're taking things away. And that's how so many things in the world work. I got this from this book I was just reading that is fantastic. It's one of the best books I've ever read, basically called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Can you say that again?

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek?

Can you spell that?

Yeah.

Can you type it in chat?

I'll type it in the chat. I don't know if you know Walden by Thoreau.

It's—

Walden is like this book where he goes out into the woods and he just writes everything that he sees. And it's about nature, but it's really about God and the universe. And this book is kind of like an updated version of Walden that was written in the '80s. And the way that it's written by Annie Dillard and the way she lays it out is the same way. It's like the first half of the book is about like the beauty of nature and it's about— she's creating this like picture of nature by adding things. And the second half of the book is like kind of reflecting on how the beauty of nature is also driven by taking things away by death, basically by things dying and other things taking their place. And it's like, it's absolutely beautiful. And it's, it's right on this kind of inhale-exhale kind of like thing anyway. But you see that everywhere in every kind of system, these cycles.

Yeah. I've seen it also framed as like bundling and unbundling.

Yeah.

Like, so you bring everything together and then it gets too much. Then you bring, spread everything apart and then you piece it. Each thing by itself is useful. Then you need to connect it again. I've also seen it described for like security vulnerabilities in InfoSec, like against everything in one place. And then there's too many connections and then like, so things can spread badly and then you've got to create some silos to separate. And then it's like, oh, too many silos. Right.

Right. Yeah.

It's very yin yang.

Centralization, decentralization, you know, Web3 is the big exhale. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

That's very true.

It's funny how simple it is when you zoom all the way out and you see the big trends. Yeah, for everyone here, we're still waiting for Anne-Laure to show up. So she's been traveling. So I think she might be, she might be like just waking up as well. So I just woke up like 15 minutes ago. So in the meantime, we can just hang out and chat until she shows up. Anybody have any thoughts, questions, concerns? Chat is kind of active. It's the daylight thingy for time zone. What do you mean by daylight thingy for time zone? Anyway, um, so then I wanted to ask you, like, so how— so even, even Every is kind of like a, like a consolidation, right, of Multiple.

Yeah, it's the inhale of the unbundled exhale of internet, right? Yeah, yeah, go for it. I saw a talk a while ago that was in the context of Web2, like not a Web3 conversation, but talking about this cycle of things happening in open source that take off and then being sort of co-opted by people who put it— they're not co-opted, but they're used by people who put it into very neat packages and create something that's easy to use, but then closes down, you know, the interoperability and, and those sort of things that open source had. And then that always leads to like the more open, you know, like we're seeing all these like Firebase copies that are open source though, right? Where they're like, Firebase is too closed. I think that's an interesting cycle of like innovation, but maybe not the most user-friendly. And then they try and make it too user-friendly, but they close down the usefulness. And then, right. That brings out, that opens the possibility for another cycle of innovation. That I think the Web3 thing is like the next layer on top of like, no, fuck it, we're gonna rethink the protocol. Right, right, right. And the trade-off is like, it's less user-friendly. Same thing with open source. It's like why people pay for the managed like open source alternative or whatever is like, they don't wanna set it up themselves. But then eventually you're like, actually, I want the user-friendly quick version. Coinbase is a good example of this. Coinbase is, you don't own your crypto on Coinbase. It's built to be consumery and that's why it's worked very well. Whereas the kind of more decentralized alternatives are just harder to set up for the average person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think even in the earlier stages of the web, I think one of the early, even like in the very early days, people were like, everyone will want to set up their own server and their own website and their own FTP and everything. And it's like, it made sense within that early adopter crowd that it seemed that everyone would, but like, you know, random people who are not so kind of intensely interested in those details, like they don't care so much. And so it does seem like, you know, in the early stages of the adoption curve, like the people who are in the room miss— system— it's like systematically misunderstand the people who are not in the room, right. And like what they want and they don't really care. Right. And so it's just an interesting thing to reflect on. I find that when you— so even with like note-taking apps or whatever, right. Like it's just the level of complexity that people can tolerate. There's like a spectrum. Genesis has a question. Uh, taking notes in an unstructured way and letting them incubate over time, how do you resurface all the notes that you've written? Dan, what about you?

How do you do that? It's a really good question. Um, it's still unsolved, to be honest with you. Um, I think recently the, the way that I have solved it is I have a pretty good idea of the times when I'm going to need to use a note right now. Because in general, when I'm taking notes, it's like for a specific post that I'm going to write now or in the near future. And I have places that I can put all of those things. Like right now I'm writing a piece about panic attacks, about my experience with panic and like how I manage it basically. And like what it is scientifically and all that kind of stuff. And like, I have a, I have a, just an section of my notes where like I just put all the Panic stuff I know about. Actually, that's split between Apple Notes and I use Muse a lot for like when I'm reading papers and I'm trying to like understand a bunch of like ideas together. It's a really cool iPad app. And so I just know that all that stuff is in there or it's in the Apple Notes or it's in the piece. And I think it makes it easier, yeah, when you have a lot, when you're reading stuff for specific projects, you know what you're gonna use it for. When you're in, and that's more of like what I like, a kind of like convergent place to be. When you're in the kind of like more amorphous divergent place where you're just like, I don't know, I'm going in a bunch of different directions. I have no idea what this is gonna be used for. That's when I think it's a lot harder. And when the more serendipitous note surfacing is like really helpful. I do have Readwise. So it does show me book notes every day, which I really like. And I think it would be nice to have more of a setup that does that with like my Roam notes or my Apple notes or whatever. I just don't have it right now. Cause I think it's, that's more of, at least for me right now, it's more of a nice to have than a like burning need.

Yeah.

When I, when I reflect on my own process, like, so in the early days, like it was all just chaos and random stray notes everywhere. It was like almost, it felt kind of useless at the time. And, you know, I don't know if I can even access some of those older stuff, but it's in a folder somewhere that's zipped in somewhere else and I'm never going to open it probably, or like, you know, someday. But increasingly I found that as I write more and I talk to people more and like over the— this is like over years and years, uh, I've come to get a sense of like, there's something like, you know, so I used to want to say, oh, I have hundreds of different interests. Once you've spoken about them and written about them a while, you find that there's like, maybe like 7, like, or like a dozen, you know, like core interests that, that recurrently come up again and again. And, uh, so when I'm taking notes, I, I, even when it's like unstructured and it's like something new, like I just watched the movie and like, what, what do I remember? Like, I, I kind of relate things back to my like 7 or 8 core interests. So, you know, like historical scenes, um, addiction, like it's just a bunch of like a few central themes that keep coming up. And yeah, I guess it helps to, it helps to have written stuff. So like having written a couple of books, I can now like relate almost everything that I encounter now and be like, oh yeah, I could, I could theoretically slot that into that section of my book for like the next edit or whatever. So I will tag it with, oh, this is about humor. This is about coping mechanisms. This is about whatever. And so like by using those frames, phrases, then like in the future, when I want to resurface something, I can kind of search for those phrases. Like, so, and yeah, so like, uh, I've, I've been trying to quit smoking. I'm like 3 weeks in, I lapsed like a couple of days, I lapsed one day, a couple of sticks, but like, so I'm like 21 days in. And every time I tweet about it, I include like the no smoking emoji. So that if I search my own Twitter for the no smoking emoji, I get all like, it's like 30 tweets about it. And then I can, when I want to write a blog post about it, I just search for that emoji. So it's like, I, so if you think of Twitter as taking notes, like I write the notes with the recall kind of intended. And I mean, I don't always do that super effectively. And sometimes, sometimes I just search my own notes randomly to see what comes up and like, it can be surprising and fun and be like, oh yeah, I totally forgot that I wrote about this like years ago. If I'm not careful, I can spend the whole day on that, which is, it can be fun.

You know?

I like that.

I think that's basically good enough. Like I had the same thing with this Panic piece. I wanted to find every note that I wrote. Written about Panic over the last 10 years. And like, I just searched and I pretty much got everything. There's like all the entries and like all this stuff. The one place I couldn't find is, is my written, my like actual notebook notebooks. I had to do that manually, but that was kind of fun. But I mean, I love the way you use Twitter like that. I think that's so cool. I wish I did more of that, like note-taking in public kind of thing with themes and all that kind of stuff.

Oops.

I'm curious. Sorry. My food is here.

Ooh.

I'm curious how, like, how the non-smoking thing is going, like, and what, whatever, what have you learned from it so far?

Oh man. Uh, well, so, you know, part of why I, part of why I did it was in, in my book Introspect, uh, there's this whole section on like coping mechanisms and stuff. And to write a good piece on that, I knew that the last time I quit smoking or like managed to go without cigarettes for about like 3 to 6 months was when I had read Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking. Like it's one of those books that people who quit smoking reference and share with each other and say, oh, this really works. And so I reread that book with the intent of working on my book to talk about coping mechanisms.. And the book is just good. You know, you read it and you're like, oh shit, like, why am I still smoking? While researching it to write the thing, I'm like, oh yeah, he's right. You know? And then it's just like, I felt like it's almost like to demonstrate my own understanding of what I'm talking about, I have to like walk the walk, right. And not just talk, talk. So I'm like, okay, like if I'm writing this book about facing your demons and dealing with your issues, like I should, go through my own thing. So that's part of it. And what I've learned, I would say, is, yeah, so I'm really approaching it kind of half intellectually in terms of like, it's just an interesting exercise to try to understand what is a coping mechanism, why do we use it, what does it help us with, and so on. And my sense is that really it's very deeply intertwined with a lot of other things, and that doesn't quite get adequately represented in public discourse or whatever about any, whether you're talking about like, um, you know, dysfunctional eating or, um, other kinds of like substance abuse, or there's all kinds of things that are seemingly dysfunctional, internet addiction, video games, whatever it is that the person is doing. It's very often people focus on the, on the, on the thing that they're doing and not so much on like, why are they doing what they're doing? Or what is that thing helping them do? Like, what are they avoiding something? Is it, You know, and with cigarettes, it's one of the reasons it's so sticky and so difficult for people to quit is that, you know, it, you, you, you, it gets used to like regulate your emotions. It gets used to regulate your biological processes, your appetite, your, your alert cycles, awake cycles, your dopamine stuff. And so like when you go off of it, it's like depressing. Like you get sad and you get, you get lonely. And, uh, You know, your brain gets foggy, like you're used to, like, so I was seeing somebody tweeting some, like, there was like a, you know, people kind of just, uh, I saw a Twitter, a viral tweet with a bunch of replies that were very insensitive about cigarette smokers. They're like, oh, why would you want to get cancer and smell bad? And I was like, that is such a, almost like a bad faith misunderstanding of why people smoke. Like smokers know that it stinks and that it, you know, it's bad for their health. Like they don't— like they're doing it because the immediate sense— and this became stronger for me when I tried to stop, right. It's like the immediate sense is that like, uh, you feel like you're losing your mind in a small way. And schizophrenics actually are likelier than not to smoke. So I don't, I don't think I'm outright schizophrenic, but like, there's, there's, it's like a spectrum. I think like there's people who are just mentally more volatile in some ways. And it's like a kind of self-medication, right? Like it calms you down, but it suppresses you. You know, it's like, like part of one of the reasons, one of the things cigarettes do is that they have, uh, like you have carbon monoxide in your cigarettes, which is like bad, obviously.

Right.

But it suppresses the amount of, of it suppresses your nervous system in a sense. Right. So it's like, if there's, if your nervous system is like a live wire in some ways, and it's, which is, which is like painful. There's so many layers, like it could be a childhood shit, right? Trauma. It could be anxiety attacks, all kinds of peripheral stuff that the cigarettes sort of help you just mitigate, I guess, which a lot of people must be doing all the time. Like they just, and some people do it with, you know, junk food, fast food, watching, staying up all night on scrolling through their phones. It's like, it's just, it's, you know, it's different things that we do to Numb the pain. I don't know how we got here. This is like 7:00 AM in the morning for me. But, um, it's just, uh, it's interesting. I think that mainstream society's understanding of addiction is very, very primitive and it's almost designed to keep us trapped in some way. Cause if you feel guilt and shame about your coping mechanisms, that itself kind of worsens the thing. So like a phrase that I ended up with was, So you, you have your cope and your cope, your coping mechanism is a load-bearing coping mechanism. It's stopping something worse from happening, or even if you just perceive it to be so, you know, if you perceive that, oh, if I, if I stop smoking, I'm going to have to deal with like the chaos of my emotions. And like, you know, it can be very life, it can feel kind of life and death. Like I remember once, like a couple of weeks ago, I went for a run trying to get healthier.. And like, I felt nauseous as hell. Like, I think it's just the oxygen levels in the bloodstream is like changing and it feels like you're going to die sort of. And in your mind it's like, whether it's this addiction speaking or whatever, it's like, oh, you know, if you just smoke a cigarette now, everything will be fine. It really feels very strongly like that. And there needs to be like compassion for that, you know?

And, uh, I mean, I understand why people don't, but Yeah, no, you're saying a lot of things that resonate with me. I've never, I've never like had a cigarette habit, but like I think it relates to a lot of, a lot of things that I've experienced in my life. One thing in particular that stood out first is just like, because you're a writer, you get to use this experience to like be curious about what it is like to quit smoking. That's actually really powerful. Gives you like this— yeah, project, you know, like there's a reason to go through it. And if it works or if it doesn't work, like if you keep smoking or you don't, you're going to get something out of that, that you, you understand yourself better, which I think is actually a really powerful tool to give you a reason to go through the pain to do it. Um, and I found that too in my life is like I relate differently to my experiences and to my emotions because I know that really getting curious about them and understanding them is like a project for me to make more stuff. Which is like a weird thing to say, but it's true. I think the other like really interesting thing that you mentioned is kind of like the guilt and shame. And I have to imagine that, you know, there's a way that you can set yourself up to try to quit. That's like, well, if I just try hard enough, I'll be able to do it. And if I don't try hard enough, then it means there's something wrong with me. And when you experience those like really tough feelings of like, maybe I'm going crazy, or it would just be so much easier if I had a cigarette or whatever, and you kind of give in, then you have this like huge cycle that gets, that gets tripped off for that, which is like, I'm bad and I'm terrible. And maybe I even deserve to like smoke or whatever.

I don't know.

I don't know exactly like how it is.

Yeah.

It is.

It is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that just makes things worse. It doesn't make it easier. And it's true. And it's like all of those, all of those like self-flagellating emotions are like things that we, I think, build into ourselves because we think it helps us. But yeah, in general, I don't think it does. You know?

Yeah.

Like there are all these studies that show that you wanna pursue a goal. What you should do is, um, is think about what might happen if you don't get that goal, because it raises your blood pressure and raises your heart rate, and you're going to be more motivated to achieve it. But there's all these situations like this one where that mode of thinking that you're super used to, used to doing and using on yourself to like get yourself to like get up and do it actually just like makes it way worse. And I just don't think that there's enough, um, there's enough thought into that, into the, into the role that like guilt and shame play in preventing us from doing things that we want to do or keeping us further away from our goals. Because people think that they're good. They're kind of things that like keep you in line, but really what they do is they create avoidance, they create anger, they like, they're demotivating. And for me, like what, something that has made a gigantic difference in my life over the last like year or two is understanding those emotions and also learning how to like create and direct like the experience of compassion for myself and for other people. It's like a huge unlock. It's crazy. It's weird that you have these circuits and you can like learn to activate them and how powerful they are and how underused they are. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think very much we inherit, especially I think like negative reinforcement from family, school, you know, a lot of civilization is like full of negative reinforcement everywhere. And like, why? Right. And I think it's just, it's very short-term thinking. It's very, don't do that. Don't, you know, this is bad. Like you should be ashamed. You should be guilty. Whatever. Like, it's very, it's very scarcity mindset informed. Like that kind of, like, if you, if you study it, if you look at the big picture and you examine what works and what doesn't work, like negative reinforcement is just not very effective at behavior change. Like historically, You can go anywhere and you find it's like everyone who does anything substantial over a long period of time, well, it's like they are driven by positive reinforcement. You know, they like what they do. They get enjoyment from it, satisfaction from it. They double down on it. I mean, and there are cases where, you know, like someone is like, uh, you know, they start working out because they feel shame about being unfit or whatever. And then it's like, there's so many of those stories where they do get fitter for a while. And then it's like they spiral into depression and they're like, they're like, kind of watching themselves too closely and they're like pressuring themselves to perform and they're miserable. And it's like, eh, I mean, it can be like a transitional stage where you go from being very helpless to, okay, you have some power and agency, even though you're mad at yourself all the time. And then you have like a breakdown and you're like, then it's okay. Then there's a synthesis, right? Like you're like, okay, now I have to relearn and accept myself and whatever. But I don't even think that that middle stage is really all that necessary. It's just that We go through that, I think, because we haven't learned better yet. And so if that's the only way a person can get out of the first situation to the second situation, I have some sympathy for it, I guess. Like, I'm not gonna— again, if you get mad at someone for being mad at themselves, like you're just perpetuating the problem. So you have to, you kind of have to be compassionate even with, with, and this all applies inside your own head as well. Right. And, uh, yeah, you know, it's funny. It's funny that we kind of, come to this place again. Like, so at our previous salon with Thiago was also about somehow we started out talking about like note-taking apps and stuff. And we eventually got to talking about emotions and feelings. But I think, you know, it's, I think this is really a recurring thing. Cause it's like, why do people take notes at all? Right. It's like, you want to remember stuff, you know, you want to, it's bothering you that you don't remember stuff. That was my thing. Like I used to be so troubled that I couldn't remember stuff. And so there's really It feels, it feels like it's all connected.

Yeah. It's, it's about emotion regulation.

Yeah.

I'm kind of, I'm curious about like, I think the thing that it connects to for me is I am trying to eat low carb. And I think the experience of like seeing cake in front of me and not eating it is like probably like a low-grade version of wanting to have a cigarette, but like not being able to.

Yeah, basically.

And I'm trying to like, I'm trying to understand that experience. And so what I've, what I've started to do now is like, when I feel that feeling, like I want to eat this, I'm kind of like looking at the feeling. And what I found is that like, there's every feeling or emotion has, it's almost like a, it's like a user interface. Like when you see Twitter's feed, you know that you can like scroll. You know, and all the other options don't really occur to you because like you just know how the UI works. I think emotions are kind of like that. It like has a user interface where the default is I see cake and I grab it basically. And it doesn't occur to you like, yeah, on Twitter, I could like look at the Twitter interface and like try to smell it, but it would never occur to me to do that because I know that it doesn't have a smell. And, but the emotions are kind of similar. There's all these like possibilities to react to a particular like physical or emotional experience that would never occur to us because like, we're just not used to it. And I've been trying to figure out like, okay, what is the like move here? Cause like, I'm not really used to having to, when I have that sensation, having to like not do it. And I found that like, just being like, No, you're not allowed doesn't really work very well. Um, and I'm kind of curious if you have discovered things like different ways to use that user interface that have helped you or not.

Hmm. The thing that's coming to my mind for me is that, uh, so like several years ago I had a colleague who was very excited about intermittent fasting. And so he kind of, he was like super, he was like, imagine, Jellicle about this, like, oh guys, you have to try this. So I was like, okay, I'll try it. And, um, I, it was very interesting. So it's like, it's not really something I think about much, but like, it was my, I did it for like once a week for about like 6 or 7 weeks. I mean, so first I just did it once to see how it, how it is.

Right.

And it blew my mind because like specifically the thing was, I remember the first day, so I was trying to do a 24-hour fast, which means just, uh, Like I wake up and I drink water and I just drink water the whole day and I go to bed not having eaten. And then I'll eat the next day. And I remember when I went to bed that night, I was like, I was thinking about, like, I was having intrusive thoughts about food. I was like, I'm lying in bed and I'm like, it's totally different from just, hmm, it would be nice to have this for dinner. What do I want for lunch? You know, it's like, it's really like, like food's entering my mind. I was like, wow, that's, that's, It's really crazy. It's like, it's like, it's like trying to like to use like computer energy again. It's like you're scrolling or something and you get pop-ups like, you know, it's like, whoa, like where's this coming from? And then I fell asleep, I guess. And I woke up when I went to bed, I was like, tomorrow when I wake up, I'm going to be starving. I'm going to be like screaming in hunger. So I assumed, and I woke up and I was not hungry at all. I was like normal, like kind of normal. And that was like, I was like, wait, what's going on? Like, That doesn't seem that it seems like something broke somewhere. Like, like, you know, and then I realized that. And so I related that back to cigarettes actually, for me. So I was like, hunger cravings, like they, they spike and then they fade. Like, it's not, it's not like you're going to get more and more and more hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry. And then you just like starve and die. Right. Like, like they actually have like, like they peak and they trough. And we don't usually, if we have like a very stable dietary pattern or like we eat every like 3 times a day, even 3 times a day eating is like culturally, you know, that we pick it up from childhood or whatever. And we just assume that it's normal, but like humans in the wilderness, probably they just ate whenever they felt like eating or whatever. Like, so they don't have these. And then the thing is like your blood sugar levels associate around it and then your sleep cycles associate around it. So it becomes this very structured way of being, and then you rearrange your life around these patterns and you're like, oh, you know, after I eat, I tend to just I tend to not do something or whatever. Where, and then once, so once, so I would say that, and I've never heard anybody give this advice, but if anybody wants to quit smoking, I would advise experimenting with fasting once or twice, you know, just so that you can feel for yourself that you can feel really hungry at night. And then you wake up the next morning and you're not hungry. And then you realize that there is a psychological sort of component to hunger or to Cravings, right? I'm not saying it's, oh, it's all in your mind because you feel it in your body. You do feel it. So it originated in your mind maybe, or it's like, I don't know what the specific like synapses and neuroscience behind that is, but like cravings rise and fade. And the difficult thing about trying to quit smoking, for example, and I'm sure it's for all addictions, is that in the needy stage, when the craving hits, you feel like, oh, it's going to get worse and worse and worse. And it's never going to get better. And that's false. That's actually, it's a feeling, but it's not. It's not true. You know, it will subside after a while. And, but if you don't have the felt knowledge that it will subside after a while, you can feel really helpless. You can feel like you're, you're like being strangled sort of. Right. And yeah, I would say so the knowledge of bigger and broader cycles. And I mean, you could even say, this is the thing about like growing up, right? Like, you know, like, like when you're a teenager, for example, and you have like social anxiety or whatever, you're like, oh, you know, my friend, My friend doesn't like me, it's the end of the world. And to the teenager, it feels that way because his social reality is I have like 6 friends and they are my whole world. Right. And like in your thirties, you're like, oh, you know, someone doesn't, ah, fuck it. You know, there are other people, I'll make new friends. It's fine. Like, it's not, it's not a big deal. And yeah. Checking out chat.

Yeah. I think that's kind of interesting. It's like, um, The interface to like a craving, whether it's a smoking craving or like desire for sweet food or whatever, is, um, it's kind of like on your iPhone or on your phone when it like, you, you automatically, you like accidentally, uh, hit the like emergency warning and it starts to buzz, or, you know, you get one of those emergency warnings on your phone. It's like you feel like you have to like react to it immediately. But I think what you're saying is you can understand that interface differently to like know that you don't actually have to react to it immediately. And if you don't, then it becomes automatically less important over time, like, or it becomes less relevant. I guess push feed of things or whatever.

Yeah.

I think, I think that experience is kind of, is kind of interesting. It just requires you to like have the knowledge that it won't get worse forever. Right.

Yeah.

That's hard to keep in mind when you're—

when it's like you right in the face, you know, that's actually reminding me, like, so when I was, uh, when I first— so before I started working, so when I used to be in the, like, when I was like 21, 22, I used to blog a lot about local politics and that was sort of like my main thing in life. Like I got my, my personal sense of validation and value from, oh, I am a somewhat important blogger in my local scene. And I'm blogging about local news. That's very important. It's very, you know, it's consequential or whatever. And I mean, it is and it's not at the same time, but like then I started work and I didn't have time to do my job and to do my blogging stuff at the same time. And a bunch of stuff happened. I got married and it was just messy.. And I eventually made the decision to be like, okay, I'm just not going to blog anymore. Like, and, and okay. There's also like, there were like some local drama events around it. It all seems so irrelevant and silly now, but in 2013 it seemed important. And like in Singapore, there was a haze at the time, like in Indonesia, they're burning forests and there's a haze. And like, we used to wear masks then because the haze was so bad. And at the time it was like, oh no, there's like limited supply of masks. And that became this whole political— like, now in retrospect, like, what? Why?

Why?

At the time it seemed like a huge deal. And I was really upset about it. I was like, people are so annoying. And you know, they're like, just the whole, like, everyone is just kind of stoking outrage about stuff. And it's just back and forth arguments. And I'm like, I'm at work. I'm like, I'm receiving these messages, these like notifications on Facebook, or like people having Facebook arguments on my wall and stuff. And I'm like trying to do my job. Like, ah, So I had like a moment of almost crisis. I'm like, fuck it, I'm not gonna do this anymore. And so I like deleted my— I mean, I export, I deleted my blog. I walked away from my blog and the whole thing. I'm just like, I'm not gonna be the social media bloggy guy anymore. I'm just gonna stop all that shit. And it was hard. It was really, I felt lonely and I felt sad. Like it's really, I find myself repeating these things Because I don't know if people really— so when talking about addiction and talking about just any of these things that you're embedded in, like, and I left a group chat that I was in, there was like a bunch of my friends and they used to just spend the whole day talking about like whatever's on the news that day. And it was, it's not healthy for us, I think. And so I told them that, you know, I'm making a change in my life. So I'm like leaving all my group chats. I'm doing all those things. So it wasn't like, screw you guys, but, you know, I'm just kind of walking away from it. And, you know, you would think that— so normally when you hear like the sort of like story, you would think that it's going to be, oh, and then my life was amazing. Like, no, it was shit for like 2 weeks. I think I was just sad and lonely all the time. And I feel like it felt so quiet, like the, the, the lack of notifications and the lack of everything. It felt like I was— it felt like I left. City or like the village warmth. And I went into the wilderness and it felt like I was going to die, like socially, like socially. Like I was just like, what's— I got depressed, you know, I was like alone, it's quiet. I don't know what I'm doing. And it's like, eventually I came to a new sense of self. I had to find new friends. I had to, but like that, there was like that dip before you get to the new configuration that is so isolating and alienating.. And I think, um, having been through that and, uh, I know Haider is in the call and we've spoken about some related stuff in the past. It's like, once you've done that or some version of that, whether it's walking away from like a career or from a religion or just walking away from something that once meant a lot to you, you can, you can identify other people who've done the same and you can identify when someone Wants to do it, but they've never done it before. And like, it's a, it's a, you know, we can recognize each other by our scars is the phrase that I like to say. It's like, you can just tell there's a smile. There's a knot. It's like, oh, you know, you haven't, you haven't, you haven't yet like broken free and gone screaming into the chaotic wilderness.

What do you think about me? Have I gone into the wilderness or not? What's, what's your guess?

I'm not sure actually. We'll have to chat more. Uh, I think, I think yes. Um, I don't know. Well, your vibe is different than when we first met a long time ago. So I think probably yes. I, I, I'm maybe, I, I mean, is it too intimate to guess? Uh, I would say you're like mostly through it. At least I don't know if you're all the way out and you come out on the other side yet.

Interesting.

Interesting.

I don't know. I don't know. You tell me. No, you tell me. I think that's an interesting read. I was, I mean, my answer to you is essentially like, I don't know if I'll ever be totally through whatever it is that I'm kind of like going through, you know, we're always going through new things, but I've definitely done the recognizable pattern of I was doing a thing and then I stopped and like, my self-worth and self-esteem and my, all my connections and all my image of myself and how people saw me like collapsed. And then I had to like figure out what to do next. You know, my last company was an enterprise software company and I ran that for a couple of years and it was a big source of motivation and self-esteem and it's how people knew me and all that kind of stuff. And we sold it and all of that immediately just like disappeared overnight. And that's when I started having panic attacks. And it took me a couple of years of like, I did so many different things to try to like figure out what I was, what I wanted to do with my life. Like what, like who I was, you know, I did some investing. I like worked at an incubator. I wrote a novel. I like, I did like 15 little side projects or whatever. And then I ended up running a media startup. Um, which is great and is definitely exactly the thing I should be doing. Um, but it took like, I don't know, probably 3 or 4 years of like figuring it out to know. Um, and that was hard.

Yeah.

You can see it. You can see it in a person's face really is there's a, there's a kind of a muscular tension in the face. I think it's part of it. Um, but it's a kind of stress. It's a kind of, uh, there is a relaxation in the face that comes when you're completely done with it. And, but, you know, it's like at the same time we're going through COVID, we're going through like all that shit, you know? So it's, it's difficult to disentangle like the, like the major cycle of a person's kind of journey versus like the micro cycles of all the daily day-to-day stress. But yeah.

Yeah. I'm definitely, where am I right now? I had this, I think COVID and like starting a company during COVID and all that kind of stuff was really hard. And I feel like the last year was the most transformational year I've ever had, probably, which is kind of a thing. 'Cause I've had a lot of shit. Like my 20s was like crazy. It was a crazy decade basically. And I'm definitely, I'm stressed right now. Like I got a lot of stuff going on. I have like, we're about to hire a new writer and I just sent the offer for, before we got on the phone. And apparently her name was misspelled in the offer letter. So I had to change it. I've got another writer I'm recruiting. There's just, I have a post I gotta get out tomorrow. I'm stressed right now, but also having a lot of fun. And yeah, I don't know where I'm going with that, but— That's interesting.

It's nice to hear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, everyone is, I mean, anybody else want to share your own stories of struggles or what you're dealing with? It's not exactly— it's all connected, you know. It's like, uh, the things that we do is scaffolding for—

when you were saying about like when you were getting off of the validation from everyone, it almost kind of sounded like a drug.

It is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like that movie, like that show, what is it? Um, It talks about the social media. It's on Netflix, that, uh, what's that one called? It has like the picture of the two people, one's red, one's blue, and it's talking about how social media hacks us.

Hmm, I'm not sure. Sounds familiar. Netflix, social media, uh, is it The Great Hack? No, I don't know, but I get what you mean.

Yeah, it's basically, it's, it's like It's a great idea, the ability to share information and to share stuff and emotion, all that kind of stuff. But it's like, I don't know what would be like the right word to describe it, but it like anything, it can, it can have a dark twist to it.

I wouldn't even, I would even posit that I don't think it's too crazy to suggest that almost all addictions might be kind of proxies for social validation in a sense, like, uh, I don't know. It's, it's, I think they have similar overlapping, um, kind of network. I mean, so like one of the famous things is the stories of like the rats in the, in the cocaine rats or something like that. The thing that, that gets rats away from like addiction is like social environment stuff.

Yeah. I think like the overlap is If you're thinking about addiction as a way to regulate yourself, one of the biggest ways that human beings regulate is through each other, is through interrelationships. It's gonna be your biggest source of positive emotion and affect, and also your biggest source of negative emotion and affect, particularly the experience of being alone or being threatened with being alone. Alone. And I think one of the ways that like addiction works is it can help to like deal with those feelings, those feelings, those fears of, or experiences of being alone. And then the like kind of pernicious aspect of it is it sometimes creates more of that feeling. So you need to go deeper into your, into, into whatever you're dealing with in order to, and whatever you're addicted to in order to deal with those feelings. Um, but yeah, I think it's, it's, it's interesting, like how much, when you talk about your emotional life, like, uh, the, the interpersonal, interpersonal relationships are like the biggest regulators of your emotions. I think we underappreciate that usually.

Yeah.

One of, uh, so if, if any of you are familiar with the book, The Courage to Be Disliked, one of the core premises in it, which is kind of, you know, it's a bit of a radical proposition, but it's an interesting proposition to consider. And I think there is I think there's some truth to it, is the idea that all problems are interpersonal problems in the sense that, you know, again, like, and I guess you would frame that. I might frame that as like all meaning is interpersonally kind of mediated. So again, we use, when we use language to think for ourselves, like language is a social technology, right? Like we, and you know, if you think that your problem is, oh, you know, I'm so unattractive. Like that's your, your model of reality is you, you know how attractive you are or not in comparison to other people, right? If you feel self-conscious about being skinny or fat or short or whatever, it's like, it's all in relation to other people. If you were the only person on earth, like not counting, like technically you have like no, no problems in that domain. You have, you have a new set of problems. You're lonely and all those things, but like, You know, you don't need to worry about things. And an interesting thing that that compares with is, uh, I went on a rabbit hole once looking up people who were in extreme isolation. So like, like, uh, some hermit in a forest, some people who like sail across the ocean for like weeks in on like by manual power on their own. And a common thing they all report is that they forget their sense of self. Like they just, The sense of— it turns out that the sense of self is kind of, it's also kind of a social technology. It's like you come up with this idea of having a name. Why do you have a name, right? It's for interfacing with other people so that people can call you, hey, you know, Visa, hey Dan. Like if you're on your own on an island somewhere, like after a year or so, you forget your name because you don't need it because no one calls you and you don't call anyone. And so it's like you unbundle into all your different— so each person is a bundle of competing interests, right? You want this, you want that, and they are at odds.. And it's almost like we come up with identities to— it's like the nation state of the self, right? Like it's the, you have a president inside your consciousness and you have, you know, you have your rep— this, you can go really far with this metaphor. Like there's an authoritarian tyrant. That's like the rebel, the guerrilla rebels will want to, you know, drink or smoke or whatever. And it's all this stuff going on. And, uh, yeah, it's just, what did I bring up? Oh yeah. So the idea of addiction as a proxy for social validation and and problems being interpersonal problems. Like there, it's, it's, it's like a fractal of internal conflicts all the way up and all the way down, or just a fractal of conflicts, right? From within the person to outside the person, in a relationship between two people, in society, all the way at nation states. And when you see that, it is very, um, It's kind of mind-blowing. It's like, oh wow. Like, it's, you know, I am not a separate— like, for me, it's almost a spiritual experience for me when I first really, really grokked it. It's like, I am not separate from the world. Like, my sense of separation from reality is like this idea that I'm this name in this meat bag with a name, with this identity or whatever. It's like, it's just, it's just an, it's just a package, you know? It's just a, it's Sure. Like where the boundaries of your skin, uh, and, and yeah, I can go in circles about this. There's a lot of stuff, but it's just when you see how it's patterns of conflict all the way down, all the way up, and it's like a dance, right? It's like, it's not just conflict as in bad, but it's also conflict as in creates interestingness and beauty and stuff. And when you see that, and then you tie it back to like regulation and, and regulation within yourself, with other people, it, you can, you see it less in terms of this is bad and this is good and this is bad and more of like, what is healthy, I guess. And now I'm thinking of like musical analogies. That's just great frame from several very excellent musicians who all say that, you know, there are really no wrong notes in music. It's just that it's the context, like whether or not a note, like, so jazz is Wrong notes. Yeah, it's exactly, exactly right. So it's, it's, if you, if you play a bunch of notes and you flinch and you're like, oh, that's bad. Um, that seems bad. And yeah, even when I was a kid, I was always like, how do pro musicians seem to never make mistakes? And what I've learned since is that actually they do make mistakes, but they recover so smoothly that it doesn't sound like a mistake or it doesn't look like a mistake. Same for people who speak really well, right? It's like, oh, you never, You never seem to get stuck. It's like, oh, they do get stuck, but then they just twist it around and it's like they jump, you know, it's like you stumble and you make it a dance move and it seems intentional. Yeah.

I mean, it's like your book. There are probably a little snack for eating my sexual organs.

So mute.

Yeah. How do I mute this guy?

Wait, listen to that crunch.

Josh, can you help me? I'm not a host.

Anyway, I imagine, I imagine like with your book, for example, there are probably pages of the book where you're like, I know I could have done that better. Like there's stuff in there that's like—

So much, every page.

Yeah.

Like, oh, like, ah, I can't look at that or whatever. And it's like, people don't notice, you know? Yeah, that's true. And yeah, I think it's— I think, you know, going back to the thing that you mentioned earlier about like having an experience of like realizing non-self, or that you can kind of transcend whatever your self is. And I'm curious about like what that experience— when you had that experience, what produced it for you? Because I do think that If you're thinking about ways to kind of get out of the good and bad stuff and learn to regulate better, like that is a core foundational experience for that. Um, yeah.

Okay. So what did you say? You're curious about something specific?

Yeah.

I'm curious about how that happened for you. Like when, when, when did you feel that?

Um, so I would say I have like, so, um, one major thing for me was listening to Alan Watts. On YouTube. So like around 2015 or so, it's just like, uh, I was super depressed and I was just kind of like, existence is a prison kind of, kind of mindset. And I was just like, and I was super down. I was like willing to try anything. And I can't remember who led me to it, but I was just, I just kind of like getting drunk and listening to Alan Watts for hours on end on YouTube. And the guy just had this very humorous attitude towards terrible things, which was like, so it was like frame-breaking for me. You know, it's like, uh, he was describing like despair and he was describing it like it was funny. And I just, I hadn't considered that that's even possible. Like, I was just, I was just like, oh, you know, like, like I'm so, I'm, I'm in such despair. And Alan Watts is like, despair is funny. And I was like, really? And the thing, the thing, but the thing is the way he, it wasn't what he said, you know, it's like, there's no, there's nothing that he said that is like completely new information that nobody's— it's not secret info or whatever, but like, he just had this cheerful, like, oh, you know, like life and death. And, and, you know, peekaboo, he described it as like playing peekaboo. I was like, what? While I was feeling absolutely abject, miserable, like, I got no friends anymore. You know, I got like my, I got bills to pay for 30 years. And he was like, oh, that's, that's hilarious that humans do that. I was like, I guess at some point I started laughing and you know, what is laughter, right? Laughter, I think is, is when we use the phrase, like, it cracks me up. It's because you have a frame, you have some model of how you're thinking about the world. And then laughter just cracks that frame. You're like, oh, right. There's something beyond the frame that I have. And you get surprised. And, you know, and once that happened, I was like, okay. You know, like nothing has changed. I still have a mortgage to pay. That's going to take me many years to pay. I still have, You know, every, all of those things. But once you can laugh, I think you can, you can find, you know, as long as you're laughing, like, and it's interesting that authoritarians hate comedians because once comedians can help people laugh at authority, the authoritarian cannot have control and power because they control you with fear.

Right.

It's again, it's like, are you talking about like Putin or are you talking about like, How you're treating yourself with regards to your cake. It's the same thing. It's like, holy shit. It's like fractals of, you know, it's like your shitty boss or your shitty, like, uh, you know, dysfunctional relationship with your spouse or like a parent-child, like why your parent was, you know, it's like they're afraid and then they exercise control and then they don't let you laugh because humor will break you from that frame.

And yeah.

So once, And same for when I was watching Victor Wooten. So Victor Wooten is the bass player/music teacher who I think helped me really see that there are no mistakes in music. And what he did was he would deliberately play wrong notes on purpose and like try to make it sound fun. And he would laugh about it. And just witnessing this, he's had like, I get so anxious about playing a wrong note. And he's like, he plays the wrong note. It's like, oof, it's funny. You know, it's interesting. And I'm like, huh. You can, you cannot take yourself that seriously. You don't have to take yourself seriously. You can kind of be, you can make mistakes on purpose and it's safe and it's not the end of the world. And you need to see that and experience that. I love that.

I love that. I think it's like a, it just goes back to the kind of interface thing we were talking about earlier. It's like laughter is a different interface to an emotion. I definitely don't think I use that so much, but there's so many wise people that are like that. Like I go to this like Zen center. In New York, like when something happens, the monks just like laugh at it. And it's just, it's kind of, it's weird. It's like jarring when you first see it. It's like, you can laugh at that? And it's like, yeah, why not? Yeah. I love that. And I think the insight about like the similarities between the way that like the kind of outer world conflicts and the way those work between populations and rulers and the inner world conflicts, like inside of ourselves and similarities, it's like, it's so true. You can find it in Plato. Like Plato, like asks in the Republic, like, what is the, what is the best way to govern a state? And in order to answer that, he has to, he has to like explain what's going on in your soul and uses that to figure out like how to govern a state. You can, you can like critique whether or not Plato's solution is really a good one. But, but I think the idea is the idea works. It really does.

Yeah.

One of— so when I went through that, one of my like shining realizations was— so I have a tweet about this, which is like, you are already the monarch of your life. Like, you know, so at the time I was watching Game of Thrones, it's like, oh, Daenerys Targaryen, queen of blah, blah, blah, breaker of chains. I was like, that's all of us actually in the domain of our life. Right? Like, so when you wake up, like you might not be able to control what your neighbor is doing, or control other people, but like within the domain of your life, you get to decide what's important. Like you are the, you do sit on the throne of your consciousness, right? And you might feel like you're not in charge. And like, there's all this noise going on in your kingdom and like, people are disrespecting you and whatever, but like you still get, even if your domain is very, very small, like you, there's still ultimately some locus of control that you get to decide what you want to do. And I think a lot of people, when they feel powerless, or they feel like they are being pushed around or bullied or whatever, it's very tempting to relinquish your sense of agency or your sense of— because it's really true that what Uncle Ben said, which is that great power, with power comes responsibility. And people who feel like they've been abused or beaten or exploited and all those things, they don't, they often, it's tempting to say, I don't want to be responsible for stuff because I'm a victim. Or I am, you know, I have been, I have been taken advantage of. I'm the one getting screwed here. Which is incidentally what like every narcissist says, right? Every narcissist says that they are the real victim in some situation, which is also why they call it a narcissistic wound. But anyway, yeah, it's just the— you get increased when you step into your power. This is an Elsa song. When you step into your power, And you, you seize responsibility for however narrow that domain is, whether it's like how you're going to spend your time in your life in an hour, in a day, right? Um, when you do that, it expands, like your— there's a resonance from being very centered and knowing what's important to you and what you're going to do. And then when you do that well, um, it resonates with yourself and it resonates with other people as well. Like, I've— which is, Which is really mind-blowing to me. It's like, on my personal journey of trying to make sense of myself and figure out what my motivations are, what good action means for me, I see these other people showing up in my life and they're like, hey, you seem to have your shit figured out.

Like, can you help me out?

I'm like, whoa. You know, I don't want to, I'm not here to rule over anyone else. Like you are the monarch of your life, you know? And I can offer like suggestions, some guidance or whatever, but like, And so it's, it's, that's the tricky thing that happens as well. Like, uh, you know, with like guru type figures, it's like they figure something out for themselves and then people see them having seemingly figured out. And again, they want to relinquish their own power and their own responsibility. And like, oh, I'm going to go and ask that guru guy to tell me how to live my life. Right. Tell me what to do, who to be mad at. And also, and it's like, it's, it's very easy to be like, oh, well, you know, if people are coming to me and asking me for advice, I mustn't be smart. I must be all that. And I should tell people what to do since they're asking me what to do. And it's tricky stuff. Like you have to really kind of, I mean, I say have, I think that's ideal. Like you have to challenge people to see that they are the monarchs of their life and that they each have to be responsible for themselves.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think it's like, It's an interesting like line to walk. Cause it's like, I believe that some people actually are victims and like have had like terrible experiences that are, they need help and are really, really difficult to open up. I do feel that way about myself though, is like, I feel like I end up taking away my own power and when I can step into it, it works much better for me. Um, and, and I, I definitely agree with that. Like, I, I forget that I'm kind of like the monarch of my own, my own life sometimes. And I think that's the, like, one of the interesting functions of therapy is that it helps you kind of like figure that out a little bit.

And again, like, the analogy, the analogies really work everywhere. So like, there's the, the saying about kings is like, heavy, heavy is the head, right? Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Like, just being responsible is painful and scary, like to be like, you know, there's this great line from Game of Thrones where Ned Stark, I think his son Robb Stark was saying, Robb Stark was talking about his father and it's like later seasons. And he's saying that he, so Robb talking about his father Ned, he woke up every morning afraid, you know, he went to bed every night afraid and he felt like he was responsible for every villager, every, like every outcome in the, in the, in that kingdom, he felt like he was personally responsible for it. And which is a little, it was just stressful, right? Like, how do you, yeah. How do you sleep at night knowing that bad shit's happening every day, every day within your domain that, you know, if you are, if you are the monarch, then the buck stops with you. So like, how do you live with it? And that itself, you know, you need guidance for that. You need support for that. Like, so just because you're the monarch doesn't mean that You have to personally solve every single problem and that you are, you know, it's tricky stuff, but, um, yeah, it's, it's again, it's like the guilt and shame and stuff doesn't work. So like, if you can't shame, so imagine now that you are an advisor of a monarch somewhere else, right? Like, and like if the monarch's like feeling torn up and he's like, ah, I don't know if I can be a good ruler or whatever. Then you're like, yeah, dude, like you suck. Like, come on. Like that's not really helpful. Like you kind of, you want to reassure the person a little bit and you want to be like, yeah, leadership is hard, you know, like, uh, you need to take a break, you know, go on a horse ride or something. I don't know. And then, um, but yeah, you want to, you want to challenge them to not take themselves too seriously to the point where, you know, it ruins them, but also, uh, do take themselves. So even if you take like The Lion King, right? Like there's that whole Hakuna Matata stage where he has to like leave the kingdom and like be chilling by himself and, to disassociate from the role of king. And so he doesn't feel like, you know, so when he's a child, he's like, oh, I can't wait to be king. I'm going to be in charge and tell everyone what to do and whatever. And it's like, oh shit, like being a king is a lot of responsibility and like bad shit happens and it's your fault. And you're like, okay, you run away, go and go into the wilderness and hang out with your buddies and whatever. But eventually you have to go back and like, there's an incompleteness if you just abdicate the throne of consciousness or the throne of self-responsibility or whatever. And eventually you have to come back and, and, uh, re— it's a synthesis sort of thing, right? I guess it's inhale, exhale, pendulum stuff. It's all the same thing. It's crazy.

And, uh, you just explained the Lion King to me in a way that my, my 5-year-old self like never realized.

Wow.

It's all, it's all coming together for me now. Wow.

Yeah.

It's, So the wild thing about this is you can, you can really see that a lot of movies, especially like Disney movies, all the hero's journey type movies, it's all about the same thing, you know, like Iron Man and what else? Frozen. Like it's all Avengers. It's always Inside Out. It's all kind of the same. It's like internal conflicts, conflicts between characters.

Right.

Like, uh, and you have to find a way to co-regulate and find consensus and meaning and deal with external challenges and communicate. And this is all the same principles. And it's all, you know, like, uh, about hearing the voice inside yourself and not being over— so like with both Moana and Elsa, it's like both like overcorrecting based on like past ancestral trauma. Like your parents are afraid for you and it's like, oh shit. It's like, Suddenly you can reconsider all the media you've ever consumed. And you see that they are the same patterns. And it's like, it's very tempting to be like, oh, there's like a divine order in the universe trying to— that might be overfitting, but like there are patterns, I think, in every— so this is how like the small branches on a tree, the twigs, like a fractal of the tree itself. Like there's all these like story beats about conflict and resolution. Inhale and exhale that really kind of, uh, the patterns repeat themselves. And so this is, there's a funny Kanye quote where in an interview someone asked him like, how do you make decisions in music versus fashion? Like, is it different? Like what's— and then he says, everything in the world is exactly the same. And I just stopped there. And it's like, in that sense, kind of, you know, everything is conflict and resolution. Everything's inhale and exhale. And yeah, there is a profundity to it. I wonder what happened to Anne-Laure. I think she might be still— she might be hungover, asleep or something. I hope she's okay.

It's okay. I'm curious if this is bringing up anything for anybody else.

Yeah. Anybody got thoughts? I would love to— the best part of a salon is hearing from everyone else.

When you talked about the hero's journey, It does seem to be the, you know, like the hero with a thousand faces, like, you know, like, yes, you could be a thousand years old and you're just gonna repeat the same stories in different ways.

So yeah, it is, it is that.

Yeah.

And yeah, you know, so even with creation myths in a lot of like, so a lot of ancient creation myths, it's all like, it's like family struggle, but it's So, I mean, um, well, I guess in modernity, it seems remarkable that everything goes back to family, but I guess in pre-modern times, it's like, what else do you talk about? It's like, just everybody's like, people are killing their parents and brothers and, you know, it's all, it's all conflict, right? It's about like, it's the, the, that, that, so that was the interface, right? The interface for people to make sense of any conflict, the most— there's the best emotional hook for people to think about any conflict is the parent-child relationship or like mother-father relationship. And so everyone has— everyone endures some kind of conflict within the family from the very beginning. So it's very wise— I don't know if I say wise, but it's very effective to talk about cosmic scale things in terms of the most intimate family dynamics, like then everyone understands, right? Even people who are uneducated, illiterate, whatever. It's like every farmer and his son understand father-son dynamics still.

Right.

Yeah.

I've actually kind of found it that like, I try to see everyone as a reflection kind of sometimes. Like if I'm having a conversation, I realize that there's a piece of me in them probably, or are they in me? It's just back and forth. And so it really helped when I did that because it got me outside of like the bubble that was my role and maybe in society. Like I just go, well, I'm here for some reason and there's something being said.

That's so good. There's a line from Carl Jung where he says, That everything that irritates us about other people is an opportunity for us to learn more about ourselves. And you know, that's annoying. That's also annoying. And, uh, can I come in?

I think we have a rule against people going into each other's rooms, unfortunately.

Oh, that's cute.

Oh yeah, I can totally come in.

Can we mute him though? That is cute. That's That is, that's very cute.

I'll dry my hand and then I'll come.

So even, even that, I don't know if he can hear us, but like family, it's so universal, right? Like family stuff, even without seeing what happens, you're like, oh, you know, kids, boundaries. And like, it's so universal, right? It's just everyone, everyone has that. Like, I'm thinking, remember the BBC dad video? The guy's trying to film and his children barge in and it's just, just It's so human that things happen. Anyway, you're asking about— you're saying about people being mirrors.

Yeah.

A thing that I've been reflecting on with the Yang quote is, you know, paying attention to what frustrates and annoys you. And I've noticed that for me, I get very annoyed when I see people expressing weakness and complaining, like on Twitter, for example, like I, And when I reflect on that, I'm like, I realized it's because when I was young and I felt weak and helpless and alone, and I complained, I think I got punished for it, like socially, like from my family and from my friends and whatever. Like I grew up in an environment that was very punitive towards weakness and complaints and just like, why are you being a whiny little bitch? You know, that kind of, that kind of mindset. And so when I see especially, especially like guys who remind me of myself, but they are a bit younger. So it's really very strong in that domain. Right. Like, um, yeah. So when I see women complaining, it doesn't seem to bother me at all. And I'm like, you know, so it's really the guys who remind me of a younger version of myself that when I see them, I almost, it's almost like I feel, uh, well, there's a few different ways to describe framing it. One could be I'm trying to protect them from the abuse that they will probably receive because I received it and they will probably receive it as well. But, you know, that's, that's the very convenient— it's what, it's what like abusive parents say to their kids sometimes. Like, I'm just trying to protect you from the world, you know? And so you need to know, you need to learn. I'm like, oh, you know, in trying to protect them from the abuse, am I not abusing them as well? Like, if, depending on how I, if I approach it in this very knee-jerky kind of, uh, snappy way. So like the challenge for me is to sit back and be like, oh, you know, I have issues. I have, I have a problem with weakness that I, you know, like, and so when I sit down and really meditate on it, reflect on it, journal about it, I'm like, oh, you know, I am still hurting from the fact that I used to be attacked for my weaknesses. And that was cruel and unfair what happened to me. And I don't want to face that what happened to me was cruel and unfair because that would imply that, you know, like there's some nuance there about whether you feel you deserve it. So it's like, like this brings into concept, like your brings into attention, like your moral conception of the universe. Like, you know, what do people deserve? Do people deserve to be bullied? Do people deserve to be mocked? You know, does weakness deserve to be mocked? It's a question to ask them. So if you ask the question outright, do you think weakness deserves to be mocked? I'm like, no, it doesn't. Well, so why am I doing— you know, it's like, uh, it then goes back to, you know, people. So again, I think broadly there's this sense that, um, people know that the mainstream concept morality in the world is quite victim-blaming. So even if we collectively acknowledged among a group of people that victim blaming is bad, it is still known, I think, that victim blaming is kind of the default. Like if something bad happened to you, it's like, you must have deserved it. Like, what did you do? What did you do to deserve the bad thing to happen? Uh, see you, Haider. Yeah. Like what did you do to deserve the bad thing that happened? It's still sadly kind of the mainstream norm. And so people don't want to— people understandably don't want to be victims because they don't want to— they don't want that identity because it would seem that they deserved it. Right. And so I'm not framing it in a very elegant way, but like the result is that there's a kind of externalizing of victimhood where it's like, it's not my fault. It's something else that happened. Yeah, I'm not doing it justice in describing it, but like, it blew my mind to kind of really come to terms with it. Like, I like not want, like, to protect yourself, I guess, to simplify a lot, it's like to protect yourself psychologically in some ways, it can be easier to lash out at other people. Right. I guess that's probably the simplest way to talk about it. There's a bunch of interesting nuance in there that I can't seem to describe off the top of my head. But it's tricky stuff. It's very, very tricky stuff. Should we try and tie this back to note-taking again?

Lisa, what's up, man?

Yeah.

Hey.

Um, yeah, I was just thinking about what you were saying earlier about like, um, thinking about Putting yourself in the shoes of an author makes you look at life differently as you're experiencing it. And I'm kind of thinking about like how you broke out of working at your job and then you took the leap and then you're working as a writer. When you're kind of making that jump, you kind of are thinking about like monetizing your writing, or I would think that you are. Do you think that kind of like takes away from that because as I'm thinking about, okay, I'm working at a job right now, we're gonna start up, and if I want to exit that, I'm thinking about building a course. But the way you're describing it is that you're building a book. And so the way you think about building a course and think about building or writing a book is a little bit different, and you're a little bit more artsy when you're thinking about writing a book as opposed to monetizing a course. So just wondering what kind of thoughts that brings up for you.

I guess it depends on each person's priorities and what they value. Like for me, I am very much like, I'm willing to trade off a lot on money for like artistic integrity. And, uh, I don't think that makes me like a better person or anything. Like it's just my standards from like a young age is just something that I value very much. I just, I place a very high premium on trying to be able to do my art or my craft or my vocation in the way that I want it done. And I mean, if you ask me personally, like, yeah, I do think that, you know, I do project my values out into the world. So I do get disappointed when people are like selling out. And when I say sell out, I don't mean like, you know, it's bad to make money. I think people should make money, you know, like it's how you pay for stuff.

Right.

But I just want to encourage people to think longer term. I think like see the bigger picture and think ahead about what you want and what your priorities are. I think very often, if very often people who are kind of anxiously, neurotically trying to make as much money as possible in the short term, they aren't even, they don't even really get a lot of fulfillment out of it.. And I think it's always worth trading off some money earnings potential to do the thing that you want to do that people don't— I don't know, that's my frame. So I'm with, you know, I still have bills to pay and stuff. So it's not like I have total creative freedom. And I do think that, you know, creativity happens within constraints. So it's like if you had absolute freedom and like infinite money and all those things, like that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to make good art, you know, that you're going to do creative stuff well. Like there's some— like Shakespeare did great plays and he had to make sure that his plays were entertaining to the public of his time, right? Like, so, and, um, that was what it was. Dan, Dan's got to head off, right? See Dan.

I do. Thank you guys so much. It was so good to see all of you.

All right.

Have a good one.

Take care. Uh, yeah. So we're talking about monetization and, uh, yeah, I guess just if you think longer term a little bit. So if you think, even if you're talking about, let's say a career in, in some, like, you know, whether you're working in marketing or just doing some stuff, like even, I would say even just thinking slightly longer term in terms of like wanting to have a good career. It can, and it might end up making you more money in the long run, you know, like just making sure that you work on projects that you really respect and you really think are worthwhile, that you would be proud to put on like your portfolio or resume, like 5 years from now, 10 years from now. So it might take a little bit more effort. You might make some slightly less profitable decisions in the short run, but I think in the long run, like, so over a scale like 10, 20 years, um, it really does. Um, to me it just seems better. Like you just win more, if that makes sense. Awesome.

So like, uh, when you were going through that journey and you were exiting your marketing career and stuff like that, you said, um, was that like length of time? Like, uh, you know, how was it at first versus like Um, like when you connect the dots backward, um, how is that like, how did it feel at first taking the dive versus like, um, how it feels now?

Um, I mean, so when I left my job, what I knew was that, so I didn't have like everything fully perfectly mapped out and planned and everything. It's more like I just knew that I wanted to honor my commitment to myself. To do some creative work, you know. So like, I was, even when I was, when I had a job, I was writing every day and I was trying to, you know, I was like writing on my commutes on the way to work, on the way back home, just whatever's on my mind. I just wanted to keep that commitment afloat. And when I left, I was like, okay, I want to spend a year of my life if I can, just doing as much creative work as I can for myself, like without worrying about, will this do well in the market or will people want to buy or whatever. I just want to do my own thing. But I mean, not completely indifferent. Like I did want to try and talk to as many people as possible and try and find— I think at some point I was like, I want to try and see if I can do freelance articles for magazines and stuff. Like that's all I wanted to do. Um, and so I was writing on as many different platforms and contexts as I could. And it was my Twitter that really took off. But so even before that, I didn't know that it was going to be Twitter. So I was doing it I was like posting on Reddit, I was blogging, I was doing everything. And it was my Twitter that really started taking off. And then about 9 months in, I had to do a bit of consulting to get more cash to pay more bills. But the year or so after that, like, so it's just, you know, you just do a bunch of stuff and you see what happens. And then I'm like, okay, like I seem to be getting more and more feedback from Twitter. So let me do more of that. And I had to step back for a second to make money and come back again. Continue doing that. And then from there, I guess I decided to try selling eBooks and then doing the Patreon thing. And because my Twitter audience was growing and how does it feel? I mean, it feels good. You know, it, I mean, it does, it does feel like it can be a little bit painful sometimes to me, pain, not like this is Slightly discomforting, discomforting, a bit. There's a bit of discomfort where I know that I'm making a trade-off in terms of like financial, you know, I could be making more money working in a startup, like working in corporate, whatever, selling other people's software. But, and while I think I'm fine with that, like I feel a bit something like, so I'm married, right? Like, and like, my earnings has an effect on like, uh, you know, if my wife and I want to have kids, like, like the financial situation there is a concern, but you know, my wife knows who she married and, you know, I have always been like this to some degree. So it's not a shock or anything, but it's, and I do, and I don't think of it as like a long-term negative trade-off where Like, it's not like I'm taking a vow of no money or whatever. It's just that the process of building an audience in the— it's very nonlinear. It starts out very— and it starts out very slow and then it gets more and more exponential in the long run. And yeah, so in the early days, it's not super exciting and it's kind of slow and tedious and not much reward, but it compounds over time. And that's the exciting thing that I'm looking forward to. And I feel like I'm kind of in that, like I'm past the first one-third or the first half of like very, very slow, not much growth. And then I'm sort of reaching the point where I now make roughly as much money every month as I used to make when I was working a little bit less, but like for way less effort, like hours, time spent. So I anticipate that in a few, like maybe next year or so, I'll be making more. Because the audience starts to scale. So that will be very gratifying. So I haven't reached that level of gratification yet, but simply being on the path and then having, you know, some people— like when you first start receiving feedback from people saying that your book changed their life, right? That's really, that's a, that's very fulfilling. I find like it's something that replaces, even though you're making a bit less money, it's very, very satisfying.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess it has to be the thing that you care about, right? So like, if you don't particularly care about helping people with their problems and then it turns out to be the other thing, then, uh, that's that. Oh, hey Anne-Laure Le Cunff Le Cunff. How's it going? Did you just wake up?

I'm so sorry. I thought it was at 9:00 AM Singapore time. That's where I put it in my calendar.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Whoops. It's all right.

Then she was like, are you okay? I was like, yeah, I'm doing great. How are you doing? And she was like, everyone's waiting for you. I was like, for what?

Well, you know, we can, we still have like, uh, what time is it? Hour and a half. It's like an hour and a half, I guess. As long as you want to hang out, we can hang out.

Yeah, no, I have time. It's morning. I usually don't do anything in the morning, so happy to hang out.

Yeah. So we can, you know, In your absence, we've been talking about like feelings and emotions and trauma and addiction, all kinds of crazy shit. But originally the plan was to talk about the future of note-taking. So just to contextualize you on where we're at, I guess, I mean, tell us about where you're at. What, I mean, so right now you're in Singapore. I mean, yeah, right. I know. What's going on? What?

Same, same as you. We need to hang out actually at some point this week. Uh, yeah, I'm very jet-lagged, um, and, um, and obviously I am good at note-taking but not good at managing my calendar, so I'm very, very sorry.

It's all right, it's all right, it's all right. We're just hanging out.

Um, uh, it's actually like just like to like, uh, I've Yeah, no idea what you've been talking about, but as a segue, it's actually interesting because I have been using my notes as also a way to process my emotions. Go through— I know you're trying to quit smoking at the moment. Yes.

Yeah.

I quit last year and I have so many notes about what I was feeling while I was going through this at the time. So I've been one year nicotine-free.

Congrats.

Yeah, like, I mean, we'll say 99.9%. I had one cigarette, uh, on New Year's, on the 1st of January, because the sunrise was amazing. I was sitting on a roof and it just felt like a moment to have cigarettes. But it was amazing to be able to have that one cigarette without buying a pack right after.

Nice.

Yeah, but yeah, anyways, I just like, I just feel like this is something that a lot of people think that note-taking is mostly kind of like work-related and something that you do just to process your to-do list or decide what your priorities are for work. And I use it in a very messy way where I mix. This is also why a lot of people ask me to share my screen sometimes and be like, show me your note-taking system. I'm like, fuck no, absolutely not. I have no idea what's going to come up. And it could be something that is very, very personal. Because I mix everything together.

Same, same. Yeah. That is, that is kind of very, very thematic, thematically related to what we were talking about. And it's so interesting because I was last month when we did a salon with Thiago as well about note-taking as well. Like it ended up in the same place. Like it was really, we started out being like, oh, what apps do you use? You know, what, uh, what's What systems do you use? What features do you want in your next app? And like, just bounce back and forth. Eventually it's like, so next thing you know, we're talking about like feelings and emotional regulation. And yeah, I guess the idea is, you know, if you ask the question of like, why do people take notes? Like, what's the point? You know, why do you, what did you come to it? And it's like, well, there's stuff I want to remember. Why, why do you want to remember stuff? You know? So, well, it's because. It's like, I want to make sure that I'm ready for something or like I have stuff on standby for something, or like, eventually you get the emotions again. It's like, you know, like you want to feel prepared. You want to, I mean, there is, there is like the lucrative side of things. Like it's good to have notes about stuff. So you can, you can, if you're working on a project, like you can flash out. So I, on Twitter, I'm keeping track of all my cigarette diary stuff. So if I want to write like a blog post, like a month from now about my process, I don't need to try and remember, I can just pull everything out. But like, and that's very, you know, so to me, it's obviously a good thing because it saves me time and the stuff that you lose, right? Like if you don't write it down at the point that you write it down, that you, that you did write it down. Then like a month later you try to remember it and your memory is tricky. Like you might be misremembering certain things, you forget certain details. And so there is, there is nuance and texture that you have from your notes that you can't have without it. But even so, uh, well, I feel like I'm contradicting myself now, right? But, but it's, it's useful in that way. And also it feels good to feel like you're being supported by your past self. Right. And like, you're not sort of struggling alone. Well, but that's my experience. I think some people have the experience of their notes overwhelm them. Do you have any suggestions for that? Like, do you encounter people? I bet you encounter more people than me who have that sort of thing. Like when they come and say like, oh, I have a note-taking system, but it's so overwhelming. I don't know what to do. 'Oh, it's so chaotic,' or 'I can't stick with it.' What's your go-to for that?

Yeah, just before I answer this, there's something I thought you said that was interesting about feeling supported by your past self. And I just want to say that equally sometimes I feel contradicted by my past self. Yes. Yeah, but I also think it's a good thing because whenever I read on a note that's from a year ago or 2 years ago or 3 years ago, I'm like, ah, that's what past Anne-Laure thought. I don't think the same thing at all anymore.

It's also a good feeling because I feel like I've grown, my thoughts have evolved, I've learned, and it's also a good feeling.

So for me, that's the good thing, is that whether I stumble on the notes that I wrote in the past where I'm like, oh, that's kind of— well, it's good, that's kind of a stable value for me, something that I've been thinking for a long time, or whether I feel like I've completely changed my mind on the topic. Both feelings are good to me. So yeah, even when I contradict myself, I think this is a good thing.

In terms of messiness and being overwhelmed, I feel like it really depends on what you want to achieve with your notes.

And I think unfortunately a lot of systems are trying to kind of like sell you note-taking as the thing that's going to solve everything in your life.

And I don't think that's the case at all. I don't think that, you know, I don't think it can solve everything. It can help you think in the same way that I think writing in general can help you think and crystallize and formulate your thoughts in a way that's clearer. It can help you empty your brain, like the whole concept Tiago has of building a second brain. I don't know if I'm convinced about the building part, but making space in your actual brain and emptying part of like, you know, offloading some of the load to your note-taking system. I do believe in this. I do think that you can take some of the mental load and put it in that note-taking system and free your mind to think about more creative stuff. I think note-taking can do that. And I do think also that it can help you connect ideas again by revisiting past things and looking at two things you wrote and seeing that, or sometimes just for me, seeing that things keep on coming back, that I've been writing about this for actually 6 months across different topics and different areas of work. Or different conversations with friends that things keep on coming back. This is usually a sign that I need to pay more attention about a topic. So I think if this is how you approach note-taking, there's no reason to feel overwhelmed then because some notes are just going to be there and die in there, and that's completely okay. Some of them are— you're going to, you know, the whole concept of gardening. Some of them you're going to grow, you're going to tend to, you're going to keep on coming back to, and they're going to become these ideas that are red threads across all of the areas that you're thinking about.

And that's good.

And that's fine. So I think a lot of people who tend to are overwhelmed are people who either expect too much from note-taking or are trying to make it this really neat, organized thing that makes sense, where every idea has a box to go to and where every idea is neatly formulated and perfectly crafted and something that they can immediately use. If you embrace the messiness and you understand that this is just a garden that's meant to grow and there are going to be some weeds and some flowers, and that's completely fine, you're not going to feel overwhelmed.

That's so good. Yeah. I mean, so even earlier when you were talking about how you encounter your past self and sometimes you find it You know, when it's a stable value, something that you cared about then and you still care about it now in the same way, that's great. And when it's different and then you feel differently now, you feel like you've changed your mind on something, you've grown, evolved your position, that also feels good. Like that itself, like what you just described there is a kind of meta nimbleness or like navigational skill. And that's not in the notes, right? That's in you. And that's your way of reacting to change or reacting to non-change, right? So like some, you can imagine someone who's like the opposite and they find a way to feel bad about both of it. They're like, ah, I'm still the same on this. Like nothing has changed. Like I'm the same person. Like what terrible thing. On the other hand, it's like, I'm such a hypocrite. I'm so inconsistent and everything, you know? So it's like, yeah, like you, how you feel about what you're in front of you is itself like a— so earlier at some point we were talking about music and how like wrong notes in music is a matter of context and like very skillful musicians, when they make mistakes, they don't flinch. They don't like freak out. They just glide the mistake of the music and glide the wrong note into the right note. And then it becomes jazz. It becomes You know, like kind of like a misstep becomes a dance move. And like, similarly, it feels like, yeah, you know, it's, it's all about expectations. Like if you have very rigid expectations of how things are supposed to go, and then you just described that as well with, uh, right. Like the perfectly crafted system, like the system has to be this way. I want it to be like, there's no mess. No, like if you have that expectation, then you're going to be disappointed and upset. So it really does go back to emotional regulation and how you feel about what you're— what's in front of your face. Right. And I guess, yeah, I guess an interesting thing would be to what degree could a tool theoretically help someone with that? Like, I'm actually not very optimistic about, about the capability of a tool doing that work for a person. And I think It really, I mean, maybe like you could have a tool that spells it out for you so that you consider the things. Like you could have an app that has, when the loading screen has a reminder, remember, you know, like mess is fine. Like maybe that's helpful, but you know, I think most people then glaze their eyes over at whatever those loading screen messages and stuff is. So it still comes back to your personal I mean, that's how I feel about it. What do you think? Do you think that there is, I mean, what do you think? Open-ended.

I know, I agree with you. I don't think, this is another thing that I see a lot is again, people are expecting too much from note-taking systems, but they're also expecting too much from note-taking tools. This is again, this whole expectation that, It is going to— however messy their life is, this is going to help them organize it. You see this. You have books that are all about organizing your life. And this is a craving that people have because when things are messy, it can be anxiety-inducing. And people think that once they find order in the chaos, once they manage to put everything in those boxes, then things will make sense, that things will be easier, they will know in which direction to take their lives. You know, it's just like about the comfort of knowing where things should be and where you should be going, basically. And obviously, I don't think— first, I don't think there is an answer to that in general, because that's what most people spend their whole life doing, just figuring it out, whatever it is for everyone. And second, because I think this is like basically a lifelong learning journey, I definitely don't think a note-taking tool is going to be the answer to this. What it can be though, and as I said, it's the same as like writing as a thinking tool. I just think that that can offer some scaffolding for your thinking, for your exploration journey. And that's it. It's just a tool. Whatever you do with it is a matter of your goals, the context, your mindset, whatever your priorities are at the moment. But the tool is not going to offer an answer to any of this. It just can offer the space for you to think about these things. But yeah, I feel like we're not like that many people. I'd love to— is that okay if we kind of go around the room? Who here is really actively taking notes? Who is using notes and why are you doing it?

I have a question actually about the overwhelming nature of notes, and that's related to using notes to overcome addiction and changing habits. I was wondering if there's a strategy to associate the pleasure of note-taking with the pleasure of changing habits. Because what I find is that when there's an anxiety to create order, yeah, then that's where there's more motivation to take detailed notes and review past notes. Like, yeah, like once, like when I was trying to do a diet, right, then I did like a simple habit tracker and like accompanying journal entries. Then on days when like the diet was going great, I'll just like, I'll just be happy and chill. But then when there's like anxiety, it feels like a lot easier to just brain dump. Yeah. So I think there's like an imbalance there. I'm wondering like if there's any strategy to like balance it out.

Can you say that again? So the imbalance is between, uh, What would you say the imbalance is again?

Like the days when, the days when like things are like going to plan and there's actually order. Yeah, and things when, and days when like the chaos is overwhelming. And like for me, I try to like manage it by taking notes.

Anne-Laure, how do you answer that?

I don't— why do you want to find a balance though? I think it's fine if you have days where you take notes because you feel happy about how you've been sticking to your habits and you're taking notes about that, which can help you in the future also figure out patterns of why, why was that day going so well? And then there are days where it's not going well and you can also write about that and it can be very messy. Chaotic and emotional, and that's okay too, because in the future you can look at it and figure out why was it that that day was harder than another day. And I think, you know, I have days where I don't write any notes, and I have days where I have pages and pages of notes, and that's fine. And I personally don't— it's not a goal of mine to have a balance and to take notes every day or having a habit. Of taking notes actually. It's absolutely not something I'm trying to do. I'm fine if I'm not feeling like taking any notes, that's okay. So is that— why is it that you want to create that balance? Is that because it's been helpful to you or is that a goal behind it or?

Oh, my concern is because like with these habits, it's easy to— it's common to fall back and I thought like notes can be useful for like recreating when the mindset when it's going well. But then, yeah, but then if there's like more like the notes for the bad stuff is maybe like not as helpful. I'm not sure.

Um, yeah, and, and I think in, in my case, like, it's, uh, I do think that taking notes, uh, is just useful as in general as a processing tool, basically, whatever it is. If it's your emotions or if it's work you want to do or anything, it's just a processing tool. And there are days where you have a lot to process and days where there's not much to process. There are days where I'm just literally doing nothing, which is good. I also have nothing to write about. It's very rare when it happens, but it's nice when nothing happens and I don't feel like not taking any notes. So I, you know, I think just see it as something that you use whenever you feel like you need it and whenever it's useful. But if there are days where it doesn't feel like it's helping and you're already feeling a bit self-conscious because maybe you're struggling with the habit you're trying to build, whether it's managing your diet better or exercising more, or maybe managing an addiction or whatever. If you're already feeling bad because you've been struggling with this, don't add the extra anxiety of feeling like, oh no, and I haven't been taking any notes about it. Like, just, you know, we're struggling with enough already. You don't have to add that extra thing. And I think it's fine if you're not feeling good that day, you're struggling with other things. And you didn't take any notes, it's completely okay. You're human, right? Just don't worry about it.

Yeah. I actually, this makes me want to share a story about the book that I worked on. And so, so my book is called Introspect, right? And it has 5 acts, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, Act 4. And the thing that annoyed me at some point was that I'm writing this book that's like about an internal inward journey into figuring yourself out. And What I felt was that the internal journey of figuring yourself out, it can get really chaotic and messy sometimes. And I felt like the structure of the book didn't quite convey that. Like I'm giving people instructions and suggestions and it's all quite, you know, like well thought out and stuff.

I'm like, it's not represent—

it's like, I want the reader to have a sense of what, how I do it and how I do it. It's super chaotic and random. It's like, I'll open up my phone. I'll just say stuff that doesn't make sense. I just nonsense. Like I'm feeling this now, whatever. And a The thing that struck me was that I could use the spaces between the acts. So at the end of every act, so each act is like a, like a, if you think about it, it's like, like a stage performance, let's say, right? It's just, everything's very well coordinated and structured and stuff. And then in between the acts at the end of Act 1, end of Act 2, I have like these, this place that's like for unstructured rambling. And like, I changed the font. I moved the, the indentation to the other side to communicate that this is not the same as the rest of the book. And then I'm just like rambling. I literally write shit like how I'm feeling in the moment. And I'm writing the work on the book. I'm like, oh my God, I don't feel like I'm going to finish this book. It feels overwhelming and chaotic and crazy. And I'm disappointed with myself about this section. I can't believe I did that, blah, blah, blah. And then I put the date on whatever that day is. And then I just left it. I haven't even looked at it since. And people have DM'd me saying that those were their favorite parts of the book. Because they don't usually get to see that stuff in a typical book. And I was very proud of that. And the thing is, I don't think I included every single chaotic ramble I had. Like, so sometimes my mind is racing and I'm too caught up to even realize that I should— I mean, I even say should, I don't even feel like taking notes. I don't even feel like writing down. So there's some stuff that's lost. There's some stuff that's It was just for me in that moment and it's not to be preserved.

That's fine.

You know, it's just, you know, I can't put all of me into the book. I just try to put as much as I can and that's fine. And even so, it's like a few descriptions of a few bad days and a few bad moments can be helpful in reminding yourself of how things are when they're bad. And then you just, you get to this like meta context of being okay with celebrating your good days. When you have a bad day, you're like, that's what a bad day looks like. Okay. You know, like, good to know. And like that, like you, if you want to thank yourself for writing that down, that's fine. If you want to be like, well, you know, like you don't want to be like guilty and ashamed about it, but it's, I found it helpful to kind of, so like, if like, so even with my smoking, like 3 days ago, I smoked 2 cigarettes, which was, you know, again, like I spent 15 years smoking every day. Like 6, 7, 8 sticks. And then like a month, almost a month of no smoking. That was great. Then I said one day, that's two days, I smoked two cigarettes, but I have some feelings about that. I wrote those feelings down, but like, if I were to feel bad about feeling bad, then, you know, it just gets spirals into worse and then you end up smoking all over again. So it's like, I guess, I guess zoom out, see the big picture and be kind to yourself about what you're trying to do. And be forgiving of your mistakes and all, like everyone has bad days.

Right.

So even I was watching this video of like The Rock. Uh, he has a TikTok about when he didn't feel like working out and he's just, it's remarkable to witness how like a very high-level performer deals with lack of motivation or lack of whatever. And he talks to himself. And he says like, I know it looks kind of crazy, but this is what I do. And then he's like, how are you feeling? Like, and he reminds himself of what motivates him. So he thinks back to his childhood days when he felt like he didn't have much. And then, um, he challenges himself. It's kind of rah-rah and it suits his personality. I don't think it would work for me, but it's interesting to witness someone else's process. And I think each person has to kind of respect their own process and you have to like figure yourself out.

Yeah.

It's all a journey, you know, it's like even, even failing at the thing that you're trying to do, like it's part of your journey. So, you know, it's, that's what I would say.

Yeah.

I agree with this. Uh, I, yeah, I think as long as you don't force yourself to do it as something that you absolutely have to do, But you do it whenever you feel like it's helpful. And I totally agree with Misa, whenever, even if it's like good or bad stuff, the bad stuff can be really helpful as well. Either as a way to, as I said earlier, like see patterns, like if you see like, oh, so this is what all of the bad days have in common. And then you can experiment. What if I change that little thing? And maybe have fewer bad days, or just as a way sometimes to just get those emotions on digital paper, on paper basically, which can also be a way to just feel better because you go from having this messy bowl of stress and anxiety or shame sometimes to something that is a little bit clearer, that's a little bit more defined and that you can just leave there and then move on to something else. In that sense, like, that's more— that's probably more of the journaling side of note-taking, which I think is also a perfectly valid and useful way to use it as well. So yeah, who else is actually like taking notes at the minute or has questions or wants to talk about anything. Like, it's good, like, we're like 10 people, so we can have a group conversation.

So I resonated with what you said about like not having expectations with what you write, kind of more on the journaling side. And what I've been doing recently is kind of just like, if I'm meditating, or if I like go for a run or something, I'll just have these thoughts and they're like, they're like, they're like these once in a they're not your everyday way of thinking. And when you capture those, it's kind of like connecting you with who you really are and where you wanna go. And so you don't have to write everything out, or at least for me, I don't feel like I have to flesh everything right then and there, but you just start putting pen to paper and then the next thought comes and the next thought comes and the next thought comes. Then all of a sudden you feel closer to who you are. And yeah, just like not having expectations, being stream of conscious about it kind of has been my recent favorite thing about notes.

Yeah, I really like this. I do have those stream of consciousness, that type of notes also. These are the ones where I tend to have pages and pages and there's a lot of, you know, fluff in there that people who are maybe a little bit like— people who are too precious about the way they take notes may think that I should go back to this and cut the fluff out and organize this and make it more practical and actionable and maybe break it down into tasks, or I don't know. Personally, I just like leave it there because the— just the process, as you said, to of putting pen to paper, just that. That was the usefulness of it, just going through that thought process, starting with the seed of an idea or maybe just a feeling that I had or a question, and then ending up having ideas or just processing shit that I have to process.

So just doing this, just that writing journey was that, that was what made it useful. And that's it. And I'm really happy to just leave it there. And, you know, the way my kind of like the way I take notes, it means that very often a lot of this is not going to be resurfaced ever. And I kind of just like tag whatever is like, you know, a paragraph that I feel like that's going to be helpful. And so that means that then this I can resurface later on. And the rest, the whole like journey to that idea, it's fine for me if I never really see it again. So yeah, I really like that using that, like using note-taking as a thinking tool. I really, really like this.

And I feel like recently it's been like a way for me to like connect myself to new adventures. Like the stuff that you have that like, if you're feeling it when you wake up and you have like these ideas or these blips of thoughts and dreams, if you capture that, I feel like when you can kind of just like extrapolate it to like some real life event thing happening, and then it's just bringing you closer to that. And you're like, literally like Visa use like language as a technology. You're like using language to, like create miracles in your life. And sounds kind of woo-woo, but that's the way I've been seeing it recently.

Oh, I love this.

And I actually like highly recommend it as a fun thing to do. I do that. I write my dreams. I take notes, but like it's in my note-taking tool as well.

And yeah, I just—

it's such a like a nice thing to do in the morning. Like I make my coffee and before I start doing any work, I just, you know, I write. I basically, when I wake up, I put them on my phone because I'm still happy. If I'm too awake, then I forget them. So I'm like literally with one eye open and just being like, this is what happened. And then I copy-paste it in Roam and I just flesh it out with actual sentences that I'll be able to read later and understand. But yeah, it's just a fun thing to do. I've never thought though about than taking those dreams and trying to extrapolate on them and connecting them to real life stuff. So that's something I'm going to try.

I've never done that.

I just write my dreams, but I just recommend it as a fun thing to do in general.

Yeah, I do that too. It's pretty, it's, I mean, it's amazing. It's like, I'm always as a creative or creative wannabe, like if you ever wanna write fiction or whatever, like the stuff that comes out with dreams is crazy. It's like, You couldn't come up with it if you tried, you know, it's like your brain has all these things going on and it's like, it's free, it's free content in a sense. I mean, no, not, not to get all like capitalisty and be like, you have to monetize, you have to like kind of extract value out of every single thing, but it's just fun. It's interesting. It's like, it can surprise you what your brain does to you. Right. Like it gives you stuff and yeah. You know, I think that is coming up for me now listening to this stuff is that sometimes when I talk to people about these things or they ask me stuff, like, I think that people's intuitions about making stuff, like, so writing notes and whatever, it's still kind of, it hasn't adapted to the fact that we can really make tons of stuff for effectively free. Like you can write, like, I get the sense that some people take notes, like, like they are gonna run out, you know, it's like, it's as though like there's a limited amount of space. Where, you know, so like Da Vinci had a limited amount of paper, so he had to reuse his paper. And there are some interesting things that happen when you reuse your physical paper and there's like accidental connections from double writing, but like with digital notes or whatever, and paper is so cheap now, you know, back then it was expensive, but paper is so cheap now. So you could actually write volumes and volumes of notebooks, pages and pages of text. And I mean, you do encounter new challenges when you have a lot of high volume of notes where you have to start figuring out how you're going to organize stuff. But that's an interesting challenge. And getting better at that, I think, is a very, very powerful thing for getting better at organizing information in general.

And it hap—

if it happens naturally from dealing, coping with your own notes, like you can, that you'll find that it applies to whatever work you do. Because whatever work you do is also involves managing information in some way, right? Like even if you're like a Carpenter or something like you end up having to manage information. Like how it's, it's, it's, it generalizes very well in, in all domains. I feel.

It's time back to what you were saying about like, yeah, you have like 7 to 12 core things. And so like, uh, if you're cognizant of like what those 7 or 12 things, then, then you're kind of just like creating your, like your own unique perspective on the world or like having your very individual, like this is, this is like only what, uh, um, you know, I can dream of or think of or remix and then reflect out onto the world.

So yeah.

For Anne-Laure, the context was earlier we were talking about, uh, just when you have thousands of interests or thousands of random things that you're curious about. And like I've said that in my experience, it eventually condenses to like 7 to 12, like just a handful-ish of recurring interests, right? And then those then can become like new lens that you view the world through. And like, if you write blog posts about that sort of thing, or if you, or you can expand it into a book even eventually. So like, I would say my, my first two books are basically things that like, I was just rambling about random shit for many years. And then I noticed like what you, what you described as the red threads, right? Like things that run through everything. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make that into a blog post and I make that into a book. And now it's like, for the rest of my life, I will be able to relate things back to that. And that's very reassuring. It's like, it's just, it simplifies what to do with chaotic information. Like, oh, how do I relate things back to things I care about?

Yeah.

I was talking about it with a friend recently, how a lot of people don't know what their thing is, like with a big T, like what, you know, how would you— how would people would talk about you if you were not here? Like what's their thing? Like what's Visa's thing? You know, what's Jocelyne's thing? Like that one thing that is your main interest, the thing that you can't shut up about, that keeps on coming back in conversations that people have with you. And I do think that writing whether it's note-taking, which can actually be, yeah, as you described, the seed of then blogging, and then maybe that becomes a book, can be a way to explore what your thing is. And I also think I agree with you, like when people are like, oh, I have too many interests, like thousands of things. I love the idea of the 7 of 12 little things, basically. But yeah, I do think also that if you have, you know, if you do practice writing about it and thinking about it and capturing those different things, you will realize that a lot of them connect together and can become a thing, an actual thing that is your thing, and that then you can explore deeper, and that can sometimes be very unique, even though I feel like, especially being on the internet, like you feel like everything been explored already, has been written about. Actually, I don't think so, because sometimes you can find really interesting intersections, your own little Venn diagram that's just yours and that no one has thought of properly exploring. So yeah, I do, I do think that taking notes, writing are also tools to finding that little, your own unique Venn diagram, your thing. And then that can become your own little playground that you can explore. And in your case, writing books about, for example, or some people start YouTube channels or, you know, it's just, yeah, it can be the beginning of a creative journey basically.

I love that you converged on intersection and Venn diagrams because so when I have my I do. So I do like marketing consulting for clients and my recurring talking point when people, people ask, how do I find my voice?

How do I—

it's kind of the same question, right? Like, how do I find my thing? And I tend to go with, you know, cities grow out of crossroads. Like, so like literally like where two roads cross, somebody will set up like a, just some kind of like a tavern or tea shop. Right. So in India, I know this happens, right? Like there might be, like literally a guy with a motorbike with like tea that he gives to travelers who show up there. And then, um, from there, it's like that can— more and more people show up. Then someone else sets up some, some cart next to maybe like a, I dunno, like a fuel depot or something. And then just everything emerges from that. It's like from that intersection, from that crossroads, somebody makes something valuable. Somebody else joins in to contribute to that value chain. And then it just expands, expands out of that. And similarly, so like the crossroads of two of your interests, right. Even just two, right? Like, so if let's say you care about programming and you care about cooking, right? Like both of those things are like mass, like tons and tons of people care about each of those two things, but you to be known as the programmer chef, right? Like half your stuff is this, half your stuff is that, that makes it a fantastic entry point for people on either side to be curious about the other thing. Right. And you don't need to be the best programmer or the best chef. You could just be like, you know, decent enough at each. And you can still, you can be interesting to both sides. And then you become like a translator between those domains. And then that can level you up. There's more people who show up are interested and so on. And you can take anything like, you know, like motorbikes and architecture, right? Like, so like the motorbiking architect guy, it's just interesting. I don't even care that much about motorbikes, but I would be curious to see a YouTube channel by an architect Who is a model?

You know what I mean?

It's just because the, when you put one thing through another lens, like it's just, it's a whole new layer of interestingness. And the other thing I would say is about finding your voice is that like, so again, if you're just starting out and you're just like saying a bunch of stuff, the first like 100 things you say may seem like, oh, everyone else has said this before, but you just have to keep going. Just keep going. When you get to like 1,000 things, like nobody, no two people say the same 1,000 things, even if it's like in the same domain. Like, because the stuff that you care, you can't help but bring your voice to your work. You know, your voice is yours. So everything you say, how you see things, how you do things. So like with enough volume, your uniqueness will come through. So just, just, and actually that's, so even that, that seems obvious to me and that's my personality. So I like to be prolific. I feel like being prolific is my answer to everything. I just do more. For some people it might be different. It might be like, Go deeper on the same thing. That to me, I tried sometimes, but find out what your personality is. So ask, ask like your childhood friends, like what you're like. They'll be like, oh, you know, you're always like that. Like, oh, okay. Then just do more of that. That's my directive.

You said something cool there, which is like, um, like if you bring the programmers and the cookers, uh, or the, you know, the people interested in cooking, it's kind of like if you bring those two parties of people together too. It's like if you go to a festival or something and there's people listening to, they love listening to indie and then another group just came for Kanye. And then now there's Kanye drops out of Coachella and now they have to go see all these other concerts. Now they're just kind of just like diversifying their interests, diversifying the type of people that they're gonna meet. And it's just like one big party. So, yeah.

Yeah, it's fun. It's just so much, so much fun.

Yeah.

I like that. I also think that, you know, you mentioned how like some people are more like, oh, going deeper on one thing. I think writing, taking 1,000 notes or writing 1,000 blog posts about that one single thing is also a way to go deeper in any case. So I think that approach of just being prolific works whether you have more of a breadth or a depth approach, it's just, it still works. Uh, you're, you're still going to learn a lot. You're still going to, um, discover your own voice in the, in the process. Like, I think it still applies even if you're the kind of person who likes to go very, very deep on a niche topic.

Yeah.

I think there's, there's like a physics to it that you can't escape. So even with, let's say with YouTube, for example, right? Like some people, So my approach on YouTube is to like make very, very low quality, unedited, like one video a day, like 5 minutes or so. That can be overwhelming for some people, but some people are like, oh, you know, it's like a very steady pace. Whereas some people do the complete opposite. And it's like once a year they release like a 20-minute video that they spend the whole year on. And it's super well produced, super well edited and stuff. And, but the thing is to make that video, they had to like work on it every day and like, try a bunch of different stuff. And like, so it's like, there's a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor. And I don't think you can escape the cutting room floor. So whether it's like you surface all of your drafts to people, which I do, cause I'm very messy, or you hide most of the mess. I mean, you keep the mess in your, in your thing, and then you present the polished work. In both cases, there's a volume of output. So it's just a matter of How much of the output do you surface to the audience? But the volume of output is inescapable, right? Like the musician has to practice. The athlete has to go for training every day. Like this, it's that repetition that, that really you develop familiarity with yourself and your voice and what you care about and all those things. Yeah. The pottery analogy. Exactly that.

Yes.

Well, you have to, there's no escaping that. So you should pick a thing that you like doing that you enjoy the, you know, like, um, Like, so again, you look at an Olympic swimmer and it's like, they win the medal. But like the defining characteristic of an Olympic swimmer is like every morning they wake up at 5:00 AM and they go to the pool and they have to enjoy that at some level. You know, you can't, because to do that for day after day for years, like 4 or 5 years, like you have to, like, they have to wake up in the morning and be like, ah, it's a nice day for swim. They must be thinking that, or they wouldn't be able to do that. So you have to find what is the thing that, you do. I always ask people like, what do you do? Like when you're skiving from work, like when you're like, so for me, I used to write on my— write for fun. Like when I'm like avoiding my work, I would just be writing stuff on my own. So it's very difficult to compete with someone who does a thing for fun. Right. So if like, and you, so you find the thing that you do for fun.

And I love this. Actually, this is a really good way to figure out what your 'What is something you love doing?' is what do you do when you're procrastinating on work that you should be doing?

I'm the same.

I'm the same. Like sometimes I have this very long list of things I should actually be doing for the business. And like, oh, I just wanna write. I just wanna sit down and write.

So, uh, I know some people will say things like, oh, the thing I do is unproductive. Like I just watch YouTube videos. I'm like, even then, Right. Even the— so even if the thing is, I like to watch a bunch of YouTube videos, like there's, there's something there, you know, it's like, you can't watch lots and lots of YouTube videos without developing a sense of the aesthetic. And like, it's just, even if you're just watching a lot of videos, you— there's, there's a visual language that you pick up that you don't realize that you're picking up. And so you now have unintentionally cultivated taste. You now have taste in YouTube videos that someone who doesn't watch a lot of YouTube videos doesn't have. And that can end up being useful in some way that you don't anticipate. But first of all, you have to realize that you have it and it's not obvious that you have something until you encounter someone else who doesn't have it. And they're like, oh, okay. Like you don't have strong opinions on what good videos are, what good editing is, what good cuts are, what good sound design, all those things. And yeah, you know, so it's, it can be, I think people always underestimate what they are good at or what they are familiar with, because when it's familiar, it feels normal to you. But like, what's normal to you isn't necessarily what's normal to the rest of the population, right? Some people don't watch videos at all and some people don't read, don't scroll Twitter at all. Different people just have different, entirely different consumption patterns. It's very interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. I know that I hate podcasts, for example. I don't listen to to them.

Same.

Yeah.

So, and I actually, I don't get it.

I just get bored. I start doing something else. I stop listening to them. So they can be a podcast in the background. I don't, I can't focus on them. I need the visual stimulation as well. So yeah, definitely.

I agree.

And this is also, you know, why I'm not producing a podcast because I haven't really developed the states that you're describing. I don't know what a good podcast sounds like. I don't know what it should contain, how long it should be, how it should be edited. I haven't developed that taste. And so I don't think I would be a good podcast creator versus, you know, and it's the same, like I've actually stopped producing YouTube videos because I've realized that I really like watching them. I don't really like creating them. It's just creating a lot of anxiety for me, like having to I'm not— I didn't do the same format that you did, right? Like for me, like I was like setting up the camera, writing a script, going through something, editing the video, publishing it. And I just realized that for a while that— and this is actually like, it comes back to that procrastination thing. I knew I had that weekly YouTube video to do, but I was like, I just want to write. I just want to just like write like a blog post through it. Uh, and, and that actually took me a little while to realize that pattern, to see that I was doing this. I was always procrastinating on the YouTube video and I wanted to write, and then I said, well, I'm just going to stop doing YouTube videos then. Like, I just, I don't like it, it's not my thing, and that's completely fine. And so I do think it's really good to experiment and try new things. And again, like journaling, writing, thinking about these things is a good way to also after a while realize that like patterns that you have in your life and also be able to make decisions more confidently and then like, oh yeah, it's been actually 2 months that I— it's a recurring thing. I don't like doing YouTube videos, so I'm just going to stop doing them. Right. So, yeah. So yeah, I agree with you that you do develop a taste by even by just consuming content. And then also just to go back like to what we've been talking about, I do think that writing, journaling, note-taking, all of this kind of like using writing as the thinking tool is also a way to then figure out what you should do with that taste that you've cultivated, or in some cases that distaste that you have for some things.

Yeah, and I think, I think too, like, it's funny that you said, like, some people just say they like to watch YouTube, but then you can kind of double-click on that, like, what, what type of YouTube videos do you like? And then most people are doing the half of of consumption but not really doing the creating part of it. And so if you probably had those people who are consuming a type of videos, maybe they like watching Casey Neistat vlogs or something like that, and they find out that they like his cool longboard and then they get into longboards or something like that. But that exploration through writing or creating something or that inner journey of like, hey, why do I actually like this thing? It kind of makes you like it more and then diverges into other interests that are kind of peripheral to it. So I thought that was kind of interesting.

Yeah, I think it's interesting actually because it also makes me realize that, and especially I think in our little corner of the internet, is sometimes this like weird pressure to create something. Like you have to be a creator. There's something wrong about just consuming content. And I feel like sometimes it can be a little bit toxic is probably too strong of a word, but it's just bad. Like, it's just like, why aren't we more comfortable with maybe I love Casey Neistat's videos about longboards doesn't mean I have to create my own videos about about that, right? I can just enjoy his work, have a good time, and like, this is really good. Like, he's put obviously a lot of love and time and energy into this, and I'm going to love the end product of this, but it doesn't mean that then I need to create my own content about it. And I think this is another unnecessary pressure that a lot of people have with taking notes and writing is that everything Every input has to turn into an output. I don't think that's the case either. Sometimes it's just fine to consume content and just appreciate it and have a good time, just feeling like, oh, that was great. I had, you know, it was entertaining, for example, which is good. And it doesn't have any practical usefulness to it. Any actual output is just going to be enjoyable. To consume content the same way that, you know, you just read a novel doesn't mean that you need to publish your notes about the novel that you read. You can just enjoy it. And so, yeah, I just, I think, I think we would, a lot of us would benefit from, and again, I think this is a problem that's very specific to our tiny corner of the internet, which is weird and wonderful. But there is something about a lot of people being like, oh, I read something, I have to turn it into a Twitter thread, or I have to do a blog post, or I have to do a YouTube video about it. And I feel like sometimes I read some of these and I feel like, you know, it could have— it would have been fine also if you just enjoyed it and you didn't turn it into something publishable.

No, yeah, I totally agree with that. Let's see. I think when it's like mindless consumption and you like just wake up and you're just— you read that and you read this. And then you don't figure out what you like. I think that's where it's kind of like you're just being, you're consuming things and you're just like turning into whatever you consume. That was kind of what I was talking about.

Yeah, mindless consumption. I agree. This is also when a lot of people actually don't feel good, right? You know, when you realize you've been scrolling for 3 hours and you just kind of feel bad because you feel like you've actually wasted your time. Versus watching a really good YouTube video, or in some ways, I say I don't like podcasts, but I imagine listening to a very good podcast episode or reading a good article. And again, that's fine if you don't take notes about these, but just maybe sometimes taking just a moment to appreciate how good that was and maybe feeling grateful also for the creator who put all of their work into this. And in that sense, like it becomes more of a mindful experience. Experience. I think that's good. And the mindless stuff, like usually you do realize when you've been doing this and then you feel bad. And this is completely fine, right? You just feel bad about it and you stop doing it and do something else. That's okay, right? It's probably more of a problem when it's something that you keep on doing all the time and when it's taking too much of your time, too much of your energy. That's kind of like sinking into, you know, you kind of like, you know, you have this feeling of wasting your time basically. That's, that's probably how you feel when it's mindless. I agree.

Totally.

Yeah.

This, you just reminded me of, so I had this manager at my last company that I really enjoyed, Dave, and he, he had such a great energy about himself. Like he is confident and he knew what he was doing and he was very comfortable with his foibles in a sense, like, uh, you know, so he would say something like he shipped, he, he, he, he gives like some presentation that was really good. And he was done with it. Then he was like, he literally, I think he texted the chat, like in, like we were at work, right? He's like, all right guys, that's my thing for the day. I'm going to scroll like K-pop subreddit right now for the next hour. And I was like, and that was almost inspiring to me because I had so much associated, like, so he knew himself well enough and he knew his boundaries and he knew that after shipping a big thing that was difficult and challenging, whatever, he knew that he was not going to be productive immediately afterwards. And so he was willing to let him give himself that space to be like, okay, I'm just going to be mindless for an hour now. And like, so it's like mindful mindlessness in a sense, right? Like he has, he knows himself well enough. It's like, okay, I'm going to just switch off for a while. And like, everyone's like, yeah, it makes perfect sense. Like, you know, it's totally fine. Like, and so, and that you contrast that with, uh, I was once on Imgur, I think. And there was a meme about somebody doing something for fun. And then they remember their obligations and then they keep doing the things stressfully. And the top comment was like, me browsing Imgur for fun, me seeing this meme and being reminded of my obligations, then me scrolling Imgur stressfully. And it's like, it's the scrolling stressfully. Knowing that you're avoiding something else. And so you can't even be present in the moment, right? You can't even enjoy. It's like, it's like if you're hanging out, if it's supposed to hang out with your friends and I do this with my spouse a lot, my wife, right? Like, so I'm like, okay, I gotta hang out with my wife. And then she's like, you're not, what's going on? Like, you're not even here.

You know?

It's like, you're with, you're here, but you're not here. Cause you're stressing out about something else. And it's like, what's the point? So you're not, you're, you're kind of getting the worst of both worlds. Right. So, and then you have to laugh, right? If you, if you're, If you get stressed about that, it gets worse. So you have to laugh and then you have reset. You're like, okay, what's going on? What am I avoiding? What am I stressed about? Like, okay, I'm stressed about work. You take like a few minutes to kind of recenter yourself, figure out what you're stressed about. And you have to like negotiate with yourself, right? Like, okay, I got it. I'm going to do this for now. And then later I'm going to go and do that. And then when you're at peace with yourself, then you can, okay, yeah, work. And then you can play and have fun and switch off. And I just said that very confidently, but I don't actually do that very well. I don't do it as often as I should. Or I guess, I don't notice when I do it well, cause it's when you're doing it well, you're fine. And then you always notice when you're doing it badly, which itself I think is reassuring to know, right? Like there's a sense of we fix, we solve the problems that we know how to solve and we avoid the problems that we know how to avoid. So since the problems that we can avoid are avoided and the problems that we can solve are solved, the rest of our time is spent stuck in problems that we couldn't avoid and don't know how to solve. So it feels like we are always fucking up, but it's an illusion, right? It feels that way because all the times you're not fucking up, you're not stuck there. You're only stuck in the things that you don't know how to do. And being aware of that, I think is a huge relief. Like, oh, okay. Like I feel, it seems like I feel stressed all the time, but it's like an optical illusion. It's like, you know, it's a selection bias sort of thing. And it helps to talk to friends.

There's also the issue of how I know that personally, if I'm like in a good place in general, like mentally, like then I'll be also better at spotting those problems and fixing them.

But if I'm not doing great, then I'm worse at spotting those problems and spotting them. So This is the interesting thing too, is that, and this is also why I feel like a lot of people think that, you know, systems or whatever, this is also why the self-help industry is making billions, right? People think that you can build, learn, and apply a system, and then that's going to help you deal with all of those problems, right? The problem, but the big, the meta problem is that usually you are able to apply those systems where you're already in a good place. And for you to be able to be like, oh, okay, so this is the problem. I'm going to apply the system and I'm going to fix it, means that you're probably in a good place already. And you're just tweaking things and making them slightly better. When you're, you actually have more systemic problems, things that are harder to solve and work on, it's probably going to take a lot of time. It's going to be messy. And it's definitely most of the time not going to be something that can be neatly addressed and fixed by applying whatever system that you learned about in a self-help book or that you learned about in an online course or something like this. It's probably going to take a lot of time and introspection. Just a little reference to your book, to deal with. So, yeah, I think it's just healthier in general to accept that things are messy. Things are not always going to be perfect. You are going to have those moments where what you're doing makes no sense. And you know, you're actually doing, you're the one doing that to yourself. And as you say, just laugh about it. Basically. And be like, oh, you know, that's fine. We're human. It's messy. We haven't all figured it out. And it's okay. I think the fun part is actually the journey of figuring it out.

Yeah.

And I would say that in my process, so I've tried like tons of stuff. And the thing that I'm finding to be most effective is that, so what you just described, right? Like when you're in a good state, then you're in a good, then you can solve problems. And when you're in a bad state, then it's harder. And like, so the paradox is like, when you're in a bad state, how do you get out? Right. And I found that, uh, and I kind of knew this intellectually, I guess, but like, uh, I've got some reassurance from like even more experienced people that really the best thing to do is to ask someone else for help. And even the thing is that even if you are like the most professional and accomplished person in a context, like in your group of friends, let's say, right. The thing is like, even a child, like in some contexts, even like a child can be helpful to a person who is stuck because they can just see the state that you're in. So, you know, and you can just imagine, imagine you're having a bad day and you don't realize that you're having a bad day. And a child says, you look stressed. And you're like, oh fuck. And you start crying or whatever. You're like, it didn't occur to you that you look stressed until someone pointed it out. Right. And so what I have been trying to do for myself is, um, I have a handful of friends, like 5 or 6 people maybe that we've done. We've now each done. So I encourage people to try this. Uh, first of all, it's like set up like a, like a let's go through our shit together at the same time, like dates. So like I get on a Zoom call with a friend, like, hey, you send the emails that you're avoiding. I send the emails that I'm avoiding or whatever it is. And let's chat for like 25 minutes. Let's do that for 25 minutes and let's chat. And then the cool thing is not only did we each get a lot of stuff done because we want to not disappoint the other person. I mean, you know, just want to help out the other person and then have that thing together. Now, at the end of these things, I tell— we come to an agreement, which is that if either of us is ever in a state where we are like avoiding stuff or whatever, like we make a pact that we have to text the other person. So it's like, yo, I'm down bad today. And then they'd be like, oh, what's happening? What's going on? And intellectually, I feel like, oh, I shouldn't need that. You know, it's like, it's just a checklist. It's just diagnostics. Like, oh, what's going— what's bad about your day today? What are you struggling with? Like, I should be able to do that inside my head. I can't, like, I think I can, but I can't. Like, so the, like writing— I wrote a whole book about introspection. And the lesson I learned from writing that book is that again, it's really When I'm in a good mood, I can do it. When I'm in a bad mood, I can't. And there's no way to improve within that bad mood. But if I can text, if I can have just enough awareness to be like, I can text a friend like, yo, I'm in the bad place. Then they'd be like, oh no, what the fuck? What's going on? How can I help you? And then it's like, they can run the diagnostic with me. That is, again, it's not like a complex thing. It's like, how are you feeling? Have you eaten, bro? Like, what's, what's And it'd be like, oh yeah, I guess I haven't eaten like shit. And like, I can't ask myself that question when I'm down that bad. So it's really having people that you can re-regulate with or co-regulate with is very, very powerful. And, but that takes some amount of humility, right? Just acknowledging that all of us, we can need the most mundane child level kind of help. And that's fine. You know, like someone has to tell you, have you eaten? Dude, have you eaten today? Like, I guess not.

Shit.

It can happen. Like, it really, there's no shame in that. It's like, you know, we, we all get stuck in strange ways. And if texting a friend gets us unstuck, like that's, that works, you know, it's like, it's magic. Yeah. It's just a big learning for me. It took me a long time to come around to that.

I love this. Yeah. Like it's also something I've noticed, like anytime I was struggling, most of the time it was actually an external external thing that was the trigger that helped me get out of it, like get out of that, like get unstuck basically. So I actually really like this of instead of waiting for something to happen or someone to ask how you doing, just as you said, have the humility to raise your hand and just be like, yeah, I'm struggling actually. And it will just this, this way it will happen earlier basically. You'll get Faster. So I really like this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it helps to— so you should do it when you're having a good day. So when you're having a good day, like you wake up in the morning, nice coffee, good, nice pleasant day. Like, ah, what should I do today? Okay. I should check in on my friends, ask them how they're doing and, you know, ask if anyone wants to do this, this thing. And then once— so then when you— because I think when you're coming up with this idea, when you're down, it's like impossible. Cause like you already feel like shit. And then you're like, oh, I know, like people are going to judge me or they're going to think I'm so needy and helpless. But when you're in a good place, of course people need help. People are human, you know? So it's, yeah, it's really doing a favor to your down bad self when you are not down bad. Right. So it's, and it's very humanizing. So one of the things that I learned while writing my book is that, um, you know, so I define a project as anything that requires collaboration, even if it's only with yourself. Right. So if, if you can do it in a moment, it's a task. If you can do it in 10 minutes, it's a task. But if it takes the whole day, for example, then it's you have to collaborate with your after-lunch self, right? Like maybe before lunch you're feeling good and after lunch you just don't feel like working anymore. Like, so it's a project if you have to collaborate with yourself and collaborating with yourself or with other people requires communication and like, you know, making negotiation. And if you can collaborate well, that's very humanizing. You feel good. I mean, like, again, like what is collaborate? Like to labor with., right? To work with someone else, to work with yourself. And if you can collaborate well with yourself across space and time, if you know that I'm working on this project and tomorrow Visa is going to do it, day after tomorrow Visa is going to do it, like I trust those guys to take care of business, then that feels good. You feel like you can trust, you feel comforted that knowing that you can make plans and that trust that the plans will be followed through. Whereas if you can't, that's dehumanizing, right? Like if you can't rely on yourself to get something done, or you can't, You can't, you don't feel like you can work with someone else, right? Like that's, then you feel isolated, alienated, alone, and then you get sad and you get depressed. It gets worse. And yeah, you know, and I honestly think of my notes as like me collaborating with myself, like me setting up stuff for my future self to work with. And you can even, I find it actually even works too if you've written notes in the past. And you can ask questions of your future self. And then you, the future self, when you revisit those notes, you can answer those questions and it feels good. It feels good to be your own, like pen pal through space and time. Like, I really enjoy it. I feel like once you do that a little bit, uh, and here's the, like the magical trippy thing. Once you have like, do a few back and forth with your past self. Like, so if, if like, again, I was like 21, 22, I wrote all these questions like, oh, Visa, what will we do? And now I can be like, yo bro, you know, we've sorted shit out. I know we got married, we got all these readers, books. And when you do that and you have that process, you can actually feel, you can trust that your future self is looking out for you now, which is like, it feels— it's like, I don't want to get like metaphysical about it, but like, it's an emotional reality. Like just being able to trust that because you have been taking care of your past self, that your future self will take care of you as well. And there is a sense of security in yourself, like being able to trust yourself and respect yourself. And that really, like, I remember when I didn't have that, I remember feeling alienated from myself, which was horrible, horrible place to be. And now it's like, oh, you know, like even if I don't feel great right now, like I know that my tomorrow self or next week self will take care of me. And this is I wish everyone could have that feeling. Cause when you, when you go from not having it to having it, it's really life and death. I would say it's really that kind of dramatic difference.

Yeah. I love this.

This is, yeah, actually like I'm definitely going to use this to like in the future to expand on like this idea I've always had, like I've always seen like note-taking as a way, you know, the question people like, it's like a very common question that people ask like as an icebreaker like if you could host a dinner and invite whoever you could from the past and the—

whether fictional or real, right?

And I've always like talked about note-taking as a way to have that dinner table, this conversation between you and different authors, because you can, you know, you can have those conversations. You and the authors, you know, read their books, ask questions, go deeper, but you can also make those authors have conversations between each other.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like, I guess— and so now I'm definitely going to steal what you just mentioned because there's another guest that you can have at the table. It's like your past self and your presence and your current and your future self. You can have these three people at the table as well.

Yeah.

And makes for an even more interesting conversation at that dinner, basically. So I just— I really like this.

Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, every— when you read people's books and then you take notes on it and it's like, you think that you have their voice in your head, but it's actually you, you know, which is very— it's like, you know, like, oh, it's like my simulation of that person. Right. So like I have a simulation of Emerson in my head. I have a simulation of Alan Watts in my head. It starts out with their words. And then along the way it starts to, you know, you might recite their words. Verbatim at first, but eventually it starts to morph a little bit. It starts to adapt to your circumstances. Eventually it's you, right? And then it's like, it's like I'm channeling Alan Watts here, but what he would say is, and then like over time with, and then you combine with someone else and then you change, flip here and there. And then that's part of how you develop your voice. Like you remix the voices that you like. And then, and the remixing space is your note space, right? It's just all the papers and books and everything and stuff that you make.

Yeah, definitely. Does anyone like—

I don't do well with very long Zoom calls, I'm sorry. So does anyone have questions, like anything that you want to talk about?

Can we hear from someone that hasn't said anything yet? Would be nice.

Nestlé.

Go ahead.

All right, I actually am a little bit curious about like your own ways of making note-taking fun for either of you. So, um, one thing that I've been like experimenting with a lot recently is like starting to like put images next to like notes as a way to like spark another way to like resonate the sort of things that you have, um, like on plain text but just like in a different medium.

So this, yeah, I really like this. Yeah, for me, definitely, like, the thing that's making note-taking fun is that I take notes about literally anything that crosses my mind. And that's what I mentioned at the very beginning of the conversation, right? It could be personal, it could be professional, it could be a random idea, it could be a dream I had. Could be a recipe that I, you know, I went to a friend and they cooked something and I asked them about the recipe. I'll have this too in there. Could be, you know, a movie I watched. I have a whole list of books I'd like to write in the future. I have a bunch of random things. So for me, like, that's, I think, not taking it seriously basically and being very open as to what can go in there and not trying to be too selective either is what is making it fun. Because I don't use necessarily a lot of images, but it does feel a little bit like a scrapbook basically, where I'm just collecting all of these different things and playing with them. It's like this like playground or the sandbox basically that I can experiment in, that's very messy, and that's you know, very personal as well. So that's why it feels fun to me that I'm not being too serious about it in general. What about you, Rizal?

Yeah, I also have like, you know, so I'm looking at my, at my Apple Notes, which is sort of my dumping ground for random nonsense before I process it into something more thing. And it's, yeah, it's so chaotic. It's like random observations, random links, random stuff. And, you know, part of it is I see it as universe building. Like, it's really like I'm stitching together. So I see these as— so now that I'm looking at it, it's like these are all individual threads of what will be later on woven into like this tapestry. And I've been doing it for many years at this point. So I know how it plays out and I look I look for surprise. I look for— and like, so a thing I've been doing recently now that after I ship my book, I have more free time. So I've been digging deeper and deeper into older archives to try and look for stuff. I don't even know what I'm looking for. I'm just wandering around it. Like I'm, like, I'm wandering in a different city. And it's so interesting to see what are the things that have now become second nature. Like I wrote it down at some point because I wanted to remember it. And now I don't even need to write it down because I could delete it and it's fine. 'cause it's just a part of my vocabulary now. Whereas there's some things that I completely don't even recognize, 'cause I forgot that I wrote it down and then I can, I get to reevaluate it. Like, do I still want to keep this? Is this still relevant to me? Or is it just like, it was a fleeting thing then and I don't care anymore and I can delete it if I want to. And it's like, I'm in conversation with myself. It's self-discovery/self-authorship. And also for me, I know that me going through this process Helps me now that it helps me get to a greater sense of emotional, psychological resonance with myself. It's a process of me becoming more myself. And the more I do that, the more when I relate to other people, they seem to enjoy my presence and I can be more present amongst them. I know what I like, I know what I care about, I know what my boundaries are, blah, blah, blah. And so this is like the joy of life for me. Like, you know, just, just processing my information, processing my— cause I mean, I grew up reading books a lot and I'm like a library child. Like, that's my domain. Like, I think of the universe as a library, and I'm building my library, you know. I'm choosing what goes in, what goes out, doing meta work on stuff, writing new books, inviting, starting a book club, like everything. I just think everything in those terms. Like, library is my church, sort of. And yeah, you know, as I'm building my church, my library, like, I'm really just piecing stuff together. So it's very It's very meditative even, like as I'm scrolling and clicking and editing and cutting and deleting, it's like I'm becoming more myself each step of the way. And it's, and you know, I know that it's also exhilarating that like, I know there's stuff in here that's super valuable, uh, even financially, potentially in the future. Like there's stuff in here that's going to be my next book. I don't know what the book is yet, but I know that it will be good because I'm following my taste and my taste discerns what is good. So there's like, it's, it's not inconceivable that there's like a million dollars in my notes app and I don't know what it is yet. And I'm going to figure it out like over the next 5, 10 years. And so it's like, ooh, it's like every day I wake up and it's like this mystery to solve. That's exciting.

Yeah.

I really love those like playful frames, especially what you're saying about like universe building. Cause like I'd imagine if you were to go inside like your past archives, all these sorts of things that you've accumulated, you know, all these 10 years, like, I think, like, you're right, Anne-Laure Le Cunff Le Cunff, that, like, not everything has to have, like, an output, like, immediately, but, like, eventually it's like, you know, when you're building lore, like, some people that become, like, fixated on, like, one, like, really odd detail, but then as soon enough it can, like, extrapolate into, like, a whole universe in and of itself almost. So it's like that sort of, like, excitement I feel like can be, like, a really great motivator to just, like, keep making things or just like keep writing things down?

Yeah. I find that it really feels like it has its own desire. Like, I mean, so it's me obviously, like, just as like the voice in my head of Emerson is actually me. And like the desire of my notes is actually me, but like, I like being able to be like, what do you want to be notes? Like, you know, where are you going? What's your, what's your game? Like, so that gets me out of my head of like, What's my job? What's my purpose? What's my whatever it is. I get to sit and witness my notes self-actualizing, although it's also me, you know, it's like an externalized version of me and yeah. You know, it's fun. It's interesting. It's yeah, I enjoy it.

Wow.

Witness your notes self-actualizing. That's some like galaxy brain, literally second brain shit. Yeah. Yeah.

It is.

It is. It is. And yeah, so like, I know that someday I will be— so I haven't written, I haven't published any fiction yet, but I know that probably in my forties or something, I will probably do that. And so it's like, it's like I'm doing all this setup for that, but like not super actively. It's kind of background. It's almost like, it's almost like an inside joke. Like, yeah, it's like infinite inside jokes with myself, which is fun. So you can see that I enjoy myself. And then that really translates to other people. Like people, like people can tell when someone else has a genuine sense of fun that is not, you know, when it's real, it shows and people can see it. And it's just joy.

Yeah.

I feel like speculative fiction in like this day and age, like a lot of these things are like happening that if you were to put it in a sort of like 10, 20 years from now, like novel about the world, I feel like it would resonate a lot, kind of like how, I don't know, science fiction is like a huge, like, how to say, pet fascination of mine, of like Snow Crash and like all those other, like, you know, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you know, they kind of like wrote all of those things because they were just like paying attention to the things that were going on in their day and age. And then now you have like all these sorts of things that sort of bleed into like modern day technology. So I don't know.

Yeah.

Science fiction writers is like a really, interesting frame to like kind of grow into whatever sort of things you're growing or writing about like now.

Yeah.

And I also think that we are definitely living through crazy times. Like, like I think the '90s were probably the most, uh, they could be the most like idyllic and peaceful decade of our lifetime. Like we, we went, we grew up in a very Like if you look at history, like say, you know, like '70s and '80s, there's like the Cold War and all that. And it's like this brief period of like a lot. And now it's like, shit's getting crazy and who knows how crazy it's going to get. And so all the more, like I say, if you read history, like if you read like about, um, you know, there are all these people who are— so I'm quite inspired by like diarists and like people who used to keep diaries in like 1500s, 1400s, 1800s. And like, there's so much stuff we know about that period, those periods of time that is very much, a lot is owed to the people who wrote diaries during those times. And like, this is the thing I talk about with my wife all the time, because we care about like our local history and the state of our times. You almost, you can't really, you would think that you can trust historians and journalists to take care of this, but you can't really, like, not entirely, like, not the institutional ones, because institutionalized history and institutionalized journalism end up being— you know, I'm on my soapbox about this stuff, but it's relevant— they end up being, you know, like, in service of whatever is the authorities. And it doesn't even need to be like, oh, like, there's an authoritarian tyrant in power who's controlling the media and whatever, but it's just You know, like just people keeping doing what is expedient because of news cycles and because of whatever. And then you look back over the past 10 years and stuff. And that's like that, like, who do you trust to give you an accurate picture of the past 10 years of whatever it is that you're interested in? And you'll find that, you know, anybody who makes an effort, it's their effort is going to be contaminated or influenced depending on how you're going to frame it, influenced by the context that they are operating in and like the agenda of whatever their employer or whatever it is that they're operating in. And so if you are someone who cares significantly about knowing the truth of things, like what really happened during this time, you know, what was the truth of COVID What was the truth of all of those things? Like, I don't mean like to be like a truther, like, oh, there's a conspiracy. None of that. I just mean like, the narrative of what happened. Like, what did you think when COVID first hit?

Right.

How bad did you think it was going to be? Like, if you try and remember now, your memory might be fallible because you might have shifted your memory. I remember thinking it wasn't going to be a big deal. And I tweeted, I don't think it's going to be fine. Like next month will be over. You know, like I tweeted that shit. And so I can, I can look back at my tweets and be like, oh my God, I was so wrong. So badly wrong. And that's very useful information to have, I think.. And if you don't write this shit down, it's convenient to forget, you know, it's convenient to— I remember thinking the Olympics will be fine. You know, Japan is, you know, it's a very like proper, like they are very professional and they're going to make sure that— I was wrong. They got, it got canceled. They couldn't. So it's like, there's all this shit that you're wrong about. So like, I recommend like making predictions. And when news happens, I remember thinking that Putin would never invade Ukraine. I just, I just thought, I didn't think he would, you know, it's just keeping a list of all the things that you think and then finding out how you're wrong is very humbling and very, um, I mean, for me, that's something that I value a lot, like knowing the truth about my kind of, uh, false impressions or like my false sense of certainty. Like I'm so sure something's gonna happen and I'm wrong. And it's very easy to, to kind of sweep that under the rug and be like, oh, you know, whatever mistakes happen. And then you're like, no, why was I wrong? You know, like, uh, I remember I bet someone money that I'm Singaporean and I bet someone on an outcome of like a Texas election. I don't know why I did that. I was like, oh, you know, this, this guy's going to win. And he didn't, he lost. I lost like $50, $50. But like for $50, I'm for the rest of my life, I'm going to be like, wow, I was so wrong about a thing that I was so confident about. Like, What else am I wrong about? Like, so everything, just—

Yeah, that goes back to the, yeah, the humility aspect that you mentioned earlier. Like, you know, when you were talking about it, it was to be able to ask for help, but same thing. Yeah, it's the same thing. Just also, yeah, just building that humility. And like kind of like, yeah, nurturing it by always reminding yourself that you can be wrong, that sometimes you need help, that sometimes however confident you are, it is very likely that whatever you think is not going, is not what's going to actually happen. So yeah, it's just a good thing to nurture in general.

Yeah, I think we are reaching wrapping up point. Anybody got any like final questions, final thoughts? If not, I think we can, we can end it here. That's a nice— humility is a nice point to end on, right? Like use your notes to face your human your humanity, right? Your frail, imperfect, beautiful emotions and feelings. And yeah, you know, remember to be human and use your notes to serve you on that front. And I hope you guys all have a good day.

Take care.

Thanks, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, for hanging out. Thanks everyone else for also hanging out.

And that was amazing.

Thanks, y'all.

Self-actualized.

Great. Thanks everyone.

Awesome.

Bye-bye.

Bye.