Hello fellow learn-it-all,

Greetings from Chicago, IL 👋

Jeepers, it's June! I cannot believe it.

What time is it? Summer time! (I can't help but think of this song from High School Musical). What does that mean for me? Spending a lot more time outside ☀️

Yesterday, on Memorial Day I was thinking more about my Dziadzia (Polish grandpa) who served in the Korean War from 1951- 1953 doing intelligence work. Months after arriving safely in Detroit, he married Basia (my Polish grandma) on July 4th, 1953. The rest is history. By a miracle of events, I came along two generations later.

During the war so many chance things can occur. Thank you to everyone that has served this blessed country. To all the sacrifice that gave us these freedoms and opportunities today, thank you, truly. I realize, I am beyond fortunate for the gifts I have every day in my life because of those who sacrificed before me.

If you are new here or missed last week's edition, you can catch up on the past letters here. If you are reading this for the first time, I’d love you to sign up below to join the other learn-it-alls:

Now, what's in store for this issue?

1. Reflections from my month of May
2. Some news about a Learning conference
3. A summary of a creative who proves that quantity —> quality
4. A word that hasn’t existed for all too long
5. A quote about the importance of execution of ideas
6. A question to get you thinking about the outdoors
7. A lake picture on a boat tour
8. Some shoutouts to Internet friends
9. Some footnotes

Now, let’s dive into letter 62 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

Some things I’ve learned through…

🤔 Reflecting

Over the weekend, I did a review of the past month to recognize patterns in my actions. To follow the format of past reviews (including letters 59, 54, 49, 45, 41, 37, 32, 28, 23, and 19), the highlights are spliced into three sections of what I love, lack, and learned.

What I loved

• My newest journal has page numbers in it, so as I was reading through the 42 pages from the past month, I started to summarize the patterns and trends into a table of contents to organize it before I finish writing in it.
• The supportive, uplifting, and inspiring friends (old and new), I have made during ODCC this past month including but not limited to Naseem Malik, Nate Kadlac, Gwyn Wansbrough, Karaminder Ghuman, Julia Saxena, Julie Trelstad, Steven Wilkinson, Emmy Sobieski, Tina Nayak, and Laura Wong
• My YouTube Takeover Gang friends: Kyle Bowe, Alexander Hughe Sam, James Stuber, Joanna Hoang and Michael Ashcroft, from the fall for being in my corner to help me make decisions
• The writing group that I joined led by Bryce Longton and Charlie Bleecker
• Some growth on Twitter with 60 new followers and 100K impressions
• 16 new readers of these letters
• I finally got the thoughts and feelings out of my head and heart and onto the page to publish a vulnerable essay on Why I pursue therapy.
• Thanks to Marc Koenig's Roam course I love pruning my knowledge garden in Roam Research now and feel confident in my systems
• My strolls along the North Pond and spotting a beaver, goslings, and painted turtles.
• Curating a playlist of some songs that are resonating with me. Currently, I am creating a new one for the summer :)

What I lacked:

• Diligence to actually come up with and follow through on an investing plan of action after completing Anthony Pompliano's crypto course
• Progress on my website and newsletter projects listed here
• Following up as religiously as usual with friends, old and new
• Daily reading
• Sleep

What I learned:

• I need to break things down over time for the project I mentioned of becoming more minimalistic. It's not going to happen all at once.
• Creating SOPs and processes doesn't come naturally to me, so I need patience to iterate thoroughly
• Creating candles isn’t all that challenging
• Tweet storms sharing other’s stories is an underrated way to provide value to my audience
• First dates can be atrocious but I can always still learn something new
• To try out experiments that scare me
• Boundless consumption is exhausting and unnecessary

My habit from May: Walk at least 3 miles everyday

I ended up walking about 5+ miles everyday because I enjoyed it so much. I found calls throughout my day that I didn't have to be sitting down for. It went so well that I even ran my longest run yet of the year on Sunday adding up to a 10K.

My habit for June: 30 minutes of strength training every day

I can barely plank for 1 minute, wall sit for 1 minute 15 seconds, three pushups (before failure). More of my baseline is still to be calculated…

👩🏻‍🏫 On Deck Creator Course Capstone

This fellowship I have been a part of the past 8 weeks is hosting the On Deck Learning Conference June 8-10.

For my capstone in the course I'll be presenting on June 10th from 1:45-2:45pm CST. I'll be sharing during that hour about the benefits of creating your journaling practice to increase your wellbeing. This is a topic I am deeply passionate about as my daily journaling practice over these past two years has and continues to transform my life.

(I've never spoken at a conference before, so even though this is over a week away, feeling nervous excited is an understatement.)

🎬 Watching

I shamelessly went down a rabbit hole this past weekend watching Casey Neistat videos. If you don't know who he is like I didn't until Sunday and the rock I was living under: he is one of the biggest success stories of Youtube who started out by making comedic videos about his everyday life.

I particularly loved this video he wrote, directed and filmed in 2013 for Nike:

It is absolutely phenomenal. I went from laughing to inspired to dropping my jaw and then laughing again. It is entertainment at it's finest. As of yesterday it has over 31,294,471 views (I was three of those).

He set himself a personal challenge to do a video a day.  On March 26, 2015, these vlogs began. Neistat stated that they were more of a forum and place to share ideas and perspectives as opposed to running daily journal.

He didn't stress out to make it perfect. That is what creativity is all about. The reps. As of July 13, 2018, Neistat released 936 vlogs including other films on his YouTube channel since its creation on February 15, 2010.

🔎 Word to define

Vlog: a social media account where a person regularly posts short videos

Etymology: early 21st century from the blend of video and blog

Example: Just because Casey Neistat made his vlog as a forum doesn't mean that a vlog cannot be a personal video diary. The hotter medium versus written text can uniquely capture different elements than a pen on a paper can.

🌟 Quote to inspire

“Ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Ideas are common. Everybody has ideas. Ideas are highly, highly overvalued. Execution is all that matters.” – Casey Neistat

❓ Question to think about

How can you get outside more in your day-to-day?

📷 Photo of the Week

Since living in Chicago these past two years, I had not made it on The infamous architecture boat tour. It was lovely because of course, I love boats and water and wind and sun and friendly company.

My biggest takeaway was how shocked I was that I didn’t know the skyscraper was invented in Chicago in 1885.

Though, I wish that the guide could have slowed down her spiels. She was going at light year speed for 90 minutes straight. It was too much to take in. Talk about information overload. I know, I know, I want to get my $58 worth. Feeling like I received my return on investment is important. But that is not the best experience. So many course creators or webinars do this technique. They try to show so much that it becomes overwhelming. My brain can’t process it all and it undermines the experience. Sometimes less is more.

I wish I could’ve hit pause, like I do during podcasts to process what I heard.

🙏 Shoutouts

• To Dane Johnson for returning from a monastery after four months and sparking some of the foot notes in this letter
• To Marc Koenig for sending over this HBR exercise to help guide career decisions

I appreciate you reading this! If certain ideas resonated or you have feedback to improve my future newsletters, I’d love you to leave a comment, reply to this email, or send me a message on Twitter @JenVermet. If you want to learn more about who I am, I welcome you to visit my online home, or a quick ding-dong ditch.

Never stop learning 😁

Until next week,

Jen

💭 Foot Notes

1. Don't try to write a story while you are living it. Live life without trying to create a script.
2. Life as a people pleaser was exhausting. Realizing that I’ll never meet expectations of everyone was permission to me to stop trying to be everything.(Tweet).
3. Anybody else journal at 4AM to get over insomnia? (Tweet)
4. I'm going to be ending my lease at the end of June in Chicago, so if you have anything I should add to my Chicago Bucket List 🪣  please let me know :)
   

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