Welcome back to my weekly wonderings, a place where I share my recent creations and ideas related to Digital Self-Actualization: > realizing your meaningful potential through the synthesis of digital tools, life management systems, and humanistic philosophies Here's a quick galactic overview of this edition: - [[#Ultimate Starter Vault 2.0 is now out !]] - [[#Self-actualization is a moral obligation]] - [[#My new shining stars in my digital galaxy 🌟]] %% - Morally pricing products - Categorical imperative - I think knowledge should be accessible as possible - Monetization strategy as a result - [[Membership Pricing]] - Not sure how to price though - Open up a middle option - [ ] join this waitlist if you are interested - Want to do a [[Full USV Rebrand]] because of it, because USV is starting to grow beyond just an Obsidian template, it's like Notion Life Design where it just happens to be most effective in Notion - [[Self-actualization is a moral obligation]] - Figuring out what editing style I want to have - [[What kind of content do I want to create]] - Internalizing all life management frameworks - Because I don't want to be a fraud - Odyseas has been gaining popularity for "mini essays" but when asked by Danny, he said he hasn't uploaded any online… nice! - Watching August Bradley videos - Danny Hatcher's ecological psychology learning - [[PKM and ADHD]] - Inspiration from last year's weekly review - Reflecting on the past - Highlighted a podcast episode I watched on [[Paul Millerd]], the author of [[My Inputs/My Books/The Pathless Path|The Pathless Path]] - Coincidental, been 2 months since I have started my journey - I've been taking this creator life for granted, I think back to what I was working on prior and - Even more apparent when I decided to randomly take Ali Abdaal's wheel of life ratings and found myself maxed out on mission - Criteria was fulfillment, alignment, and doing what you're good at - Fulfillment is covered because of the impact I've had by working on these Obsidian workflows - Alignment is covered because I'm following my [[My Alignment Philosophy]] - Doing what you're good at is covered since i'm hired to make obsidian products, obsess over systems design, and learn 😋 - Just want to leave feedback on things I've mentioned: - In the pathless path, fulfillment and autonomy is the main focus. Content creation should not become another rat race. focus on finding what you're passionate about first, then try your hardest to keep it sustainable. - In a society built around following expectations and traditional systems, we're constantly forced to suppress our dreams and inner desires. It's time to bet on ourselves and be an inspiration for others to do the same. - Acknowledge the pros and cons behind this new change of life. Uncertain discomfort + Wonder > Certain discomfort - Zsolt recently shared a video on how multi-order visual PKM graph which went over this exact thing - Might end up doing this again for when I did have a weekly wondering from the previous week :o - Reminds me of an anime I watched called [[Frieren]] (spoilers obviously) where even if you did take the present moment for granted, since [[Notes allow for multi-layer time travel]] these weekly wonderings can help me reminisce on the past :) - Brainstorming workflow in action %% Apologies for some missed weeks whoops, I'm still improving my daily endurance for writing and creating (which was mostly taken up by the below announcement) 😅 ## Ultimate Starter Vault 2.0 is now out ! Building off of my last newsletter where I announced my public documentation for the Ultimate Starter Vault, I've finally finished migrating the 4-module roadmap for understanding my Obsidian philosophies, systems, and workflows! To my own surprise, I enabled the `Novel word count` plugin, I found out I had 20,000+ words alone on the folder that contains most of the core documentation notes 🤯 If you want to understand the organization principles and workflows for my life design, personal knowledge management, or productivity, you can start your exploration in [[USV Documentation]] 🤩 Full vault tour soon but I got sidetracked with making a critique video for another Youtuber coming soon 😅 Thank you to everyone who's already reached out in [[My Community]] and given suggestions or shared feedback on the new changes and updates! I still have yet to update the [landing page](https://shop.johnmavrick.com/usv) but hopefully will be able to next week 🤞 For someone trying to [[Building in public]] I've done the opposite of what it's supposed to achieve… Instead of sharing progress as you work on a product to build momentum and hype for when you monetize, I've only shared updates to existing customers as I built it, and am only starting to work on showcasing it through landing pages, email courses, and videos 😅 On top of this, I've been contemplating potential rebrands for it, as it is starting to fall into the same nature as [[Pipelines Pillars Vaults]]—it's beginning to transcend beyond just an Obsidian template, but into a comprehensive life operating system. Anyways I hope you can find something valuable in the notes and I'm always open to hear suggestions and feedback and suggestions :) ## Self-actualization is a moral obligation To feed my confirmation bias for why self-actualization is a fundamental human duty, I finally came across a logical argument from none other than the people who had time to actually think about this—historic German philosophers 🥳 Immanuel Kant was a philosopher from the enlightenment era that initially lived his life as a hedonistic, self-destructive, and rowdy individual. Usually the complete development of your [[Prefrontal Cortex]] at 25 helps with prioritizing [[Long-term thinking]], but it wasn't until around 40 years-old where he became a productivity nerd that was obsessed with optimizing his life for growth to become his best self. Doing a complete 180, he developed rigid and mundane schedules for health, learning, and teaching that would last the rest of his life: ![[The One Rule for Life#^y7ai0h]] If it wasn't biological developments, what caused him to reconsider his life choices? The truth is, nothing can convince you as much as cold hard facts 🥶 One of his major contributions has been the [[Categorical Imperative]], an attempt for a moral philosophy based on pure reasoning that could be followed by everyone. He reasoned that things can only be truly good if it was universally good—no situation or context should contradict or conflict with the statement (this argument was debunked by the axe murderer scenario but I'm too lazy to write about it). As a result, one such universally good law was the [[Formula of Humanity]]: > 1. So act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. Basically, treat humanity as ends and not means, for the sake of preserving intelligence. He believed that intelligence was one of humankind's most unique and valuable traits as it lets us overcome [[Temporal Discounting]] to achieve [[Long-term thinking]]. It was here where I discovered the similarities with my own journey of personal growth I mentioned in [[My story, why im grateful for all of you, and my plans for the future]]. When I unearth the roots of my extreme productivity phase, they ultimately came from [[Mortality salience]] as I realized the impermanence of our lives. This drove me to follow [[Utilitarianism]] principles where I strive for the grand collective improvement of humanity. However, there are some nuances with utilitarianism as it focuses on the results of the actions (feelings-oriented), while the formula of humanity is prized for a **logical** way of preserving his rationale for preserving human rationality (thinking-oriented). But the above conclusion felt too close to martyrdom, so I decided to explore my vault and play my own devil's advocate to see what could balance it out, which led me to my note on [[Against mastery and being remembered in history]] 😋 Under the assumption that our existence will be forgotten in 3+ generations (which checks out since I have no idea who my great grandparents are), the scale of our contributions will not matter in the grand scheme of things. If we are [[Cosmic insignificance|cosmically insignificant]], then what could we do if we do want to have some sense of meaning from our lives or impact? I feel it requires us to make the most of our unique self and environment we're in. Cherishing our one-of-a-kind existence and having an impact in our existing relationships. I find value in this belief because it prevents people from having a [[Savior complex]] for the sake of being remembered, which is not always [[Discipline of Perception|in our control]] and might lead to a regretful deathbed as we kick ourselves for not doing enough. Instead, we will be remembered by the people who we find memorable ourselves, through our shared experiences of the people within our lifetime. Fully experiencing our unique existence and cultivating our existing relationships. If you combine the two: - We are morally obligated to self-actualize for the preservation and positive contribution towards humanity - But if you want to find meaning in this duty, it's easier to recognize through inner impact than global fame Now, how do I apply these principles to my own life? Applying the categorical imperative based on my own personal worldview helped suggest answers for ethically deciding on my [[Brand Monetization]]. I believe knowledge should be free as it promotes [[Collective learning pursuit]] and I personally try to learn first then pay and support creators after through donations and joining their [[Paid membership]] 😅 This is also what is naturally assumed with the [[Give the solution, sell the implementation]] model. Second helps shift perspective for my new brand mission. I can aspire to share Digital Self-Actualization to a level of influence like HealthyGamerGG towards the general online population to act as a powerful fuel for motivation. But at the same time, I should not neglect my own social bubble as that is where my own efforts will be most remembered and impactful. ## My new shining stars in my digital galaxy 🌟 _A place to share the new stars and constellations inside my digital galaxy_ ### Apps I've been trying [[Beeper]] as an all-in-one messaging app to streamline my social activities the same way I have Obsidian for PKM and [[Akiflow]] for task and time management 😁 ### Inputs [[This approach to psychology changed my life (Ecological Psychology)]] is a deep dive by Danny Hatcher into [[Ecological Dynamics]] and its implications on explaining how we learn. I still have yet to fully process the ideas but it's been tying a lot with ones from [[Awakening from the meaning crisis]] and has unexpectedly given me potential answers to the power of digital tools for self-actualization, curating enjoyable but still effective learning experiences, and how it's a more empowering approach for those neurodiverse which i partially explore in [[PKM and ADHD]] ### Notes When thinking on what editing style I want to have, seeing [[The qualities of creators I watch]] made me realize editing style does not affect my engagement levels considering I listen to videos most of the time 🤣 Accidentally [[Deleting 1tb of media]] made me do resesarch on [[File Data recovery]] 🥲 When looking at the top posts from r/singularity, [[People in unsatisifying relationships will turn to AI]] ## Upgrade your personal knowledge management system If you want to collect cool ideas and create things like I try to with [[My Digital Galaxy]], you can learn from any of my free email courses below: 🧠 [Organize your life and knowledge with your own second brain in Obsidian](https://free.johnmavrick.com/code-method) 📃 [Get my 4-day Obsidian beginner course with 20+ templates](https://free.johnmavrick.com/obsidian-templates) 👩‍🏫 [3 Days to Lecture Note Taking Mastery](https://course.aidanhelfant.com/3daystolecturenotetakingmastery?ref=JohnMavrickYT) 🤖 [Get the Ultimate Guide to using AI for PKM with 15+ prompts and AI search](https://free.johnmavrick.com/ai-pkm) This has been John Mavrick, stay mindful ✌️