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Documenting Lost Documents
In Praise of Rescuing Lost Stories Whenever I come across a broken link, I gasp. I pull up Archive.org, the vast backup of broken links, and I indulge the impulse. I noticed this first in 2012, when I tried finding full footage of the Watch the Throne documentary. I caught wind that there was a…
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How I Wrote a Book in the Pandemic
When the pandemic first started, some of us drew inspiration from how Shakespeare wrote during the plague, or how Isaac Newton invented calculus while in isolation. The idea was aspirational—perhaps we, too, could make great things during the pandemic. It was a relief. While I didn’t aim to be Shakespeare, I did need to write…
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Longcutting
There’s a time and place for shortcuts, but here’s a call to actually doing the work. It’s the opposite of a shortcut; it’s a longcut.
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Learn a Book’s Best Ideas in 20 Minutes
Why you don’t need to read an entire book to learn from it. In The Creative Habit, author and choreographer Twyla Tharp writes, “I read for a lot of reasons, pleasure being the least of them.” Tharp, probably like us, reads for specific, transactional, purposes. For example, she’s often looking for concepts, patterns and situations…
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The Kanye West Religion (Part 2): The Future
“My greatest award is what I’m about to do. I’m always thinking about the future,” the Grammy website quotes Kanye West. Kanye is, very much, a quintessential American CEO. He positions himself as a creative genius and innovator. More importantly, he invests vast amounts of resources into backing his claims up with the projects and…
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Own Your Marketing, Own Your Income
A Moment of Clarity In the Business of Content Creation Who Is This For? Content creators (i.e., anyone using social media to make money). People like Greg Isenberg and Peter Yang have asked, how can the average content creator make more money? It’s a real problem—TikTok influencers are trying to forecast their reach/engagement projections to…
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The Kanye West Religion (Part 1)
Who Is This For? Artists and creative independents. Kanye West’s most recent albums sound nothing like the one before. In an age of blockbusters and calculated risk, he proclaims his strategy is no strategy. Yet he has also cultivated one of the most fervent fan bases, rivaling the Beyhive, Beliebers, and the Swifties. Rolling Stone…
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Announcing: There Is No Right Way to Do This & How You Can Get Involved
This isn’t the order page for my upcoming book, but it’s just as important. There Is No Right Way to Do This is my first book, and I’m publishing it myself. As such, I’m writing to ask for your support. This book has been developing since I wrote this blog post seven years ago. I…
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The Agile Writer
A key concept I learned when I worked at Xtreme Labs was the idea of agility. Agile development was one of the distinctive features of their services. Xtreme believed that this style of programming, driven by weekly releases of a project to their clients at the end of every week, enabled better speed and quality.…
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Your Success Does Not Depend on Productivity Rules
Your productivity settings should evolve to keep up with you, not the other way around Image: Helena Lopes/Unsplash Productivity advice seems to be everywhere these days, but the more you read, the more you’ll see its contradictions. For example, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen used to advise against keeping a schedule, but now he keeps a…