Reviewing 25 Lessons

Shu Omi - 25 Lessons

Right around the time I started my 2020 yearly review, I read 25 Lessons that Changed My Life by Shu Omi. Please read it for yourself.

Omi pulled together 25 statements summarizing what he had learned in his first year as a full-time creator. Each statement has a brief summary of its meaning. These are big picture concepts that I found to align well with my own thoughts and ideas. I decided to use them as writing prompts to understand better how they fit within experience. Some aligned very tightly, while others seemed interesting but on a different page. In writing on the themes, I naturally stated categorizing them, and after some review and synthesis, I felt ok grouping them into more generalized categories.

For the initial split, I broke things out into two categories.

• Personal Productivity
• Emotions and Decision Making

As this is a process of making connections, I decided to track those using the networkD3 library in R.

I’m writing on these larger categories now, utilizing the initial writing from the 25 lessons as source material. There are clusters of ideas that are strongly related to one and other, meaning there are many more connections between these topics. More to visualize.

Beyond understanding these topics, I’m also interested in how a network visualization can influence my writing? I don’t know what will come of it but trying it is a great way to find out.