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You know, I love notebooks. They're like my favorite thing in the world to sit down and record my thoughts and my ideas. But the problem I have is getting all of the good stuff out of the notebooks into real life. Because once it's written down and I move on to the next page and the next, I lose the good stuff. I have a stuff problem. So in this week's episode of the Readable podcast, I'm going to share with you the first in a six week series about somebody I've been studying, a master journalist named Ralph Waldo Emerson on how he treated his journals and to get his stuff out of those books. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I'm your host where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Readwell podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I am the host here. So grateful that you are joining me to talk about books and note taking and journals. That's what we're doing. I started studying Ralph Waldo Emerson and his life a while back. There's this really great book called Mind on Fire. I don't have it on my desk right now, but it's a gigantic biography about him and his life as a thinker, an essayist and a poet. But then also there's a small book called first we read, then we write, which is all about his process for journaling. I started taking my notes as I do, and there was so much there that I had to break up the content into six different sections or series. So this is a mini series that you'll see, and this is week one titled turn your journal into a savings bank. So here's a quote for you from Mr. Emerson himself that I would love for you to try and remember. It is changing the way I think about knowledge, which is that it is a great secret to know what to keep out of your mind as well as what to put in. I love that. So let's just break that up for a minute because we get lots of information daily and most of it probably isn't worth remembering, recording in our journals or even thinking about. And of the stuff that's really good, should I memorize it? Should I use it somewhere? So in that quote, let's think about it. It's a great secret knowing what to keep out of the mind as well. As what to put in. So if we break that up, the first part is that it is a secret. This is the kind of thing or skill that only the best people in the world seem to have mastered, right? The rest of us are the herd. We are just sort of going to work every day, showing up, doing the same old thing, not getting that upper tier of like living or thinking or whatever it might be. We're just busy trying to keep the bills paid, which is totally normal, totally understandable, and there most of the time myself, which is why this message appeals to me. But the secret is that there are certain people that have figured out how to think, right? How to, how to decide what information matters. And you're going to have to do some work to crack that secret. You're going to have to put the work in. Now the next part is knowing what to keep out of the mind. So first of all, I think about like a zombie apocalypse, right? Where the zombies are just trying to come in and eat my brain. These are the emails, the meeting requests, my kids calling a thousand times a day, everybody pulling me into a state of distraction rather than a state of flow. And so I have to actively keep those things out. Not my kids, of course. They get direct access to dad, but even then I partition my calendar so that I can focus a little bit. So for me it's a skill knowing how to keep things out, which means keep, you know, of course being an active verb. We're going to have to build, build some infrastructure. We're going to have to build up some defenses. We're gonna have to put like spiky poles out in the yard so that the zombies run into the poles rather than eat our brains. I think you are sticking with the metaphor here, right? But you gotta actively keep these things out and also know what to put in. So that's the other part of the quote that I absolutely love. It's not just about keeping the emails out and all the distractions out. It's about going, huh, okay, I've created 30 minutes a day to actually think critically or, well about something, which I think about, right? And so that's the next part here is knowing what to think about. Now for each of us, it's different. I cannot tell you what you should think about. And that's because if you're following Emerson's path, you should be learning to be self reliant. His most popular essay is an essay called self reliance. And the summary of that essay is that you, you become your most transcendent self your most spiritual self. If you learn to follow the beat of your own drum, learn to follow your curiosity in your heart, right? You have to. You have to listen to that inner voice and follow it, right? And learn to be reliant upon yourself. So as you're journaling, you're going to learn things about yourself that are important and you'll think, huh, I need to know more about that. Those are the things that you should be putting into your brain. Okay, now I'm going to give you a challenge. I would like to challenge you just for sake of memory, to memorize at least one valuable thing that you can keep with you. Just to know that you've achieved something. And if you're hungry for what that might be, I would suggest this quote. Again, it is a great secret knowing what to keep out of the mind as well as what to put in. Ralph Waldo Emerson, well, he considered his journals, which, by the way, he filled 263 journals, had so much information, so much good stuff, he had to create two 400 page indexes just to keep track of everything. So in future episodes, I'll be talking about his indexing system, which I'm really excited about. It's intense but very valuable. For now, though, I want to change how we think about our journals. You know, we're approaching our journals as though they're these works of art that we can't destroy or ruin. We have to have perfect handwriting. They're leather bound, they're gorgeous, they've got whatever on them. I would argue that beauty, that that sense of sacredness is keeping you from using the journal as it is meant to be used, which is to be just forceful with it, just excited about life, writing what you're passionate about, what you're curious about, scratching words out, drawing pictures that are ugly, all this stuff just putting you on paper in all of your messy glory so that you can sort of excavate through all of that mud and find the real true gems. So he considered his journals a savings bank of ideas. And that's my challenge for you this week, is to stop looking at your journal like it's an art project that will be passed down to future generations because people probably won't care that much and instead use it as a savings bank. Just keep it with you and write fluently about anything that you can as it's coming to you. Okay, so that's the first installment of this six part series on Ralph Waldo Emerson's journaling habit. It's to change how you think about your journal Stop seeing it as a piece of artwork and start seeing it as a savings bank for your ideas. Okay. I would like to do my typical book recommendation this week. I'm really excited about this one. I think you'll find it valuable. And then I'd like to give you an update on the community and the things that are going around are going on around the shop here. So. But before we get into that, if you find my content helpful in any way, shape or form, please take a minute to, like, subscribe, share with your friends, do whatever you gotta do. Right. We're trying to grow this community of thoughtful readers. Well, here's the book I want to share with you this week. It's called the Notebook A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. Now, I don't often share books that I haven't fully read yet, and, but this is one of them. It's so good and it's so applicable to what we're talking about that I just had to tell you about. Starts off with the history of how humans have used notebooks as thinking tools beginning in 1000 BCE and then it brings it all the way down into, let's see, or 2010 in Brooklyn using bullet journals. Right? Oh, it actually goes to 2022 and even more present. So if you're a journal nerd like me and you want to see how people have used this great tool for thinking, for capturing, then I would absolutely check out the Notebook, A History of Thinking by Roland Allen. So good. Okay, quick update on the community here. As you know, I'm trying to open my own physical bookstore. And you all have been so gracious and kind to help me with this crazy thing called a Kickstarter. Now, it's funny because I have found that asking for help, one, I'm not good at it, but two, people don't like it. People are not happy, happy that I'm asking for help. I've had probably more people cancel my newsletter subscription and so on. I think that that's okay, right? I think it's totally fine. At first I was super worried about it, but you know what? I think it's okay to sort of put yourself out there and see what happens. And if people support that dream, great. If they don't, great. But I know this. Had I not taken the leap to try and open this bookstore with, with the help of our community, which I'll post a Kickstarter down below, I would have been in full regret the rest of my life. So I'm really happy that I did it. And I'm really proud. So far at this point, we have raised, we are at 50% funded, so we're just over $12,000 of our goal of $25,000. There's this beautiful property in Bountiful, Utah that I can't wait to turn into Edgewater Bookstore. If you want to watch that video, I sort of take you to the property. You can do so by going to the Kickstarter and the whole video is right there. Anyway, that is the update. And boy, I'm just so grateful that you're here. If you like the book, A notebook history of thinking on paper, shoot me a message. Let me know what you think. And if you've supported me on the Kickstarter campaign, thank you so very much. Just so you know, every donation is making a huge impact, right? $10 goes a long way, especially since there are 7,000 people that get my newsletter, thousands of people that watch the YouTube channel and so on. So yeah, please know that your donation absolutely makes a difference and I'm really grateful for it. So as always, until next week, remember to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thanks, everybody. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reading reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.