I asked Mike Monteiro how he thinks about his creative practice, and he wrote about how much he loves folding socks. Life’s most mundane and creative activities are interconnected.
Hello world. This is my new blog. I’ve been writing it in private for awhile now, so I’m glad you’re here. Check out what it’s all about, then I hope you’ll explore and find something interesting.
I usually post something new a couple times a week. If you’d like a monthly roundup via email, subscribe to the newsletter.
A lot has changed since I started writing on the web half a lifetime ago, but I believe one thing hasn’t: sharing what’s on your mind brings you closer to finding your people and yourself. I’m glad to be back at it. What are you working on? I’d love to hear about it—get in touch.
Singer-songwriter EJAE recorded a couple of voice notes on her way to the dentist which became the mega-hit earworm Golden. EJAE was the voice of lead singer Rumi in KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix’s most popular movie of all time, and my favorite movie of the year. For the fans!
When you focus on maximizing productivity, you inhibit creativity. In many ways, productivity and creativity are at odds.
Productivity is all about getting stuff done more efficiently: completing tasks and projects to meet your obligations and be successful. Capitalism relies on ever-increasing levels of human productivity. It always asks: What is the most value you can bring with the least amount of time and effort?
On his 50th birthday, Anil Dash shares five ways to treat others, make things, and treat yourself. These five things confirm why Anil is my friend, mentor, and cofounder, whose expertise includes the ability to frame the passage of time in huge terms. Happy half-century, Anil!
Parenthood reminds me on a daily basis: there’s a big difference between intellectual and experiential knowledge. Lessons from a book or teacher pass easily. Experiencing something firsthand—that is, getting your body involved—is how you absorb information into your bones.
No matter how often I tell my kid what I know, she won’t fully learn until she does things herself, often the opposite things I advise. Hard to watch! But this is attendance in the school of life, where her experience will always be a more effective teacher than me.
(via) Kevin Kelly’s excellent essay about publishing today is that it’s all about self-publishing. These points jumped out at me:
The traditional approach to publishing a book—write a proposal, get an agent, get a publisher, get an advance, write the book, do a tour, collect royalty checks—is over. (This related piece on the dire economics of traditional book publishing concurs.)
Even with an agent and publisher, it’s up to you to supply your audience and market to them. (This was my experience with the Lifehacker book 15 years ago.)
On-demand printing software and services are better than they’ve ever been for self-publishers. I especially like Kelly’s flow chart of platform recommendations depending on your goals and content. First question: “Have an audience?”
The audience for text is stagnant and skews older, while the audience for video continues to expand while getting younger.
Being a book author has a lot more cachet attached to it than being a blogger. I’ve been both, and for me, engaging with an audience online is way more fun and fulfilling than having a book with my name on it sitting on a shelf.
When your self-worth is linked to your productivity, you see every activity in your day as either valuable (productive) or not. I have this disease. At some point, the ability to check items off a todo-list stops moving you forward, and instead holds you back. Rick Foerster argues for the value of “unproductive” time without metrics.
What did you figure out on sabbatical? What was the takeaway from the 10-day? When you give yourself time and space to ask big questions, you expect to have an epiphany. But there are no lightning bolts. Instead, you get a whisper or a notion, wisps of ideas and longings. Some pass quickly, others tug your sleeve. Some dissipate given attention, others take root with nurturing. Stop checking your watch and wondering when the revelation will arrive, and listen for the whispers instead.
Confusing intensity and passion is a common mistake. Intensity is external; passion invokes something inside you. Passion is a call-and-response with your soul. It’s not just adrenaline.
— Po Bronson makes a useful distinction in his book What Should I Do with My Life? (my review). It’s easy to look back at intense, adrenaline-driven times in your career and feel nostalgia for the clarity of focus, but it doesn’t necessarily mean what you were doing was your passion.
Jenn Schiffer shares a useful list of websites where you can get beautiful, free images licensed for use in your creative projects.
I enjoy a few blogs and newsletters that obviously use gen AI to make header images. Those images do the writing zero favors. As I writer, I understand the impulse to outsource image generation to an AI tool where you can describe what you want with words. But just because you can, does not mean you should. Imagery that’s obviously generated by AI has a who cares smell about it, and I don’t use it here.
Years ago I was at Disneyland in California with my family, taking a lunch break between rides. As I sipped my drink and watched the crowd passing by, I spotted someone I recognized: Ron Moore, creator of the TV series Battlestar Galactica. I was a huge BSG fan who was sad the series had ended. Starstruck, I abandoned all vestige of a chill New Yorker who sees and ignores celebrities, and I ran up to him to thank him for the show. He was kind and gracious—and said something I never forgot.
One way I’m breaking my Amazon habit is by patronizing independent bookstores through Bookshop. Check out my favorite books on creativity, making stuff, and living well at my Bookshop.
(via) Steve Krouse nails the difference between vibe coding and programming with AI assistance: “Vibe coding is on a spectrum of how much you understand the code. The more you understand, the less you are vibing.”
His graph is a useful check to plot your own AI-assisted coding projects. Rapid prototypes, hobby apps, and low-stakes, low-maintenance projects are great candidates to be high on vibes, while the serious stuff you intend to expand and maintain should land further on understanding.
How does anyone achieve something big? The answer is always, “They worked hard and got lucky.”
Most people emphasize how hard they worked to accomplish something. Others looking at them think they got lucky. It’s never one or the other. It’s both/and. Lots of people work hard and never get lucky. Some people get lucky but don’t put in the work. Those are the folks you don’t hear about.
When you get sucked into our collective fascination with the heroes, champions, geniuses, and creators who have achieved a level of success, don’t forget both the hard work and good luck involved.
Not long ago my writing group was discussing how to process criticism of your work, and I shared Ann Friedman’s classic Disapproval Matrix. First, know where the criticism is coming from. Feedback from folks in the top two quadrants are the ones that matter.
What would happen if you surrendered your computer, phone, books, and pens and went silent—no contact with anyone—for 10 full days? There was something irresistible about this question to me. I needed to find out the answer for myself.
The prospect of being alone in your own head for 10 days is scary to a lot of people. I happen to be a person who loves being in my head. It’s safe, comfortable, and logical there. I rely on facts and narratives to form my understanding of the world in there. My body rarely gets involved, at least consciously. And that served me just fine—until it didn’t.
Good personal finance software is worth the expense. When Intuit shut down Mint, I got Monarch Money and it’s way better. When you use my referral link you get 50% off Monarch’s yearly cost (and I get a gift card). Give Monarch a try.
Just sent the first installment of the newsletter. When I confirmed it arrived in my inbox, I noticed a typo.
The key difference between an email and a web page: once it’s been sent, you can’t fix typos in an email. This typo is forever cemented in my inbox, right smack dab in issue #1.
The typo could haunt me for the rest of my days. Or, I could view it as a personal monument to practice over perfection.
The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it. And why people with Volkswagens, and mortgages, Personal Equity Plans and matching Louis Vuitton luggage are not.
— Art director Linds Redding in a classic viral essay about his 30 years in advertising. Following his cancer diagnosis, Redding passed away at the age of 52.
Writer Ann Patchett describes the idea she has for her next project as a beautiful, wild butterfly fluttering about her mind, a three dimensional miracle of color and movement she enjoys for as long as she can.
When it’s time to put pen to paper, she plucks the butterfly from her mind, smashes it onto her desk, and pins it down. What’s left is her book: a flat, one-dimensional, “dismantled, and poorly reassembled” version of her butterfly.
No one wants to smash the butterfly, but it’s the only way to turn an idea into something tangible.
Your true self is intensely interested in your real life’s work—but it could give a rat’s ass about anything else. When you pursue a career that pulls you away from your true self, your talent and enthusiasm will quit on you like a bored intern.
— Martha Beck with a signature delightful turn of phrase. I’ll forever think about my talent, enthusiasm, and energy like interns I can give interesting work they’ll enjoy and grow doing, or anything else that will make them quit on me.
