Habits are in focus at this time of year more than any other. My recent reading of Atomic Habits [https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits] and testing various habit tracking apps has had me evaluating how I get things done and how I plan my time. I’m not alone. Here are other authors writing along similar lines: * Cal Newport: habits vs. workflows [http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/09/11/habits-vs-workflows/] * Ryan Holiday: how to develop better habits [https://medium.com/s/notes-on-changi…
Building habits is easier when you understand the science behind them. And there are some good apps that can help.
Matt Gemmell gives some insight on how he writes his novels using Ulysses. > TOLL is the result of two years of work, and is the second book in my KESTREL series. It’s around 100,000 words long, and required a great deal of planning, research, and organisation. I used various tools for the planning stages, but ultimately I moved almost everything into Ulysses, to keep all my book-related material in one place and easy to access. You don’t have to be a novel writer to get some value from this po…
Alan Jacobs gives some insight into how he keeps track of things when doing research for a book. Reading the post, you come to know he’s tried many ways of organizing things, but he’s recently begun following the methods of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten system. He shares how he had thought he was too late in life to adopt this system, but… > But ultimately, when I was working on The Year of Our Lord 1943, I realized that the demands of my research — trying to track the thought and writing of f…
David Cain shares an experience: > One evening last week, I was sitting on my front stoop waiting for a friend to come over. I brought a book out with me, but instead of reading I just sat there and let my senses take in the scene. I didn’t look or listen for anything in particular, I just let the details of this particular moment in the neighborhood come to me: the quality of the air—heavy and warm, the incoming summer storm kind; birds; two couples having a conversation down the sidewalk; the…
How do you fight the feeling of being overwhelmed when you have so many roles in your life that bring responsibility? I have to remind myself of what progress is made and set up a weekly rhythm.
I enjoyed this look at the devotional practices of Richard Baxter. I’m already a believer in Christian meditation [https://chrisbowler.com/journal/meditation], but sometimes hearing the experiences of others can be an inspiration to us. > In The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, Baxter states that, because man is a rational creature, we must reason with ourselves. We are to take a truth and mull it over in our minds. He compares it to a balance that sits before us. There is a natural desire to want to…
I’ve been heads down with our team getting Conveyor ready for a launch. And most of my work is writing. When you write copy for a product, you quickly come to realize how massive an effort this is — and just how much copy is required. Tracking all your work and changes is not an easy task. And so I’ve been keeping an eye out for people describing their own writing practices of guidelines. As UX Writer is relatively new as a career choice, there’s not yet a lot of material to be found. Oh, you c…