Hello there and Happy Thanksgiving! I’m sure that you’re relaxing and enjoying some down time today but I still thought I would keep up my reignited cadence of sending out this newsletter and keep the streak going.

I wanted to thank everyone who gave me feedback on the recent website design and launch. It’s great to see people engage with something I spent time on and it makes me want to continue to create. I really appreciate it! And to top it off, the website traffic was at an all time high (haha since it just launched) after I put out my latest article. Look at these stats!

This week I also shared on Twitter that I’m thinking about starting a YouTube channel! I’ve dabbled in YouTube before but only made a video here or there because it was so much work and effort and the gains take time to come.

Well recently a lot of my Twitter friends have been getting into the YouTube game and this has rekindled my desire to make videos! I do enjoy using my camera again and messing with editing and recently recorded the first video I’m hoping to put out. I even went all out and created a Notion tracker! If you’d like to subscribe ahead of time (aka the true believers!) you can do so here!

Top 5 Underrated Roam Research Features

This week’s article is dedicated to the GOAT of note-taking apps - Roam Research. There are numerous tutorials out on Roam Research already and even some full length courses. However, I think there a ton of features and add-ons that are underutilized by most people who use the app. I wanted to compile these and create an Underrated Feature Guide.

I’ve received some good feedback on this and a lot of people have said that they hadn’t heard of most of the add-ons linked in the list. If you’ve been using Roam for a while or are even just getting into Roam as a beginner, check out this list for some added functionality to make your experience in the app even better.

Collector to Creator Week 2: Collection

This week in the Collector to Creator course was all about creating a collection inbox. This is essentially a system to collect all of your inputs and then come back to read, highlight, and process them. Mine of course is combination of Instapaper, Hypothes.is and Command Browser on mobile for saving, reading, and highlighting and then Readwise to Roam for importing notes.

Everything I listed above is called “note taking.” It’s the easy part of the process because it is all consumption and no processing. “Note making” is the next step where you take your highlights and process them, adding notes in your own words. This takes a lot longer but is more valuable in the long run for both retention and understanding as well as creation. I’ll be honest - I am a much better note taker than note maker and it is one of the things I want to get better at as I go through this course.

Someone asked a great question during the live session about how they should dedicate their time to a backlog of notes to process vs taking in new content. Anne-Laure Le Cunff answered this beautifully by saying that you can either go through and figure out if you want to process your old stuff or just set aside dedicated process time (which is what she does) and eventually you will get through the backlog.

However she noted one really important point - even if you don’t ever get through the backlog, this is fine! This just means that those notes aren’t valuable to you right now and you don’t need them. Don’t get into the trap of having to process everything. If there are notes and ideas that you truly need, they have a way of finding you.

Inputs

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: I recently watched a few episodes of this show and wow am I late to the game! It’s so well done and the story line is so engaging. It gave me the old Dragon Ball Z vibes which I used to love watching as a kid. If you’re looking for a something light and fun to watch that is engaging, definitely check it out.

• Gary Kasparov’s Masterclass: Everyone has been on the chess hype lately thanks to The Queen’s Gambit. I played chess as a kid a long time ago but got into it again in 2018 when I started med school because my roommate was really into chess (competed as a kid and tutored students). We ended up starting a chess club at a local elementary school through our medical school’s community service program and I got more into the theory behind the game. I was playing pretty consistently on chess.com and hit my 2019 goal of getting to a 1000 rating. I’ve come down since but The Queen’s Gambit hype has got me back into it! I found this class on Masterclass and man oh man it’s great. Learning from a Grandmaster is already awesome but the production quality is unreal. I definitely want to do a deep dive into Masterclass and how it fits into the online education ecosystem.

• Means of Creation: Future of Online Education and Universal Creator Income: Speaking of online education, I really enjoyed this Means of Creation episode that talked about how online courses are evolving and a new platform being built for teachers who want to do live cohort courses (e.g. BASB, Write of Passage, Part Time YouTuber Academy). Nathan and Li always spark a good discussion and this was no different. They also touched on models for new creators to grow and why they think that there is a place for established creators to invest in and bring up the next generation of creators.

Thanks for checking out this week’s newsletter! I would really appreciate it if you can share this issue with one friend if you found something valuable from it. As always, if you have thoughts or just want to say hi you can find me on Twitter!

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