Category: Uncategorized
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Appreciating obscurity
“93% say that being a creator has introduced stresses that have ‘negatively impacted their lives,’ with 45% saying they’ve experienced ‘big emotional lows,’” report the authors of this paper which surveyed 1,624 respondents. There’s no surprise to me here. As I’d covered in Marker before, making money as a creator is tough. The creator economy…
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That’s that heat
For the new version of my book, my partner Bernice Liu (i.e., the artist Spime) blessed me and Holloway with the cover: Here’s an excerpt where I explain more about the cover. (I’m so happy that I can so conveniently link to these, it’s definitely a perk of publishing a digital book with Holloway. Print…
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Improve the interface
The best social media sites have incredible network potential, but none of them enable a really good creative process. It’s the same upload process, or just typing or pasting words into a field. What sites like Unum, Buffer, and Hypefury—and even Linktree (to the tune of $45 million!)—have done incredibly well is identify parts in…
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Blogs are a longcut
“Blogs are dead.” I know what people who write that with the headline mean, which is mainly that the vibe has shifted away from blogs. It makes sense to me; social platforms are incentivized to keep people in the platform, so any content linking outwards—to, say, a blog—will not be boosted organically by the algorithm.…
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Focus involves quitting
Quitting sucks. We’re taught not to quit it. We’re also taught to do more, all the time; to always grow. This is a tension that often gets in the way of us being the best at what we do. The Dip isn’t just a book about quitting, it’s a book about focus; “The way you…
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5 Sentences about Ye on Failing
One of the things I admire most about Ye is his how he’s reconciled his perfectionism with the failure that comes with innovation. At his since-deleted blog post from 2008, Ye wrote, “It’s either pass or fail! A+ or F-!” In his interview with REM in 2013, half a decade later, Ye says, “If everything…
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When idea becomes solution
At first glance, it’s obvious that we don’t need more ideas. Everybody has ideas. Ideas are cheap. Ideas don’t matter. So they say. Yet the ephemeral thoughts we label as “ideas”—other words include insights, complaints, challenges—are the fundamental raw ingredients to solutions. Ideas are the soil for solutions to emerge. When you express an idea in…
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How a daily writing habit sparked my creativity
5. Million. People. I couldn’t believe my eyes. 5 million people had seen a piece that I wrote. It was spontaneous. I just wrote that post because the topic was interesting to me, and I promised myself I would write something that day. I started blogging when I was 15 years old. I remember nights…
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The other half
There’s a popular article making the rounds, entitled, “There is no such thing as a millennial middle class.” It includes some important points, namely a call to reform the political decisions that have led to Canada’s high student debt loads, unaffordable housing, and stagnant wages. All worthy causes to fight for. This resonates with me…
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Hire yourself
“What if you hire yourself?” There are two ways to interpret this question. First, are you good enough to hire yourself—would you pay your rate to work with yourself? If not, what can you do to get to that rate—what is the outcome you need to provide to yourself that would make your price worth…