Return to site

Depth of Relationship, Light Bulb, Quality of Sleep

1 idea from me, 1 learning from others, and 1 question to ponder

April 7, 2023

Here are 1 idea from me, 1 learning from others, and 1 question for you to ponder this week.

1 idea from me

1 lesson from others

"I want to live my life like an incandescent lightbulb. Burn brightly my entire life, and then one day suddenly go out. I don't want the flickering fluorescent lightbulbs that signal their impending demise."

Dr Sanjay Gupta

1 question for you to ponder

How is your quality of sleep? Do you snore? Are you suffering cognitive decline, memory loss? Do you feel tired easily?

I've been diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) recently. I will share more about it and a project extension that I'm working on in the next newsletter.

 

Reading Club

I just finished Deep Work by Cal Newport. I love it when he says we need to wean our brain from a dependence on distraction while engaging in more deep work. Doing more deep work has helped me publish 3 books, 1 podcast while caring for 2 young children and working full-time.

 

According to Cal, there are four ways of scheduling deep work:

  • Monastic - go to a retreat and disappear for a period of time.
  • Bimodal - it feels like you are living two lives. This is more me. On weekends, I do my writing before the kids get up. Once they're up, I don't write. On weekdays, I get up at 5/6am, do my writing, exercise and then return to work.
  • Rhythmic - you go through a period of intense deep work, like a current in the ocean. I tried this but prefer bimodal because the habit of deep work becomes ingrained in your system.
  • Journalistic - as the name suggests, your deep work is much like writing a journal. You are able to switch on and off almost on-demand. I do this sometimes whenever I go through a walk in the nature. If ideas pop in my head, I would write down the ideas, and leave the details for the next writing blocks.