I use an app called Whisper Memo to take notes while I'm driving and listening to things. The workflow usually goes something like:
- Hear a cool thing on a podcast.
- Hit pause.
- Open up the Whisper Memo app on my watch.
- Make the memo.
- Send it.
- Go back to listening to the podcast.
Sometimes I'm really good about recording which episode something came from, and sometimes I'm not. In today's example, I didn't record anything about what I was listening to when I made the note.
And just to prove how super nerdy I am, I don't really make the note. The AI makes the note because it processes my inbox when I tell it to, and it finds these Whisper Memos in my inbox. It then adds them to my content idea board in the program I use to keep track of all of that (Obsidian). To make it super fancy, I asked the AI to follow a standard procedure for these Whisper Memos. It looks at all of my notes across Readwise and other tools. It then writes a "pitch" note giving me several ways to connect to this seemingly random idea that caught my attention to other things I've read and saved.
Here's the text I spoke into my watch that landed in my content idea note: "It's the people in power who write the stories and make sure the stories persevere beyond them."
I could stop here. That sentence is a story all on its own. I didn't need the technical how-to in order to tell that story.
I didn't immediately gravitate towards any of the ideas the AI pitched - or at least they didn't strike my fancy today. What did catch my attention here is the idea that in my little corner of the world, I am the person in power and I can write my own story.
I wonder, dear reader, do you need to be reminded of that today? Do you need to be reminded that you do have power and you do have agency? You can say no. You can take the job. You can leave the relationship. Things will change for sure, but you do have options.
Too often, I think we let our limiting beliefs decide things for us. Or, to borrow an idea from Gretchen Rubin, we let the decision drift by simply deciding not to take any action at all. I love that Rubin gives that a name. I've let decisions drift, too.
What story are you telling yourself that might be wrong today? What do you need to take action on, rather than let it drift by? Are you writing your story, or are you letting someone else write it?
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