Inputs #01: The Discipline, Writing, and a Roam Roundup
Curation vs creation
Hey there! I have a little bit of a change up in newsletter schedule that I wanted to tell you about. I’m starting my Internal Medicine rotation next week so will be busier than usual for the next two months. I still want to write and send out a newsletter regularly so I’m moving my weekly post to Sunday where I’ll send out some Inputs that I found during the week that I think are worth sharing. It’s more curation but easier to write so I’ll be able to stick with it.
I’m still hoping to post a more long-form topic based piece each Wednesday but won’t feel as bad if I miss a week here or there. I also want to have a short update for you all each week with what’s going on in my world since this audience is growing and I feel like I should share a bit more about what I’m doing in medical school.
For daily updates you can follow me @akiffpremjee on Twitter!
So with that, let’s get into it!
Update
I just finished up a two week elective in the NICU (Neonatal ICU). It was very different from anything I’ve done before since it was a lot of premature babies with specific conditions and the main goal is to make sure they are on pace for getting enough nutrients and growing so they can leave the NICU. Had a great time and learned a lot of new things about that population that isn’t generally covered in medical school.
This week I start my Medicine rotation which is one of the tougher ones. It covers essentially every body system and is probably what you think of when you think of patients in the hospital. Hoping to keep you all updated on a weekly basis with interesting findings!
Inputs
The Discipline: I learned about The Discipline from Andy Henson on Twitter and I’ve been super intrigued by it and hoping to incorporate it into my workflow soon. Essentially this is a framework for how to spend your free time. You work in 10 day periods called “decades” and each day in the decade has a preset category. The categories are Create, Read, Study, Play, and Create. Since each day is predetermined (e.g. today could be a Read day), you don’t have to spend time thinking of what to do in your free time (you just read). I love the idea of removing friction from decision making and just doing something that’s been predetermined for you. I highly recommend you check it out and also follow Andy on Twitter. I also just interviewed Andy for my Digital Studios series so be on the lookout for that in a future issue!
How to Start a Blog That Changes Your Life: I originally read this post by Nat Eliason when it came out but revisited it this week to take more detailed notes. I’ll probably come back to it again and again as I keep growing my writing and audience but right now my main insight from it is to make writing a habit and keep at it for at least 1 year. This in itself should bring about good results. Monetization, SEO, etc. can all come later with time but having a good foundation to start with is what seems to 80% of the process.
Roam Roundup
The rest of the inputs are from the world of Roam which had a big week.
Roam’s CEO, Conor White-Sullivan, made three big announcements on Twitter (after already having a big week raising $9M at a $200M valuation). These include API and multiplayer Roam launching, a fellowship program, and a Roam Fund for makers building Tools for Thought.
Roam’s Road Ahead: Nathan Baschez of the Everything Bundle had a good write up on Roam’s recent funding round and what he thinks it could mean for the future of Roam. He laid out two possible paths - creating a team-based tool and following a similar route to other note-taking apps like Notion or creating a new type of internet where things are interconnected and linked and you can essentially have a view into the Graphs of other people. Option 1 is what he says is most likely but also doesn’t truly vibe with the values that the Roam team seems to operate by.
Daniel Wirtz’s To-Do List System in Roam: I’ve been trying to find a better way to manage my to do’s in Roam besides copy and pasting from Things 3 and manually moving things around. Daniel Wirtz has created a great framework for this using queries and tags that he walks through in this video. If you’re looking to up your Roam productivity game, give it a watch.
A lot of people enjoyed this Tweet about creating a [[twitter.com]] page in Roam which will pull in every tweet in your Roam as an unlinked reference. Make sure you write something on the page though because I’ve had a blank page get auto-deleted on me!
That’s all I’ve got for the first issue of Inputs. I hope you found some of these highlights interesting. I’m hoping that writing this each week also forces me to read varied and interesting things that I can then share with you all so that you can learn something you may not have known before!
As I mentioned before, I just interviewed Andy Henson for the next Digital Studio Tour. Here is a link to the first one in case you wanted to see what they are like. If it’s something you’re interested in, definitely subscribe below!