[antifragile 4 🔥] social media sugar, my simple beloved notes app, wolves in Yellowstone, Sesame Street wisdom
#14: a weekly 4-item newsletter created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind.
👶🏻 new combination I’m getting introduced to: newborn lack of sleep + out-of-daycare toddler entering his tantrum phase. putting Peter Attia’s mental model to work.
Welcome to the 14th edition of the antifragile 4 🔥.
It’s a weekly 4-item newsletter from The Antifragile Dad created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind. Some weeks will have a theme, others will meander. Expect it every Friday.
Here’s this week’s antifragile 4 🔥:
an idea 💡 about social media and sugar.
a simple notetaking app 📝 that contains my entire life.
a book 🐺 about wolves in Yellowstone that had tears welling in my eyes.
a bit of 😌 Sesame Street wisdom.
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1.) an idea 💡 about social media and sugar.
If you’ve ever cut sugar out of your diet for longer than a week or two, you’ll know how overwhelmingly sweet some foods you considered “normal” taste when you reintroduce them. So sweet you can’t handle them.
For me, the same is true with social media.
Through a combination of circumstance (newborn) and intention (cutting Twitter) - I hadn’t browsed social media in several weeks until I glanced at Instagram this week.
Good lord. It felt like I was drinking for a firehose.
I had a headache after 15 seconds and had to shut it off.
Doom scrolling for an hour, like I would do in years past, would have been absolute torture.
It reminded me of the huge mental tolerance I build up in response to the barrage the internet throws at me. And that maybe that barrage isn’t something that’s healthy to have in my life.
2.) a simple notetaking app 📝 that contains my entire life.
I could go on for days about Roam, a fact to which my poor friends can attest. I switched from Evernote 4 years ago. My entire life - work tasks, journal, writing, travel, friends, diet, fitness, notes for antifragile 4 🔥 - is all here.
I’ll keep it brief and sum up my love in three bullets:
Simplicity - absolutely no frills.
Bi-Directional Links - the secret sauce. You can give any word/phrase its own page that will, from then on, list every future mention of that word/phrase. I have thousands of interconnected pages - so does pretty much everyone who uses Roam.
Think of having a page for your son/daughter - then every time you’re journaling/writing/uploading photos and you tag them, it shows up on their page. Making their page an entire, beautiful history of their life.
Also think of having a page for “diet” and “travel” and “meditation” and “dad jokes”. The possibilities are literally endless.
Create Your Own Adventure Philosophy - how you build out your Roam is 100% up to you. There is no one way to do it.
(There is a definite learning curve. Fortunately, there are tons of amazing tutorials. If it looks interesting, message me and I’ll point you in the right direction.)
I have a page called “favorite” for…well, you get it. I’ll leave you with the latest post 😇.
3.) a book 🐺 about wolves in Yellowstone that had tears welling in my eyes.
American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee. This book was such a great surprise. Recommended randomly by a friend, I listened to the audiobook carte blanche and absolutely blew through it. By the end, I legitimately had to hold back tears. My wife had the same experience.
An incredible true story of the wolves of Yellowstone told in riveting fashion.
4.) a bit of 😌 Sesame Street wisdom.
I wonder? What if? Let’s try!
-Sesame Street
Adley is new to Sesame Street, so I’m sure this phrase has been around for a while, but I love this little gem. Why couldn’t we adults apply these same wonderful questions to the problems in our lives?
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Two last things for you this week:
If journaling appeals to you, make time for it. Today’s mundane entries will make you smile years from now.
Be fire and wish for the wind 🔥
With love,
Chris