Note: This is a compilation of Frontier Friday, a weekly Substack published, originally released on 8 Jan. 2022
PART I
- ✍️ NEW FROM MY DESK: Parameters and Samples for Capturing Weekly Therapy Learnings
Maybe I’m biased, but this new post is important. My hopes is that you too will be capturing your weekly therapy learnings from this new year.
In this blogpost, I provided a guideline on how to do this consistently, as well as samples of my own learnings straight from my note-taking vault in Obsidian.
Sidenote: I’ve found so much joy in the use of this open-source app. Many have asked me about this. I will be doing a video series on the use of Obsidian this month)
- 📜 Web-Read: Time is personal. Your Year Changes When Your Life Changes
Derek Sivers is a master of brevity.
I keep returning to his writings. This is one of them.
“Your year really begins when you move to a new home, start school, quit a job, have a big breakup, have a baby, quit a bad habit, start a new project, or whatever else. Those are the real memorable turning points — where one day is very different than the day before. Those are the meaningful markers of time. Those are your real new years.”
- 👓 Watch: The Fourth Turning Visual Summary
I highly recommend William Strauss and Neil Howe’s seminal book, The Fourth Turning.
The authors describe the following:
“Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum. Together, the four turnings of the saeculum comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and destruction:
i. The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays.
ii. The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime
iii. The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants.
iv. The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. Each turning comes with its own identifiable mood. Always, these mood shifts catch people by surprise.”
If each saeculum (i.e., cycle) is about 20 years, it does beg the question of what season are we in as a collective culture.
By these estimates, we are in the Fourth Turning. If this is the case, that we are in a season of Crisis–which may come as no surprise–we must prepare ourselves and the next generation for the First Turning. We cannot ignore the common good as we walk through this pandemic and political climate.
Just to be clear, I don’t see this idea as a sort of crystal ball into the future. Rather, it’s a framework of conceiving our history and how we might learn not from the linearity of time, but the cyclical nature of reality.
For a good visual summary, I highly recommend you check out this video. There’s something about seeing the four cycles being visually represented in this video that makes the idea of the wheels of time pop out.
This also made me think a lot about how books can be better written with the aid of visual maps, especially if the content is dense.
Here are some of the screen grabs:
- 👓 Web-Read: Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead
Tim Ferriss provides a useful idea around “Past Year’s Review” (PYR). This ties in with the Highlights in Weeks that I use. See
2018
Private Thoughts (Part I)
Personal Learnings (Part II)
2019
Personal Mistakes (Part I)
Personal Learnings (Part II)
2020
Looking Back at 2020 - ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
“The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.” ~ G.K. Chesterton.
Reflection:
If learning = transfer, what are the top 3 things you’ve learned last year that you’d want to take with you to this year?
PART II
Obsidian.
I’ve been taking notes of my learnings for over a decade, and have relied heavily on SimpleNote.
Since May last year, I’ve made the cross-over to Obsidian. I was reluctant. Some in my profession would call me Resistant. I was reluctant and resistant because SimpleNote worked for me – until it didn’t.
- 📽 NEW VIDEO FROM MY DESK: How the Heck Do I Begin to Use Obsidian?
Here are the timestamps of what I’ve covered in this video, which is part I of a video series videos on Obsidian:
– Why as a Psychologist I take learning notes (00:18)
– 5 Key Benefits of Using Obsidian (01:17)
– Getting Started (07:50)
– The 7 Tips on How to Use Obsidian:
i. Headers: (08:20)
ii. Bold (09:14)
iii. Bullets (09:32)
iv. Checklists (10:00)
v. Adding images and pdfs (11:00)
vi. Adding bi-directional linking (13:20)
vii. Adding Tags (15:07)
- 👓 Watch: Linking Your Thinking
Nic Milo’s youtube channel helped me get started with Obsidian.
He also shared uses cases and chats with others who uses the software for their personalized knowledge management (PKM) system.
You’d note from my videos I prefer to call this Personalised Learning System (PLS) and I explained why in the video above.
- 👓 Watch: Filipe Donadio
Filipe’s videos were short and helpful too. His website has lots of useful tips.
WARNING: If you go down the rabbit hole, there’s lots and lots of plugins for Obsidian. I will be covering my top useful plugins in coming videos.
- 👓 Bookworm: How to Take Smart Notes
Who in the world wants to read a book about note taking? I must admit, I felt that way. In fact, I was unintrigued at my first pass of the book.
However, when I revisited the book and focused on how to focus on actual note-taking, linking my ideas so as to promote deeper reflection, this book cover grounds that are directly related.
“If you use the slip-box* for a while, you will inevitably make a sobering discovery: The great new idea you are about to add to the slip-box turns out to be already in there.”
* An approach to linking your notes, sometimes called Zettelkasten (German for slip box) method. - ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
“As we are living longer, we are thinking shorter.” ~ Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson.
Reflection:
“As we are living longer, we are thinking shorter.” ~ Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson.
PART III
- 📽 NEW VIDEO: How to Organise Your Notes to Improve the Learning Process
In part 2 of the Obsidian video series, I talked about how to use folders, tags, and a special “Inbox” to organise and improve your personalised learning system (PLS). - 👓 Web-Read: Exploring the power of note-making with the co-founder of Obsidian
Co-founder of Obsidian Erica Xu talks about the power of customizing your note-taking environment, note-taking versus note-making, digital gardening as a way to produce content during the learning journey, and building a community of note-takers.
Thank you Erica Xu and Shida Li for creating obsidian–and the community of people who developed plugins to improve the user experience of app (More on recommended plugins in next week’s Frontiers Friday newsletter).
- 📜 From My Desk (Archive): Blackbox Thinking for Psychotherapists
In this two-part blogpost (see Part I and Part II), I talked about why and how we can build our own little “blackbox” so that we can develop a learning system in our careers in the helping profession.
- 😳 Watch: The Difference Between the Aviation Industry and Health Care Systems
This is the difference between a learning system vs. a performing system. Watch this video to figure out where health care systems recede.
Spoiler: Aviation learns because it employs an open loop for reporting and responding to problems. Healthcare, by contrast, typically uses a closed loop where errors are swept under the carpet rather than used as learning opportunities.
- ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over.” ~ Coach John Wooden
Reflection:
What is one thing you need to set up once so that you no longer need to let it bug you for the rest of the year?
Now go do that.
PART IV
- 📜 New From My Desk: The Difference Between What’s Right and What’s Right For You
Sounds obvious? Yeah, but not trivial.
There are 3 key questions to ask yourself as you figure out where you should channel your efforts.
- 📽 Watch: The Surprising Thing About Learning In schools Will Richardson
Will Richardson who authors books about the education system , does a thought provoking talk about learning in a schools.
Here’s one that most of us know is true: “Our students will forget most of what they ‘learn’ in school.”
Here’s one that we need to take pause on: “The current grading systems and assesmments define our kids and teachers in ways that are counterproductive if not harmful.”
Finally, here’s a useful screen grab. Go through this list side-by-side, one at a time: - 📽 Watch: Neuroscientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty
Wired magazine has a video series them where they get experts to explain complicated things in 5different versions:
i. to an expert
ii. to a grad
iii. to a college student
iv. to a teen
v. to a child.
Besides the practice of brevity, it’s also an exercise of clarity.
Stay tuned next week, as I’m writing a blog how this applies to our field. - 👓 Read: One World Schoolhouse
Sal Khan is famed for his development of Khan Academy (This has grown to become a great resource for kids. My 4 yr old loves it).
His 2012 book One World Schoolhouse, was one of the key books that sparked me to re-think how we approach learning and training, and helped shaped the creation of the Deep Learner course.
- ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
“The line of progress is never straight. For a period a movement may follow a straight line and then it encounters obstacles and the path bends. It is like curving around a mountain when you are approaching a city. Often it feels as though you were moving backward, and you lose sight of your goal; but in fact you are moving ahead, and soon you will see the city again, closer by.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
RIP Kim Hogan Lavery.
Reflection:
What does progress mean to you?
Conversely, has the push for constant progress robbed you in living?
PART V
- 📽 New From My Desk: 9 Highly Recommended Plug-ins For Obsidian to Go Further With Your Personalised Learning System (PLS)
In Part III of the Obsidian videos, after going down the rabbithole of various plugins to improve my Obsidian note-taking app, I’ve come up with my top 9 plugins.
(You can watch the previous Obsidian related videos here).
- 📜 New From My Desk: Explain Your Ideas to An Expert-and to a Child
Wired magazine has a video series where they get experts from various domains to explain complicated concepts—from blockchain to machine learning, music harmony to sleep—in 5 different levels
What’s really interesting is to listen carefully how they explain these concepts at varying degrees of complexity.i. To an expertii. To a gradiii. To a college studentiv. To a teen, andv. To a child.
The ability to explain things in both succinct and elarboative ways is a real skill, not just in terms of the depth of knowledge, but also a sense of clarity and empathy for who the listener is.
In this ne blog, I provide the reasons why we need to develop this skill, and three exercises of how we can do that.
- 📽 Watch: Genius is not about excelling at something–it’s about doing thinks differently by Eric Weinstein (Big Idea)
We want our surgeons to be excellent. We want our classical music performers to be excellent. But do we really want excellence everywhere?
Eric Weinstein raises some important questions about excellence and expertise.
Here are some of my key grafs:
A. Jazz vs Classical Music- jazz is not really about playing something flawlessly but taking risksMiles Davis Kind of Blue. almost nothing on the sheet music was written down. you can also hear a few flaws which makes it so excitingQuality control can be deadly eg jazz improviser taking few risks
B. Excellence is About Hill-climbing- the fabled 10000hrsit is something we know how to teachwe want this in our surgeonswe want this in our classical music performersbut the question is, do we want it everywhere?
C. Genius- kids diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD are not designed for the excellence model of education
- they are meant to be the innovators (note: see The Pattern Seekers by Simon Baron-Cohen by Simon barron Cohen, The Dyslexic Advantage What are the dyslexic strengths MIND
- what we have effectively done is demonised these different learning patterns and called them “learning disabilities.”
- 🎧 Listen: Why Do We Forget So Much of What We’ve Read?
I love listening to Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics) and Angela Duckworth (author of Grit) chat.
In this particular epsiode, they raise the topic of forgetting. We covered grounds about this in the Deep Learner course, which was why this piqued my interest.
- ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
“To learn is to form an internal model of the external world.”
~ Stanislas Dehaene, How We Learn (2019)
Reflection:
Take a moment to think of the following: How do you explain what you do in therapy?
Imagine explaining that to an adult. Now explain that to a child.
PART VI
- 📽 New From My Desk: How to Use the Gorgeous Graph View in Obsidian
In Part IV of the Obsidian videos, I’d walk you through the beautiful graph view in Obsidian. Beyond the pleasing aesthetics of seeing the inter-relationship of your notes, there are ways that this can help you learn more deeply.
This is related to one of the four tenets that I teach in the online course Deep Learner called Synthesis: Not just collect the dots but connect the dots.
(If you’ve missed them, you can watch the previous Obsidian related videos in this playlist).
- 👓 Web-Read: Retrieval Strength Vs. Storage Strength
This blogpost by Veronica Yan highlights a critical point that we often take for granted. Forgetting is paradoxically important to learning.Here’s a tip Yan suggests: Delayed quizzing.
When we test ourselves (or our students) on a particular lesson, we should not do so immediately after having just studied (or taught) it, when retrieval strength is still very high. Rather, we should wait some time after study before quizzing, when retrieval strength is lower. This delayed quiz will result in a) a more potent learning event (i.e., greater storage strength), and b) a more accurate indication of real learning!”
Implications for therapists: As you capture your weekly therapy learnings, look at the headings of your notes and test your recall!
- 📕 Big-Read: The 4-Hour Chef
Tim Ferriss is quite an exceptional human –if he’s even human. His wildly successful book The 4-Hour Workweek had a follow-up book (amongst other books) called The 4-Hour Chef.
No, it’s not a cookbook. It’s really about learning.
This tome covers wide-ranging topics from Muay Thai to French Omelet, learning Mandarin to shooting a free-throw. One of the key features for me is Ferriss’ ideas around meta-learning. For example, how to deconstruct tasks into component parts.
Sidenote: I learned a counterintuitive but effective way of how to start a fire from this book!
- 📽 Small-Video: The Powerful Effects of Drawing on Learning
In the online course Deep Learner, I talked about how we can tap into the dual-coding pathways for learning and why drawing out your ideas is a powerful way to improving learning.
This short 2 minute video talks about the benefits of drawing.
To my surprise, some clients have mentioned to me about how they recall a session from years passed based on a sketchnote that we made in session.
You don’t have become Picasso, but learning to symbolically represent ideas with an image is powerful.
- ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
“I’m afraid of my computer. I know when I turn it off, it’s learning new things without me.“
~ Elvira Kurt
Reflection:
Most therapists I know truly value life-long learning. But busy-ness has a way of side-stepping what we value.
Here’s one word to contemplate: Return.
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