💎 Friday Gems (Ultra Learning, The Power of Questions, UX Career Strategizer and much more!)
Keep it simple. Don't boil the ocean. Just start!
Low Fidelity is a free weekly newsletter that provides fresh insights on mindset, mindfulness, and personal growth. Empowering you to show up, thrive, and achieve your full creative potential.
Hi everybody!
I’m trying something new this week. In the spirit of experimentation, I have created a video to introduce the stories I have picked for this week’s Friday Gems issue and share more context about why these gems caught my eye. Please let me know what you think of it and I welcome any feedback.
Note: Please disregard the squeaking sound from my desk and the choppy editing. Remember done is better than perfect.😅
In this edition of Friday Gems:
📚 How to Start Your Own Ultra Learning Project
🙋🏾♀️ Rekindling the provocative power to ask the right questions
🚀 UX Career Strategizer - Miro Template
🌟 Gem of Wisdom: See the miraculous in the mundane
🎵 Gem of a Tune: Saints by Applescal
💎 How to Start Your Own Ultra Learning Project
Ultralearning is deep self-education to learn hard things in less time.
I’ve been a dabbler all my life. Lately, I’ve noticed this tendency to be on the fence with my interests instead of going all in. There is nothing wrong with dabbling, but there are topics we would like to explore more deeply, so we need to commit to learning them with our time and effort.
This is why this article by Scott Young on the topic of Ultralearning caught my eye. In the article, Scott shows how to start your own ultralearning project, which I find fascinating.
Ultralearning projects can help you achieve breakthroughs in whatever you’re trying to learn.
Why start an ultralearning project?
Imagine experiencing these benefits of diving into a topic:
Learning quickly
Getting to the fun parts of learning faster
Being fully engaged with your learning
Developing the skills and muscle memory to repeat this exercise for any other topic
I’m excited just talking about the benefits. Imagine where you could be in a month, 6 months, or even a year of deep and focused learning.
Scott then shares how you can design your own ultralearning project by breaking it down into three parts:
Figuring out what you want to learn deeply, intensely, and quickly
Keep it simple and easy by picking just one thing to learn,
Don’t boil the ocean; add constraints to keep your focus
Just start! Add goals/deadlines/milestones once you get started and better understand the direction in which you want to move towards your topic.
Choosing which format you want for your project
Pick a format that works for your life situation/time/energy
A full-time project is a good option if you can dedicate large blocks of your day
A fixed-schedule project is a good option if you have limited time to dedicate, for example, if you only have 30 minutes before or after work
A fixed-hour project is a good option if you are busy and need to fit the learning in between other priorities.
Preparing to start learning
Before you get started, it’s a good idea to prepare. Think of this as the discovery phase of your project, where you:
Research how to learn your topic - Figure out what type of learning works best
Gather materials and design a preliminary attack plan - This is where you sign up for courses, subscribe to YouTube channels, buy the books, and get the tools you will need along the way
Conduct a pilot week/dry run of your schedule — Before you commit to many weeks or months of learning, you can try out your schedule to see if it fits your lifestyle.
Scott Young has many more articles on ultralearning on his website and has even written a book titled, Ultralearning.
I think ultralearning is a fascinating way to dive deeper into the topics we want to learn more about and develop our expertise.
Now the question is what topic will you choose to ultralearn?
In the comments, please let me know your thoughts on ultralearning and which topics make it onto your list.
Source: Scott H. Young
💎 The 4-24 Project: Rekindling the provocative power to ask the right questions
If you’ve been around toddlers or preschoolers, you have experienced their amazing curiosity and questioning abilities. They don’t hesitate to ask questions as they experience the world around them for the first time.
As adults, we lose that natural ability to wonder and stop asking questions.
Instead…
we want answers
we want options
we want certainty
However, asking the right questions can bring more creativity, increase our understanding, and break the status quo.
The 4-24 Project is a simple framework for bringing us back home to our childlike wonder and reconnecting with our creativity and curiosity.
Here is the framework:
Set aside 4 minutes every 24 hours (totaling one full day each year) to ask better questions
Sound interesting? Here is a video to better understand why we need to develop our questioning muscles
Are you ready to increase your questioning capacity and open your world to new possibilities?
Source: 4-24 Project
💎 UX Career Strategizer - Miro Template
Have you planned out your career? I can’t believe I haven’t been more intentional about it, but there is no better time to start than now. As I took stock of my skills and the next move in my career, I came across the UX Career Strategizer Miro template.
It’s a great place to start if you also want to organize your career planning. I suggest getting a cup of coffee or tea, doing a breathing exercise to center yourself and get in the right mindset. Also be honest with yourself as you work through the exercises and align your answers with your values and what is important or exciting for you, not for your employer, your manager, your team, only you!
This exercise is good for you if you…
want to understand your current skills and which ones you want to develop
want to understand what type of company/team you want to work in
want to create a plan for developing the skills that are important to you
want to create an actionable plan with tangible activities so you can see your career path clearly
I’m still on Day 1 of the exercise, but I am amazed at how much clarity this has brought me. Now, I don’t need to keep it all in my head, and I can take my time to make sure I truly want to grow a skill instead of going where the wind takes me.
Try it out, and let me know how it goes.
Source: Miro
💎 Gem of Wisdom: See the miraculous in the mundane
Is it possible to find beauty and joy in the simplest of things—the sounds of traffic, the chirping of a bird, an airplane passing overhead, rain hitting the roof—the myriad kaleidoscopic shapes and colors, shades and textures all around us, the play of light and shadow—the aroma of coffee, the taste of it, the felt-sense of the warm cup in our hands?
Is it possible to deeply appreciate something as simple as drinking a glass of cool water, smelling rain-drenched earth, feeling a cool breeze on the skin? Do we need something more magnificent, more extraordinary, more transcendental?
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💎 A Gem of a Tune: Saints by Applescal
Saints by Applescal is a light and airy tune with a deep question asked of a saint/yogi, “What is the goal of life and how can it be achieved?” You’ll have to listen to the song for the answer. 😉
Feel free to send any recommendations for songs to include in the Low Fidelity playlist.
Enjoy!
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That’s it for this week’s gems. Do you have a gem you would like to share? Hit reply and share, or DM me.
I’m thankful that you read this far.
Have a fantastic weekend!
Love the video addition!
Also Scott Young is great - I'm so glad I came across him when I was still at college - his strategies (and Cal Newport's) saved me lots of hours and lots of pain