Good morning and day to you. This week the newsletter finally lives up to its name and offers you a bagel at the bottom.
But first, here are some ideas that I’ve been going over this week. I’ve been reading Jonathan Hari’s Stolen Focus, so each one has some sort of inspiration from this book.
1. If reading and taking notes helps deposit information into your long term memory, then sharing what you’ve learned is a way of depositing ideas into your long-term footprint that you leave behind. Another term for this is legacy, but I prefer the less assuming word footprint. This is just as true when it comes to music and art.
2. Learning to perform music that has already been written can be incredibly demanding, yet by doing this we learn how work is executed. We need to know what note is coming next: The mechanical workers in our mind need to be able to hand over the G and the F# at the exact moment when they come up in the score.
Similarly, when you go through your work day, you can see when tasks are not being delivered, and instead you do things like re-check email or go onto a news site. Break this habit by writing down the next steps you need to take or recite it quietly to yourself, and get it delivered without distraction.
3. The answer to constant phone checking is not to take away our phones, but instead to replace the need to check on content that you did not intend to look at with having a goal or purpose to work towards. This came from the book referenced above.
I think it’s true but it needs to be combined with the knowledge of the nightclub bouncer or guard that protects your awareness and controls which thoughts are allowed to enter and expand. Meditation is a way of training this bouncer to operate effectively.
Must Listen
I heard this Jon Hassel piece again this week and I was reminded just how perfect it is in its simplicity. There is a quiet string loop and the thing just grows from there.
Listen on YouTube
This Week’s Bagel: Swiss Cheese and Lox on Sesame
Ok the bagel.
I thought it would be fun to experiment with all kinds of toppings on the bagel and we can collectively figure out what makes a good. After making this insane sandwich, it’s pretty obvious that plain cream cheese is the answer, but let’s give it a show anyways.
This is an untoasted, yet fresh sesame bagel with:
Smoked Salmon (Lox)
Swiss cheese
Pickled Onion
One slice of tomato
Alfalfa sprouts
Pickles
Mayo
Salt and Pepper
Price: $11.27 CAD after tax ($8.25 USD)
The first few bites were difficult since I don’t typically go for salmon on my bagels. But by the end of the first half, the flavours started to really combine nicely. I put so much crap on this bagel that not until the second half did the taste of sesame seeds even show up, which is something that you should be getting a hold of within the first few bites. I would describe the experience of these flavours combining as something like a bloom that a wine critic talks about. I could see images of a lush forest and birds, with light trumpets in the distance. At this moment, I arrived into the seat of consciousness.
If I were to do it all over again, I would not combine sliced cheese and smoked salmon as that hiked the price up big time. It’s one or the other, and I think the Swiss cheese would be amazing if I could talk to my team about melting it in a panini press.
What ideas do you have for the next bagel?
Ok thanks for reading and I’ll see you next weekend.
Have a great week,
Elliott
The bagel sounds really delicious, too bad we do not have bagels around in this part of Europe, we do though have eggs Benedict which are similarly overpriced with salmon and avocado :)
You may find this very interesting on the focus topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb5zpo5WDG4
another one that I found very interesting is the concepts behind flow:
https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_secret_to_happiness
(I have some of his most impactful books on my table waiting for me) :)