Wise Owl Wednesdays - Issue #4
Feb 19, 2020 7:35 pm
Hello again fellow Wise Owls,
Today is Wednesday February 19th, 2020 and once again you've made it halfway through the week!
It's time for your weekly dose of Wise Owl Wednesdays. We've hit 4 issues now! That makes us official, right?
This newsletter has been so much fun to write, and I've really loved all the feedback I've been given so far. Send me more! I want to turn Wise Owl Wednesdays into the one email you look forward to each week.
To do that I need your feedback on how I can do better, so please let me know how I'm doing.
Now, let's get into the issue.
This week we cover the following:
- My quote of the week
- What I am currently reading
- Tips to make you wise, healthy, and wealthy
- Any new or relevant Wise Healthy Wealthy articles I think you might enjoy
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Quote of the week:
This week I'm on a bit of a stoicism kick. When my life gets stressful I fall back on stoicism to handle the extra load to avoid getting overwhelmed.
This quote from Seneca is a big one for me because I always build shit up in my head and make it far worse than it is in reality.
Here's a silly but legit example of how I would do this to myself. Two cats live in my house, and so I have three litter boxes. I hate emptying these litter boxes. Why do I hate it? No idea, but because I build up this resentment towards doing this one task in my head, I put it off.
Friends - if there is one task you do not want to put off, it's cleaning the litter boxes. So what did I do about this? I tried to take all the emotional baggage away from the task by timing it to see just how long it takes for me to clean all three litter boxes.
How long does it take?
If done daily - 2 minutes
If done weekly - 20 minutes
ONLY 2 MINUTES! After learning that, I don't have an excuse anymore. Especially now I know waiting ends up costing me more time overall.
The moral of the story is not to let yourself suffer more in your mind than in reality.
Life is hard enough as it is.
Seneca was a smart guy, and embodied what it meant to be wise, healthy, and wealthy several thousand years ago. Which is why this week I have been re-reading his famous letters.
Current Reads - Letters From A Stoic
Why this book is awesome:
Tim Ferriss has called stoicism the "the ideal operating system for anyone who wants to operate in high-stress environments."
That is my life. I am now self-aware enough to know that some part of me wants and sometimes enjoys operating in a high-stress environment. I work a 9-5 job full-time, am a full-time caregiver, and still choose start side projects all the time, as well as write articles and this newsletter every week.
This book is one of several that give my mind the scaffolding to handle the intense pressures of life and not let it drag me down.
Links to get this book:
** The links above are affiliate links. If you purchase the books with the links above, I receive a super tiny commission, which helps support this newsletter. Thank you! **
Tips or Tools of the week: Wisdom, Health or Wealth
This week I am going to switch things up and share a tool I use for each of these categories. Sharing tools was one of the promises I'd made when announcing this newsletter, and thus far I haven't yet shared tools.
So this week I will share three.
Wisdom tool of the week: Notion
What it is - Notion is my everything tool. It's an all-in-one work space.
Why I use it - It is my one tool to rule them all. It has replaced Evernote, Asana, and Google Docs.
I use it to:
- Track all tasks in my life across all projects
- Organize my yearly and quarterly goals and projects
- Take notes and keep meeting minutes at work
- Create a backlog for future articles
- Track my habits
- Write my fantasy fiction novel
What I wish it had - Speech to text. I wish the desktop version had a way to do speech to text for longer form writing. That is the one feature that google docs has that Notion does not have on desktop. Oh well, the pros outweigh the cons.
One note about Notion though - Notion requires a bit of a learning curve to get the most out of it. I plan on making YouTube videos in the future of how I use Notion, and the resources I have gathered that make using Notion much easier.
Notion is free at first and with this link you will get $10 in credit should you ever decide to upgrade (if you switch over to Notion, you will 100% upgrade).
Health tool of the week: Simple
What it is - A super clean intermittent fasting app that gamifies fasting and makes it easier to do. It can handle all kinds of fasting lengths from 12 hours to several days, but the core of it is built around intermittent fasting.
Why I use it - The design is clean, and you can customize the hours you want to fast. The app also lets you know when your body goes into Ketosis, fat burning, and the autophagy stage (cell cleansing/regeneration). These are helpful for me because if I want to push my fast longer into the fat burning stage I can see how much longer I need to go without eating.
It also syncs with Apple Health so all of my other fitness trackers can provide it with data.
What I wish it had - A stronger push on community. To be honest I haven't played with the community aspects of it much. Let me know if you join and we can test that out ourselves!
Wealth tool of the week: Clarity Money
What it is - A dashboard of all of your finances
Why I use it - I like the layout a lot more than Mint, and the AI powered insights are nice to see. Plus, it has a feature to cancel paid subscriptions like Netflix or Spotify. This is really helpful for me because I sometimes stop using various apps I've paid for and forget to cancel them.
What I wish it had - Cryptocurrency tracking. Part of my financial portfolio is in cryptocurrency and in the first issue of Wise Owl Wednesdays I spoke to the importance of learning about crypto. Clarity Money doesn't track that yet, so I must use a different tool for that.
New Articles
Every week I publish new articles on Medium.
Not every article I write will pertain to wisdom, health, and wealth, but most will!
New or relevant articles I publish will be included here.
Share The Love, and Help Me Help You!
What did you think about the newsletter?
If you know anyone that could benefit from reading this, please forward it to them.
Also, if you have ideas or thoughts in the following areas, please let me know!
- Books I should review
- Topics you would love to read about
- YouTube videos you'd love to watch
Let me know by replying to this email!
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