Start your writing with mind mapping
Don’t start writing until you gain clarity on what you’re trying to write about. My favorite tool for gaining clarity is mind mapping.
Writing involves making sentences, so creating a certain kind of structure. This process slows you down. Mind mapping frees you from the grammatical structure and allows you to play with concepts only.
So, start your writing with mind mapping – to take it to the next level, you can do it while walking. Play with ideas until the pieces fall into place, and only then proceed to sentence crafting.
Perpetual Motion Machine 2
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I want to never be sedentary for longer than 15-20 minutes. So I take a little movement break every 15-20 minutes.”
“Why the interval?”
“15 is the floor, 20 is the ceiling. So it’s a 5-minute buffer.”
“Does taking breaks so often not take you out of Flow?”
“A sub-skill of Flow is getting into the state as quickly as possible.
It also depends on the activity. Creative Flow – my favorite kind – is both the on and the off. It’s an oscillation. The magic happens during the off, not the on.”
Journaling Optimization
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What if your journal had a table of contents?
Journaling in essence is preserving aspects of your history. The items of the table of contents clarify the aspects you deem worth preserving.“
“I love the idea.“
“What would the table of contents of your journal look like?“
“So far, like this:
Experiences Journal – resource experiences
– Beautiful Experiences
– Storyworthy Moments – experiences I can tell a story about
– Turnarounds – situations where I beautifully recovered balance
Learning Journal
– Optimization Journal – life optimization, but not only
– Implementation Journal – you grow through the ideas you implement, not those you read
Ideas Journal – I love playing with ideas
…
“
“How might you implement it?“
“I keep my journal in Logseq [<link]. I can create a template for it.
Whenever I write something in the journal, I can add it within the corresponding category.“
Compounding Meditation
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“For how long do you meditate daily these days? Is it the standard 20 minutes in the morning?”
“I meditate for 15 minutes in the morning.”
“Why 15 minutes?”
“It’s another facet of my life-art.
I meditate for 5 minutes during every hour of the day. I consider every hour sacred, and I want to make the most of it every day. 5 minutes may not sound like much, but over the course of a day, they compound.
There are 16 hours in a day. 5 minutes every hour over 15 hours is 15×5 = 75 = 60+15 minutes. Add the 15 minutes in the first hour of the day, and you get 90 minutes. I meditate for an hour and a half every day.”
Tree-Climbing Snacks
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I love climbing trees. One of my favorite pastimes during my Parkour walk [<link; short read] is what I call tree-climbing snacks.“
“What are those?“
“It’s a little game I invented for myself. The rules are simple:
Pick a tree.
Pick a branch at height. The goal is to climb and touch that branch.
Bonus points if…
– you don’t take the same route if you’ve climbed the tree before
– you don’t take the easiest route
– you spend a few breaths at height until your heart normalizes – expand your awareness for a beautiful little Zen moment
– you come down on a different route
“
Journaling Meditation
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What is journaling meditation?“
“Meditation combined with journaling.
You meditate as you normally would, but with a sheet of paper in front of you. You may write on it a few cues to guide your practice.
eg
Non-Judgmental Self-Awareness
Loving Acceptance
Relax
Notice…
– thoughts
– tension
Meditation is an inner journey. Its fundamental purpose is self-exploration by non-judgmentally observing your inner world. In journaling meditation, you’re also taking notes along the way.
Turn every meditation session into deliberate practice.“
Project Transformational Vocabulary
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“Another project?“
“This is an organic evolution of my linguistics project [<link; shot read].“
“What’s it about?“
“I know the concept of transformational vocabulary from Tony Robbins.
The words we attach to our experience become our experience. Words have a biochemical effect on the body. (Tony Robbins)
You can change your emotional state through the language you use to describe your experience. Tony calls this type of language, transformational vocabulary.
Language is a tool. However, Tony’s idea is but one application of it. Jason Silva shares a mind-blowing perspective:
The words you use to map reality affect your experience of reality. Words do not just describe; words are generative.
Language is a metaphysical tool. […] We create and perceive our world through language. We think reality into existence through linguistic construction in real-time.
I’m fascinated by the magical technology we call ‘language’. I see language and meaning as the ultimate playground. I’m especially interested in practical ways of using language for personal transformation and for shaping your subjective reality – I call this process, reality painting.
I see concepts as the (modular) building blocks of meaning. In playing with concepts, we’re playing with meaning in the same way a child is playing with Legos.
We all have an internal concept library we unconsciously use to construct meaning in real-time. The library was unconsciously (and haphazardly) ‘compiled’ over the course of our life. I want to make this process conscious and deliberate.
I’ve started compiling a dictionary of the most powerful concepts that make up my personal universe of meaning, and of the most powerful concepts humanity has created that are transferrable across domains and disciplines. I call this project, Transformational Vocabulary – in homage to and as an extension of Tony’s idea.
I’m interested not just in the concepts, but also in the interconnections between them. I use Obsidian for this project because it allows me to see them as a graph – as a beautiful (and useful) constellation of meaning.
I’m also deconstructing and organizing the concepts, identifying various kinds of linguistic and semantic structures.“
Masterpiece Days 3
Make each day your masterpiece. (John Wooden)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“Live your masterpiece day every day of your life.“
“How?“
“Make it depend only on things within your control. And make it antifragile.
In terms of structure, you have most control over the beginning and end of the day – the AM and PM bookends, as someone called them. Treat the bookends as sacred time and endlessly optimize them. Make the bookends the first and last win of the day regardless of how the rest of the day went.
In terms of content, gain clarity on the things that are most meaningful to you, those things that make you feel most radiantly alive.
What are those things so meaningful that you see yourself doing them every day for the rest of your life?
Those are your daily life-quests. Treat them as sacred and make it a habit to do them every single day regardless of circumstances.“
Life Design Document
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What do you start your day with?“
“By reading my Life Design Document (in Google Keep). It’s a deeply meaningful document with a specific structure:
General Life Purpose
Who do you want to be?
How can you use your Gifts in greatest service to the world?
Specific Life Purpose
What are you pursuing over the next few years?
Mastery
What are you mastering over the next 10 years?
Identity
How would you express the essence of who you are?
Strengths
What are your top strengths?
Zone of Genius
What is it that you and only you can do? (Onlyness)
What feels like play to you but work to others?
Virtues
What are your core values?
Feelings
How do you want to feel consistently?
Goals for the Year
What is the most important goal for the year?
What are the most important secondary goals for the year?“
“Why is it important?“
“Reading it activates me for the day – it has a powerful energizing effect.
Every section is a prompt. I start every day by reflecting on what’s essential, to gain more and more clarity on it.“
“So there’s value in both reading the answers and in asking the questions anew every day.“
“Yes.
Every day I also seek to optimize the document itself. It’s been through quite a few iterations. The document is modular: I can add or remove sections, I can change the order of the sections to maximize the impact while reading (Sequencing), I can add, remove, or modify questions.“
Dani Trusca 
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