The Daily Recall #3 - Multifunctional Form

Hey stranger,

In this episode, I explain the idea of multifunctional form, which can help you to 10x your work output without having to spend 10x more time.

If you prefer reading, you can find the transcript below.

Take care!

-Vasili

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Welcome to the daily recall show. 

I'm your host, Vasili. And this is the place where I share the things that I have learned and understood well, so that you can think yourself smarter in just five minutes a day. 

Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. Today I will share the things that I have thought for myself instead of things that I have read from others. 

And the idea I want to talk to you today about is called the multifunctional form. So the principle that I’ve shared yesterday, which is the ideal state law, leads to the realization that a technical system is perfect when it has no form, but the function is being performed flawlessly. And that means that we kind of have to combine forms. So in a technical system, like the satellite example that I mentioned yesterday, one form, which is the gadget that they had to put in, had to perform two functions to solve the problem. That's the idea in its essence; that one form can perform many functions.

And this idea that one form can perform many functions is actually very useful in real life. 

I discovered that for myself last week, which is actually the way how I came up with an idea for this channel. So I'm going to share the process of thinking that I used to discover this idea of sharing sharing knowledge to people on the internet. And I will also talk about how the idea of a multifunctional forum can help you be more productive. 

So let's kick off this from the productivity perspective. When people think about productivity, they get it wrong. They either think that they have to do more things or they think that they have to do the right things. That’s how they call it. 

But there's a problem with those two ways of thinking. First, you've got a very limited amount of time in a day. There is a natural cap and nobody really works 15 hours, 16 hours; you gotta sleep to be productive. Second, it's really hard to figure out what are the right things and what are the wrong things to do. 

My approach to productivity is the multifunctional form approach. I think you'll be really productive if you start doing things which contribute to many different functions. So you spend the same amount of time; but you get many things done at one go, okay? That's basically the idea between behind the multifunctional form; to do things where you do one thing, but it contributes to many many many different areas. 

A good example of this thinking would be the story behind this channel. 

When I was recalling my learnings last week, I thought: 

"Okay, I'm doing this out loud. And I'm actually doing this like everyday. So everyday I have these active recall sessions where I present myself with a question, and then I just reply to the question out loud. That's how I get to remember stuff well."

And then I thought: "Can I add any more functions to this form; to this activity that I'm already performing every single day?"

And then I was like: "Okay, I'm doing this out loud. But maybe I can download some speech to text app and then launch it when I'm doing this active recall session. So that It takes my ideas that I’m recalling here anyways and transforms them into text. So I don't have to write blog posts." 

So that was the initial thinking behind it.

But then I thought: "Okay, but I'm really doing this active recall thing our loud, right? So there is voice form already built in. So maybe I can use the voice as a channel as well?"

So now I've got two; I've got speech to text, which produces the text file, and the voice, which can be turned into a podcast. 

And the coolest thing is that nothing really changes in the process. I'm still doing the same thing just with a microphone. 

But then another idea came to me: "But I can actually hook this up to the iPad and I can record myself when I'm doing this with a microphone. And that's how I get the video for a YouTube channel. And that’s how I also get this audio for a podcast and a text file for a blog post."

And this is just the content perspective of it. But there are other functions as well.

So whenever I do this active recall session, I get to: improve my memory, learn these ideas better, practice my English more, practice communicating ideas well and designing narratives on the fly, grow my ideas by enriching them with other things I’ve learned, practice pronunciation, practice public speaking, improve self confidence because I’m talking in front of a camera every day, etc.

So all these activities and all the skills that compound over time; they come from just doing one little thing - this active recall session in front of a camera. I’m basically doing ten times more work and skill development with the same input; the same activity.

So I think that's a really useful idea of how you can think about being more productive in general. That's why I decided to do this daily special episode; to explain this idea because I believe that if you combined multiple functions under the same form, that would be really useful because you would have more time are you would have are more skills built and all these wonderful things. 

Thank you so much for listening and see you tomorrow.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.