How to Build Future Knowledge and Intelligence Systems with AI | Zowie Langdon | Glasp Talk #29
This is the twenty-ninth session of Glasp Talk!
Glasp Talk delves deep into intimate interviews with luminaries from various fields, unraveling their genuine emotions, experiences, and the stories behind them.
Today's guest is Zowie Langdon, a technical founder, podcast host, and systems thinker with a passion for understanding and impacting the world through technology and personal growth. As co-host of the Systematic Mastery podcast and founder of several startups, Zowie explores topics ranging from self-mastery and flow states to augmented intelligence and complex systems theory. His approach combines technical expertise with philosophical inquiry, driven by a fascination with mental models and effective patterns of thought that offer simple yet high-resolution perspectives on complex problems.
In this interview, Zowie shares his journey as an entrepreneur, discussing his early experiences in software engineering and what sparked his interest in the field. He explores his current work on second brain technology, focusing on how people learn from the internet and the role of knowledge management systems in personal development. Zowie also offers his insights on scaling startups, the impact of AI and large language models (LLMs) on knowledge work, and his thoughts on the future of second-brain and augmented intelligence systems. Join us as Zowie dives into his unique perspective on tech innovation, personal knowledge systems, and the evolving digital landscape.
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Transcripts
Glasp: Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Glasp Talk. Today we are excited to have Zowie Langdon with us. Zowie is an entrepreneur and technical founder currently learning several experiments and startups focused on crypto, fintech, and second-brain technology, with a deep passion for exploring mental models, system theory, and augmented intelligence. Zowie has been instrumental in building cutting-edge technologies in crypto and beyond. Besides founding startups, Zowie also hosts a Systematic Mastery podcast where he dives into topics like self-mastery, pro states, and blockchains, sharing his knowledge and insights with a broader audience. Today we dive into his journey in entrepreneurship, his approach to scaling startups, and his thoughts on the future of technology and augmented intelligence. Thank you for joining today Zowie.
Zowie: Yeah, thanks, guys. Really nice to be here, thanks for inviting me.
Glasp: Thank you. So first of all, you are currently working on a stealth mode startup, right? And that's described in LinkedIn. Can you tell us a bit about you know, the concept you're working on or you know, or what area are you working in if you can?
Zowie: Absolutely, yeah. That's a great question to start off with. It's actually not too far off from what you guys at Glasp are doing in a sense. So I've been doing stuff within the PKM space for a long time and eventually, I realized that what I think is just a generally really interesting topic is the way that people learn from the internet. I'm a user of Readwise and many of these tools like this, but I feel like what I really like for example about Glasp is the social aspect. And I think what I eventually realized with the advent of LLMs making it so cheap basically to deal with textual information and metadata information and generate it and like analyze and stuff like this, I think that really made it make sense for me somehow to start building something that uses the fact that most people, especially in the knowledge work sector I think, have effectively kind of like a digital library in their pocket nowadays. We collect information everywhere, whether it's Obsidian or Readwise Instapaper as you just mentioned, or Glasp, etc. And I think it's kind of the right time to start building something in the area of aiding people on their kind of self-directed learning journey, right? So we have great apps like Duolingo and Brilliant and stuff like this, but I think those are kind of constricted to very specific niche topics, predefined sets of knowledge. And I think that what is just a really interesting thing that I would also benefit a lot from and I think a lot of people around me, so that's why I started just building something, is yeah like an intelligence system to help you do this effectively. Like I can't say too much because obviously I want to try and keep it you know moderately still, but yeah so it's not too far off from what you guys are doing I think in a sense, not the same but maybe overlap in mission as well.
Glasp: Cool. Are you coding yourself or do you have a team? Yeah. When I looked at your LinkedIn profile, I think you started your career as a web developer, so in the beginning. So just curious, so what made your interest in software engineering? Do you have any triggers?
Zowie: Yeah. My dad, my dad was a programmer. Interesting transition - he made a transition from being a bass player to being a programmer. And when I grew up, I grew up in like two households, and so my dad's side was basically completely filled with computers, a lot of hardware. So as a kid obviously you play with whatever you can find around you, so that ended up being computers. So most of my youth I just spent playing with computers and eventually more software. Then I started doing software engineering as a study because that just seemed like the most obvious logical and fun thing to do for me.
Glasp: I see. And so I think you're changing jobs sometimes like you're starting your company or you work at some companies. So do you have any criteria or like you know, things you are thinking about when you're choosing jobs or like positions?
Zowie: Certainly, yeah. I mean most of the things that I've stumbled into, and I think this is - I mean in my experience is kind of a good way for a general founder journey I think - is to kind of stumble into things in a sense. Like you know, just start with a project because you find it fun, you meet people along the way whether it's open source or not, and then you get into new things. So that's always kind of been the case for me. I think it's a nice way to discover new things that you find interesting or learn a lot of new stuff. And I think when it comes to selecting whatever position I would go into, one thing that I had to learn the hard way I guess, is to really get a good feeling for the people that are running the company. So I've been through situations where originally things look very very good and you have a really great relationship, but then one of the founders decides to leave for you know all the right reasons, but it's really hard to understate how significant the impact of that might be. And especially if you're into scale-ups and startups. So I definitely really look at the people. I think you know, initially, I started out as being kind of like a technology purist in a way and then I realized it really doesn't matter - like you can work in any programming language. I mean obviously you can make bad systems in any language just as well as you can make good systems in more or less any language. So those are criteria I don't really focus on. Yeah, so it's generally I think the qualities of people, the reasons they're doing it mostly, and an ability for them to kind of open up or be honest about why they're doing it I think is a really important thing for when you pick founders.
Glasp: So yeah, thanks. And do you have any like process or you work you know, you remember like very like you have worked, you know you built your startup several times and then also worked at several companies and also I think working on several projects right? Do you have some specific project that you remember or your favorite project or moment?
Zowie: Oh absolutely, yeah. I think I mean there are definitely a few really interesting projects. I think they're all interesting for different reasons. So if you don't mind I'll go through two of them. So the first one's definitely something called Election Compass here in the Netherlands. I was at that time very young, and I helped them build their whole platform basically. It's a platform that allows you to answer a couple of questions - depending on the country they are completely different questions, usually aligned with political parties - and then gives you a recommendation based on yeah, kind of an internal calculation that they've developed, on what party is in the closest proximity to you. And this is big in the Netherlands for some reason like proportional - like relative to the population size it's huge. In other countries not as much, but they had some really big projects in like Australia and the UK. And I find it fun because I, as just mentioned, stumbled into this. And to be honest I was way in over my head because the amount of traffic that they got was incredible. After all, it's around half of the population of the Netherlands uses this tool one month before the elections. And to be able to work on something useful for people, you know - like people used this to decide what to vote on and I thought that was cool. I was like, obviously, I was not in the limelight, no one knew about me because I was just building it, I was just the builder. But it was really gratifying to build something that really helped people in a way I guess. So that's one of the most interesting projects.
And then from a technical angle, the crypto - like the whole kind of last five years, except for the last year which has been more focused on trying new things. I think crypto is unfortunately - it suffers a lot from the fact that it's a very speculative industry, but I think from a technological perspective there's like a lot of interesting things happening there. Like I was always into security and using cryptography for well, beneficial systems for humanity. And I think there's just a lot of extremely interesting technology there. So one of the projects that I worked on was trying to kind of create a cross-chain aggregation protocol. Not going too deep into the details, it's just it's pretty complicated basically to do something across multiple blockchains in an efficient way. So those things are just really fun. But yeah, some of those things never see the light of day, so that's also kind of one of the downsides perhaps of the industry sometimes. So I'd say those two things, but there are a lot of different things you run into that are fun for their reasons.
Glasp: Yeah, it's a good question. Thanks. And then I'm curious you know, now you're working on like second brain technology and then you are into second brain like as long as I know you know, from three years ago, four years ago. And how did you get into the second brain area or knowledge management or PKM space?
Zowie: I started with Bear notes I believe. It's a note-taking app for Mac, it's a really small app. I just really liked the UX for some reason and I struggled with memorizing whatever I was working on. This was actually during the Election Compass times and I remember trying to - they eventually came out with this callback implementation so like you could build things based on yeah, you taking notes. It's kind of like an API. And I was playing around with that and then I realized wow this is really cool like you can do some really interesting stuff if you have programmatic access to your notes. And this was like 10 years ago or something and I didn't really end up doing anything with it. I built some like really small things for myself that I liked and they helped me and whatever and that was basically it.
And then later I think it was Obsidian and Notion kind of that time where there was a friend of mine tweeted about Obsidian, how he thought it was much better than Roam and I was like what is this Obsidian thing and I started getting into that and really was blown away by the fact that again like kind of a similar moment to Bear but much more powerful obviously because Obsidian really at that time especially it was like really really great for people that enjoy building stuff for themselves like scratch your itch kind of software. And I've always liked that so I just ended up making notes and going into the PARA system, this whole like second brain thing by Tiago Forte and before you know it you know you have like thousands of notes and then Readwise come out with their plugin and they just you know you go into this rabbit hole.
And I think obviously you build up something of such a significant value that you obviously want to keep that, you want to kind of nurture it even to a certain extent because it's taken me years to like build up all these notes and things like this. So you get stuck into it like it's something that you don't really leave behind I feel. So I think it's quite beautiful because there's a lot of - and that's also what I really like about what you guys are building - there's a lot of beautiful like lessons and information in what like a personal journey is and people take notes and it would be quite cool if you can like to share that with others or at least have something that you can maybe 20 years from now still find back somewhere in like your basement of notes and then I know to tell your children about it or whatever, tell an interesting story, share something valuable based on that. So I feel like that was one of the reasons I really realized like oh it's actually quite nice to build up this second brain over the course of several decades perhaps. So that's why like how I slowly kind of got more and more into it.
Glasp: I see. And then I watched your video about you know like a PARA method and how you use Obsidian and three years ago I think, three years back, and then that was a really amazing and very insightful video. But thank you for that. But do you still use the PARA method or do you know how did you - how do - how to say - how to use Obsidian or a note-taking app or PKM has it evolved over time or since the last three years ago or you know or is it the same?
Zowie: It's evolved yeah, a lot. I think what might also be more obvious in the videos is that initially when I got into it was a relatively framework like oh I use PARA strictly and Zettelkasten or what I call domain roots. I think it's really nice to have all these frameworks within your note-taking tool. And they've definitely developed - like one thing that I rely on the most that I think the strictest or like the most valuable thing I do with Obsidian nowadays still is reflections. So I have these reflection templates that I use. They're like weekly or decision-making templates for reflecting on certain decisions that were made. They can be weekly reflections, monthly, or yearly. And it's just I think when it comes to second brain stuff that's probably the most valuable thing I've ever done with it and those templates obviously evolve like the questions that you ask yourself to prompt yourself with the things you maybe need to hear sometimes. You know depends on where you are in life or what you're working on in that moment so those questions certainly change.
I also feel that I have become a lot less rigid when it comes to what tool I use. So originally I thought I was going to put all my tasks and my notes and everything I want to remember and my writing all in Obsidian and now I think I've - it's become a little bit more fragmented. I use like a weird sometimes just intuitive but not structured combination of Todoist, my calendar, Slack reminders and and I feel like as long as I do what needs to get done and I can find back what I need to find back the system kind of works for me. It's not - it's hard to explain to others because obviously, it's very nuanced as to when you decide to use Todoist versus your calendar for reminding yourself of something. But I think yeah, I think it's definitely evolved to become a lot less rigid and the amount of writing I do in Obsidian has certainly become less. I think I do more writing because I feel like writing is supposed to be shared with others and that's one thing I think Obsidian lacks. So I do more writing in Notion actually.
Glasp: Interesting. How do you think your, how to say, the system will evolve over the next few years or five years? You know, that was, the last three years, four years, right? How about the next three or four years?
Zowie: This is a super interesting question. So I, I do believe like there, there's obviously, this trend of also if we don’t, we don’t have to really work and think for ourselves anymore to a certain extent. So, you know, like we'll have systems that collect all the information for us basically, they record our screens, record our calls, and they digest everything. And then, you know, you, you effectively don't have to make your notes anymore. I don't personally believe in that. I think, if you, you do need to stimulate yourself, I guess, in a way to remember things the right way. So I do think that there's a big space still for manual note-taking, and also manual linking of notes and writing and things like this because those, that is the thinking process. But I do think it's cool, and that's also something you see pop up in Readwise Reader a little bit, which is, which is an app that allows you to like Instapaper, that allows you to read, and with the Pocket, but then they have this Ghost Reader feature, which I think is pretty cool, where effectively you have a couple of features that assist you in how you read. I think that's just going to go a lot further. So, we'll have effectively like, what would you call that? It could be a tutor, it could be an assistant, and they effectively live inside of your knowledge management apps, but relatively seamlessly. So, I don't think that we need separate apps for anything. I think also we can build a lot of things ourselves. So, I do believe that tools like NN, which I rely heavily on, or another kind of like very easy workflow tool will be used by a lot of people to integrate with this kind of system. But effectively what they will end up with is some form of an intelligent like, kind of a Notek co-pilot. And I think I think it will continue to go that way.
I also feel that what is hugely potentially valuable is, that most of these kinds of systems are initiated by the user, right? Like they’re prompt-based. So I think what will be an interesting development in the new management space is where the initiation actually happens in the system itself. So it's proactive rather than reactive. I think because people react very, very well that's also why I believe at least many social media platforms and like to push notifications work so well, obviously we are very reactive as humans. And I think if you have a system that understands you quite well and can be reactive with the right intentions, right? Not to capture you for ad revenue, but more to capture your attention for, hey, this is a valuable thing for you. I think that would be hugely valuable to help stimulate the right habits for humans. So I, I would hope also, I guess there's like a sprinkle, a little bit of optimism in there that I would hope that we get tools like that. But that's a direction I think is hugely interesting, that we can now kind of build with a reasonable cost of production and that isn't as complicated anymore. So I hope that kind of gives an idea.
Glasp: I see. At the same time, we see AI trends, and ADM trends, right? You know, ChatGPT, many LLMs come out these days. And how do you think AI or LLM impact how we used to, as you mention like PKM or also our intelligence, you know, should we, and as you mention, how to say the, if the LLM or AI works proactively, is that good? How should we deal with AI, what are you already, you touch a little bit, but do you have some assessments around here?
Zowie: Yeah, what I, the thing that I'd like to double-click on is like our own intelligence because that's something I think is on a lot of people's minds, especially on mine. What I'm a little bit worried about sometimes, maybe even, is that especially with these like these, the system that would then self-initiate and prompt you. The big question of agency comes up like, okay, but to what extent are we making our own decisions? Obviously I don't, I don't think in reality a lot will change because the extent to which we're making our own decisions is already, it's, it's already a pretty fragile concept, I guess.
So I think one thing that I do think is quite important is that we do realize that augmenting our intelligence might still be the way to go and not, you know, not necessarily delegating everything to systems. But the more we understand ourselves, I do think with LLMs and like the more advanced they become, right? Like now with GPT-4 where it's not just a prompt, but it is like kind of like a chain of thought thing that's going on. I think the more intelligence is externalized and we can rely on the system to help us, the more important it will be also just for in the market like the natural selection, I suppose, to keep stimulating ourselves because, yeah, we can, we can, it can either go very well and we end up all being all better for it, or because we don't stimulate ourselves enough or we're not stimulated enough in the right ways, it will become a lot harder to, to kind of like manage society.
So that's something where I think, you know, in the long run, it's probably quite, quite important to like keep, keep, keep an eye on that, because yeah, it's going to have quite a large social, socio-economical impact. I wouldn't say necessarily LLMs only, of course, it's like all the systems around this, that are startups that are being built. I think it's, it's pretty cool. Like it's, it's still really nice to be alive in this, in this time, right? Like things like protein folding, going as, as fast as, as, as it's going like that's, it's incredible. So it's hard to like, it's kind of like a combination of kind of potential catastrophe but also a lot of a lot of optimism.
Glasp: Yeah, we see two Nobel prizes in for physics and chemistry, like related to AI, and that, that was really impressive.
Zowie: Yeah, it was funny. One of my best friends is, is actually a theoretical physicist and mathematician and he actually was quite frustrated because it was like, we need, we need, we need Nobel prizes for physicists and not for AI, right? Like, or like not to be given to AI. But it certainly is, it’s, it’s extremely impressive, for sure. So I mean, it's a good sign where, where things are headed, right? Like there are new players on the field.
Glasp: Do you have any AI tools or AI tech that you, you know, you're interested in doing or like you've been watching? So not only like PKM or on brain but anything?
Zowie: Good question, sure. I think, to be honest, I mostly rely on GPT and Claude. I do use so I use n8n a whole bunch. So, I would say that a lot of the tools that people are building, like you meet a lot of founders that are like, oh, I'm building this email automation tool or like all these kinds of things that yeah everyone needs them, but they're also pretty obvious. I think I just built them with n8n and GPT, which is pretty simple and I have an assistant and she's, she's great at n8n, she loves it, so she helps me a lot with that. I think there's, there's a lot of power there.
When it comes to specific tools, I wouldn’t say as much. I think you can build most of the things on these systems anyway. I use image generation, but what you, see is that companies like OpenAI and, Anthropic, they effectively eventually everything onto them, right? And I mean, of course, there are a few other companies, Suno is pretty cool. I think that's the one I think so far has been the most entertaining for me, to try and see if professional musicians can find the difference between real music and generated music. But, I think most of it eventually comes down to OpenAI and Claude for me.
Glasp: And I think you have encountered many, like as you mentioned, like AI tools or PKM tools, and then so on. But since you are so technical, have you, have you thought about, oh, I can build this in a week or something like that? I mean, since your bar should be higher, right? When you see technology, you understand technology, and things you will be impressed by will be that the bar should be higher, right? How do you see a product when you see it, since you know technology?
Zowie: Yeah, I’m curious. I mean, I can imagine you guys have this as well, but like, when it comes to like, because I have founders around me as well, and sometimes smaller investments or things like this, and of course then you ask yourself, okay, what is kind of the defensibility of this? How unique is this in general as you say? A lot of products you kind of feel like, I guess I could build that myself as well.
I think one thing that I think is, quite a strong sign, of something that I wouldn't be able to build myself is, me, the size of the pain financially. I could build it myself, but how much time will it cost me to maintain it, is usually something that I, that I do think about. So a lot of small businesses I might still pay for, I could build myself, but it's, it's pretty hard to maintain. When it comes to new startups that I see pop up around me look at like how durable, might be. I'd say it's largely also a business model thing. Like I think certain business models make a particular company hard to get out of the market, right? And it could also be their positioning, right? So I don't know if you're a two-sided marketplace or something like this, then, it can be a lot more difficult, to compete with something like this.
So I think it's not necessarily anymore the tools or the whatever software that you're building that, in any case, unless it's like, pretty cutting edge. But then we're talking about like, you know, things like Suno or like OpenAI is like an extreme version of this. I'm talking about many of the other tools. It's really about like what position they have in the market and how well have they thought about, the business model. So that's definitely when I look at a tool also, I guess when you're going to put your information in there, you would like it to still be there in three years because otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that they're shutting down, which kind of sucks. So yeah, I could, I guess it's the business model, something that, either builds up value in terms of knowledge of people, for example, that's why I think the PKM industry is quite interesting because yes, you can export all your knowledge, but largely a lot of metadata is very relevant in these PKM tools, and they still, it's on your side, right?
Also with Glasp, like you guys are building a huge database of knowledge, that yes is pretty open of course, but there's a lot of metadata and a lot of value in there. And I think over time, that could be a good sign of defensibility. So, that's how I try to look more and more at tools and a lot less in terms of the software because guess we all feel, feel the fact coming that the more simple version of software engineering will be partially replaced, or at least more redundant.
Glasp: I see. Do you invest mainly in dev ops or PKM, knowledge management, second brain space, or do you invest in other spaces like entertainment, I don't know, like crypto?
Zowie: I have a hard time. I'm generally, I don't think very well equipped to invest in a high variety of industries. I do believe that you have to invest in what you understand of course. And, so I do try to stay close to things around, for example, DevOps or also the people, right? If you, some, some founders you just feel like they have a lot of talent and also momentum and the knowledge needed. So then of course you can make a decision based on that.
I usually do only invest in friends, people that I know, personally because I'm not a professional investor by any means. And crypto, I think crypto more infrastructure stuff, actually has a lot has a lot, I mean, there's, there's a lot of good things missing there. I don't believe as much in tokens but, the industry has changed I do think infrastructure is still something very valuable and the same goes for DevOps like, as there are a lot of people who still need good tooling.
What I would love to be able to invest in at some point is, is more hardware or just build-in, in general. But it's, it's hard to do. It's quite challenging.
Glasp: Hardware means like AI pendant or those hardware or more like, you know, car or Tesla, that kind of hard?
Zowie: No, yeah, like I'm pretty close to the pendant. Yeah, I would say that I wear an Oura ring for example. So like these kinds of quantified self technologies I think are super interesting for both health, mental health, and many other purposes. So I just think that's hugely interesting in terms of human progress in the coming years.
Glasp: Yeah, I use Fitbit and track, keep track of, you know, my, my health data, and that's, I love seeing this data and I love, you know, seeing logs and data, daily data. So yeah, we have kept, you know, what books we read, something like that.
Zowie: Yeah. There's something uniquely satisfying about just stats on yourself. It's hard to explain why, but it's super satisfying.
Glasp: Yes, so yeah, and, and regarding daily life, you know, I'm curious, you, you're passionate, since you're passionate about philosophy and concepts like stoicism, Buddhism, and, and also self-mastery, and how do these philosophies, impact your daily life and, and your approach to, I don't know, leadership, entrepreneurship?
Zowie: Well, you guys ask great questions. Thank you for being so intentional. I think initially when I started, as a, as kind of a founder, I mean, I kind of stumbled into being a founder, but I was of course also quite a, I guess you're kind of indoctrinated sometimes with the idea that there's a certain glory in setting up your own business and things like this. And I think over time I realized that that's not the that's not the purpose, like also not the most enjoyable thing to do. So, I feel like what I'm directed by mostly and what I've tried to integrate more over the years is to only zoom in on what you, I guess a nice way to put it is like what would you do for free, or like, really are very interested in.
And it's, it's quite difficult because if you can reflect and you can spend a lot of time thinking about it, to what extent is this an autonomous decision that really reflects my curiosities? And I think reflecting on philosophy and thinking a lot and reading a lot about being human, helps to build a certain intuition to say, to easily and intuitively say, no, this is not for me. And I think lessons are part of that as well, but I think you can really, and that's what I love about the PKM space in general, like you can learn so much from all the knowledge that has been built up by people over the years and the education system.
And I think I guess we also benefited from, from, from that, has done a great job of teaching us certain theoretical skills, but the whole question of like what it, what does it mean to have a good life is still pretty unanswered and it's pretty hard to answer. They help you on your way to answer that question. So I think that like, you know, what I, what I would be eventually pretty happy with, even though there's like, it's pretty cool to try and be a founder and build businesses, is just to try and be a good person, which is quite challenging because there's a lot of important decisions to make every day. So I try to integrate them into everything I do instead of choosing the, you know, maybe the most objectively best route. Maybe there's also something to say for just choosing the route that seems to be the, right thing to do.
And that's a huge debate on what that exactly means, but I do think that's, yeah, I'm trying to stick to that a little bit more.
Glasp: But how do you know or how do you learn so those like, you know, philosophy or like, you know, stories like PKM, stoicism? So do you learn like by watching movies, by reading books? So where's the source of like knowledge? What’s through your experience?
Zowie: Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, through experience, is one of them. I think so I don't watch a lot of YouTube videos on this kind of thing. I think I don't know, I'm really bad at learning from audio-visual content, I suppose.
But books for sure. I think the act of struggling through a philosophy book is, is, really satisfying. So I think that's a really big source of it. And, I mean, this is also the kind of the original method of the stoics in a way is having discussions, like really having long debates with people that are interested in the same things is something that I, so that's why I walk around with my remarkable a lot where, I have like a workflow to make notes on my phone easily because that's where a lot of my notes come from, from conversations in the middle of them, or transcriptions, of course.
So that's why I try to, how I collect this information and then maybe, you know, use it for new notes or to just thinking topics for myself, or they end up in those reflection templates we spoke about. But I think by far books, and sometimes really long-form articles seem to somehow be, the best.
Glasp: Do you like book reading club, book club?
Zowie: Yeah, actually my, one of my best friends is the founder of, Reading Rhythms. So I've been doing a lot of these reading with this, this reading party that they have in New York. And, they're doing it more across the U.S. now. So I've been inspired by that. Just sometimes I bring together a group of friends and we have a two-hour format where we just read a book, have a cup of tea, and discuss these topics in the meantime.
And I think that's just a general recommendation for anyone that is like into this stuff is just to get a group of six people together, and use the format. It's super fun. It's great fun.
Glasp: Yeah, actually, Kei and I and also some other people do book club and we’ve been doing it for years, five years.
Zowie: Oh, that's awesome.
Glasp: Yeah, we read a book every week, every week, or every other week, and then discuss the book. And then and in that sense, I'm curious, how do you decide the books to read? How do you discover books to read for either book club or, you know, for your personal growth? Is that from Amazon recommendation list or, you know, always looking for good books?
Zowie: Yeah, I was just about to ask that to you guys as well because like I was like, how do you track the books that you select for the book club? So, I'd love to, I'd love to reflect that to you as well. But what I usually do is Goodreads, honestly. I have a love-hate relationship with Goodreads. As you know, as someone who somewhat builds software, the fact that it's so ridiculously slow is quite frustrating, but there are a lot of people on there. And I think they do a great job. I follow a few people who are avid readers, and I think that's a great way to find it. Yeah, find a few profiles, follow them, follow their reviews, and they're generally really high-quality reads that I find through that.
And otherwise, it's recommendations. I also don't, I'm a firm believer in not finishing books. So, I'm like, I personally just think it's much more fun to pick up the book that somehow seems to suit the moment the best. And then, so I guess I'm reading 30 books at the same time, and I probably will finish only six of them or something like that. But, so it's really like just pick them up, try it, put them away if you don't like it, and sometimes you feel like it sticks, and then you do end up finishing it.
That's how I usually go through it because it's really hard to just go off of recommendations sometimes.
Zowie: What about you?
Glasp: Almost the same. Yeah, through sometimes Amazon recommendation list and also sometimes from Goodreads. And sometimes, Kei and others like smart people, great people know what to read next, and then I just follow that. And yeah, also I just follow some like great reviewers or like smart people, so maybe like VCs or maybe sometimes YouTube, some smart people’s YouTube recommends some like old biographies. So that's how I get through, yeah.
Zowie: Ah, nice.
Glasp: And I heard Kei usually keeps a list of books when someone recommends him a book and he, he keeps notes and he counts, he counts the numbers. He has three times or more, then he, oh, it's time to buy a book.
Zowie: I like that method.
Glasp: Yeah, maybe you are, keeping track of like books to read like on Goodreads.
Zowie: Yeah, and we should have it on Glasp too, but yeah.
Glasp: It was about books, right? And books, how about web content? How do you discover things to read every day? Like a web article, PDF, or tweet? And I think I'm curious about your information consumption process. How do you discover information and web content?
Zowie: Yeah, this is a, I honestly don't have a great system for this yet, so I'm looking for, yeah, whatever could be a better one. Maybe that's also why I'm building what I'm building. But I'm not very active on social media, so sometimes I open Twitter, but I can't say that I get a lot of good potential reads from that.
I do have a few newsletters that I filter through and then if I find an interesting topic in there, I'll select it. But mostly I'm dependent on people recommending me something. So yeah, I'll have friends that say like, oh, I read this really interesting article. They send it over to me, and then I'll start reading it. That usually is, is the best way. And then I do have in Reader I have a log of a lot of stuff that I want to read. And now and then when I have a moment, I open it, scroll through it a little bit, and see if there's something that seems to be fitting to what I'm working on right now.
But I am a really firm believer in reading something that is kind of like time relevant. So if it's relevant, to whatever I might be engaging with, let's say this month, then I will give it a much, much, much higher priority because also it does, otherwise it doesn't stick. I don't think that's how, how human memory works anyways. So I try to try to do it that way.
What I would love is to have like a really smart app that recommends the right things to read based on my total environment. That would be pretty cool so that I don't have to think about that myself because I don't have a good answer to that question.
Glasp: Is that what you're building now?
Zowie: Might or might not be a part of it, yes.
Glasp: Okay, interesting. And how, how about personal advice? Do you keep like a tracking of, advice you get from other people? People recommend your content, but at the same time, when you meet your mentor advisor, consultant, or someone, personal coach, they might give you great advice or lessons. And then do you keep track of these too?
Zowie: Absolutely, yeah. I'm also a big believer in therapy so, I try to record all of these sessions and then I do analyze those insights as well and store them. Then I do believe that like, so knowledge is something that you can kind of store and recall, say if you have a good, like if you are, if you're lucky you could do it in one go, otherwise you need to maybe see it twice or three, four times. And then you, if you're interested in it most of the time will stick. When it comes to behavioral change, so like wisdom, I think it's much, much harder. So, you might be able to see it on the background here like I have these cards so that I kind of like put in my house, all over the place. They're cards with small messages and sometimes there are also other wisdoms that I get from people and I'll write them down. And I believe that if you see something like, I don’t know, a couple of months in every day for a couple of months, then it will stick. And then actually behavioral change becomes a lot more feasible. So that's what I try to do. And I have, therefore in my weekly review, I also have a list of things that I try to remind myself of, so I force myself to go through it every week. Because otherwise I've tried to not do it for a few weeks and it's actually funny how fast I forget it. It's quite surprising, like two months and I've forgotten these kinds of wisdoms to try and live by and stuff like this. So, it's a personal and it’s, it would be beautiful to have a, a way also to, yeah, like a feed of sorts, this kind of thing. And I guess also Glasp offers something of this as well, If you learn certain wisdom you can share it on the platform. I do think there's, there's a space for that.
Glasp: Thank you. And you said cards. Does that mean physical Post-it or small cards?
Zowie: Yeah. They're post-its or printed cards that I found somewhere. Yeah.
Glasp: I see. But you also write a message or advice on your Obsidian, like a digital notes app or not?
Zowie: Yeah, I think, I mean there's also a space for physical note-taking, which is why I think, for example, the Remarkable is very interesting. It’s like some people are good at it, like, having, a tool like Obsidian and to, I don’t know, visit a note every day or have these daily notes. I'm not good at it. So, I don’t use Obsidian for that. I use it more for intense sessions of note-taking or searching for something but not for reminders and stuff like that. I don’t know, do you, do you use Obsidian as well?
Glasp: I don’t. I have used it but I use Evernote eventually. Yeah, I tried to make maps, so I connected it, so every time, but I gave up for Obsidian.
Zowie: It's funny, there's this, it reminds me of the PKM meme where like you use Evernote, then you start using Obsidian, and you think that’s the way to go, and then eventually you settle with true mastery back on Apple Notes where you started. I think there’s something to that for sure. I’m still, at the peak. I don’t know I’m, whether I’m at the top or I’m at the lowest, I have no idea but, you know.
Glasp: Yeah, I understand. So by the way, do you prefer reading physical books or Kindle e-books? Has that changed over time since the Kindle came out, you know, people say, “Oh no, I prefer physical books,” every time I choose physical books. Nowadays, people prefer Kindle books and, “Oh it’s easier to carry,” and what’s your, reading behavior and platform look like?
Zowie: I mostly do Kindle, yeah. But I do think there's a lot to say about physical books. The main reason is that I just don't like carrying them with me all the time, but I do, there's something to having a physical book if you think you're going to read it twice. So then usually that's a sign for me to start, to start buying it. Or sometimes if you're in a bookshop and something speaks to you, obviously it's a nice way to prompt yourself again. I do think because we live in the digital realm it's easy to forget how useful it is to have a good physical space because we are pretty much built, pretty optimized basically as physical humans to, to engage with a physical space. So I do think there’s something to having these prompts around you to stimulate you, instead of having a space. So I try to buy physical books for that reason to kind of like stimulate certain thoughts perhaps, but when it comes to real reading there, it’s hard to beat a Kindle because it’s just so extremely efficient.
Glasp: Yes, and so when you are reading with Kindle and when you finish reading books. So there are so many devices, right? And so you are trying to apply that advice into your daily life. So, how do you evaluate that advice, or do you change your behavior, you change your customs? I think you're reviewing advice every week. But, do you have any threshold or, “I already finished this one, I changed my behavior”?
Zowie: Yeah, that’s also a good question. So, it’s the weekly reviews. So I'm, I believe in checkboxes. So every, regular review has a certain amount of checkboxes that I can go through. So then, it’s nice exactly for the, for the reason I just mentioned that behavioral changes are so hard. So, you know, oftentimes I’ll fail at it, let’s say six weeks in a row, and then it will start getting better because, I mean, you look at that checkbox and you can’t check that checkbox and you're like, “I want to check it next week,” you know? And then, yeah, you keep trying, you keep trying, and eventually, “Okay yes, I finally got it,” and then you try to get to a streak. And then, if you check it for two months straight, then you can kind of archive it and that’s how I try to go through them. But you do notice like, I try to rate things based on areas of life. So like if physical or, being able to regenerate or I mean physical health, or it could be amount of reading, etc. And these can go, off track or they’re on track and doing well. This, this kind of life goes all over the place because it depends on the phase of life. But it’s a nice way to kind of do these check-ins and then also see if, if the behaviors stick. And then there's also a decision log. So just whenever you make an important decision, I just record it with a date and then, a month later I can check like, “Okay, are the second-order consequences of that decision preferable or not?” Then I’m living, in the second-order consequences a month later. So then I can evaluate whether it was a good or bad decision. I think that’s a great method to also do behavioral changes.
Glasp: Do you have other methods you use daily basis? I’m curious about, you know, like you, you shared a lot of insight, you know, insightful methods and, and, and like, a way to retain knowledge and review yourself daily but, you know, is it something else, you know? Do you have the method you use, let’s say, you think it’s, you know, really common for normal for you but, you know, other people say, “Oh this is unique to you,” or something like that?
Zowie: That’s a good one. I'm not sure. I do believe in the, I do it through cold showers but you can do it in any way you like. There are a lot of people that go for runs for example. But I do think it's nice to start the day with something somewhat challenging. Some people do the hardest thing like, what’s it called? “Eat the frog” or something? Like the hardest thing first. That’s a, I think it’s a great way somehow to feel quite motivated at the beginning of the day. So no matter how tired you are, you know, get on the cold shower, and eventually, you don’t even think about it anymore, you're like, “I just do it.” I mean you do think about it when it's winter here in Amsterdam because it gets quite cold. But yeah, I think that's the only one I can think of right now that has given a lot over the years because it kind of forces you out of your head because you stick to the routine.
Glasp: I see. Yes, I’m kind of opposite. Like I start with small tasks to gear up, so that, motivate.
Zowie: It’s funny because I recognize that I have the same when it comes to work. Then I'll do the heaviest thing last in the day and that's also why, and being a night owl, kind of helps because then you kind of extend way into the late hours finishing that big task that you postponed during the day. At least that’s, what happens to me a lot. I think there’s something to say about that for sure. But when it comes to, just like physical stimulus I guess it’s nice to do that in the morning.
Zowie: What about you, Kei?
Glasp: I do take a shower in the morning every day.
Zowie: Cool. Yeah. Is it a cold shower, hot water, or cold water?
Glasp: Hot water.
Zowie: Cool. That’s funny.
Glasp: And yeah, but how about like exercise custom, exercise habit? Like do you go jogging, do you go swimming or play sports?
Zowie: No, I really was never into fitness or anything like this and also tried running, also somehow didn’t stick. But, realized that I think gymnastics is cool. So I mean you, I have the rings even in my own house, in the background. So I think it’s really fun because it gets quite technical. Calisthenics and gymnastics are all about body positioning, leverage, the way, the muscles develop, and also, the connection I guess between your brain and muscles is something that we focus on a lot. So I know it’s nice, it’s a nice thing to nerd out on but still not be behind the desk. And that’s something that’s stuck over the years. I think it’s nice again with physical stimulus to have something in your house that kind of prompts you to do it oftentimes when you walk past it, do the thing. Yeah, I think it’s a nice and healthy habit to, especially if you work a lot and you are coding the whole day sitting behind the desk, it’s sometimes hard to move. So then having this right next to your, your computer is, is quite handy because you're thinking about something, then you can take a break, figure out what the problem was, then get back to it, and then you realize, “Oh yeah, actually that’s the solution.”
Glasp: Yes, thank you for that. And then, yeah, since you know time is running up, you know, I'd like to ask you for advice. You know, since you know our audience are like lifelong learners and aspiring founders and so, they love, you know, acquiring knowledge and applying it to their daily life or daily work. So do you have any advice for those [types of] people?
Zowie: Yeah, I mean I'm not a, I don't believe in general advice because it kind of, supposes or implies that there are general solutions. But I do think one like a principle, that something that I think stuck is, I guess twofold. One is prioritizing reading very difficult stuff. I think it’s easy to get lost in the ocean of content, and there’s a lot of it. But I think if you don’t read any articles and instead of reading 50 books a year you read three really difficult ones, I think it's more valuable oftentimes. And it’s quite a great experience to struggle through something quite, quite hard. So I think that’s nice, it’s something I try to do more often. Not always succeed but it always somehow gives back more. So, that’s I think what I would recommend to anyone, especially if you want to build something, right? I think it’s the second one also that kind of translates nicely into that one which is to ask yourself a lot what do you want? And to also allow yourself to answer the question of, “What would the world be much cooler with?” And like, you know, “In what situation would I think the world would be a lot cooler, and is it something I could build?” And if you have an idea then just for the heck of it just get started, you know? And, maybe read the difficult book to get you to build it, and then you end up, usually, in better places. Like it’s a very, very small chance you're not going to end up in a better place, I feel, at least if you, if you take the risk of just trying to build something you think the world will be cooler with and not because everyone else does it or anything like this. And it’s hard because there's always some part of that because we’re not completely autonomous decision-makers of course. But, I feel like that’s something that has always given back a lot to try and do.
Glasp: Nice, yeah, thank you. Great advice. And thank you so much. And this is, yeah, the last question. And since Glasp is a platform where people share what they’re learning as their digital legacy, and we want to ask you, what legacy or impact do you want to leave behind for future generations?
Zowie: So something that I would love to be able to do is to just tangibly help 100 people. And if I can do something bigger, it would probably be to change the way that people learn from the internet. That would be a pretty cool legacy, if possible. We’ll see.
Glasp: Yeah, beautiful. Yes, thank you.
Zowie: And what about you?
Glasp: Oh, since the idea of Glasp came from my near-death experience. So when I was 20, I had a subdural hematoma so the left side of my body was paralyzed. At the time I was almost dead, so I was so scared. But before that, at the time, I thought, you know, I want to leave something for other people so that I, I could feel a sense of contribution. So that’s how, and then since then, I’ve been thinking about how I can leave something while I’m learning, studying something so that that could, that might help others. So that could be my good legacy so that I can feel a sense of contribution matters to me a lot. So yeah, that’s how we got the idea of Glasp, that’s my answer.
Zowie: Wow, amazing. That’s inspiring.
Glasp: And Kei loves logging information and sharing and, yeah, we love reading, learning, and sharing. Yeah, that’s how we teamed up, and yeah.
Zowie: Awesome.
Glasp: So yeah, by keeping learning, we are leaving our digital legacy for future generations so we, you can see our digital legacy concept. That’s a cool motivation to learn as well. To learn to give for, learn for others, of course for ourselves.
Glasp: Yes, so yeah, anyway, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing great advice and, and insights. And we enjoyed and learned a lot from you. Thank you.
Zowie: Yeah, really appreciate it, I also love the questions. So thanks a lot.
Glasp: Thank you.
