Of Recent Fixations
Or just a lame excuse to write about the things I’ve been geeking out and hyperfocusing on as of late.
First of all… wow. Twenty-four subscribers. That’s fricking cool. When I started this Substack in November of last year, I was expecting at least only 5 people to sign up for it. I initially only wanted for this to stay hidden so I only gave the link to whoever said they were interested (decided by a very prestigious decision-making body aka an Instagram poll lol) but now I’m more comfortable with sharing and also people stumbling upon it. So yeah, thank you for taking interest in my little hub in the world wide web and getting your dose of me - because hello, this is called A Cup of Rae. Ha. So much for introductions - I’ve never been really good at it.
I was in the mood to write something today so I figured I’d share with you what I’ve been hyperfocusing on for the past few weeks - the very list of reasons why I haven’t been consistent with my Substack entries the past month and a half.
Hyperfocus, if you’re not already familiar with it, is “a common — but confusing — symptom of ADHD… the ability to zero in intensely on an interesting project or activity for hours at a time. It is the opposite of distractibility, and it is common among both children and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” Definition from Additude Magazine. This is a word that’s being used abundantly in the productivity and career/professional community but fellow ADHDers take this to greater heights and have a very personal love-hate relationship with it.
I’ve been including a segment in my Rae’s Currently List since the birth of this newsletter so I’m pretty sure you’ve encountered the word here at least once (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’ve at least read one entry all the way to the end *wink*).
Now that’s out of the way and I’m certain you have the context of what this is about, here are five things I’ve been hyperfocusing on the past few weeks! Just a warning that it’s all about to get so geeky after this point. 🤓
Building better financial habits
This is on top of the list because I’ve been doing a lot of subtasks centered on this. To name a few:
learning how to build my credit score (thankful my job has made me very much aware of how important credit scores are here in the US)
familiarizing myself with personal finance vocab
comparing options for a better way to save money (enter the past few weeks I’ve been looking up the best rates for a High-Yield Savings Account (HYSA))
looking for books to read about money management, building wealth, and anything else related to it
subscribing to podcasts related to finance
following personal finance accounts on Instagram
starting to research more about investments
Another thing that I’ve been working on is building my own finance tracker in Coda. I’ve been working on this the past two days so I can minimize the apps I have on my phone and I didn’t want to do it in Excel (trust me, I tried it before, it just felt so boring and tedious - my brain craves dopamine). Initial version I have right now can automatically add my subscriptions, bills, and some initial budget items I have every pay period - without me having to do anything else aside from setting it up the first time.
Personal Knowledge Management System
I’ve been trying to work on this for the longest time since I find out about Building a Second Brain from one of my close friends. During the months that I was unemployed last year, I’ve already brainstormed a bit on how I wanted to approach this and even bought Tiago Forte’s book to dig deeper - but Coda kind of ruined it all for me - in a good way, I guess? Coda is a very powerful tool that I discovered while trying to look for Notion alternatives because the latter was blocked on our company laptop and I needed a tool for taking notes and work organization. It can handle calculations and automations more in-depth than Notion without having the need to sign-up for an additional service. Both have its pros and cons so I’ve decided to still keep Notion. I’m still trying to figure things out and I’ve been spending a lot of my time obsessing over that. I really want my second brain to be more functional and I want to be more intentional in the way I approach this - no offense to a lot of Notion content creators but I just want more than habit trackers and simple planners with the complexity of my neurodivergent mind.
Automation
Related to both items above - I’ve been digging deeper into automating some of my day-to-day stuff not only for work but for my personal life too. The automation I’ve done for adding what I call “Daily Defaults” in my work planner and creating my own time tracker with timesheet has saved me a large amount of time over the past two months. I’ve tried to dabble with automation two years ago but as I said above, Notion wasn’t really built so much for it so I had to look into Zapier and Integromat and both required separate subscriptions and that wasn’t something I really wanted to prioritize then. With Coda, I’ve been trying to explore how I can use it outside of work since most of the processes I’ve set up in it are more work-focused and all the integrations/packs I need are already included in my subscription.
Workspace Set-up Daydreaming
Aka wishlisting. Aka basically me adding to my Notion Inbox all the things I see that I want for my new workspace set-up. We’re about to move to our “own” place soon - quoting and unquoting it just because I used own in the context that it will only be me and Karl soon but the place isn’t technically owned by us but my father-in-law’s. We’re going to live there while we save up for a house of our own eventually! (I don’t really know why I felt the need to explain it but then again, of course I added a side comment to this because I can’t focus on just one trail of thought). The past few months, I’ve seen a lot of pretty, nifty items but when the time comes, I’m going to sort through my Inbox and just decide which ones are necessary and reasonable for me. I’m just so excited to have a bigger table eventually - I’m getting used to my current set-up right now but I still feel limited in terms of space.
Taylor Swift
Buying merch, reading up on Reddit and Facebook threads about theories for the easter eggs since Midnights’ release, obsessively reading up on the possibility of when Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will be released… I mean - at this point, almost everything on my feed is about Taylor Swift. I’ve been trying to search for better seats for the Eras Tour on May that we’re going to - very hard to do when all the scalpers have monopoly over almost all the ticketing apps/sites available. The opening night videos on Tiktok just made me more excited for the concert and prompted me to have a Taylor Swift only listening spree since last Friday. I reconnected with my Swiftie side since the pandemic and I’m just really grateful I get the chance to see her live soon!
Rae’s Currently List
Watching: Criminal Minds S13; and at this very moment, Olivia Rodrigo’s Tiny Desk concert for the nth time
Reading: Kindle: The Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins; Audiobook: The Atlas Siz, Olivie Blake
Thinking about: what I’m going to talk about next - I really enjoyed writing this entry!!!
Listening to: The Eras Tour playlist I made from the opening night setlist
Hyperfocusing on: updating my finance tracker in Coda right now
Welp. That’s a wrap! I know I probably geeked out too much above but I just find joy in these things and sharing it with others - I hope you learned a thing or two from today’s entry!
Now going back to playing with Coda,
Rae