LfM

Who's Brandon Zhang 🧐

Brandon is a student at Columbia, host of its own podcast, and has been an apprentice at Visualize Value with Jack Butcher.

Quarantine had a big impact on our lives and it's impressive to see what came out of it for Brandon.

What is Student Mindset ?

Student Mindset, is actually about: engaging in intentional learning, leveraging Twitter, and being mindfully productive. Here's a bit more about all three.

Intentional Learning: Seeing learning as a growth and self-improvement opportunity. Not simply about adding a couple of lines to your CV.

It prioritizes being a maker over being a consumer and encourages creating opportunities yourself through your body of work.

Twitter Leverage: Twitter is well known as a social media platform but not so much yet as a professional media. Lots of opportunities are popping up and our own collection of tweets could look like an online resume.

Here's the 3 ways Brandon uses Twitter ⬇️

• Idea Refinery: Brandon uses Twitter to collect feedback and evaluate value in his ideas.
• A super-charged LinkedIn: Twitter is becoming a bit a professional social network and Brandon has used it to connect with founders, angel investors, and many more to build a community.
• A Serendipity Engine: Brandon is careful about who he follow and decide by "quality of ideas rather than by field of expertise".

Mindful Productivity: I will let Anne-Laure, who's been working on Mindful Productivity at Nesslabs, define the term:

Mindful productivity can be defined as being consciously present in what you’re doing, while you’re doing it, in conjunction with managing your mental and emotional states. Mindful productivity is about calmly acknowledging and accepting your feelings and thoughts while engaged in work or creative activities.

Anything else?

I also am a big fan of Pomp and well, Brandon had him on his podcast. Strongly recommend it!