The Note

Shawn Blanc shares a handy writing productivity tip, amongst other insights into his process:

500 words ago, I lied to you. I said my writing begins at 7:30 every morning.

The truth is that my writing for this morning began yesterday when I put that note on my desk. That note is my topic for the day. That note is the single most important element of my personal productivity system. Because that note is the single most important thing I have to do today.

In a sense I'm reminded of Ernest Hemingway's method (scroll to page 6 of that PDF) of keeping the writing momentum going from day to day:

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. [...] Always stop when you are going good and donʼt think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

What Happens When You Unfollow Everyone on the Internet

Helena Price:

“What if we made more active decisions about how we spent our Internet time? If we weren’t bogged down maintaining our inboxes and social networks, who would we set out to meet or get to know better? If we weren’t so busy clicking links or browsing photos in our feeds, what would we choose to study or learn more about? If we spent these hours differently, what would happen?

I was curious to find out for myself.

So, one night while I was sitting in bed, I un-followed everyone on the Internet.”

The results of her experiment are fascinating, particularly that the action of checking her various feeds was so ingrained into muscle memory that she continued doing it for a while even though nothing was there to check anymore.

I feel that same muscle memory myself all the time. One thing that has helped some is cutting down on my Twitter and RSS feeds quite a bit in recent months. I don't know if I'm willing to unfollow everything just yet, but I do believe there is something to be said for carefully cultivating (and judiciously pruning) one's online experience.

For a More Ordered Life, Organize Like a Chef

Dwayne Lipuma of the Culinary Institute of America, while being interviewed for an NPR piece:

“The world is a giant gerbil wheel right now. I think if we just became a little bit more organized, a little bit more mise-en-place, understand what we really need and only do what we really need, I think we'll have more time for what's important.

You'll be able to sit down at the table with your kids and actually cook a meal. Get up a little bit earlier so you could breathe. You want to greet the day.”

The timing of coming across this article is funny to me, because there's an article about mise en place and other such concepts sitting in my drafts folder at this very moment. I should really finish it sometime. I think it's going to be a good 'un.

In the meantime, you can read more about mise en place here.

"Don’t write email that people can respond to."

NPR Creative Director Liz Danzico, being interviewed by web magazine Technical.ly:

“As far as Inbox Zero, I’ve tried a few things, and even now I use a modified GTD approach where I transfer all to-do-like email content into a to-do app. But basically those all pale in comparison to this simple approach:

Don’t write email that people can respond to.

If you ask questions in an email, people will respond. If you don’t answer their questions, they’ll ask again. If you write charming email, they will want more. Don’t do those things. Write an email that is impossible to respond to. Answer every question. Tie up every loose end. Write a complete and completely un-respondable email.”

I like her style. (h/t Patrick Rhone)