The Weekly Review: Vol VII Issue 1
Hi folks,
How’s 2020 going for you? Are you still excited for what the year might bring? Or are you already feeling deflated because you’re struggling to adopt some of the changes your holiday-enthused self thought were a good idea? I hope it’s more of the former and very little of the latter.
We’ll all do well to remember that the journey is just as important as the goal, and change comes moment by moment.
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Running your own space
It’s the time of year when I consider if I want to make any changes to my personal site. Some years I have the margin for it, others not. There are always things I’d like to do (the Library page is something I’ve long wanted to give attention), but owning a site is work. Plain and simple.
Recently, Alan Jacobs shared some issues he was having with his own site.
Some very strange stuff is happening to my blog right now. Many posts, at least recent ones, have disappeared from the homepage, though they’re still online and visible if you know the URL. At first I thought only photo posts were missing — see for instance this and this and this — but now I see that some text posts are missing also. And tags don’t seem to be working properly: some of them turn up no posts, others turn up only a few when there are in fact many.
Anyone who runs their own hosted site likely can empathize with this kind of scenario. Me? My Kirby-based RSS feed has issues every so often. But sometimes those issues can feel too much to deal with when your blog is a small piece of your life (especially as most of us do not earn direct income from our sites). For Jacobs, these issues, combined with other some of the negative aspects of the internet life, seemed to tip the scales.
The world overall is not in the worst shape it could be in, but online life seems to be chiefly a cesspool. I am glad that it is only a part of life; I hope that in the coming decade it will be, for me and for others, a decreasing part. One can always hope. I won’t say that I’ll never return here, but right now I feel that the blogging season of my life, which started around 2007, is over. I’m excited about the work to come, the reading and thinking and writing that awaits me, and I’m especially excited about doing all of it in a less internet-connected way.
As I spent the holidays reviewing my year, considering goals for 2020, and contemplating possible things I’d like to do with my site, I came across a tweet where the author was stating that sharing thoughts using a Twitter thread has much less friction than running a blog. Another person chimed in that they agreed as drafting blog posts adds the burden of being perfect, while tweets allow you to shoot out quick ideas.
I thought to myself, “What a crock!”
First, if we all took a a bit of time to shape our thoughts before sharing them, online discourse might be in a better place. Second, the fact that I cannot find that tweet speaks to the value of owning your words and your own corner of the web.
And so once again I’d like to sing the praises of running your own website. Whether you use a self-hosted version running Jekyll on Digital Ocean or use Wordpress.com, there’s so much value in registering a domain and publishing your own words on it.
I came across Small b blogging by Tom Critchlow recently. He makes a great case for making the effort to run your site and publish your thoughts. What is small b blogging?
Small b blogging is learning to write and think with the network. Small b blogging is writing content designed for small deliberate audiences and showing it to them. Small b blogging is deliberately chasing interesting ideas over pageviews and scale. An attempt at genuine connection vs the gloss and polish and mass market of most “content marketing”. And remember that you are your own audience! Small b blogging is writing things that you link back to and reference time and time again. Ideas that can evolve and grow as your thinking and audience grows.
He finishes the post with a great summary of why this concept is important:
Instead - I think most people would be better served by subscribing to small b blogging. What you want is something with YOUR personality. Writing and ideas that are addressable (i.e. you can find and link to them easily in the future) and archived (i.e. you have a list of things you’ve written all in one place rather than spread across publications and URLs) and memorable (i.e. has your own design, logo or style). Writing that can live and breathe in small networks. Scale be damned.
I love that focus. It makes me think of my personal knowledge base. While a big part of the purpose of this knowledge base is to enable creation, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t include my own writing in there.
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Items of note
There was a lot of interest in my two part series on my personal knowledge system (i.e. how I try to make the most of what I read). Since so many people are curious about the topic and toolsets, I wanted to share a couple of other good resources I came across in the last year.
Building Blocks of a Zettelkasten: I shared this one in my previous article, but it is one of the best pieces for someone just learning about the concept of the Zettelkasten. Christian Tietze gives an overview of all the pieces and how they work together, along with a nice summarizing sketch.
Knowledge Management with Zettelkasten and iA Writer: this is another good piece, but one focused on to create your system using iA Writer instead of Ulysses. This one had me considering using iA Writer when I was deciding how to implement my own set up.
Zettelkasten — How One German Scholar Was So Freakishly Productive: this is another introductory post, a good option for someone brand new to the topic. It’s a longer read as he spends time both covering Luhmann’s own usage, as well as the benefits of the Zettelkasten. He finishes with covering how to get started using it yourself.
Luhmann’s Zettelkasten differs from other notetaking systems. Instead of being intended only as an aid for the next writing project, the method is designed to help you with a lifetime of thinking, writing, and publishing. It’s designed to accommodate as many notes as you want without turning into an unworkable mess. And it’s main purpose is to find connections among seemingly unconnected ideas.
That’s about as good of a summary as you can get.
All right, for all of you who are not interested at all on this topic, this will be the last reference for a while 😄
How I currently use Todoist Premium
On the topic of systems and how to manage your responsibilities efficiently, this Medium article caught my eye.
I’ve used Todoist in the past. It’s not as nicely designed as native apps like Things, so it’s never stuck for me. But I sure appreciate the approach of the Doist team (there’s a reason why we invited them to People First Jobs), so I follow the evolution of their products quite closely.
This article is not long, but covers how Andrew Quinn set up Todoist with some smart use of filters, as well as the processes for going through things each day.
You’ll notice that in my Daily Routine, there are several tasks which don’t take a lot of time to do and are themselves about maintaining the system. I find the Inbox Zero philosophy, for all the scorn heaped upon it, to be remarkably helpful, and so a (small) part of my time each day goes towards making sure my email and Todoist inboxes are freed up. (I heavily recommend Google Inbox for its “snooze” feature, which does with emails what Todoist’s “Postpone” feature does to to do tasks.)
This reminds me of Nat Eliason’s post on using Things in a similar manner.
Anil Dash shares some thoughts about the sites/resources that make the web valuable to us:
Every day, millions of people rely on independent websites that are mostly created by regular people, weren't designed as mobile apps, connect deeply to culture, and aren't run by the giant tech companies. These are a vision of not just what the web once was, but what it can be again.
And how those sites are in danger if we don’t take care:
If we're going to build a new web, and a new internet, that respects our privacy and security, that doesn't amplify abuse and harassment and misinformation, we're going to need to imagine models of experiences and communities that could provide a better alternative. There's not going to be a "Facebook killer". But there could simply be lots of other sites, that focus on a different, more constructive and generative, set of goals.
This is related to my thoughts above on owning our own piece of the web. We can each create some small piece of value, then use it to point to the various services that bring us the value he’s referring to.
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Quote of the week
Let us be on the watch for opportunities of usefulness; let us go about the world with our ears and eyes open, ready to avail ourselves of every occasion for doing good; let us not be content till we are useful, but make this the main design and ambition of our lives.
Charles Spurgeon, The Soul-Winner
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Currently
Watching: Lost in Space, season 2.
Reading: Coming into the climax of Ancillary Justice. What a different type of story — without giving too much away, the main character is an AI of a ship that inhabits multiple human bodies. It makes for a very unique point of view. It took a while for me to warm up to the story, but I’m enjoying it now.
Listening: JESUS IS KING by Kanye West. I’ve never once listened to Kanye before this new album, but it’s good. Real good. And whatever you think about the guy, these songs strike me as worshipful.
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Well, this is the first issue of a new year and I'm looking forward to hitting your inbox in 2020. As always, thanks for reading!