What's inside the ⬛ box?

Mysteries and surprises await

Hello again friend.

Would you look at the time?

Half of the month has disappeared already

And speaking of disappearances & “hocus pocus”, this time I’m bringing a new topic.

Let’s dive in.

Main quest 🛡

Ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome everybody.

Gather ‘round and come closer for this special show.

One where you’ll bear witness to the extraordinary, the inexplicable, the mesmerizing magical extravaganza!

Get ready to enter a world where the impossible becomes possible and the lines between the known and unknown blur like smoke in the wind.

This performance will have you perched on the edge of your seats.

Watch in amazement as the magician peels back the curtain and reveals the secrets hidden within the black box.

Now… it is time.

Let’s get this show going.

When you first encounter a new subject in practice, you see the results but don’t know the how. And when you start diving in and learning about it, what was unknown before starts making sense now.

(And yeah, I know that sounds obvious. But let me give you the nuance.)

I first encountered this process of discovery back when I was in college. It was in the context of systems engineering (although I applies to any other topic, you’ll soon see).

For now, here’s a visual for you.

I think my wondrous drawing skills do all the necessary explanation. 😆 But let me add a couple points.

When you see someone performing an activity (or when you do it the first times) you can see the results but have little to no clue about the how.

Everything is unknown, like a black box. You feed it some inputs and then you see the outputs that come back.

If you’re curious enough you can experiment giving it different inputs, seeing the results, and taking notes about the commonalities between them.

And that is where the learning comes in.

Well… there are 2 options here:

• You can dive in, start learning + practicing, discovering how it works from the inside, and using that knowledge to improve your results.

• You can have someone who’s already experienced help you get from point A to point B without you knowing how it works (think of it like going to a car mechanic to help you fix a problem with your ride).

For our purposes here, I’m talking about option número 1. (Option #2 is fine for those things that are occasional and not directly related to your main work.)

Through learning and practice (also trial & error) you start discovering what you need to do and how you need it to do it to get the results you want.

Once you understand how the thing works, you can improve your approach, and tweak the inputs to get the desired results with predictability and consistency.

That’s when the black box becomes transparent.

You know understand what’s required to produce specific results. And that’s when people start saying that you’re really good at it.

But this doesn’t only applies to skills or particular activities.

Things like:

• Email marketing.

• Video production.

• Graphic design.

• Playing the guitar.

• Writing a novel.

• Making sourdough bread.

• (Insert your fave activity here.)

If you abstract the principles and apply some inductive reasoning, it goes way beyond.

It becomes a mental framework you can use to see the world. Everything (almost) becomes a system. A system with a set of parameters and characteristics that takes some inputs and produces some outputs.

And if you understand the system, you can tweak those parameters to get closer to the results you want.

I got this realization around 2017 after lots of experimentation in different scenarios.

It’s sort of the “scientific method meets self development”.

Using this method you can improve many areas of your life.

Such as…

• Your health & fitness.

• Your interpersonal relationships.

• Your performance at work.

• Your finances.

• Your mindset & self-image.

• Your contribution to the world.

• Your connection to a higher power / the universe.

• Your relation with your spouse & kids.

• (I can keep going but you get the point.)

And at this point, related to what I said before about the options, you now have a 3rd one.

Having someone who’s experienced show you how to go from point A to point Z in the fastest way. Helping you skip most of the trial and error in the learning process.

That’s the end goal and Supercharged Learning is the way to get there.

Experiments 🧪

Picking up from last week’s post…

It works! The habit is built. And I’ve been fine tuning little details to fit my situation (that is schedule the sleep blocks of the day).

Here’s a recap of this experiment:

For the 1st week, I tried to take a nap of 1 sleep cycle (90 minutes) around 6:30 pm or so. Then, I would wake up, have dinner, some facial skin care, and sit with my laptop to get some online work done.

That normally lasts for 2-3 hours (unless I get into flow and then 4 hours gone by without me noticing). The important part here is that the first week I aimed to do that every single day so that my body started getting used to it.

The 2nd week I kept the trend going but I was finishing work earlier than usual so the nap was earlier OR we would make some afternoon snack with my father. Meaning the usual nap time would shift either earlier or later (but it was still the same 90 mins).

To calculate that, I could have used plain time math. But if you’re tired from a day of work and don’t want to do any math like I was… a pretty useful tool is this site https://sleepyti.me.

It helps to determine at what time to sleep when you have to wake up at a certain hour (without having to wake up in the middle of a cycle and mess up your day).

I need around 7:20 to 7:40 hours of sleep normally (I’ve tracked that many times during the past 4 years). And so, my math is a nap of 90 minutes (hour and a half) plus a “core sleep” of 5-6 hours over the late night.

What’s interesting is that for the past week I’ve slept 6 to 6 and a half hours in total most days without much disruption to my routine or health.

The past 3 days I’ve switched it up and instead of a regular nap from 6:30 pm to 8 pm, I’ve done something like 6:10 - 6:20 pm to 8:40 - 8:50 pm (2 sleep cycles approx.)

This allows me to stay up for a little longer, get more done, and still be able to wake up around 6:10 - 6:20 am to start the day without any adverse side-effects.

All that is to say that if you have the luxury of controlling your time and set your own schedule, you can experiment with bi-phasic sleep, get more time to get work done when you’re more productive, and don’t have to suffer any sleep deprivation effects.

(And if for whatever reason you have to sleep less hours than normal cause “life happens”, you can still perform well if you take creatine. Take a look at this.)

To consider 🤔

Have you experienced before that change from looking at an activity like an spectator to diving in and understanding how it works through personal experience? How was it like and what is something you'll apply this knowledge with?

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There you have it, my friend

That’s all for this week (which was supposed to be the past week but yesterday was pretty hectic for me and couldn’t send this email on the regular schedule).

Hope you had some rest and recharged to face this new week full on.

Let’s go 💪

Cheers,

Juan.