Welcome to the 2nd edition of On the Brookeshelf!

On the Brookeshelf is a monthly digest of the most interesting and actionable content I’ve consumed, products I’ve tested, and things I’ve learned, over the last 30 days.

It is published on the 1st of the month, every month – well, except when it’s my birthday month, in which case, it comes out on my birthday.

In any case, if you enjoy this issue, subscribe to get the next one delivered straight to your inbox. And of course, forward to your friends!

Let’s get into it.

 🌟 Top 3 of the month

1. The Girl on the Train by Paula HawkinsFormat: Book | FictionTime commitment: 1 week What you’ll gain: Entertainment. This one kept me on my toes until the very end. A crime novel – sort of – minus the scare factor. Convincing character development and a compelling storyline. Personally couldn’t wait to get into bed at night to read another chapter.

2. Extreme Ownership by Jocko WillinckFormat: Book | NonfictionTime commitment: What you’ll gain: Lessons in leadership. This book is required reading at Gordian (ICYMI, I started a new job last month!) and it’s chalk-full of insights for managers or really anyone that believes in the philosophy of extreme ownership. Extreme Ownership basically means “no excuses – execute” or, as my new manager Linda aptly summarized, “there is no such thing as minding your own business.” This is written by a Navy Seal but is less about combat and more about general principals of leadership that you can take with you into the office.

3. 100 Foot WaveFormat: TV Series | DocumentaryTime commitment: 50 minutes per episodeWhat you’ll gain: Probably admiration or incredulity, depending on your personality type. 100 Foot Wave is an HBO Series that follows Garrett McNamara – a pro big-wave surfer who is known, among other things, for putting Nazaré, Portgul “on the map” – and many of his contemporaries, as they push their limits in search of the ultimate challenge: a 100-foot wave to surf. Having recently learned to surf and, by extension, knowing how massive 5 ft waves feel from the peak, it is truly mind-boggling to watch these surfers tackle 70 and 80 foot waves. Whether or not you’re into surfing, this series gives a window into the psychology of extreme sports aficionados and is just an all-around eyes-glued-to-the-screen watch.

🗞️ March content haul

A summary of some content I consumed, so you can skip to the good parts.

👁️ Reads

News

• Expedia built a plugin for ChatGBT to allow travelers to plan every aspect of their trips – from flight bookings, hotels, vacation rentals, and car rental – directly through the AI bot. The demo is pretty cool.

• This year, Ramadan, Passover and Easter are all overlapping in April. This doesn’t happen often, since they all follow different calendars. Let’s get up to speed on all three, in chronological (historical) order.

  • Passover is the commemoration of the story of Exodus in the Old Testament, which recounts G-d delivering the Jews from slavery in Egypt and is mainly celebrated through an elaborate dinner (called a “Seder”) that accompanies the reading of the Haggadah. The Haggadah is a centuries-old book dating back to the year 300 that lays out in explicit detail how Jews are to commemorate Passover. You can think of it as the Seder manual. Passover consists of two Seders, which take place on two subsequent nights. “Seder” roughly translates to “Order” referring to the order to steps that you should take in commemorating the Passover story. During the Seder, you say a lot of prayers, recount the Passover story, thank G-d, and remember our ancestors’ deliverance from bondage. It’s chalk-full of symbolism and marked by several unique traditional foods, including Charoset (my personal fav – a sweet blend of chopped apples, walnuts, cinnamon and red wine meant to represent the mortar that enslaved Jews used in Egypt) and matzah (unleavened bread, a reminder of the rush the Jews were in as they were escaping the Pharaoh on their way out of Egypt). As a Jew, Passover is one of my favorite holidays. This year, I hosted a small, abbreviated Seder for a few friends and tried my hand for the first time at making homemade charoset (recipe here – it’s fire!)

  • Easter – the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection. One cool thing you might not know about Easter, is that it is actually intrinsically linked to the Passover story, too. As the Passover story goes, God’s plan to deliver the Jews from slavery in Egypt included inflicting 10 plagues on the Egyptians in an effort to convince the Pharaoh to let the Jewish people go. The 10th and final plague was the slaying of the first born son of Egyptian families. Jews were instructed to sacrifice a lamb, and mark their doors with the blood of that lamb, so the Angel of Death would know to Pass Over their door and spare their first-born sons. Christ is often referred to in the Scriptures as the sacrificial lamb of God; his crucification aligns with the Passover sacrifice, and in this metaphor, Jesus is the sacrificial Passover lamb, offered as a sacrifice for all the world.

  • In brief, Ramadan is the Holy Month in Islam, where Muslims fast every day, from dawn to sundown, for 29-30 days (based on the sighting of the first crescent moon in the eight month of the Islamic Calendar). Fasting means no food or drink (yes, including water). Here’s a fuller overview on Ramadan and its significance for Muslims. Ramadan is at a different point in time every year, since it is based on an (uncorrected-for) lunar calendar. It takes about 30 years for Ramadan to circle its way around the western calendar.

• Relatedly, it’s particularly cool timing for the opening of the Abraham House – a mosque, a church and a synagogue coexisting on a single plaza. Now open in Abu Dhabi, visitors can plan their visit including a tour the spaces and a forum to learn about the core tenets of each of these three Abrahamic faiths.

• We all know about the gender wage gap, but have you heard about the grooming gap? According to the Today Show, women spend an average 55 minutes and $8 a day on grooming products (nearly $3,000 a year if applied every day). There’s a conversation happening about the so-called “beauty bias” and its implications in the workplace. I’m not sure where I land on this, but I have thoughts.

• It might be a good time to start paying attention to aquaculture. Billionaire Jack Ma is reportedly touring the world to study sustainable food solutions, including farming certain species of fish and breeding insects for fish feed.

• Google Flights made a splash in travel news with its announcement of a new flight price guarantee feature that will refund you if your fare decreases after you book. To start, only flights departing from the U.S. will be eligible. Price-guaranteed flights will be marked in Google by a colorful price-guarantee badge. This badge means Google Flights is willing to guarantee that the fare won’t drop (or your money back).

🎧 Listens

• Pilates Flow 2023 on Spotify – My new go-to on days where I’m swapping a Form workout for a DIY pilates moment (usually once a week, on the weekend).

• Airline Weekly Lounge Podcast – My crash course on the airline industry. This one may be somewhat niche, but if you’re passionate about air travel or working in the travel industry, this could be a useful listen. I’ve started tuning in to stay up-to-date on mergers, regional trends and top headlines in the air travel industry.

🛍️ March product haul 

What I’m loving, and what I’m leaving.

Loving:

• KYY Portable Monitor – A must for work travel and digital nomads.

• Jeh face oil – From Maha Meta Skin (Ubud). I found this while in Indonesia last month and tragically, they can’t deliver to the UAE. That said, I’ll be looking out for other face oils with similar properties (baobab, kapulaga, marula, rose hip & sea buckthorn) once my supply dries up, which at this rate, is going to be soon.

• Coffee tea bags – Perfect for travel. My partner brought some back for me from Ethiopia, but there are tons of brands making these now.

• Nanopress portable espresso maker – My preferred travel caffeination machine. For me, nothing beats the taste of a frothy espresso in the morning. This portable espresso is ready in ~30 seconds – just fill the capsule with ground espresso, fill the base with boiling water, and pump. It comes in a handy little carrying case and all of the parts fit inside the nanopress, so you can just throw it in your bag and head out.

Leaving:

• Orro app – I was into this for a month or two, but ultimately find that (a) there is too much choice, it’s overwhelming, and I find myself wasting precious time scrolling trying to decide what workout to do, and (b) I basically found 3 teachers I really liked but they each only post a few classes every few weeks, so this platform model doesn’t really suit my style. I’ve pretty much fully switched over to Form, which spits out a workout per day (new decisions required) and gives a solid mix of strength and pilates classes with upbeat soundtracks.

• Headspace – I started using Headspace ten years ago (!!) so this feels like chopping off an arm in a way. Truth be told, I will always love Andy (the founder – if you haven’t heard his voice or his story before, you should look him up) but he’s stepped away from Headspace and since taking VC funding (they’ve now raised more than $215M) the app has moved away from pure mindfulness content and into a particularly commercial brand of identity politics that is just not what I’m in a meditation app for. It’s been a great ride and I’m grateful to Headspace for introducing me to a lifelong habit that has changed my life <3

Other things I’m trying this month: BetterUp Coaching, a 29 inch at-home monitor setup, Medito meditation app. I’ll report back in May!

 🔮 Monthly manifest

🛫 A final thought 

Our minds are powerful. So powerful in fact, that they can determine outcomes. I was thinking a lot about this during my freediving course this month. As part of the level 1 course, you learn to descend down to 20 meters on a single breath. For some of us in my group, we were already so comfortable in water, either from scuba diving or spearfishing, that dropping down to 20 meters came naturally. For others, it took some time to build the confidence to get down to depth.

But one of the particularly cool things I learned during this process is that all humans are physically capable of diving down to 20 meters on just one breath. In fact, all humans are physically capable of holding their breath for 4+ minutes.

Yes, you too.

Not only that, but our bodies are literally primed to be aquatic. There is a phenomenon called the Mammalian Dive Reflex (MDR), which is found in all mammals and quite literally puts our bodies into underwater mode.

MDR can be triggered by things like increased C02 levels (from breath-holding) or the sensation of water (i.e. cold) right beneath our eyes. Once MDR is triggered, our heartbeats slow down, our C02 tolerance increases – our bodies literally prepare to dive. This is why for freedivers, the first 1-2 dives are usually harder than subsequent ones. The first dive is a warm-up, in part meant to trigger MDR.

In short, in the water, as in many cases in life, our barriers are not physical, but mental.

In freediving, as in life, the calmer you are, the farther you’ll go. Fear is often misguided. Success is often instinctual. Discomfort is almost always impermanent.

🎂 A birthday note

It’s my birthday! I wanted to share a note of gratitude today for another adventureful year. I like to start my birthday mornings writing down all the things I’ve been grateful for over the past year, and my favorite memories – and this morning’s list was particularly long.

It sounds cliché, but as the years pass, I feel myself falling more closely into step with my truest self. Part of age is understanding who you *really* are and, overtime, learning to embrace it.

Feeling excited about the year ahead and grateful to have arrived at this moment in time. Thank you to anyone reading this that’s been a part of this past year with me.

And with that – have an amazing April and see you next month!

Yours truly,

Brooke

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