Equally Important
Thoughts on Life/Work Balance, How to Foster Learning, Bear 2 Out of Beta, A Shortcut to Save Searches, Universal Variables in Shortcuts
Let me share with you a couple of things that stood out from my previous week:
On Reading
Last week I read this letter by André Gregory to Richard Avedon. It’s a letter that talks about the work/life balance, specifically for artists. There’s several things that I found insightful, such as the way that he talks about the impossibility of seeing these as separate things. He says: artists are always working, though they may not seem as if they are. They are like plants growing in winter. You can’t see the fruit, but it is taking root below the earth. So true! There’s this other part that I think it’s also true for creatives:
Life and the work are equally important. You cannot separate one from the other. The work changes the life, and the life changes the work.
In THIS ARTICLE I continued reading about retrieval and storage strength when it comes to memory and learning. “Forgetting focuses remembering and fosters learning; remembering generates learning and causes forgetting; learning causes forgetting, begets remembering, and supports new learning.” – Bjork
On Apps & Shortcuts
Bear 2 is finally out of BETA! This was huge news. While I think I had enough features in the previous version and I didn’t really need anything else, this new version of my favorite note-taking app is packed with new things. There’s a couple of formatting elements that I still haven’t gotten used to because they updated their markdown language, there’s also a few bugs I’ve found here and there, but overall it’s been amazing. I love being able to toggle headings—I guess that’s one of my favorite things now.
I was looking in the Bear forums and found a very cool Shortcut that allows you to save searches.
A few days ago I shared a Shortcut for manually sharing Snipd podcast highlights to Readwise. I have another Shortcut to share soon that is Chat GPT-related but I’m still debugging and writing a guide. It’s a BIG one guys, but look forward to it.
I discovered Data Jar App, for having universal variables in Shortcuts. I wish I had found this earlier, I have been using the Reminders app as a place to store data but this simplifies my workflow so much more.
On Cinema
Too Old to Die Young (2019). I do not watch a lot of TV shows, but this one was very much like a long film, so I’ll recommend it here. I’ve been a fan of the work of Nicolas Winding Refn for a long time and this show has just exactly everything that you’d expect from this director. I actually found out about it because of cinematographers Diego Garcia and Darius Khondji. It’s a visual masterpiece, simple as that. Many reviews express that this work is more style than substance, and while I don’t totally agree I think I’d be totally okay to watch it only because of the style. If you are into photography or cinematography don’t miss it, seriously. Synopsis: Detective Martin Jones, who leads a double life as a killer for hire in Los Angeles’ deadly underground, suffers an existential crisis which leads him deeper into a blood splattered world of violence.
Biosphere (2023) Simple. Minimal. Surprising. Funny. Philosophical & Insightful. Synopsis: In the not-too-distant future, the last two men on earth must adapt and evolve to save humanity.
Joyland (2022) I’d been waiting for this one for a long time. A very good and solid drama that stayed with me for days. Synopsis: As a patriarchal family yearn for the birth of a baby boy to continue their family line, their youngest son secretly joins a dance theatre and falls for a transgender starlet.
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