Prefer to read this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: A Healthy Vault Isn’t a Tidy One; It’s One That Actually Helps You Think When did you last open a note in your vault just to think? Not to organize, not to file, not to tag. When’s the last time your vault surprised you with a connection you’d forgotten you made? If you’re drawing a blank, it may be a sign that your Obsidian vault is in need of some TLC. It happens. Most people eventually fall into the same trap when...
14 days ago • 9 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: The Suffering is Optional Last month, I was listening to Gabby Beckford give her talk at Craft + Commerce, and she asked the question: If you could burn the rulebook, what would you change? I’ve been brewing on this for the last couple of weeks. And I think I’ve got an answer: I would remove the suffering from the creative process. To some, that may sound blasphemous. There are lots of famous books that...
21 days ago • 5 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: AI can give you creative superpowers. But you have to use it intentionally. There are two camps when it comes to using AI for creative work, and they can’t stand each other. Two little kids ready to fight. On one side, the purists refuse to let AI touch their writing. They’re fine using AI for mundane tasks, but the creative process? That’s sacred. To the purists, using AI in the creative process at all...
28 days ago • 9 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: You Don’t Have to Wait for Someone Else to Fix It Anymore A few weeks ago, an Obsidian update quietly broke one of my favorite plugins. A small tweak to the app destroyed every custom callout in my vault overnight. As frustrating as this was, it’s not the first time something like this has happened. Right before I released LifeHQ, a plugin called Query Control was broken in the exact same way. Last...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Prefer to read this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: What James Clear told me about how he views using AI in the writing process Last week, I was in Boise for the Craft + Commerce conference. I always love going to Craft + Commerce, but this year was extra special because I got an invite to a private mastermind that happened the day before the conference started. Part of that mastermind was a 90-minute Q&A with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. James Clear, author...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: The better the tools get, the more the only thing that matters is what you bring to them. There’s a section near the start of Four Thousand Weeks that I can’t stop thinking about. Oliver Burkeman opens the book with a bold prediction made by the famous economist John Maynard Keynes. Back in 1930, Keynes stood in front of a room and told everyone that technology was about to make us roughly eight times...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: The Basics are Pretty Basic A few weeks ago, David & I were recording a Focused feedback episode, and the topic of a minimum viable productivity system came up. And it dawned on me that we really don’t need a whole lot to make sure that we stay focused on what really matters. A calendar. A task manager. A place for notes. That’s basically it. Every workflow, every system, every tweak and optimization...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: How I Learned to Name and Face the Fear That’s Been Running My Business. Last week, I attended The Growth Intensive by Darrell Vesterfelt & Corey Wilks. Darrell is a growth strategist who helped scale ConvertKit (now Kit) from $1m to $7m in 15 months, and Corey is a clinical psychologist who helps founders break patterns of self-sabotage. I got to spend time with both of them when I was at Sponsor Games...
2 months ago • 9 min read
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. The Big Idea: Your PKM Practice was Secret Tastemaking Training for the AI Era. There’s a recognizable pattern to AI slop. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The “It’s not just X, it’s Y” sentence structure used over and over. The smooth, generic, vaguely helpful tone that could have been written about literally anything. The five-bullet structure where every bullet starts with a strong verb. The “Let me break...
2 months ago • 8 min read