Hey y’all 👋🏼 I hope you’ve been enjoying Sana’s Notes so far, if there is anything you’d like to hear about from me, just hit the Reply button and let me know! I hope you enjoy this week’s catch-up.

— Sana Tabassum

🍎 food for thought

It feels like I finally have had a moment to breathe this week. I’m not recovering from illnesses or post-holiday blues and I’m finally settled into a routine as a freelance creative. There are quite a few ongoing projects that I’m working on and hoping to complete in the next few months. Throughout all this, I often have moments of panic or introspection where the imposter syndrome kicks (hard) and I’m left feeling like my growth has stagnated.

In moments like these, I am lucky to be surrounded by friends who have my back and will tell me things as they are. I also try telling myself that a good night’s sleep is probably the solution at the moment - which is mostly true. Working as a freelance creative, I’m more exposed to podcasts and frameworks by individuals in the creator economy and most of this heavily revolves around the business aspect of it.

While I get to learn A LOT, sometimes I’m swayed by the potential of creating an online business through content and other times the reality of my lack of growth hits me. But deep down, I know numbers aren’t everything.

What I’ve learned 👇🏼

• I’ve been reading Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte lately. It’s about the power of information and how to make use of what you consume. The book teaches you how to create your own personal knowledge management system which I’ve begun to do. I’ll keep you guys updated on this.

• Developing things for the archi-community is really where I thrive. On a random whim (and from the many ideas in my Notes app) I decided to create a swipe file for architecture students who are starting university next month. More on this below 📂

• Recently, I’ve been a little worried about the 27K followers I’ve been at for the past year or so. Content isn’t performing as I would like, even though I am putting in a lot of effort. Sometimes I’m questioning whether I’m really being authentic to why I started creating content in the first place, and other times I’m just grateful that any of it resonates with at least one person. It’s a lot tricker than it may seem on the surface.

🍗 content nuggets

This week I want to spotlight a lifestyle vlogger and creator called Ashley Alexander, aka urmomashley. I love the videos with her siblings, who also have their own channels, and the trips they go on. It’s wholesome and fun content which I’m beginning to enjoy more and more.

As part of the process of developing a second brain, I want to include something that I watched a while ago and wrote some notes for. This interview of Sahil Bloom by Ali Abdaal had a few interesting takeaways such as saying yes to something under the assumption you’re going to have more time in the future.

Instead, you should say no unless there’s actually something structurally changing in your life. I struggle with this quite a bit, and usually it’s me saying yes to some new project I want to start. But Sahil proposes that you shouldn’t take on some new thing just to fill your time.

🦋 casual magic

As I mentioned, I developed a very simple swipe file. This free resource got some great responses from the archi-community, which I thought I’d share with you all 💜

🔥 on the back burner

Not much from me on the back burner - but I’d be curious to know what you guys are up to lately? If you’re in and around London, have you seen any cool exhibitions or things to go see? Hit reply and let me know 💌

— Sana x