#28: Half A Year In Review

6 Months of Recalibrating

You can read this entry online here.

6 months of Recalibrating, I can't believe it 🤯

It feels surreal that I quit my job 6 months ago, a full half year.

I have allowed myself the freedom to explore whatever my heart desired, no boxes, no limits. No conformity. Pure intuitive exploration that aligned with my self and the path to the best version of me.

I was so burnt out that I knew if I tried to put myself back into the box of a traditional schedule, I would not physically or mentally recover. I knew that I needed a fresh start to my life, one that I could only achieve if I let go of my preconceived notions of "work" and "productivity".

I was also so "bored out" that I knew I could not sit on the couch and do nothing for months (though, depending on why you are burnt out, that might not be a bad idea). Instead, I let myself dive deep into rabbit holes, researching the burning questions on mind mind. Some topics include:

AI, blockchain, social media, passive income, business, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, human behaviour, change, addiction, evolutionary psychology, myth, story, knowledge, wisdom, and what it means to be human, to name a few. 

Recalibrating is not merely an exercise to overcome burnout and bore out (though it did help with that) but is rather a philosophy on how to embrace the ever-changing nature of life.

To celebrate 6 months of writing and the end of 2023, I thought I would provide a quick overview of the last 28 weeks. This overview will provide a map of Recalibrating so far to help you more easily find relevant posts. Think of it like a checkpoint in the game of Recalibrating.

These posts are not meant to be a one-time read, but a resource that you can return to whenever you are looking for change.

At ~71,000 words, I have effectively written a non-fiction book in the last 6 months (most non-fiction books are between 55,000 and 80,000 words). Rather than trying to compile this book all at once, I have been writing episodically in public so that people can learn as I learn ✨

I am also excited to introduce a new way to consume Recalibrating: audio 🎙️✨

Recalibrating Recap

Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots)

Join me each week as I learn to better life in every way possible, reflecting and recalibrating along the way to keep from getting too lost.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me ✨

Last week, we touched on the power of writing and how writing protocols can be used to permanently lower stress levels.

This week, I am going to provide a 1/2 year in review of Recalibrating to give you a map of where we've come from so that we can better course the path forwards into 2024.

I hope that this entry can be a resource for whenever you find yourself blocked by a problem.

Introducing: Audio Posts 🎙️✨

Starting with Entry #1 (What Recalibrating Means To Me), I will be updating each entry to include a voice over portion so that you can listen to Recalibrating instead of just reading it.

I hope that the audio provides a complementary accompaniment to the newsletter so that you can more accessibly listen to Recalibrating.

Introducing: YouTube 📺 ✨

I am excited to announce that I have also launched the Recalibrating YouTube series!

This series will complement the newsletter to provide additional context on the Recalibrating process as well as personal stories of my journey. I hope that YouTube will make my story and writing more accessible and sharable for all ✨

Let me know in the comment section on YouTube if you watch the first or second video, I'd love to hear from you!

Without further ado, let's dive into the Recalibrating 2023 Review 🧭

Recalibrating 2023 Review

Recalibrating began with a journey of burnout recovery. To guide this journey, I used the burnout recovery pyramid, which is mapped to Maslow's Hierarchy. I used this hierarchy to structure Recalibrating 2023.

Feel free to bounce around and review (or listen to) whichever entries capture your interest ✨

I will provide a summary and list of key concepts discussed in each entry.

Introduction to Callum (aka Wanderloots)

After burning out at my job as a lawyer and patent agent, I decided to quit and recalibrate my sense of self through intuition. With all of the AI hype in 2023, while pursuing this new path, I wanted to also generate data that could be used to train an AI model calibrated to me personally.

The goal was to find a better path for myself while building an intellectual property-based AI asset.

Maslow's Hierarchy Level 1: Physiological Needs

Before getting into AI, I knew that I wanted to understand more about what it meant to be human. However, at the time, I was still quite burnt out and not feeling very human at all.

The Burnout Recovery Pyramid is modelled from Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. To better understand burnout, I decided to explore the needs of humanity on my own path to self-actualization (the best version of myself).

Concepts:

• Burnout Recovery Pyramid

• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Maslow's Expanded Hierarchy of Needs

To build a better life and recover from burnout, I knew that I needed to completely recalibrate my habits. Habits are the building blocks of experience, and we are each the culmination of our experiences.

My habit system was in dire need of an rebuild.

Concepts:

• Prioritizing basic needs

• Atomic Habits

• Compounding Habits Over Time

Though I had the best intentions in mind, after one month off, I was already slipping into habits of over-productivity. To help recalibrate this failing system, I performed a habit stack analysis to identify what was working and what was not working.

I reminded myself to focus on the physiological needs and take a deep breath.

Concepts:

• Habit Analysis

• Mindfulness

• Breathing

Despite my best efforts, I noticed myself procrastinating with exercise (physiological needs), so I decided to look more into procrastination.

As someone who overthinks a lot, I can face analysis paralysis and push things off to the future. To help overcome these problems, I reflected on what worked (my mind-mapping) and how I could use intuition to help overcome my problems.

Concepts:

• Procrastination

• Regulation

• Intuitive Problem Solving & Mind-Mapping

Maslow's Hierarchy Level 2: Safety & Security Needs

After moving onwards, inwards, and upwards to Level 2 of Maslow's Hierarchy, I defined what "safety and security" meant for my life:

1. generate sufficient income to satisfy my needs (food, debt, mortgage, retirement savings);

2. structure a habit and task system that enables me to consistently build income to a level that meets my needs without burning myself out.

I re-interpreted this level as "financial security and mental safety", prioritizing mental health and a reduction in financial stress.

Concepts:

• Financial security and the Internet Economy

• Mental Safety in Hierarchical Models

• Intellectual Property and the Creator Economy

One of my most referenced entries, I continued with Level 2 by elaborating on what it means to structure a sustainable system for achieving financial security and mental safety through the creator economy.

Concepts:

• Natural Self-Expression

• Self-Reflection

• Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning & Understanding

• Data Systems

• 1000 True Fans (Creator Economy)

Entry 8 is one I find myself returning to over and over again. This entry introduces the concept of passive income as a means to generate income without burning out. Passive income tied to the creator economy can be considered a flywheel built with metacognition (thinking about thinking) to achieve a system that is sustainable for each individual.

Concepts:

• Passive Income Flywheel

• Metacognition

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

• Biometric Regulation

While AI has been in the news quite a bit in the last year, triggered by ChatGPT, I have been following AI developments for over 5 years (and reading about it in science fiction since I was 6). This experience has given me a bigger picture view of where AI is headed next.

However, for many people, AI gives them anxiety. AI-nxiety.

This entry gives an intro to common question related to AI, LLMs, and ChatGPT and my predictions on which tools and skills will be valuable to learn in the near future to alleviate stress around AI.

Concepts:

• AI-nxiety

• What is AI?

• What is ChatGPT?

• What is an LLM?

• What is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?

• Building in an AI future

Ideally, the habit system we constructed in Level 1 to generate passive income should also be automated. Think 4 Hour Workweek. While creating this habit and income system, we must keep in mind that the point is to avoid burnout. Hence, regulation.

By constructing a system that is both automated and regulated, we can tap into the 24/7/365 digital realm of the internet. The modern Creator Economy.

Concepts:

• Automation

• Self-Regulation

• Habits, Distraction, & Executive Function (e.g., ADHD involves impaired executive function)

• Mindfulness & Regulating Stress

• Compounding Metacognition

• Self-Awareness

The combination of tools I use in my passive income system all fall under a single topic: Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). Effectively, your PKM system is how you keep track of valuable information you have learned over time.

Your Digital Mind.

Your second brain.

PKM involves three phases:

1. seeking (new information),

2. sensing (comparing new information to existing knowledge), and

3. sharing (validating your understanding of the new information by verifying its "truth" with someone else).

This digital system (habit workflow) can be plugged into the Creator Economy to form part of the passive income flywheel.

When your digital mind is used (intentionally) to train an AI model, the PKM is augmented (drastically improved).

When portions of that digital mind are shared in public in an interesting way, you become a teller of stories, tapping into the most ancient of human art forms.

Concepts:

• Personal Knowledge management (PKM) Systems

• Building in Public

Maslow's Hierarchy Level 3: Love & Belonging Needs

Next, I moved onto Level 3 of Maslow's Hierarchy: Belonging and Love Needs. The first psychological need (as opposed to physiological - your body), our minds strive to be accepted by others.

We fear being alone, deeply and innately. When we are a part of a community, we do not feel alone - we belong. However, that sense of belonging can give rise to the fear of being abandoned. A fear of change.

This fear of change makes us grip our current circumstances as tightly as possible. Fear of the unknown is the prime fear.

To avoid becoming alone, we share stories of wisdom with one another. We tell of others who have been on journeys into the unknown and how they dealt with change.

The Hero's Journey.

Concepts:

• Belonging and Love Psychological Need (Level 3)

• Fear of Change and Being Alone

• Moral Panic

• The Hero's Journey

Story is at the core of what it means to be human. We use story as a medium to communicate with others, to share wisdom and form connection.

However, to tell true stories of wisdom, we have to internalize our own experience so that we can better communicate with others. We must become self-aware of our own stories.

By mindfully stepping into our own story, we can recognize that change is a constant part of life. Not something to be feared, but something to be embraced.

Concepts:

• The Hero's Journey & Story

• Paying Attention

• Self-Awareness & Mindfulness

• Journaling & Patterns

To truly understand story, we must look at its pillars: Character, Setting, and Plot. You can weave these three pillars together to form your Voice, your unique way of expressing your own story.

While we each have a Voice, it is often suppressed by society and social media. We begin to lose the signal of our self amidst the noise of others. We become non-player characters, observers of our own lives.

If you are not the hero of your own story, who is?

Concepts:

• Finding Your Voice

• Social Media & Mental Health

• Character Development

• Flow

To truly develop your character, your self, your Voice, you must be able to overcome distraction: the Anti-Flow. Unfortunately, the system is rigged against you. Our modern society is filled with intentional distraction aimed at your attention. The Attention Economy.

To overcome distraction, it helps to understand the techniques being used against you to steal your attention. The more self-aware you are of your own distraction, the more you will become an active character in the game.

Concepts:

• Flow & Distraction

• Attention Economy & Surveillance Capitalism

• Variable Reward Systems (slot-machine style social media)

To truly understand how your character fits into the plot, we must look at the third pillar of story: Setting. Our environment plays a massive impact on how our brains respond to the world around us.

Our habits are most often impacted by the environments we put ourselves in. By understanding the impact of the environment (the setting) we can increase self-awareness to better walk more intentionally through life by establishing anchors of our identity.

We can then share aspects of this identity through story online, tapping into the Creator Economy. However, most people don't share, they merely consume. Sharing requires improving self-esteem.

Concepts:

• Habits & Environmental Impact

• Establishing Identity Anchors

• Stabilizing Through Change

Maslow's Hierarchy Level 4: Esteem Needs

Next, we moved onto Level 4 of Maslow's Hierarchy: Esteem Needs. Esteem is the final deficiency need in the hierarchy (before moving onto Growth Needs). Esteem has two components, internal and external; both have a huge impact on who we are.

To help understand esteem, I provided an overview of what it means to self-actualize and how our limiting beliefs often prevent us from getting there.

Concepts:

• Esteem Needs (Level 4)

• Internal Esteem & External Esteem

• Limiting Beliefs

• Growth & Change

• Autotelic Exploration & Flow

In my experience, many people struggle with their esteem (both internal and external). To get at the root of this problem, I explored the concept of fear and how our fears limit esteem from growing.

These fears cause our brains to shut down, reacting instead of responding. Unfortunately, this shutdown makes it difficult to remember the lessons we have learned from our experiences. We loop on autopilot.

Concepts:

• Confidence & Esteem

• Fear of Failure

• Fear of Comparison

• Experiential Learning Cycle

To grow, we must change. To change, we must learn from our experiences. However, we often get stuck in loops, running in autopilot, performing the same actions over and over again.

Instead of looping, we can remember our past experiences and learn from them, converting the loop into a spiral that trends upwards. The more we repeat the cycle of learning, the higher we grow and the more we transform.

Concepts:

• Looping is the Status Quo

• Default Mode Network (DMN)

• Toxic Productivity

• Stillness & Reflection Tools

After weeks of discussing change and how it is an essential part of life, I thought it would be a good idea to do a deep dive into the different stages of change, and what happens if we fail.

In this entry, I outline the 6 stages of change as a practical guide for changing human behaviour. The model was based on helping addicts. Addicts are people who fail to change their behaviour and provide stark reminder of what failure means. They lose belief in themselves that they can change.

By recognizing the difficulty of change, we can work to boost the esteem of others so they believe in themselves. We can change together.

Concepts:

• Behavioural Change

• Self-Belief

• Stages of Change (Transtheoretical Model of Change)

• Addiction

Maslow's Hierarchy Levels 5 & 6: Cognitive & Aesthetic Needs

The lines between levels 5, 6, and 7 of the hierarchy are a bit blurred in my mind. I generally think that self-actualization involves elements of the cognitive and the aesthetic, so do not worry too much if entries 21-27 seem to be part of the same level.

Levels 5, 6, and 7 are, in my opinion, all about developing originality of the self.

The first Growth Need, Level 5 of the hierarchy is Cognitive Needs. This entry began my true exploration into the world of AI and what it means for humans to live in an AI world.

Society tends to value logic more than creativity, but this value system is changing. If we continue to push society forwards with a logic-based approach, we risk losing what it means to be human.

The future is not a linear path, so why do we treat it linearly? This way of thinking limits the potential of ourselves as individuals and as a species.

Concepts:

• Growth Needs & Maslow's Hierarchy

• Cognitive Needs (Level 5)

• Logic vs Creativity

• Redefining Value in an AI world

With society valuing logic over creativity, we have seen a shift in how innovation operates in our world. As a patent agent, intellectual property lawyer, and engineering student, I have been studying innovation for years.

The diffusion of innovation in a digital age is not remotely close to innovation in the physical age (the previous 3000+ years of human innovation). We are becoming overwhelmed with information. Cognitive Overload.

Times are changing. AI might be the most disruptive technology we have ever created. Why do we think that society is going to progress in the same way it has before? We must change our thinking.

Concepts:

• Innovation

• Diffusion of Innovation

• Cognitive Overload (information overload)

• Information vs Knowledge

The cost of this cognitive overload (overvaluation of logic) comes with the decline of creativity. Creative underload. Humanity evolved with spontaneity and surprise, traits that are difficult to find in a world of pure logic.

Unfortunately, this overvaluation of logic tends to cause people to lower their esteem when it comes to creativity. With creativity being so undervalued, people automatically favour logic, operating on the autopilot of the masses, forgetting their creative selves.

Concepts:

• Societal Overvaluation of Logic

• Creative Self-Disbelief

• Autopilot Behaviour

Maslow's Hierarchy Level 7: Self-Actualization Needs

With hype surrounding the concept of artificial general intelligence "AGI" (superintelligence to a whole other level), it is more important than ever to distinguish between self-worth and economic value.

Our understanding of value is changing. AI is going to be able to do many of the tasks we previously considered valuable. Rather than morally panicking, why not take a step back and consider how a changed world may actually be a good thing?

We can use writing as a tool to identify our own self-worth and original value. No one else is going to do it for you.

Concepts:

• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

• Paradox of Self vs Other

• Writing is a Mirror to the Ego

• Augmented Originality

AI systems are surpassing tests that detect "human experts" including math, physics, history, law, medicine etc. These systems are not just text-based, but operate multi-modally (text, audio, code, video).

Rather than forcing ourselves to generate value in prescribed, linear systems, we can begin thinking more multi-modally. This transition is a good ones, since humans have never been single modal.

We can use this multi-modal flexibility to shift how we think by finding flow, self-reflecting, and self-analyzing.

These practices can generate valuable data that can be used to train your AI copilot as part of your second brain (digital mind).

Concepts:

• Multi-Modal AI Systems (e.g., Google Gemini)

• Force vs Flow

• Self vs Other

• Authentic Value Generation

• AI Co-Pilot Training

As AI systems get smarter and better at generating value, it's worth taking a step back to consider what brings about the most individual human value in an AI world. I think a good place to start is to consider intuition.

Humans have thousands of years of evolutionarily fine-tuning our genetic code, giving us an innate intuition. However, this intuition is often out of date or stifled by the choices of others. Both impact the direction of our own lives. Over time, intuition fades to the background.

What if we brought it back? What if it could be recalibrated?

Concepts:

• 3 Types of Intuition

• Intuition vs Instinct

• Neuroplasticity

• Mindfulness (Responding vs Reacting)

In my opinion, writing is the best way to improve the understanding of the self and recalibrate intuition. To help demonstrate the power of writing, I listened to Andrew Huberman's lecture on a Writing Protocol that has been proven to permanently lower stress levels.

This entry is my analysis of the writing protocol with my three key takeaways.

I also provide an introduction on how to leverage the lessons of this protocol in your second brain.

Concepts:

• Truth-Telling & Self-Narrative

• Language & Vocabulary

• Linking Thinking

• Neuroplasticity

Worldbuilding 2023

Worldbuilding is the practical counterpart to Recalibrating. Worldbuilding has content available only to my paying subscribers, including step-by-step tutorials, more context to the lessons of Recalibrating, and access to a private chat.

The second portion of Entry 27 includes an introduction of the tools I use to build my second brain, why I use them, and what my daily writing template includes.

Next week... TBD

I hope that this synopsis of each entry helps you see the bigger picture of what I am building here. I know writing this summary helped me. Feel free to use this entry as a map of Recalibrating so you can revisit the concepts that resonated the most with you.

Rather than deciding now what to write about next week, I am going to reflect on my year and see what I come up with.

Stay tuned ✨

P.S. If you are interested in learning how I build my digital mind (second brain) to help me process information and identify patterns to solve my problems, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid. Your support means more than you know 😌 ✨

Paid subscribers get full access to Worldbuilding, a practical counterpoint to the theories described in Recalibrating. You also get access to a private chat and bonus explanations exclusive to paying members 👀

If you are not interested in a paid subscription but would like to show your support, please consider buying me a coffee to help keep my energy levels up as I write more ☕️ 📝