Hey all, few years ago I was deep in the doomscrolling pit. Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, brain
genuinely feeling like wet bread by 11pm every night. I'm a PM at Google and I honestly started
getting scared I was getting dumber month by month. So I made a rule for myself: every single
day, something goes into my brain that actually deserves to be there.
Three years later, halfway through my online psych masters, hundreds of books deep, daily
learning is probably the highest ROI habit I've ever built. It compounds harder than money
honestly. Here's my current stack:
#1 - Obsidian. I'm an INTJ and the dopamine I get from a perfectly organized vault is borderline
concerning. Book notes, podcast takeaways, random research papers I discover at 1am,
everything linked/tagged/connected like a conspiracy board. Half the fun is honestly just
searching my own brain later and rediscovering ideas.
Big flaw though: organizing knowledge can become its own form of procrastination. I have like
700+ videos sitting in my YouTube watch later that I've beautifully categorized and never
actually watched. Filing knowledge FEELS productive in the same way buying gym clothes feels
like fitness. It's not the same thing. Had to learn that the hard way.
#2 - Maven. This is where I go for cutting-edge AI and PM stuff. Cohort-based courses taught by
people actually shipping products in industry instead of academics recycling the same 2018
case studies. One course every few months is honestly my max as a working adult.
Main downside is price. Most are like $1k-$2k+. I've done two so far and keep debating whether
to do more. I genuinely don't understand people who take like 5+ of these a year. How do you
people have both the money AND time?? If that's you pls explain your life setup.
#3 - BeFreed. One of my ex-Google colleagues built this, so I originally downloaded it just to
support him, but now I'm genuinely addicted to it. I used to use Blinkist because I liked the idea
of learning during commutes, but I quit after like 2 blinks. Everything felt shallow and
disconnected, like random isolated facts with no progression.
BeFreed is basically what I wanted Blinkist to become. You put in your goals/interests/current
level and it builds an actual personalized learning path instead of throwing random summaries
at you. You can also customize narration style, depth, voice, etc. I have mine set to the
roasting/humorous style and it's weirdly entertaining, like having a smart friend aggressively
explain concepts to you during your commute.
Honestly the dopamine hit is doing half the consistency work for me. Daily learning got WAY
easier once it stopped feeling like homework.
Biggest downside is it's still pretty new, so occasionally some UX flows feel a little confusing.
Doesn't really affect the core functionality though. It's basically replaced podcasts for me at this
point.
#4 - Tiimo. I have ADHD and this is one of the only productivity apps that hasn't ended up
abandoned after 2 weeks. The UI is genuinely beautiful and calm, which matters WAY more
than productivity people admit. If an app is ugly or overwhelming, my brain simply refuses to
open it.
I use it for gym, daily reading, meditation, walking my dog, all the basic human maintenance
stuff. The points/badges/gamification thing sounds gimmicky until you realize your monkey brain
absolutely falls for it every time. I've stayed consistent for 8+ months now which honestly
would've sounded impossible to me a few years ago.
Tiimo + my morning reading block is genuinely what pulled me out of the doomscrolling spiral.
Honestly the bigger realization for me is this: almost every good thing that's happened in my life
over the last few years traces back to replacing 30 mins of scrolling with 30 mins of actual input.
Promotion at work. Grad school. Better communication skills. Feeling smarter in conversations.
Having thoughts that aren't just recycled TikTok takes.
Your brain literally becomes what you feed it. And neuroscience backs this up too,
neuroplasticity absolutely does not stop in your 20s despite what people online say.
Read every day. Even 10 pages.
It's probably the most underrated cheat code I know.
What's in everyone else's daily learning stack?
Always looking for more stuff to add :))