I currently work as the director of marketing at FGX. One of the aspects that continues to energize me is the depth of thought the leaders put into defining the world of global IT logistics. They’ve noticed and named a dozen interesting patterns in their world.

Our article defining the term, “Infrastructure density,” is the most recent result of this practice. Even though the team has talked about the term for years, putting pen to paper really sharpened and clarified the idea. It made us more committed to what it meant and didn’t mean, and we needed to untangle it from other ideas.

While insights like these have remained in conversation with some of our most valuable clients, there’s a lot of value in sharing them with everyone else too. I’m looking forward to further building out the world.

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If a lot of people see your creative work all the time, then it’ll be more difficult for you to make imperfect work. 

You won’t have space to tinker and experiment so much. You won’t even just be able to share a link that you like—people might think that you’re offering a formal endorsement. You might go viral or get publicly shamed at any point. You don’t want to make a bad impression, or to waste anyone’s time. Publishing becomes a lot more precious.

Reaching a smaller audience used to be a bug, but now it’s a feature. As Donald Glover says, “Making songs now that I know aren’t going to be heard by anybody else, it is an interesting thing. Because I think you have to do that now as an artist. I really do. Because you start to manipulate your work based on other people, which is fine depending on what you’re trying to do.” Sometimes, making things for yourself—that you won’t show anyone else—is a great way to jumpstart your art.

You could also just shrink the audience size as well. Recording artist J. Cole realizes this. “I been wanting a lil blog for years,” he writes in the introductory post of his new blog. “Somewhere to post random [stuff I like] where the audience is way smaller than it is on the social media platforms.”

Blogs are a great way for you to intentionally connect with much fewer people, who are seeking a deeper connection.

P.S., Chamillionaire recently also started a blog. Most of the posts are private, and in order to read them you need to sign up for his membership website. While it’s a more commercial intention, I am glad that he found a new way to use blogs to connect with his audience.

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It’s with this observation that he suggests looking at stories as an asset class. He writes, “No matter where we are in our lives professionally or personally, we all have plenty of raw material to develop into compelling stories.” One of my favorite ways to do that is with the podcast I co-host with my friend Hamza, New Material. 

You invest in your stories by developing the raw material—making it interesting, identifying clear characters, and describing specific details. You get feedback on it, refine it and learn how to tell it better—building tension, describing a transformation, and creating a resolution. With enough investment and promotion, maybe it plants seeds for a new way that other people can see the world.

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Apple honors people who think different.

Stripe honors people with high agency who value intellectual ambition, as well as economic and technological progress. 

Every good brand is built on honoring a group of people. Who is your group? What do they respect and value? What are you making that will honor, impress, and energize them?

When you apply this degree of thoughtfulness, and promote your work enough, good things will happen.

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Reading a book summary is not the same as reading a book. In fact, you miss the most important parts of the book when you read the summary. Worse yet, you may even fool yourself into thinking you know what the book is about. 

Whether it’s done by AI or a person, summarized information—books, notes, interviews, etc.—is definitely not the same as the raw material. The risk of misunderstanding or missed nuance increases drastically. 

Context, specificity, tone of voice—you don’t know any of that when you ask AI to summarize the information. Whether it’s right or not, I don’t think it’s reliable enough yet to completely outsource it. I’m not sure it ever will be. 

A summary is most helpful as, perhaps, an alternate perspective or a preview. It’s not a substitute for doing the actual work.

If you want to really understand a subject, you’ll want to do like Robert Caro does and turn every page. Read every line. Listen to every word.

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It doesn’t always look like that, of course. Ezra Miller likens editors less to technicians, and more to mystics, saying, “They see something that isn’t there yet, whether of their own work or your work, and not really knowing how to get there, they help you get there. Not really knowing how to get there, they help themselves get there.”

“If you are not strong enough to give the writer what he needs, which is your true, strong opinion, if you have to hold back, it is not going to work,” says Bob Gottlieb. He goes on to describe editing as an “intelligent and sympathetic reaction to the text and to what the author is trying to accomplish.”

In many ways, it’s the opposite of looking outwards to external metrics, research, or zeitgeist. It’s making sure you and the author listen to yourselves, and give your work the shape it needs. Think about Anna Wintour and Vogue. Adam Moss says, “It’s like trusting yourself in any context, which is that you get a little courageous, and you venture out, and you try something.”

Without building this trust in yourself, you’re going to be limited in how far you can go as an editor.

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Sherwood, the media arm of the retail trading platform, Robinhood has poached a half-dozen high profile journalists to lead its Spring launch. Walter Hickey, the Business Insider data guru who won a Pulitzer for his role in a graphic novel-style treatment of the oppression of Uyghurs, who will be executive editor of the the new venture, and joined by Axios’ Matt Phillips; the former Vox data journalist Rani Molla; Jack Raines, who is leaving the Exec Sum newsletter; and the former Gawker and Outline chief Leah Finnegan, who will be features and magazine editor. Sam Ro, who will keep running his own TKer substack, one of our favorites, will also be a consulting editor on the project. They’re joining a team of about a dozen working on the Snacks newsletter and Chartr data product. “These editors and writers are wildly creative and deeply experienced, and are not only defining the voice of our news experience, but actively working to move journalistic storytelling forward in ways that really matter,” said Sherwood president and EIC Josh Topolsky.

What’s more curious is the original vision for Sherwood and its publication Snacks. In Axios a year ago:

Robinhood will support the creation of the outlet to start, but Topolsky plans to create commercial opportunities for the editorial products he’s building….

“It’s a significant, long-term investment,” Topolsky said when asked about Robinhood’s commitment to the new outlet. There are “a lot of resources being dedicated to this project.”

Topolsky plans to hire dozens of employees this year, including reporters, editors and social media content creators.

In addition to Snacks, he hopes to launch new newsletter products across specific verticals related to business and finance.

One idea he’s considering is creating specific newsletters that cover high-profile companies, such as Tesla or Disney….

Topolsky likened Sherwood to the media arm of Bloomberg LP, a financial software company owned by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Media is supported by Bloomberg LP but operates independently.

“Robinhood essentially has created like a ‘Terminal’ for everybody,” Topolsky said. News and information “can be a great value add.”

(I had no idea about Josh’s history with Bloomberg.) 

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Later in my tenure there, I would start copying and pasting these comments down to try to make sense of them. I didn’t know it yet, but that was the beginning of a great idea.

Several years later, this dormant idea emerged in full-form recently when I met with Rachel Jepsen, who is currently my writing coach and is also the editor of my book Creative Doing. I was discussing the challenge of noticing my own insights and patterns as a writer, when she suggested that I start logging them. It was a great idea—but how?

So the next time I took in an editor’s feedback, I decided to set up a new, separate, doc. This would be my editing log. It would have three columns:

The left column shows the text before the edit. I usually keep an old version of the same doc open in a separate window.

The middle column shows the text after the edit. I usually accept changes in the doc, and then paste the new version in the log.

The right column shows the immediate responses and impressions I notice and take note of. This might include something as simple as noticing a word that was removed (and asking why?), noticing a paragraph shifting around, or how a paragraph was tightened up. If I’m working with an editor, I’ll try to figure out what they’re trying to say or help me accomplish.

I also note the longer, more open-ended, suggestions or the stronger directives here, often pasting in the direct comment, and write down my ideas, options, and stream of consciousness through the note. What would be a way to achieve the editor’s comment? Is it the right direction for the piece? 

As it turns out, I just met with Rachel again recently and she was happy with this editing log. When I asked her if it was supposed to look like this, she said the log was just a suggestion—and she’s happy with how it turned out.

It’s great to have a record of these changes, and provides a starting point for me to take in my insights and patterns. I’ve started applying the logging idea to other parts of my life. I was originally inspired by the idea of a decision journal, in which a person writes down the decision they make and explores how it turns out 6 months in the future.

One final thing I really appreciate about the edit log; I like that it slows me down. That’s the whole point. I can’t just click-click-click and accept changes quickly; I need to slowly and manually copy and paste edits, and my brain can respond to spotting the differences in the before and after, which I can then write down into a note. R.P. Blackmur’s words to Robert Caro come to mind, “You’re never going to achieve what you want to achieve if you don’t stop thinking with your fingers.” Similarly, Ross Gay, in The Book of Delights, “Susan Sontag said somewhere something like any technology that slows us down in our writing rather than speeding us up is the one we ought to use.” The editing log is one of those technologies.

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These are particularly useful for new customers, as well as prospects who are really close to buying:

• 8 Things to Do the Moment You Join Shopify Plus (I pitched and authored the first version of this with 5 items, based on a good friend’s feedback)
• 8 things you didn’t know you could do with GitHub Copilot

How your team uses your own product

These are a fun, engaging way to cover two important things your buyers will want to know—what it’s like to work with your team and how to use the product:

• How Gong uses Gong
• How Notion uses Notion
• How Slack uses Slack (from a developer angle, and since Slack is so popular, also in the form of publicity)

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It’s a great way to get someone interested in learning about a topic that would’ve otherwise bored them immensely.

Elvia Wilk writes, “First I point—then, you notice my finger. Then you notice my whole enthusiastic self.” Then you notice my expertise and other enthusiasms. 

Like, you notice Venkatesh Rao’s finger, then you notice his enthusiastic self, then you notice he wrote a book about management that you uses the television show, The Office to explain his theories.

There’s no shortage of examples. I highlighted some more in this post: 

The World According to Star Wars, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, Adam Smith can Change Your Life, and Monster Loyalty.

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