Weekly Quote: Annie Murphy Paul on Naming the Feeling

This week, we have another quote from one of my favorite books The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul.

What's wrong?

This is a question we've all heard and said countless times. Think of how often this query has been directed at you, and think about your answer. How often were you actually able to articulate what was going on? Did you respond with nothing, I'm fine, or another dismissive throw-away line? Did you make a joke, or perhaps just started listing a bunch of semi-random annoyances that came to mind? I would be surprised if one or more of these responses didn't sound familiar to you from a recent conversation.

We need a better question, something more focused on a person's present feeling. As this week's quote states, scientific research has found that naming a feeling reduces the body's stress response, helping us broaden our ability to cope with either the situation or the emotion causing the stress. So saying what are you feeling right now or how are you feeling seems a more direct approach to giving a person the space to begin figuring it out. It also signals that you are listening, and that's helpful too.

Asking about a person's feelings at work feels a little fraught. But, having done it many times with team members or colleagues who were struggling, sometimes at a crisis level, I've seen it help. I appreciate being on the receiving end of this conversation, and I believe others usually feel similarly. It doesn't always work. When it doesn’t, I remind myself that most things don't work all the time and I take a moment of reflection to examine if I could have done something differently.

Frequently, we are more comfortable with this approach around our kids or family members. Parents know that naming the feeling is the foundation of helping children learn how to develop their emotional intelligence. So it's less of asking about what's wrong and more a complex and open-ended question about thoughts and feelings that sparks a dialog.

I know that what's wrong is a ubiquitous phrase in our culture that isn't going away anytime soon. I'm trying to ask a better question, and I encourage you to do this too. Try it. Start with someone you trust. It isn't always easy to dig in, yet it can be a rewarding experience to help someone resolve a stressful situation. Are you ready to listen?

My Home Screen on MacSparky

I’m a big fan of the work that David Sparks does at MacSparky, the newly formed Labs, and on his podcasts, Mac Power Users, Focused, and Automators. I count David as one of the people who helped inspire me to do this project so I was excited when I was offered a chance to share my Home Screen and give some insight into the apps and tools that I enjoy using.

You can check out the post here, and if you are a Mac or technology geek, you should (and probably already are) check his stuff out!

Weekly Quote: James Clear on Systematizing The Goal Process

In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes about how our goals are only as successful as our systems.

This idea and the book's premise generally have me thinking more about the journey of accomplishing something important. At its core, a goal is essentially a specific ambition that is easy to express but takes actual effort and planning to complete. Developing a good goal requires consideration of the systems that can be implemented. Otherwise, it may never move beyond an ambitious idea.

In addition to planning systems and building habits to get things done, motivation is a factor. The weekly quote from a few weeks ago was from Get it Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation, and it was about creating targets for goals - essentially, systematizing the goal process. This is why the SMART framework is prevalent in many corporate settings. It's a system that works pretty well for building actionable goals in large organizations.

I'm rethinking my process because I'm finding that I need more clarity on some of my goals. What are you doing to develop your systems and achieve your goals?

Weekly Quote: Adam Grant on Being Actively Open-Minded

This week, I’m sharing another quote from Think Again by Adam Grant. It’s a book that has stuck with me since I read it last year, and I regularly go back through and reread sections and review the highlights I have captured in Readwise.

I like how Grant uses roles that we are all familiar with to help us best approach effective learning and communication methods. Early in the book, he writes about Phil Tetlock , a fellow Wharton Professor, who discovered that people frequently fall into the role of either politician, preacher, or prosecutor when discussing or thinking about something. Adam takes this concept and expands on it by writing that the ideal role is that of a scientist in search of the truth.

I think looking at this through a lens of humility is helpful. I may have ideas or thoughts about a given topic, and I want to test them and see how they stand up. This helps everyone, including me, get closer to the facts. This can also feel very vulnerable, so it is essential to realize that it’s okay to be wrong. Also, if you see someone approaching a question or idea as a scientist, support them in the process.

Being actively open-minded takes exercise, like so much of what is good for us, and I’m continuing to work on it. How often are you searching for reasons why you are wrong?

Finding Focus: Keeping on Task with Reading Mode

While I still enjoy printed books occasionally, my reading preferences have shifted to the Kindle app on my iPad. Customizing my Reading Focus Mode has improved this preference, and here’s how I set it up to make it work for me.

Contextual Triggers

My Reading Focus is triggered contextually, turning on automatically whenever I open the Kindle app. My Home Screen on both my iPad and iPhone shows only Widgets from Kindle, Readwise, and The New York Times.

Integration with Sleep​

I wrote about how I handle Sleep on my iPhone here. When my iPad enters Sleep Mode, the Home Screen also switches automatically to the one mentioned above. I find that this helps me stay on track at night. If I want to watch Netflix or YouTube, I can find it. It just takes extra effort, so I’m more likely to do some reading which feels better to wind down and sleep.

Reading More by Seeing Less

I try to read every day. I may not read more than a few pages on hectic days, but it still fills my cup and desire to learn something. Plus, it’s an incremental way to finish a book even when I don’t have much time.

With Reading Focus turned on, I am less likely to wander into the myriad distractions that may tempt me. I can still do anything on my device; it just requires overcoming the friction of opening the search dialog, typing in whatever I’m looking for, and then pressing on the result.

More Focus & Automation

I’m working on my writing and production focus modes right now, and I am very interested in how contextual triggers, Automation, and Shortcuts can help fine-tune my workflows. How do you use these tools to help you get work done? I’m curious and interested in learning, so please let me know.

Weekly Quote: The Science of Motivation

I recently began reading Get it Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation by Ayelet Fishbach. I’ve heard Ayelet’s name mentioned by psychologist and Grit author Angela Duckworth on the No Stupid Questions podcast. I enjoy Angela’s perspective, so this felt like a great book to pick up.

As a leader, I have found meaningful and effective goal setting with team members to be a challenging task to do well. I’ve thought a lot about it because I was responsible for twenty annual performance reviews in my most recent position. They required goals aligned with the business needs and individual engagement goals. It was a lot of work to do well, and it was a personal priority that each team member felt like I was giving them my attention and care. I think I did a pretty good job, but I’d like to learn more.

I’m enjoying that Get it Done delves into the science behind motivation and, inversely, demotivation. It’s a complicated subject, and I’m already learning a lot, challenging some of my own beliefs and practices, and taking notes on how to get better at goal setting.

Happy Star Wars Day!

As a kid growing up in the early 1990s, I vividly remember watching the original Star Wars Trilogy on television and receiving the reissued “faces” VHS box set for Christmas in 1995. I watched all three movies many times, especially The Empire Strikes Back, my favorite of the original three.

We live in a bountiful time for new Star Wars projects, particularly from the non-feature length side of things with shows like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, The Bad Batch, and the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi all landing on Disney+. I know there are plenty of comic books and novels available too. I can personally attest to the very cool Lego sets available because they are slowly beginning to take over parts of my desk!

During the last few months of 2021 and early 2022, I rewatched all of the films and decided that my favorite from the newer batch of films is Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Do you have a favorite?

May the 4th be with you!

Thoughts on the Apple Studio Display

After having the Apple Studio Display on my desk for about a month and a half, I continue to be delighted with both it's form and function.

I had two large Dell monitors at my most recent corporate job that provided me with enough screen space to have reference material and project management apps open. At the same time, I did the bulk of my active work, mostly management reporting, performance reviews, Zoom or Teams meetings, and email, on the other. While the screen real estate was plentiful, the pixel density and overall image quality were subpar.

Now, my computing options are either an iPad Air or a MacBook Air, so while both have a high quality display, neither has much room to work with.

If, like me, you’ve recently read The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul, where the author shares the science behind why more screen space helps us remember more, you will know how important it is to have more room. I was already in the market for something bigger, but many options available didn't quite hit the mark in terms of build quality or style, so when the Studio Display was announced, I picked one up at my local Apple Store within a week.

The Studio Display offers me an outstanding balance of screen real estate and image quality, with a 5K native resolution display created in Apple's design language. As a result, I can have multiple apps open with plenty of room to breathe, and the image quality and brightness are excellent.

For my needs, I went with the standard glass display as my office doesn't have any glair issues. I'm also using the default stand, and it's working fine for the height of my workspace.

The speakers sound pretty good. I use AirPods for nearly all audio consumption, so i didn't need external speaker level quality.

I have not used the camera with its image quality issues, although I will try it out once the new firmware is out of beta. It's disappointing that a display of this quality and price shipped with an issue like that, and Apple needs to fix it. Apple knows how to do camera hardware and software properly, so I remain hopeful.

The Studio Display came in at the upper end of my budget. However, I'm comfortable with the price because I plan to use this display with either a MacBook in clamshell mode or a Mac Mini for some time to come.

Do you have the Studio Display? Let me know what you’re enjoying and where you think it doesn’t quite meet your expectations. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to work on cable management so my desk is tidy again.

Weekly Quote: Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday

This week’s quote comes from Ryan Holiday’s latest book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave. Ryan is one of my favorite authors. His books and emails are always on my reading and re-reading list, and I frequently recommend The Daily Stoic to friends who want an introduction to Stoic philosophy. It’s where I started.

In Courage is Calling, Ryan writes about many aspects of courage, including difference between being scared and feeling fear. It’s one of the ideas from this book that I’ve really been chewing on. He quotes William Faulkner, who wrote a similar sentiment about walking in the woods, “Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.”

Before reading this book, I hadn’t deeply considered the difference between fear and being scared. Fear is more conceptual, and being scared is an emotional response the body experiences. It’s helpful to have such a distinction clearly laid out by a thinker that I respect, to understand that it’s okay to be scared, and then it’s essential to act anyway, not let fear paralyze you and prevent you from achieving what needs to be done.

I’m doing my best to remember this quote when I am heading into the unknown and begin to feel dread. I’ll allow myself to be scared, but I will fight the fear.

Weekly Quote: The Itch of Happiness

This week’s quote comes from 10% Happier by Dan Harris, a founder, author, podcaster, and former ABC News anchor.


I found this book on Audible several years ago and listened intently to Dan’s journey from his on-air panic attack in 2004 through his journey towards having a better mental balance through work/life balance and meditation.

I know these “if only” thoughts all too well and I’m sure you’ve experienced them too. They usually come by when I’m tired, or maybe at 3 am when I happen to be up with one of my kids. Either way, when they come they hit hard.

Pursuing happiness can find us with blinders on, so eager and focused on that one thing that we miss the forest through the trees. We don’t see other sources of happiness around us, we don’t find the balance that may be right there because we just can’t look around.

It’s good to be motivated, to want to succeed, and find happiness and connection. But, as Dan writes, we have to watch that itch because it can be all-consuming.

Express (and Remember) your Colors with Pastel

I’m thinking about color and design aesthetics these days, both for this website and other projects I’m working on. I know. It’s pretty monochromatic here right now, which is why I want to be able to put together some colors and keep track of the combos that I like. So I searched the App Store and found Pastel. After using it for a few days, I can tell it’s what I need.

What is Pastel?

From the developer, Steve Troughton-Smith on the App Store:

Pastel is an app for amateur developers & artists (like us!) that lets you build up a library of color palettes for your projects.

Pastel is free to download, with the ability to unlock unlimited palettes for a one-time fee. It is available on the iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

What does it do best?

Pastel comes with a bunch of colors and reference palettes included. Then, there’s the option to pull colors from different style pickers and save them to create new custom palettes. The creativity goes a step further by allowing the user to import a photo, and it will pull a palette of complementary colors. It works really well and is a fun feature to play with!

Palettes can be exported as wallpaper to beautify your home screen or watch face, as a color swatch featuring hex colors, or you can send it directly to Procreate for your design work.

Pastel is free to download, with the ability to unlock unlimited palettes for a one-time fee. It is available on the iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

How is it useful?

Pastel helps manage colors, which is useful for many projects, including websites, presentations, book and print media design, and even for pulling colors together for ideas around the house. It’s perfect for what I need because it’s not overly complicated yet still allows me to play with different ideas and take inspiration from the included palettes.

If you are working on a Keynote or slide deck that isn’t constrained by a corporate or institutional stylebook and want to make it stand out, Pastel is an excellent place to start experimenting with colors.

Weekly Quote: Jan-Benedict Steenkamp On Humility

This week’s quote comes from the book Time To Lead by Jan-Benedict Steenkamp.

My workflow for quote posts is to pull what I’m going to write about at the beginning of the week, so I can spend some time reflecting on it. Humility is a complicated concept, one that has been around for millennia and has been the focus of some of history’s most respected philosophers and thinkers. So I was struggling a bit to wrap my brain around it.

Then, I had a breakthrough.

I spent yesterday afternoon at the playground with my wife and two children, enjoying the sunshine and breeze as Spring finally arrives in New England. As we returned home to prepare for dinner and the nightly routine, I thought about this quote and realized that I wasn’t thinking about myself at all at the playground. I wasn’t thinking about the projects I’m working on or the tasks I need to get done around the house. I had entirely focused my mind on my family’s happiness. I was present.

Humility starts here for me, with my family, and not just thinking about what they need but what I can offer them. Who I can be for them. How I can be a better father and husband, and how it all comes together to help me be a better person.

I’ve tried to express humility in my leadership style by doing my best to understand what the teams I work with need from me, by being forgiving when people make mistakes and supportive when times are tough.

I know I still have a lot to learn in all realms of my life around humility. As I said, it’s complicated. To take a deeper look at what it means to me, I’ve created a Day One entry on the subject and look forward to further reflection. I think I’ll be writing on this topic again in the future.

What does humility mean to you?

Weekly Quote: Coleman Hawkins on Making Mistakes

This week’s quote, by the jazz legend Coleman Hawkins*, reminds us that if we aren’t stepping out of our comfort zones, we’re probably missing out on opportunities to grow.

Mistakes are the language of growth. Starting a new job, shipping a new app, building a new team, being in a relationship, being a parent, so many things are hard to do. You have to stretch, and you’re going to mess up. It’s what you do with the experience that matters. I’ve written about getting it wrong before, and how learning from that is essential. It’s a universal concept and one that is worth remembering.

It’s also important to know that it’s okay to be cautious. Maybe it’s a high-stakes situation, or you’re at a point where you need to slow down. That’s okay, embrace it and know that when you’re ready to try something new, you will, mistakes and all.

*Go check out Body & Soul by the Hawk, it’s a great collection of his work.

Chain Bookstores Aren’t Dead Yet (Thank you, TikTok)

I came across this article about the bookstore revival on Bloomberg CityLab by Alexandra Lange. It offers some history of the big-box booksellers, and dives into how Barnes & Noble is staging a comeback thanks mainly to nostalgia (check out the photos!) and by acting as the backdrop for the BookTok boom that has racked up over 40 billion views on TikTok. Gen Z is apparently finding its way to the mall.

There’s also talk of the concept of these stores becoming the third place. From the article:

It’s not until you add the coffee shop to the chain bookstore, circa 1990, that it becomes the best illustration of sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the “third place.” The chain stores were pick-up joints without the alcohol, teen hangouts without the style pressures of the mall, opportunities to explore identity both socially and via reading material out from under the thumb of parents and teachers. As with the malls and shopping centers that often support a bookstore, these private enterprises offered accommodation to a broad range of people, in terms of class, race and age.

Thanks to the efforts of Starbucks once and again CEO Howard Schultz, this is a concept associated with that coffee chain at least before the pandemic.

I grew up without a Starbucks nearby, but we did have a large Barnes and Noble that opened when I was in my early teens. I spent many hours exploring books and magazines about technology, business, cooking, science fiction, and fantasy. I also developed my taste for coffee at the cafe. Yes, they did serve Starbucks, but as part of a licensed program, so sadly, they weren’t nearly as good at misspelling our name in wild ways.

Weekly Quote: Ray Dalio on Maturity

This week’s quote comes from Ray Dalio’s book Principles, which I mostly consumed via audiobook during the long commute to and from my previous job. However, I’m planning a deeper dive on my Kindle soon.

It’s challenging to imagine what you may have to give up in the future when you’re focused on the present, and the idea of saying no to something now to hold space for better opportunities certainly takes practice.

I’m still maturing in this area of my life. I like to get engaged and learn and have felt the rush of excitement and, in some cases, flattery when someone asks for my help on something.

As I strive to become a better decision-maker in this area, I’m learning to ask myself in these situations the following questions and then taking some time to consider the answers honestly.

1. How will this fit into my life?

   Check in with yourself and your family and see what’s possible. If you’re returning from parental leave, maybe it’s not the right time to jump into a new project which will likely increase your work and stress load. If you have some time and flexibility and want to get involved in something new, go for it!

2. Do I have the capacity to complete this and do it to my standards?

   It is easy to overcommit and underestimate the time needed to complete a task. Unfortunately, as a species, we are good at doing this. It’s called the Planning Fallacy, and it’s real. Capacity, a term I’m using to represent mental and physical energy, can be hard to measure. Do you have margin in your life, and how much of that are you willing to give up? Margin equals time, and time is so important.

3. Does it help me learn something new?

It isn’t about being selfish. It’s about wanting to stay engaged in something while being able to learn something new. Not all projects or opportunities will tick this as a yes, and that’s okay. Saying no to this is not an automatic pass for an opportunity. However, if the first two are leaning towards a no and this one isn’t screaming yes, I have a good idea of how to proceed.

As I said, I’m trying to mature and learn how better to find the right opportunities. It isn’t always easy, but I think the three questions act as a framework to help me succeed.

PKM Toolkit: Using Readwise to Spark Creativity

Personal Knowledge Management, or PKM, feels like it has hit its stride in the digital world. Task management, mind mapping, project management, and knowledge management apps like Roam, Obsidian, and Craft offer various options for collecting, organizing, and managing our data. These tools aren’t just popular with users; investors are taking notice too.

What is PKM?

Great question. The productivity nerds reading this probably already know, but for those new to the idea, Wikipedia does a great job of summing it up:

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a process of collecting information that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities (Grundspenkis 2007) and the way in which these processes support work activities (Wright 2005). It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers need to be responsible for their own growth and learning (Smedley 2009). It is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management (KM) (Pollard 2008).

Mike Schmitz from The Focused Podcast wrote an excellent primer on PKM over at The Sweet Setup that goes deeper into the concept. I encoruage you to read it.

My PKM journey has changed a lot in the last six months. After a shift in my professional trajectory, I’ve become more engaged and focused on being creative and developing new ideas here. I’m working on some other projects as well, so with several irons in the fire and the responsibilities of a stay-at-home Dad (my biggest promotion to date!), I saw an opportunity to assess and, in some cases, add or change the tools I use to find, catalog, review, and act upon my information.

With this closer look, I’m starting a new 24 Letters series called PKM Toolkit, where I’ll share my results, the apps, workflows, tools, systems, and ideas that I use to get organized, keep focused, and create.

First up in this series is Readwise.

What is Readwise?

Readwise is an app that helps me manage and organize highlights from ebooks, articles, and email newsletters.

I’ve always enjoyed highlighting or writing marginalia in my books. Sometimes, I even keep a notecard in books to add notes or reference certain pages for future review. When I found out about Readwise, I was excited to try it out because it sounded like the digital version of what I’ve been doing for years.

A few weeks into the 30-day free trial, I subscribed, and It has become an essential part of the workflow that I use daily.

How I Use it

My favorite part of Readwise is the highlights emailed to me every morning at 7 am. It’s a great way to start the day because It can help set the tone and spark inspiration and creativity.

The email also encourages taking a deeper look at each quote and provides options to process it further and decide if I want to favorite it, share it, tag it, or even discard it. The same opportunities for review are available on the Readwise app and site via the Highlights Feed. There is also an option to browse the entire library on the site that I use regularly.

Readers of 24 Letters will note the weekly quote that I share. I always pull them from my highlight feed. Kindle is set up to sync into Readwise, and the bulk of my highlights are from books that I have read on that platform, although some are from newsletters and websites.

I can export my data in various formats and styles, including CSV, Markdown, and the graphical format I frequently use here, perfect for the web or Instagram. The data remains accessible, and that’s important to me.

There are several syncing options, currently in beta, for many of the aforementioned knowledge management apps like Notion and Roam. My preferred app, Craft, is not included at this time. I’m hopeful that Craft X will help build a bridge.

There is a robust search feature where I can use author names, titles, keywords, or tags to find what I need. Search can be narrowed to specific books or the entire collection. I use tags to track what’s been shared here before. I want to explore creating tagged collections based on the content or theme for personal and shared use.

How it Fits in

Readwise is a vital tool in my workflow. It’s the beginning of many things. In addition to the weekly quote I publish, sometimes a highlight gets imported into Craft and becomes the inspiration for a new idea or helps feed an existing project. Other times, it gets moved to my commonplace book for further consideration. It also helps me remember and reflect on what I’ve read in the past and sparks creativity and curiosity. That’s why it’s a daily use app for me and why I recommend it to anyone looking for a tool of this kind.

The read-it-later app that Readwise has in development looks exciting too, and could prove useful for the gathering stages of the PKM process. I’ve requested early access via beta, and look forward to trying it out and sharing my thoughts when I can.

Are you a Readwise fan, or perhaps you have another productivity app that you think I should look at? Email me and let me know. Your feedback about this series and 24 Letters is welcome, too.

Weekly Quote: Less is More

This week’s quote comes from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. This is a book that I’ve read multiple times and continue to find new wisdom and ideas every time I pick it up.

I’m working on trying to say less while learning to trust that those who are listening will ask for what they need. I still find myself sliding back into explainer mode sometimes, particularly in email. I desire to be helpful, but my attempt likely hits somewhere between a lack of focused thought and condescension.

It’s a balance, like so many aspects of communication. Trying to make expectations known or be supportive of someone without writing them a novel via email that they won’t read anyway.

Sometimes, less is more.

Ted Lasso on 60 Minutes

60 Minutes did a segment on Ted Lasso, one of my favorite television shows and one of the shining beacons of hope, love, and kindness that helped many of us get through some of the darkest days of the pandemic.

It’s a great watch if you want to smile and know a little more about this show that no one, including its creators, was quite sure would find an audience.

Weekly Quote: Rethinking is a Skill

Another quote this week from Think Again by Adam Grant.  I like the idea that rethinking, a critical part of leadership growth in my experience, is both a mindset and a skill set.

I’ve found that one of the most important skills for rethinking is active listening.  It’s important to hear those who present a different perspective and process what they’re saying instead of just waiting for the chance to respond.  I know this skill can be challenging to maintain, especially in high-stress situations, but it’s worth trying.

Time for reflection is also helpful.  It gives room to consider further the new information you have and decide what other data you may need to make the best decision.  Because rethinking is a form of decision-making, the entire process can help us learn and grow, so let’s embrace that. 

As Adam says, these skills get rusty.  What are you doing to get them out of the shed?

Weekly Quote: Make a List

This week’s quote is from Jon Acuff’s book Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.

I love lists. I always have. Creating lists brings me a sense of control and focus that is so empowering.

I use digital and analog tools to collect data and am pleased with this hybrid approach. Tasks end up in Todoist, and items that aren’t as fully formed or action-oriented find their home in Craft.

I find lists to be especially useful as a tool to slow my mind down during a stressful or unexpected challenge. I will take five or ten minutes, find a quiet place, and write everything down in these situations.

I think of this as reactive list building, although it’s essentially a brain dump, a concept popularized by David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I find that doing this helps me sort out a situation by getting organized, and it helps bring a sense of clarity to the challenges ahead.

Are you a list builder? What tools do you use? I’m going to write more about this in the future and would love to hear from you.