Learning Nerd’s Diary #05 👽
Hi folks!
Welcome back to the the Learning Nerd’s Diary.
This week I want to add 2 more Rs to last week’s rest, recover and reflect - Reconnect and Refuel. Bangalore has finally opened up and I spent the better part of my weekend hanging out with friends. It was so amazing to go out and meet people that it almost felt like Covid was just a bad nightmare. Alas!
Embracing Ambiguity
I am what you would call a Type A personality. I like to plan everything, I practically live off my calendar, I make spreadsheets for vacations - you get the gist. The last couple of weeks at work have been a worldwind and so much has happened - I can barely wrap my head around it. The ‘Just keep swimming’ song from Finding Nemo has been stuck in my head all week.
The world can be a funny (& serendipitous) place, because I came across the quote and the cartoon below the other day.
"You don't need to predict how everything will play out. Just master the next step and continue moving in the right direction."
- James Clear
Coolest Things I Learnt This Week
Atomic Essays: I found an online community of people writing daily atomic essays - small 250-300 word essays. I have been struggling to write regularly, and was super pumped to join a community where I could build a new habit, get feedback on my writing and meet some awesome people (we all know how challenging the later is during the pandemic).
Since last Friday, I have written 5 atomic essays on different themes. The goal is to get 30 essays out in the next 30 days. Fingers crossed!
If you’re interested to read them, you can find them all here.
Capturing & retrieving: I have been trying to build an efficient system for capturing and retrieving ideas, thoughts and ramblings. As of now, I use either whatsapp to send myself thoughts in the moment or I write them down in my notebook. For the past 2-3 weekends, I have been sitting down for an hour to digitise these ideas - copy paste from whatsapp and type out the ones in my notebook. After that, I try to form clusters which eventually find their way into this diary/ atomic essays/ tweets or just sit there waiting to be picked.
It is not the most efficient system - logistically speaking because of the time it takes. But it also is unidimensional - it only captures words for now. I am inspired by different types of media - screenshots, books, videos - still trying to figure out the best way to store those… If you have any ideas - this is a cry for help!
Gift of giving: Growing up, my biggest motivation for learning a new craft was actually being able to share it with someone. Birthday gifts, greeting cards, even rakhis - all were handmade.
While I loved the process of creating these things, sharing it with people I loved gave me a whole different joy. Thanks to tablet weaving, this week I was rekindled with my joy for giving handmade gifts to people this week! Here is a keychain I made for a friend -
