The Self-Selecting Audience

Merlin Mann, from a podcast interview in 2009 (transcription mine):

“But the truth is, I've been able to attract a pretty broad audience for what I do by being very specific about who I wanna reach. And there's a funny self-selecting bias to that that delights me.

I love when I post something on Twitter and a bunch of people unfollow me. It delights me. Because that...that is the sound of my audience getting better.”

Absolutely spot-on. I feel like this is a good reminder not to take it too personally whenever someone unfollows you on [your social network of choice].

If you're a socially anxious person like me, I totally get it. It's tempting to watch your follower count like a hawk, hoping against hope that it won't go down even by one number. Whenever it does, you take it personally and wonder what you did to drive them away. This is especially true for people you respect/admire — I've had a couple of my heroes unfollow me in the past, and I'll be honest, it hurts.

The thing is, everyone has their reasons for unfollowing someone else, and they might not be what you think they are. Maybe it wasn't something you specifically did or said — maybe they just felt overwhelmed by their feed and had to prune things a little. Maybe you did inadvertently offend them, but so what? It probably wasn't going to work out anyway.

Don't spend a lot of time fretting over what anyone thinks about you, and especially stop trying to please everybody. It's just not possible. Your self-worth is not dependent on your follower count, your RSS subscriber numbers, your Klout score, or whatever other metric you might be paying too much attention to.

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

— Bill Cosby

Just keep doing the thing you love, and if someone's interests align with that, then you'll be on the road to building a group of friends – or audience, if you want to call it that – that will really matter to you and support you in the long run.

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Readers should note that, while I hope this stuff helps other people somehow, these kinds of posts are often letters to myself just as much as they are to the rest of the world. Don't confuse me as trying to be some kind of Life Guru™, because I'm still trying to figure all this out too.

'The Time You Have (In Jellybeans)'

A video by Ze Frank, using jelly beans to depict how little time we truly have in life for our creative pursuits. Neat concept, although I disagree with the way he divides the 'Work' and 'Creative' portions up from one another.

For creative people at least, I think the goal is to have those two aspects of life coalesce into something harmonious, not treat them as separate, untouching buckets of time.

Editorial for iPad is Out

I've been anxiously awaiting the release of Editorial after Federico Viticci mentioned it a while back, and now it's finally here. Speaking of Viticci, you should go read his epic review of the thing.

If you'd like a more summarized description of Editorial, go check out my post about the app on Tools & Toys.

Scott Belsky on Taking Action

Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Vice President of Products/Community and Head of Behance, was interviewed by The Great Discontent. He spoke a lot about creativity and doing great work.

There are two particular quotes that stood out to me. Here's the first:

“One piece of advice is that the opportunity cost of waiting to do what you want to do just goes up. The excuses you tell yourself to wait to try what you have in your mind are wrong. In truth, you will have more responsibility tomorrow than you have today — it’s a fact. You can always find a reason why you should wait, and some are very valid, like having to pay back student loans, but recognize the fact that the opportunity cost goes up, not down. Whenever people talk to me about their ideas, I get frustrated because I want them to do something about it. Take action on things that are in your mind’s eye.”

And later on:

“There are probably more half-written novels in the world than completed ones. The solutions to all of our gravest problems in society are in the minds of creative people out there: the creative chemist who works in a lab somewhere but can’t stay organized, or doesn’t have the impetus to act, may have the cure for cancer. Obviously, all of the greatest artists who we know are the ones who have produced stuff, but that doesn’t mean they’re the ones with the greatest insights.”

The biggest takeaway I got from this interview is the sheer importance of getting started with something. You might be holding onto the greatest idea ever, but it's worthless to the world if you don't do anything with it.

iTunes Movie Bundle Sale

A whole bunch of awesome HD film bundles are currently on sale in the iTunes store at huge discounts. Here are some of the better deals I've seen so far:

• Harry Potter Complete Collection — $60 (normally $126)
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy — $10 (normally $45)
• The Matrix Trilogy — $10 (normally $45)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1-3 — $10 (normally $45)
• Jurassic Park Trilogy — $20 (normally $45)
• The Bourne Collection — $30 (normally $60)
• X-Men Quadrilogy — $25 (normally $60)
• Spider-Man Trilogy — $20 (normally $33)
• Star Trek 1 - 10 — $50 (normally $100)
• Blade Trilogy — $18 (normally $45)
• Lethal Weapon Movie Collection — $20 (normally $60)
• Austin Powers Collection — $18 (normally $40)
• Back to the Future Trilogy — $20 (normally $45)
• Die Hard Ultimate Collection — $40 (normally $75)
• Taken Double Feature — $13 (normally $30)
• Ice Age Triple Pack — $18 (normally $45)
• Night at the Museum Double Feature — $13 (normally $30)
• The Godfather Trilogy: The Coppola Restoration — $20 (normally $54)

The Harry Potter bundle is especially crazy because it has all eight films for only ten bucks. I think I'll be picking up that one, the Bourne Collection, and the X-Men Quadrilogy.

UPDATE: It looks like the Harry Potter collection has jumped up to $60. Still a decent deal comparatively, but come on, Apple :(

Instapaper Web Beta

From the Instapaper blog:

“When the [Betaworks] team sat down with Instapaper’s creator, Marco Arment, back in April to get a download of his ideas and to-dos for improving Instapaper, the first thing on his list was to update the Instapaper website. Well we’ve done it, and it’s now ready for you to check out and test.”

I've only been using the beta for a few minutes, but I already dig the new visual style and layout. It's very exciting to see that Instapaper's still being actively developed and improved after Marco sold it a while back.

If you'd like to check out the beta, just head over to beta.instapaper.com and log in with your Instapaper credentials.

FeedPress Introduces Dropbox Integration

FeedPress, my RSS feed provider of choice, has announced an awesome new thing: your feed subscriber/reader stats can now be exported to a plain text file in Dropbox on an automatic, daily basis.

The text file even breaks down the RSS readers and services people are using to read your content. Pretty cool.

One Thing Well

There are a lot of apps in the world that are renowned for doing "one thing well." They're often seen as the best in their respective fields, because the developer focused on a single problem and simply nailed the hell out of it.

Why not apply the same principle to ourselves as artists?

After all, there are a ton of potential roadblocks when it comes to doing creative work, many of them psychological. Maybe you're trying to juggle too many projects at once. Maybe you've got so many ideas that you can't even take the first step with any of them because you're overthinking everything. At some point, you've probably allowed yourself to become distracted from your work, even despite your best efforts.

We've all been guilty of these things and more. I think it helps to focus on a single issue and really tackle that one thing until you're at the point where the only thing left to do is slightly tweak here and there. Pick a single project and aim for perfection in that one thing before even thinking about moving onto something else.

Perfection may not be achievable – or else nobody would need to be creative anymore – but your work will be better for trying. This is what all efficient craftspeople originally set out to do: eagerly master that one skill, honing it day-by-day until it becomes second nature.

Don't allow your work to become diluted by indecision and inaction. Forget distractions. Focus on the task at hand and block out the rest.

Do one thing well.

'Delight is in the Details'

Shawn Blanc has released his long-awaited eBook + interview series, Delight is in the Details.

“In the book, I talk about why the long-term success of our products (and our reputations) depends heavily on us taking the time to think through and sweat the details. This book encourages you to strive for excellence and resist the tendency to settle on “good enough” work that leads to forgettable products.

Additionally, I share several examples of products and services I consider delightful, and I talk at length with makers who've shown an astounding ability to sweat the details, gleaning from their experience and success.”

Shawn has put a ton of work into this project, and it shows. I highly recommend picking up a copy, especially if you're a designer or writer (or anyone else who does creative work, really).

The full bundle that includes the audio book and interviews is only $29, while the eBook by itself is $20. I'd recommend getting the full package at least to get access to the interviews.

Getting It Right

Jaren Sinclair, developer of Riposte:

“I have my dad to thank for my capacity for this kind of work, such as it is. If I had had a different upbringing, I would likely have a bad habit of settling for my first attempts. My dad taught me the importance of getting it right.”

We could all stand to do more things right rather than just okay, myself included.

Farmer's Market, Episode 7

Rick Stawarz of Macinstructor invited me to be a guest on his podcast, "Farmer's Market". We discussed my iOS workflow, my day job as a tech support guy, our former days as Apple employees, and the interview series I've been doing around here.

This was a lot of fun and I appreciate Rick having me on. Go listen!

“Creativity is part of everyone’s childhood until they learn – or are taught – how to not be creative.”

—Jeffrey Veen

Tooting Your Own Horn

A little while back, I heard about an email newsletter through Patrick Rhone called The Listserve, and it sounded pretty interesting so I signed up. I'm glad I did.

Essentially, what they do is pick a random person every day out of their ever-growing list of subscribers (currently numbered at 23,310) to write about almost anything they want, and it will be sent out to the rest of us a few days later.

The stories told within these emails – which are from people of all ages, all over the world – are often inspiring, thoughtful, and educational, and it is truly a joy to receive in my inbox every day. I can't recommend it enough.

About a month ago, one particular email – titled "Tooting Your Own Horn" – stood out to me in particular. It was written by a guy named Connor Tomas O'Brien, and something about it really struck me, because it addressed something that's been on my mind for a while now.

Here's a quote from the email:

“It’s a shame that, in some cases, those who are most comfortable with self-marketing are those without anything interesting to promote in the first place. Meanwhile, some of the greatest living artists and thinkers are right now almost certainly working in obscurity, lacking the confidence or the platform to show the world what they’re doing.

For those of us that aren’t prone to shouting about ourselves, we risk being drowned out by those that can and do. The presumption is that if you don’t say anything, you don’t have anything to say, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way. Those that are quiet are sometimes just waiting for a gap in the conversation. They’re waiting to be invited to speak.”

Man, it's like he's speaking directly to me. In a world full of people constantly shouting to be heard, my voice feels very small indeed.

Readers may or may not recall that back in December, I started up a membership subscription for this site. Since then, I've not talked about it much publicly at all, nor have I tried doing anything like a membership drive to encourage sign-ups. I merely placed a link in the top navigation bar and left it at that.

The result? Well, let's just say I'm not exactly close to quitting my day job yet.

It's a difficult thing, putting oneself out there and asking for people to support what you do. I've never been comfortable with sales or marketing, but I feel very strongly that writing this site is what I'm meant to be doing.

So, I'm setting my meekness aside for a moment to ask that you check out the membership subscription if you haven't done so yet, or make a one-time donation if that's more your speed.

Any support you can give goes a long way, and is very much appreciated :)