Incremental Note-Taking and Methods for Remembering What You Read

Hey! How are you doing today?

My newsletter has been on hiatus for a few months, but it’s about time I brought it back.

First of all, a big thank you to hundreds of new subscribers, and apologies for making you wait for a long time.

Secondly, this newsletter is where I share life tips and lessons I learned, latest tech and apps, and the best links I found about productivity, personal knowledge management, finance, relationships and health.

Finally, I recently launched a community called Mindvillage. It’s a casual space where you can chat about interesting tools and ideas as well as to connect with like-minded people around the globe. I’m going to be hanging around in the community, so feel free to join!

I’ve found this app on Product Hunt recently. It’s “a visual & spatial workspace combined with the information depth of a wiki”. I only tried it for a few minutes, but it seems like a combination of Muse and a mind map app. It’s fun to use thanks to its visual elements.

A great read for anyone who’s a freelancer or creating something online (e.g. blog posts, Youtube videos, newsletter etc.). More and more people (including me) are now choosing to be self-employed, instead of working for a company. For companies to win, they need to compete. But for individuals to win, we need to cooperate.

This is also why I started Mindvillage community. It’s great for finding others to cooperate with!

I discovered Jiddu Krishnamurti’s work because Naval Ravikant often cites from him. Naval says he likes to read Philosophy books, especially the ones of Krishnamurti before bed. While Krishnamurti wrote many books and his philosophy isn’t easy to summarise, this short article introduces a bit of the essence.

I love reading how others do their personal knowledge management. This one in particular resonated with me a lot.

A great article from Farnam Street, as always. It covers a wide range of practical methods to actually remember what you read like intelligent skim, taking notes, and making your notes searchable.

Yesterday, I was in the cereal aisle of Costco. Out of curiosity, I took some of them and looked their ingredients; It’s shocking how much sugar they contain. Cereals are easy to make and a lifesaver for busy people, but I think it’s important to know what it does to your body. This article focuses on how sugar influences kids’ behavior and cognition.

For me, this is one of the best piece of advice on meditation. Many of us think we have to quiet our mind while meditating, which is impossible, but what we should be doing is just to observe it. Like Anthony de Mello said, your thoughts are like clouds; they come and go. What you can do is just watch them.

As I write this, it reminded me of this tweet which I thought was brilliant:

This week, I tried Logseq! At first, I thought it was just another Roam Research clone, but boy was I wrong. It’s actually an incredible note-taking tool despite it being FREE.

I will probably make more videos about Logseq in the future!

If you liked this issue, please share it with your friends and family. It’d mean the world to me and help my work tremendously!

Thank you!

Shu