Vol. 5. Student Mode: What are You Feeding Your Brain?
I've been in business for 8 years now. At the beginning, I was learning sooo many new things:
- How to find clients
- Sales
- Marketing
- Workflows
- Software
I was in student mode.
You may be there currently.
And now, if you read my last newsletter, you know that I'm learning a lot about YouTube as I go all in over there.
Really, I always try to operate in student mode, meaning: what can I learn from every situation?
But since I've been spending more time on YouTube, I've been discovering different topics that really interest me, some due to a handful of searches, and following curiosities but also... I've just been algorithmed. Really freakin well.
One of those topics has been around studying, but more generally, how to really learn. This is something that has always intrigued me: How to learn, retain, recall & apply information better. Being a better learner.
Side note: the past couple years have been ridden with extreme brain fog, where learning, retaining, recall--all of that was extremely difficult. I'm finally feeling like I've gotten on the other side of recovering from the effects of mold (most days) and I've been inspired to become a student again.
Between videos about that, planning, journaling, documenting, and some creative quests I've been on, I've stumbled upon some creators with super cozy content. And their recommendation is to... slow... down.
Read slower, take notes, ponder ideas.
Let things sink in.
This feels so much better for my brain, easing back into things, even though my ambitious side wants to learn everything all at once.
It's caused me to realize and ponder... the amount of content that we have access to: it's overwhelming. It's overstimulating.
Is this causing content ADHD?
No wonder we have such a hard time focusing on tasks at hand. Or our goals. We (I) have a million tabs open, 500 podcasts in the queue, a ton of memes & reels my friends have sent me, sitting in my DMs waiting to be opened and an endless feed (literally) of more content. Being FED to me. we're being bombarded with everyone's opinions, teachings, strategies, everything!
I don't even really have to search for the content I want. The algorithm already knows.
It is by design. The goal is to keep us on the platforms as long as possible, so we can be FED ads over & over again and eventually spend money.
It isn't lost on me, that you may have come from an ad of mine. Or perhaps the algorithm fed me to you at some point. Which I'm grateful for. And it's a conundrum for me.
A new experiment...
Over the past few weeks, I've made a shift. I deleted instagram from my phone on a whim; I was admittedly having a hard day, and kept reaching for my phone and going straight to IG to numb out and avoid my feelings. Once I became aware of that, I immediately just removed the app.
Numbing out to the social scroll isn't healthy. I've wasted so much time there when I really could be relaxing in different ways. Or focused on needle movers.
at the time of writing this, I haven't had the app on my phone for 3 weeks and I don't miss it. I'm checking DMs through Manychat but there is an automation letting people know there will be a delayed response. At least for my business page.
I'm still working on being on my phone less (IG time has shifted to YouTube and some time on threads, but I've been more purposeful and intentional about what I'm doing on both of those places)
So now the experiment is:
- Slower & less content consumption
- Taking more notes
- Ideating on paper more
- Being a student again
- Following my curiosities
- Creating more than I consume: whether it be content for business, crochet, art, food, or music.
What are you creating?
What do you want to be creating?
And where can you create space for that in your life?
Because this... creates the rich life we're all after.
...this might be what they call:
Responses