Learn something new

[00:00:03] Hey everyone, this is Voice with Warikoo, my or Ankur Warikoo. In this English podcast series, I cover a lot of things in this English podcast series. Career, relationships, personal finance, success, failure, and frankly, something else that comes to the time. Every week on Thursday, a new episode on your favorite podcast platform. Voice with Warikoo.

[00:00:28] In my weekly newsletter, I introduced a new section sometime, I think six or seven months back. And that was one new thing I learned this week. And it's been fascinating the kind of response that I've got. In fact, this podcast episode has been inspired by Ashwin who wrote in and said that I should talk about this journey of how do I learn something new every week? And how do I document this? How do I even remember what it is?

[00:00:55] So the genesis was that a lot of people used to ask, why don't you just share how your week goes? And I created this section called 3-2-1. And 3-2-1 was three photographs from my previous week. Could be anything. It could be something that caught my attention. It could be a trip that I went to, a talk that I gave or something. Two quotes that I shared online. And these are mostly quotes that I have written. And one new thing that I learned every week.

[00:01:24] And I thought that this was a good summary of how the week has gone by in addition to what I wanted to share during the newsletter. And I have to admit that writing that one new thing that I learned about is the toughest part of the newsletter now. It's very easy for me to write the main section of the newsletter because it's just something that I'm feeling and I'm in the flow. Then I write about the book that I'm reading that's obvious and factual. Then there is a survey, which is always fun. Then I share the top content pieces that we published last week, which is just factual. The pictures are easy. Quotes are easy.

[00:01:54] But this one thing I struggle with. And the reason is not because I don't know what new thing I learned. It's because there are so many new things that I come across that to pick the best one and to even remember what all they could be is just a challenge. So here's what I started to do. To make it easier for me, I started using WhatsApp. And this is a hack that I've been using for a really long time.

[00:02:19] I basically have three groups pinned to the top of my WhatsApp screen. One is the Warik Crew, which is the team that I work with. And one is Documents and Images. And one is New Ideas and Thoughts. And the two groups are essentially groups that I created with Ruchi, my wife. And as soon as I created the group, I threw her out. So now the group only has me.

[00:02:47] And I renamed them to whatever it is. And I pinned it to the top. You could also do that by sending yourself a message. But then that is only one group. Through this way, you can create multiple groups. So I have one for Document and Images and one for these New Ideas and Thoughts. So whenever there's any new idea or thought that I come across, whether it's in a newspaper or a magazine or something I'm reading online or something that I thought of or something that I read in a book, I just click it, write it, record it on a voice note. And that becomes my feed.

[00:03:16] So when I sit down to write the newsletter, I simply have to browse through the past week's recordings or clippings and whatnot. And I know what I have to share about. But what's even more interesting is while the audience gets to see only that one new thing that I learned, now I've created this fascinating WhatsApp group that has all the new things that I've learned across the past six months documented. Because earlier, if I was learning new things, it wasn't documenting.

[00:03:44] And most likely I forgot about them as they moved on. But this is now such a beautiful repository of how I am acting as a student. So I love it. And I'll encourage you to also have something similar on WhatsApp. There's so many new things that we come across, so many new things that surprise us, that catch us by surprise or by awe or by shock. And I think it's just a simple way of documenting all of that so that after a year,

[00:04:12] when you're just looking back at that group or whatever note app that you use, you have a way of reflecting upon how your year has been and how cool it was. I hope it helps. Simple. All the best. If you like this week's episode, please don't forget to review your platform on your platform. And do subscribe to Voice with Variku every Thursday, a new episode on your favorite podcast platform.