Weekly Quote: Ryan Holiday on Creating a Better Second Draft
This week's quote from Ryan Holiday's 2017 book Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts is geared towards creators, that's clearly spelled out in the subtitle. However, these ideas apply to other aspects of our lives, too.
You need to find the people you trust to tell you when things aren't working. The people who aren't afraid to potentially hurt your feelings, respectfully, of course, by pointing out the flaws in something you're deeply invested in. Remember, they're doing it for a higher purpose - helping you find your way to the next level where you belong.
There's time to get it closer to where you want it to be, and you won't get there without listening to them. Find your editor. Whether you're a writer, a manager, a student, or a parent, who's the person you trust to advise you on becoming a better version of yourself?
Morgan Housel on The Written Word
Morgan Housel, a longtime blogger and author of the excellent book The Psychology of Money and the forthcoming Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, has shared a few of his thoughts about writing.
A few of my favorite ideas:
Writing for yourself is fun, and it shows. Writing for others is work, and it shows.
The beginning of a story should be as pleasurable to read as the big idea that comes later.
Whoever says the most stuff in the fewest words wins.
Take a look because the entire piece is short and insightful. We all write in some capacity, from work emails to the great American novel. Morgan shares valuable advice for us all.
Weekly Quote: Tiago Forte on The Second Brain
This week’s quote comes from Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. I’ve been familiar with Tiago’s work for some time. Still, it wasn’t until a series of conversations over the last month with my friend Jim from Original Mac Guy that I decided it was time to dig into this book and give the approach further consideration.
I have lots of data, ideas, and things collected in too many places. I need a better system as I do more and create more. I hope this book can help me learn how to accomplish that
I’ll share more thoughts as I go through Tiago’s book. I’m taking it slow, trying to make highlights and digest and reflect on what I’m reading.
I send a monthly newsletter about the power of reading and journaling, the benefits of finding focus and productivity through intentionality, and how tech can help you grow in the ways you want. I also share a recommendation of something I'm enjoying or finding helpful. You can read past issues and subscribe here.
Weekly Quote: James Clear on The Courage to Look Foolish
This week’s quote comes from James Clear and the May 27th, 2021, issue of his 3-2-1 Newsletter.
The quote continues:
“It’s not the failed outcome that paralyzes us. It’s the possibility of looking stupid, feeling humiliated, or dealing with embarrassment that prevents us from getting started at all.
The first step to being courageous is being willing to look foolish.”
As I grow older, I get more comfortable with looking foolish. It’s something we should all endeavor to be better at. The potential reward from having a bias towards action is worth any temporary embarrassment.
Weekly Quote: William Zinsser on Knowing When to Stop
The writer, editor, and teacher William Zinsser first published On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction in 1976. It’s sold over a million copies, has been updated several times, and is a book I sincerely enjoyed. It ends where it should. There is no flourish or grand finale, just more of what Zinsser does so well, advice from an experienced and passionate writer to those seeking to learn from him.
This idea that the story will tell you where it wants to stop is true in many aspects of our lives. The ending is often there waiting in front of us and is frequently visible to others before we see it. But, once we do, it can be a relief, an end to searching or striving when it makes more sense to slow down and set our gaze upon a new beginning.
Weekly Quote: Philip Glass on Getting Better
Here’s a helpful reminder as we approach the new year from the composer and pianist Philip Glass. If you have things you want to start doing or get better at, pursue them. Be consistent and work towards small growth over time. When you fail or make a mistake, keep going.
Practice makes progress has been a recurring theme for me this year, and I know it will be on my mind in the year to come. I encourage you to adopt that mindset too.
On Twitter and Owning Your Stuff
Brent Simmons has written a great piece called After Twitter, and It’s worth reading.
I found Brent’s blog through his app NetNewsWire, which is my preferred RSS app. I like the design and the part of their mission where they actively encourage users to use RSS and reading apps. Any RSS and reading apps, not just their own, because they want the format to thrive.
With a similar spirit, Brent and the folks behind NNW encourage creators to write and build their stuff on a platform they control. On the now-inactive podcast Dialog, Federico Viticci, John Voorhees, and their guests talked about the importance of this a lot. I recommend this podcast, despite not having new episodes since 2019, because it is full of valuable ideas for creatives.
I have a Twitter account, although I’ve never really used it. Many of the creators I follow have gotten so much joy and connection from Twitter, not to mention lots of growth opportunities and valuable connections, and it’s unfortunate to see what is happening to the platform. I know it was never a safe space for so many, yet it seems to be going from not great to worse quickly.
I’m glad this site is something I control, and I’m thankful for RSS to help broadcast what I create. Don’t misunderstand; this can get lonely. I like collaborating with others and want to contribute my voice in other spaces if the right situation arises. Still, I like having a site and domain, and I encourage new creators to follow a similar path.
Maybe one positive from this shift will be a resurgence in blogs and websites with valuable and engaging content and ideas. Either way, I probably won’t be jumping on Twitter anytime soon.
9to5Mac Shows Off Freeform, Apple’s New Collaborative App
9to5Mac has a walkthrough of Freeform, the new collaborative, flexible canvas tool coming soon to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. My experience with similar apps is mainly limited to Mural, which was great for workshops. Because of that, I'm excited about the OS-level integration in Freeform and what that could mean for the future of remote work and workshop development focused on the Apple ecosystem.
I'll close with a question: Does Apple have a business case for a web version for Windows and Android users?
PKM Toolkit: Rediscovering My Journaling Habit with Day One
My earliest personal knowledge management tools were journals. Even in the days of using the original iPhone, I did most of my note-taking and writing in print. Can you remember the before times when you double-checked your pockets not for your phone, but to be sure you had your iPod and that tangle of earbuds?
For many years I kept a Moleskine journal and would write in it daily, sometimes more often. I documented my ideas, days, creative bursts, to-do lists, big plans, and emotional struggles. Later, I also kept a Field Notes in my pocket for jotting things down when I was at work or away from home. I even got nerdy and created a basic index system so I could reference stuff I had written.
Eventually, I just stopped. I got pretty intense in my habit and would write even when I lacked much to say because I didn’t want to break my streak. I became burned out by that part in particular and also found myself having more responsibilities as I got older, leaving less time for the kind of detailed journaling that I was prone to.
Making a Brief Return to Print…
With the changes that occurred in my life over the last year, I felt the desire to return to journaling so I could document my life and process my thoughts and feelings. To get started again, I picked up a new journal and decided on the following three prompts to answer for each entry:
What am I grateful for?
What did I win today?
What did I learn today?
It worked well for a few months, and then I had that little broken wrist issue, which made writing by hand impossible for eight weeks. So I took a few days off as I went through the initial recovery stage and decided to modify my approach instead of giving it up.
… And then to Digital
Using Day One, I switched to a simple one-question gratitude prompt and found this to be an even more effective method for my needs. It’s been rewarding, and here are my four big reasons why Day One is working better and will be the format that I stick with:
Photos with a date and place
It’s easy to import photos from the day’s events and have the journal automatically change the location and other relevant info based on their metadata.
Access from anywhere
It’s the same with reading on Kindle; I like that I can access this journal on my iPhone, iPad, or Mac. I have a shortcut on all of my devices that gets me right to a new entry with the date and the prompt so it is very convenient. I don’t have a set time for my reflection, although I try to do it in the morning. If that doesn’t happen, I can do this easily from any device later in the day.
Backups
Because my Day One backs up to the cloud and syncs to all of my devices, I don’t have to worry about losing my writing.
Less Pressure
By reducing the prompts from three to one, the process is simplified. I can write a sentence or a paragraph and feel happy with whatever I’ve recorded.
Journaling for Myself
I do not journal for anyone other than myself. I enjoy the process of recording gratitude because it feels great, and the ability to look at past entries and see what was happening can be fun too.
Do you maintain a journaling habit? I recommend it, in whatever form and frequency work for you. It’s helpful in so many ways for the present and can interest your future self too.
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.
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.
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.
Be Creative
David Sparks over at MacSparky posted about this Bloomberg article that suggests new entries into the podcast market are happening faster than the growth of the audience, which may cause issues for new shows as they try to reach new listeners. I received the link in today’s Morning Brew and read it in the quiet moments after I dropped my daughter off at daycare, and immediately thought it was a bit of a pessimistic take on the situation.
It’s helpful to hear that David heard similar feedback when he started Mac Power Users some years ago, and I’m glad he didn’t listen to it. His attitude that more art is always welcome is one of the reasons why I’m a fan and supporter of his work. As he put it:
Nobody looked at a Picasso painting and said, “That’s it, folks. We’ve reached Peak Art. There is no point doing any more painting.” The fact is that everything is evolving and every new voice leaves its mark.
I struggled with the idea that my contribution to the blogging world was worthwhile, and I am thankful for those who support new voices. One of the subjects I plan to write about is building time and intention around creativity. I hadn’t prioritized it for years, and now that I am again, I feel more complete. I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer to launch this site and begin my journey, and I encourage you not to wait any longer either.