Good morning and welcome back to On the Brookeshelf! OTB is a weekly digest of the most interesting content, articles and products I’m coming across, so you can skip to the good parts. Let’s learn something new together.

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Let’s get into it.

🌟 Favorite of the week

1. Sahil Bloom’s thread on Solomon’s paradoxFormat: Twitter threadTime commitment: 2 minutes Why bother: Solomon’s paradox refers to the idea that we are often able to see our friends’ or even strangers’ actions and decisions with piercing clarity and may find it easy to give sound advice to others, while struggling to achieve the same clarity or apply the same advice to our own lives. Sahil offers a few strategies to get around this, but I also think that this paradox is part of what makes close, trustworthy friendships essential to moving through life with clarity and grace. Who do you lean on when making big life decisions?Read the full thread here. 

📰 Other interesting stories

• This rhyming recap of January somehow manages to tell you everything you need to know about the first month of 2024.

• By now we’ve all heard the big news: Taylor Swift announced her 11th album, the Tortured Poets Department, while accepting Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights (as a side note, this itself was historic, as she is the first artist in history to win best album four times). But did you hear about the puzzle she put together for her fans leading up to the announcement? Games like these are the reason why, despite being one of history’s greatest songwriters, I remain convinced that Taylor is one of the geniuses of our generation.

• Stomach cancer is on the rise in young women and doctors aren’t sure why. Some are theorizing that this could be related to overuse of antibiotics. In a world in which our food has become more and more heavily inundated with preservatives and toxins, I wonder what role if any the food we eat has played in this. More to come in next week’s edition.

• The highly anticipated release of the Apple Vision Pro has arrived and honestly, I am terrified. This technology brings us closer to the sci-fi reality of a blended world where technology and life traverse the realm of co-existence and actually merge. There are reasonable arguments to be made that this is inevitable, but that does not mean it isn’t scary. As humans, we are hardwired to physically connect. I fear for the psychological impact of spending less and less time together in the same rooms, experiencing the world and our own minds as they are, free from notification and distraction. But maybe this is how every generation feels as time passes and technology progresses.

• Two random facts about pregnancy/fertility/womanhood that blew my mind this week:

  • You spent five months in your maternal grandmother’s womb before she ever gave birth to your mother. How can this be true? All of the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a ~four-month-old fetus. So yes, your cellular life (i.e. the egg that decades later, was fertilized, and became you) began while your mother was still inside your grandma’s stomach. 🤯

  • Every fetus sends cells out into their mom’s body and the cells stay there for decades. Even crazier, this happens during the first trimester of pregnancy. Meaning that even if a baby is miscarried or in some cases aborted, a piece of that child will live on in their mother for decades to come. But here’s the real kicker: there is research to suggest that these cells may play a role in protecting mom from certain autoimmune diseases and even possibly repairing organs that have been subject to injury.

• Nobody wants to manage people anymore and it’s leaving a troubling gap for many corporations. I’ve had variations of this conversation with many friends and family members within my generation and I do think it’s true. I am interested to see how companies will start to incentivize management over individual contributor tracks. Particularly with the rise of remote work and an emphasis on work-life balance and flexibility, it seems that the appeal of management has waned considerably as compared to the generations before us.

☕ Something to think about

I’ve been drinking caffeine daily since I was 14 years old, and outside of days where I had a horrible stomach virus or was otherwise ill, not a day has gone by in the past 14 years that I have not consumed at least one cup of coffee.

I am self-aware enough to admit that I am dependent and woefully addicted – physically, mentally and psychologically. It energizes me for my workouts, it focuses me for my deep work, it helps me tap back in after a slump in the afternoon, and put plainly, it just makes me feel happy. I notice a marked difference in my emotional state before and after my first cup of espresso.

There is nothing wrong with coffee in moderation, but being so completely dependent on a substance is…troubling. Moreover, it’s occurred to me that having taken caffeine daily since middle school, my adult body has never experienced moving through life without it. This in itself is kind of mind-blowing, and not in a good way.

So I’ve decided to do something about. Next week, I’m starting a self-directed caffeine detox program. I’ve learned in life that gradual changes are more sustainable than rapid ones, so I’ll be gradually reducing my caffeine intake over a period of weeks. My goal isn’t to eliminate caffeine entirely. Rather, to:

• 1. Experience my baseline. I honestly have no idea what my body/mind/energy would feel like without caffeine because I have never experienced it. I am not convinced that I am looking to quit caffeine for good (though I am open to that being one possible conclusion to this experiment), but I want to experience what being caffeine-free feels like.

• 2. Eliminate my dependency. Not only is being so dependent on something logistically challenging (I literally carry a portable espresso maker around when I travel because I can’t bear waking up without hot coffee) – it’s also ideologically misaligned with my commitment to listen to my body’s cues and honor them. (Caffeine works by blocking the molecule that tells your brain that you need rest). I want caffeine to be a choice I make, not something I rely on to start my day.

• 3. Understand how caffeine impacts my energy levels. I have noticed in my current state that I am highly energized and focused in the morning, but suffer pretty extreme energy dips in the afternoon. I’m curious to see if eliminating caffeine can help regulate and sustain my energy throughout the day.

Your turn: Is there something external to you in your life that you rely on? Is there something you’ve been consuming for so long, you don’t know what you would feel like without it? Would you consider a detox from it? Why or why not?

🛍️ New product haul

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

Loving:

• Balance Meditation App. My meditation journey started in 2013 on Headspace, but recently the content has gotten less and less compelling (for me) so I have been experimenting with other tools. I have been using Medito (which is free) for the past six months or so but ultimately wanted something a bit more robust. Last week I started a trial for Balance and so far I am loving it. They have a fairly robust library of meditations, including daily meditations, sleep meditations, walking meditations, and others for more specific challenges (i.e. anxiety, work stress, focus, etc.) It costs $70/year but they are currently offering your first YEAR free, which is quite a generous trial period.

• This breathwork audio on Spotify. A friend introduced me to this breathwork practice and it’s been transformative for my overall energy and focus. The audio is free and available on Spotify. It’s a 20-minute exercise, but I promise it goes by faster than you’d think. I was not able to complete any of the breathholds to completion on my first go, but it only took three or four sessions on consecutive days to work up to it. I feel a calm energy after this that is hard to describe in words and not entirely similar to anything I’ve experienced before, including from traditional meditation. Give it a go. I like to complete this in the late morning, usually after my workout and before I sit down for deep work.

Leaving:

• Nespresso Aerocino. I’ve tried this now with multiple milks (oat, almond, full and low fat dairy milk) and it never quite froths. Worse, it’s started to somehow burn the milk. The handheld frothers like this one, while a bit more work (you have to heat the milk first separately), work much better.

That’s all for now, see you next week!

XO, Brooke