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Recommended Reading

No one goes north this time of year, so I took a weekend off and headed up north with my son on a road trip to Door County. A whole bunch of new books were released, so the timing was perfect to catch up on some reading. Alex Van Halen’

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Make the time.

I hate that sentence. It assumes a lot about agency, not to mention the reader’s mental and physical abilities. The core of it is necessary to hear, though. It would be better stated as, “You must fight for enough time to devote to the things that matter.” No one

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What’s your creative refuge?

I did a stupid thing.  I had a summer packed with content strategy work — mostly about AI and mostly with big tech companies.  For some reason, I decided this meant I had to really buckle down and never leave my keyboard. I took only one vacation day for the entire

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Long Form = Long Term

I’ve been writing a lot about AI lately for big tech companies. I don’t think any of it would surprise you anymore, except for the reverberations. Every Friday I see news releases about thousands being laid off in content-related business, while I hear nothing but great things about

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Easier books and handsome home screens

I think there’s still a place for books in 2023. I consider them the place for the “why.” Courses and posts cover the “how.” I’ve been privately updating my 2022 post 35 Lessons from 35 Years of Newsletter Publishing with new lessons, revisions, and research. It’s a

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Solitude Deprivation

Since I’m doing some editing and cleaning on my site, I figured it might be fun to do another link love issue. Enjoy! — CJ 1 Author Cal Newport explains the collected research on whether smartphones are bad for kids or just another moral panic. This was more even-handed than

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Choose your stressor.

Here’s just a quick lesson I learned from a road trip to the Smoky Mountains this past week. Even with the views, the southern cooking, and time with family, I put in plenty of work — both for myself and others (related: see my new post at StudioNorth on B2B

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How to Stay Creative Forever

How do writers stay in shape? They usually don’t. But writers (and all creators) do have to keep their minds in shape over the decades if they hope to maintain that career or hobby. The mind gym It’s now been 36 years since I started publishing and I

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Bring Back The Hobby

Stephenie Buck writes in Our Parents Discovered Leisure. We Killed It [https://timeline.com/hobby-career-b5d199b0df18#.3jl4jfnmu]: > "For many of us, the hobby is dead. Our work lives have merged with our free time, and hobbies are now often indistinguishable from second jobs. In a culture obsessed with productivity,

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The Importance of Leisure

We need a different relationship with leisure in our minds. It may be the best investment we can make. I refer over and over to this article by Maria Popova: Leisure, The Basis of Culture [https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper/?mc_cid=c738efb0b7&mc_eid=d012da5742]