Ferate's Five: Cultivating Curiosity, Personal Time Capsules, & The 3 T's of Writing.

As Matthew McConaughey says, don’t forget to document the good.

March 29, 2023

What’s up! My goal is to be as consistent as possible with my weekly newsletter and continue to improve on the craft of writing. The skill of storytelling, gaining more clarity in how I communicate, and most of all delivering value to you. I want this to be worth your time, spark interest, and cultivate curiosity in your life.

This week I am trying something new. Instead of diving into one topic, I wanted to share five things that I found interesting this past week when I was exploring my curiosity and most importantly discovering what it is I truly want to want.

That last part is something I think about daily. Seeking out and discovering what is that I truly want to want. Not the biased wants or the wants that are norms created by society or culture. The real wants, the what does FERATE, in all caps want with his life. What does the best version of me truly want with his life?

I would love to hear back from you, to see if you enjoyed this new format and which of the five bullets interested you the most. Which topic would you double-click or google after reading this? Let me know by commenting or emailing me.

So here it goes… Ferate’s Five.

Ryan Holiday & Billy Oppenheimer’s Note Card System.

I look up to both of these people. These past 2 months I have been reading everything Billy Oppenheimer, Ryan Holiday’s research assistant, has been putting out into the world. He has been crushing it, make sure you check out his Twitter & newsletter links below.

The Note Card System is Ryan Holiday’s process to collect useful stories and extract insights from reading, podcasts, or any impactful content. Billy shared most recently on The Danny Miranda Podcast that one of the most important parts is physically writing the notes by hand. Here is the breakdown of the system.

  1. Reads an amazing book

  2. Underline impactful parts, writing questions or notes in the margin

  3. After a week he goes back through writing down only the most insightful points each on their own individual notecard

  4. Then organizes them by themes/topics to refer back to on later projects.

Over the years your work begins to compound because you pull lessons and amazing stories from your past to a specific topic that you are writing about right now. For example, Ryan Holiday recently wrote a book on disciple relating current events to stories from the stoics & American history.

My favorite part is physically transferring the story or insight to a note card is the key to absorbing the information. We imprint that into our brains by physically writing it down. Billy mentioned this awesome filter “If I can’t convince myself to do the work to transcribe something from the book to a notecard then maybe it's not that good.”

Introjection.

(oxford definition: the unconscious adoption of the ideas or attitudes of others.)

Okay, so this one is weird, in a good way. I recently had been thinking if I could only read 4 to 6 people’s work and just go all in those who would it be? Consume only their content and not get distracted by any other cool articles or new podcast drops. Well, two people who made my list were Billy from #1 and Danny Miranda.

Good news for me they were on a podcast together. That’s not the weird or crazy part, the crazy part is that Billy brought up this idea of introjection. Which had me say “No shit…..” pause for a second while listening to their pod.

Billy explained the story of Andrew Huberman (a pretty decent podcaster) having a list of his favorite scientists in his lab and he would often think about what attributes he liked about them. Over time he would inherit some of the qualities simply by it being top of mind.

Something else he shared that I loved. At times it is tough to be you when people say “just be you” when you don’t know who you are. I mean who knows 100% who they are? It may help to understand what specific attributes of others you think are important and that collection makes you uniquely you.

So what qualities or attributes do you admire? Why? What ones are you trying to inherit and keep top of mind?

The Danny Miranda Podcast with Billy Oppenheimer.

Stanford’s 5 Stages of Communication (Touchy Feely) My First Million Podcast.

Well shit this wasn’t on purpose but this just made me laugh out loud. My First Million Podcast with Shaan Puri & Sam Parr are also on my personal introjection list.

In the podcast below, Shaan discussed the 5 stages of communication from a Stanford course nick named the “Touchy Feely” course using this framework.

STAGE 1 Ritual - “Hey” “What’s up” (Automated Hallway Hi)

STAGE 2 Extended Ritual - ““Hey how’s it going? How’s your day?” “Good.” You’re asking but don’t really care and they aren’t really going to tell you anything besides a stereotypical response.

STAGE 3 Surface Content - BS’ing about current events, sports, to-do lists or things top of mind. Surface level on top of an extended ritual.

STAGE 4 Feelings About The Content - I feel stressed, worried, excited about this project. It is how you actually feel inside.

STAGE 5 Feelings About Each Other - I love working on that, disappointed, annoyed, etc. Point is to say how you feel about each other not say I feel “like” because that takes away from how you actually feel.

The key here from what Shaan said was the first 3 stages are really automated habitual responses and are surface level. The relationship doesn’t move at all because at most you talk about what March Madness for 2 minutes. The last 2 stages move you farther down the ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP TRACK. I feel hyped when we collaborate on this or thanks for that feedback because of xyz.

Where do you spend most of your time when you are communicating at work, with your friend, or family?

My First Million Episode #435 with Ben Levy 

The Three T’s of Writing - Noah Cracknell

Noah was episode 1 and most recently episode 24 on my podcast. This dude is a legend and someone I connect with often on the writing and creating art. He also was my student-athlete at the University of Portland back in the day when he was on the baseball team.

Most importantly thought, this dude teaches me a lot. Most recently he taught me his framework for writing and what his goal is moving forward for his newsletter.

His goal is to write things that are timeless, not timely. To create art that is long-lasting. Below is his simple, but not easy framework for his newsletter.

  1. Transparent- Being vulnerable in my writing and my story?

  2. Trustworthy - is this true? Are you telling your own true story?

  3. Timeless - News & headlines are timely. When you create something timeless the work surpasses the test of time.

The biggest hitter of them all was this Timeless one. Things that become timeless relate to your life, lessons can be extracted, or we can learn from stories others tell. For example, Noah shared his welcome to New York experience and the lessons he learned from kicking his phone into the Hudson River and blundering a date when trying to take a picture of a sunset.

Time to apply the 3 T’s to my writing more often.

Noah’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/thenoahcrack 

Noah’s Newsletter - https://www.thedailypreneur.com/

Personal Time Capsules

Jack Mullaney taught me this lesson back in 2020 after we won our first WCC Championship in Women’s Basketball. We had an incredible run with projected last place in the pre-season polls to upsetting 3 teams in a row to win the conference tournament.

The lesson has evolved for me over the years. Here is direct insight into what I shared with the incredible group of young women on the University of Portland Women’s Basketball team a few days after the 2023 WCC Championship.

FRAMEWORK: CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONAL TIME CAPSULE.

  1. Time Block 15 to 30 minutes For Yourself

  2. Open your iPhone notes and just start brain-dumping every memory you can think of over the past few days of the conference tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada. Document the entire trip with extremely specific notes, and don’t hold back on the emotions/feelings in those moments. From getting into Las Vegas on Saturday, spending time with family Saturday night, team breakfast, practice Sunday, the sun being out, going to Fogo De Chao steakhouse for dinner, all the jokes, Pacific game being extremely stressful, getting that dub, back on the court for walk through that night, wake up, being down 11 at halftime, the rise of emotions, some HUGE and 1s, steals, winning the championship (beating our rival Gonzaga) and all the celebration shenanigans.

  3. Once you feel like you ran out of notes refer back to photos in your camera roll. Not just from the game but all the other photos that led up to that moment during the trip.

  4. Then back to the iPhone notes for a few more minutes.

  5. Save it to your iCloud

  6. In 10 years you will be grabbing a drink with your old college teammates or telling your family a story and be glad you created this personal time capsule.

As Matthew McConaughey says, don’t forget to document the good.

If you are here then you made it, not to the end but to the beginning. Excited to evolve my newsletter and take a step in a new creative direction. If you connected with any of this writing please reach out and let me know through the comments or by email. Did you enjoy the new format or did one of these five insights from my past week get you fired up? Pull the trigger and tell me!

Appreciate you all more than you know!

Let’s Go! Keep Killin it and making today the best day of the year until tomorrow…

Ferate

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