Tuesday Letter #11 - Just Fucking Ship, Mentions and Underappreciated Daily Actions
Hi all, Happy Tuesday!
Last Tuesday it was mine and my wife's anniversary, which is why I missed the letter. I hope you also have small or large things to celebrate during the week. Each day, I understand this more and more.
In the last couple of days I realized I have totally lost my mojo. Rigth before the pandemic started I was going to bed at 10, wking up at 6, exercising, building web stuff, then going to work. At work was productive and went back home early to spend time with my wife.
Now, I don't have any of that. No early bed, no early, no exercise, etc... I know for sure that this is pandemic related. But what's weird to me is that I always dreamt about remote work, now, it seems its not working out so great. I just can't get the self-displine / self-control back in order.
Any suggestions?
Anyway, sorry about this long blabber. Let's get to business. I hope you enjoy this week's "Tuesday Letter" :)
📜 Quote of the week
Start with the tiny little things you can finish, and especially those you can use to make bigger things, and make you feel good about making actual forward motion.
Sometimes when I finish something I don't even take time to celebrate, I just move onto the next thing, forgetting that the previous was done. Again that's me, but it might be a recurring thing with entrepreneurs. Chasing the next thing.
There’s nothing as gratifiyng as watching your work shape up before your very eyes.
With software, writing, design, teaching — the process is far less tangible, less final. It takes a lot longer. It’s easier to get dispirited. It can feel like you’ve spent a lot of time doing nothing, and yet you’re still not done.
Use kanban to drag things along. Track your time.
Remember — your job isn’t to just “make a thing the bestest” — it’s to just fucking ship, because the goal is to get your project or product into the hands of someone who will use it.
Don't reinvent the wheels.
👉 ️Mentions
This week Luke Plant posted an awesome guide on Django Views. I haven't finished it yet, so can't give a full review, but it does look great, for beginners and experienced developers alike.
The reason I mention this post is that I got a mention and a backlink to one of my django posts. This is the very first time for me. So thankful.
📚 Short Books
3 Blindingly Obvious and Therefore Painfully Underappreciated Daily Actions That Will Change Your Life by Jason Lengstorf
Action #1: Write a Daily List of Things That Matter
When we write things down, they become less stressful and easier to prioritize.
A DAILY LIST HELPS BUILD (AND MAINTAIN) MOMENTUM AND MOTIVATION. Writing a list of just a few items — the things that are most important for today — and crossing all of them off is far more motivational than crossing those same few items off a list with dozens of items on it.
Action #2: Actually Make Sleep as Important as We Always Pretend It Is.
Action #3: Put Your Phone Down and Act Like a Person.
Smartphones are great at solving problems that were caused by smartphones.
😁️ Person of the Week
Stew is a former CTO for Banzai. He now runs a private writer's group with some of the best minds on the internet, Compound. Stew also publishes a great newsletter each Sunday, strongly recommend. One of his latest golden nuggets is the "The Five Most Common Writing Mistakes" thread.
I've edited almost 100 blog posts this year -- some for well-known writers, others for promising new writers. I've noticed a few writing pitfalls that are amazingly similar across both groups:
- Long throat-clearing intros
- Overly abstract language
- Lack of clear intentions
- Overusing caveats and qualifiers
- Losing momentum
https://twitter.com/stewfortier/status/1292511738445717505?s=20
🐔 Tweet of the week
https://twitter.com/jdnoc/status/1288077680596922369
I've been a big fan of this short guides to better life recently. The most facinating thing with those, is that they all make sense, they all are simple, but each one is also hard to achieve. Each step requires great self-control, which I lack now. I think gaining such control over oneself is one of the best things you can do for growth.