Putting pen to paper

I’ve tried to do digitally the thinking and creative part of writing. It just doesn’t work as well as scribbling on paper. I use these tablets to capture ideas. This seed has been bumping around for 3 months (if you zoom in, it’s interesting that this seed happens to be _about_ reverberations!) Today it gets turned into a new something for Open + Curious.

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Pre-flight checklist? Check!

I’m a major process-person. Process is discipline. For me, inspiration always runs out. But process enables me to put one dumb foot in front of the other— and then course correct as I go. Pre-flight checklist here minutes before a guest joins me for a recording.

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Building tools

Currently in my personal knowledge system I have notes on ~400 audio recordings. (Raw recordings I’ve done, podcasts of my own I’ve published, other shows I’ve been on, etc.) That can be my episode notes and writing, but also program-readable meta information. Today, I spent time writing some new tooling to help me sort out transcripts (which recordings have them, which have been sent out, etc.)

Hand rolled

I describe my weekly email, 7 for Sunday, as “Hand-rolled and algorithm-free.” I’m using some custom code in WordPress to assemble separate posts into a single “thing” which then goes out via email. It’s definitely a lot of “hand-rolling”. A lot of hand writing my notes and mind-maps for each post, typing the posts, the quotes, ordering and organizing everything, handling links and images and… zoinks, it’s a lot. I love it.

A few things in view

Taking a fresh look at Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work. Book is smashed open to a quote from Russell Brand—with a notecard where I’m about to add this quote to my collection. I’m a bit of an audio nerd—I don’t stream from services, rather stream from the countless CDs that I keep in the ‘ol digital library. I like to start from a movie soundtrack, and then spread out into all the artists. Rubik’s cube, glass of water. Pink postit reminds me: “There are no miracles, there is only discipline