Experiments Check In
A few of you wrote to me to ask about how my year of experiments is going. To refresh everyone, for 2021, I changed personal websites, started blogging daily again, changed book publishing models, moved to a new newsletter host, and tried to fix an old guitar with my son
Get Your Ass Kicked
From Brené Brown [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9855106-if-you-are-not-in-the-arena-getting-your-ass] via Weekly Thing [https://weekly.thingelstad.com/]: > “If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today
22nd Birthday Makeover
Yesterday afternoon (February 26, 2021), I began preparing my Fender Strat for a makeover/restoration project with my son. I never knew when the guitar was actually built, so when I finally opened her up, this is what I saw. That’s a little spooky. It’s stamped February 26,
2 Dutch Sayings You’ll Use Every Day
I learned these from Adam Curry, inventor of podcasting and former MTV VJ. I use them almost daily (as mantras in my head when dealing with difficult projects and people). “Wat je zegt ben jezelf, met je kop door de helft.” Loosely translated, it means: What you say about others
Reading Is An Action
And it takes time. So, why do treat our reading (of RSS, social media, email, books, etc.) in the same way we treat non-active parts of our life? An aside: I’ve given up giving lifehack-y, productivity tips. As lucrative as they have been for some, I’ve aged out
Practice Avoids Perfect
I love this from Tim Stoddart [https://www.timothygrant.co/]: > “Hate to break it to you, but the people who read my morning blog read my worst work. Which is actually the point. This is my warm up. This is my set of jumping jacks before I do burpees.
Hey, World! It’s About Time!
I’ve spent months trying to duct tape together what the team at Basecamp just unveiled: Hey, World [https://world.hey.com/jason/hey-world-b02a6f2e]. In short, they’ve taken their email service, Hey [https://hey.com], and turned it into a privacy-friendly, old-school publishing platform. I love it. Just about
Ask.
You have to ask. It’s humbling. It’s takes guts. But if you need help, you need to ask. If you want customers, you have to ask. The problem is that some businesses ask too much and don’t provide enough value. The heart of content marketing (and just
David Lee Roth Predicted the Future
30 years ago, David Lee Roth made a prediction in a music video about what he’d look like and be up to in 2021. How close did he come? [https://www.vhnd.com/2021/02/17/when-david-lee-roth-predicted-2021-in-1991s-a-lil-aint-enough-video/] I think he (accidentally?) predicted everything he could possibly do to offend