Monthly Favorites - December 2021

Hey everyone, my name is Andrew Nicholls and today I want to share with you 3 things I enjoyed from December 2021.

 This is my way to share the things I have found interesting or got value from each month. Not only that but it lets me think back and recall the kinds of things I learned or was useful to me in my life so as to keep them on top of my mind.

First I want to talk about music and one new artist I found in particular.



Then we will explore a learning platform called SkillShare that I came across which I actually am really enjoying and have learned so much from already.

And finally, I want to introduce you to a book I got a lot of value out of which is called Peak by Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool which is basically about deliberate practice and how important it is to obtain greatness in the field you are in.

So let's jump right into it.

New Music - Warren Zeiders

I have been a huge music fan pretty much my whole life so I always get super stoked on new music. I found this guy Warren Zeiders on Youtube music. It was on a recommended for me playlist or maybe the similar to section. Anyways, I usually check out new stuff and I have to say I was blown away. 

I am really into the country/rock style of music so this was a big plus to stumble upon this. Warren Zeiders is a brand new artist for me and I guess his new album is his debut album called "717 Tapes" which came out in October. The first song I heard off the album which was first released as a single was "Ride The Lightning". Sadly there are only 5 songs on the album:

1. Never Look Back
2. Ride The Lightning
3. Boys For Life
4. Dirt Road Don’t
5. Loving And Hating You

There is not a song I don’t like on the album. My favorite song keeps changing from “Ride The Lightning” or “Boys For Life” but I can not get enough of his music.

Warren Zeiders does have another album on YouTube music (probably on other platforms but this is the one I use) that is a bunch of acoustic covers and is also pretty badass. This one is called “Acoustic Covers” and there is also a Deluxe version. Warren does a great job with these covers. Most of the covers are songs I know very well and he absolutely killed it. 

He kind of reminds me of a "Tyler Childers" or "Whiskey Myers" and has definitely become one of my favorites. I highly recommend checking him out and adding him to your playlist.
Here is a link to his Youtube video Ride The Lightning to get you started.

Skillshare - A Learning Platform

So next up I will talk a little bit about SkillShare. This is a great platform if you want to learn about pretty much anything. One of the first things I jumped into while taking advantage of my free week with the service before I paid for a year was how to make and edit videos. The monthly favorites was actually a class project that the instructor "Ali Abdaal" gave us to do so we could take action on what we learned. This is the blog post for that video and I am still working on the video (a bit of a learning curve) but should be done at the beginning of January if I am being honest. He taught the class using final cut pro X which I couldn’t use because that software is only for apple. I decided to start using Davinci Resolve and you guessed it, there was another class on skillshare that I am going through now to learn how to use it.

I have since gone through several videos, some of which aren't the best of quality but the majority of the ones I have done have been really great value, especially at just over $200 Canadian for the whole year. Even if you aren't into video creating or editing they have a ton of other topics that you might enjoy like productivity, creative writing, Leadership, management, and many more. 
If you want to take a break from Netflix and flex those mind muscles this is definitely worth the investment. If you want a free month to try it out I will leave a referral link. I don't get anything if you don't make a purchase after the free month. If you actually do end up paying for the service they tack on a free month for me on my paid subscription. I only got a free week just going to their website here but there are probably other ways to get the free month if you don't want to use the referral link . Either way, there are options to try it out before you buy it and see if you can get some value out of it. You really have nothing to lose.

The Book Peak - By Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool

The book I wanted to show you guys is called Peak by Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool .  This book is all about becoming an expert in your field through something called "deliberate practice". 

From the book, the best way to implement deliberate practice is to find someone who has figured out how to do whatever it is you want to learn and has established training techniques that you can follow.  The practice you do has to not be too hard that is overwhelming and you can't do it but at the same time, you will want it to be challenging. You want to stay away from doing things that are too easy because then you aren't improving very much.

Deliberate practice also involves getting immediate feedback so you know where you went wrong and can fix the problem right away. Doing this will improve your mental representations of what you are learning and involves building on or modifying previously acquired skills. This is what I got as deliberate practice from the book. 

There were also tons of examples throughout the book of people who do deliberate practice on their road to mastery. They also talk about "so-called prodigies" like Mozart, Picasso, and Serena Williams and how they may not have been born with their talents after all and how they may have developed and improved their skills through intense focused practice. 

Overall I think there were a lot of great insights in the book and think anyone can learn something from it, especially if you are looking to improve your current skillset.

Conclusion

So these were 3 things I got out of December of 2021. I hope whoever has the chance to read this gets some value from this and would love for you to share with me some things you have gotten out of this month or even the year for that matter. Feel free to shoot me a message or leave a comment, good or bad, so I know how to improve myself. See you next month with more of my favorites!