#80 - Notes on Otters, Stories and Journaling
Education Coffee is a 2x Weekly Newsletter on People, Ideas and Culture.
In each edition of this newsletter, I will share some inspiring web resources that I have curated after hours of research to ensure that you have the best education coffee in your inbox. In upcoming editions, I will focus on sharing insights, notes and realizations that I gather from people, ideas, books, films and podcasts. This month I have taken up a #30DaySubstackChallenge. I want to challenge myself to write a newsletter everyday for the next thirty days. I have really enjoyed writing this newsletter and this is a way for me to build my skill set as a newsletter writer. I will go back to writing a 2xWeekly Newsletter in January 2025.
1. Learning from People
Robin Waldun, is a Youtuber and a post-graduate student at UoM. He writes, makes videos on YouTube, and teaches courses on SkillShare. His work can be boiled down to one question: what are the humanities for? He has a unique style and shares some unique insights on reading, learning and more. Here is a video from his Youtube channel.
2. Learning from Ideas and Questions
I have always loved journalling and recently started using Notion as a web journal. I came across the idea of a commonplace book on Ryan Holiday’s blog and knew I came across a powerful idea.
A commonplace book is a central resource or depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations and information you come across during your life and didactic pursuits. The purpose of the book is to record and organize these gems for later use in your life, in your business, in your writing, speaking or whatever it is that you do.
We have 20,000 thoughts a day and are exposed to a lot of people, ideas and culture through the day. We need to find an effective way to record these thoughts in one place. It is a great way to create a second brain and organize your thinking on a day to day basis. You can use this book to record quotes, passages, pictures, bills, ideas, book notes, film notes, podcast notes and more.
3. Learning from Books, Websites and Blogs
Dhavnil P is a designer based in Berlin. He maintains an updated list of books that he read and loved that I wanted to recommend here. I want find more such lists on the Internet and create an archive of the same on my website. You can access this bookshelf at this link - https://dhvanil.com/bookshelf.
4. Learning from Films, Videos and Shows
Billy and Molly is a National Geographic film about a man who forms an unlikely friendship with a wild otter while living in the remote Shetland Islands. It is a beautiful film about parenting and unconditional love. For me, it showed me how sometimes our parents were once as clueless as us and just figured things out along the way. It also throws light on how nature can give you a sense of purpose and connection, if are you open enough to accept what it can give you. Here is a quote I resonated with
Billy: I knew she had to eat and take a bath, but beyond that I was clueless.
5. Learning from Podcasts and Music
Pocket FM is an audio series platform, and has a presence in over 20 countries globally. The platform has over 250,000 content creators and over 130 million listeners spread across geographies. Raj Shamani interviews Rohan Nayak about why he created Pocket FM and how people have started adopting audio stories as a form on entertainment in the age of podcasts!
Thank you for reading this edition of #EducationCoffee. I look forward to writing weekly editions of this newsletter this year. I hope to continue to share resources that will add value to your life. You can also review the archive of Education Coffee for free at this link (79 past newsletters).
Please do send me your thoughts and resources on any edition of this newsletter through email at abhishekashokshetty@gmail.com, Linkedin or Twitter. You can find my work online at this website. If you would like to read pieces in the future please do consider subscribing to this newsletter by clicking the button below. I love taking these discussions forward on those platforms and look forward to hearing your feedback.
Abhishek Shetty