Chris J Wilson

🔗 Overthinking? Try this iOS Shortcut.

As usual, I found myself overthinking this week about small details and not getting much done on the big stuff. It’s been happening too often lately, delaying my newsletter and book projects. But this week, I decided to do something about it. I built a kind of break-glass-in-case-of-emergency shortcut for whenever I’m stuck in a rut and overthinking.

I really like this idea from CJ Chilvers. I think I might steal/adapt.

The Big Three - The Accidental Creative

Keeping a shortlist of open creative loops in front of you consistently will help you stay focused on what matters, and prompt your mind to be looking for potentially useful creative stimuli in your environment.

I’m reading (well, listening on Audiobook) The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry and he shared this simple idea above.

I love it.

Creativity insight so often comes by looking at problems from a different perspective or noticing a connection with something else. Keeping a list in front of you with three problems where you need some insight helps invite these connections and perspective shifts.

I’m trying it, and I’ll report back.

The end of secularism is nigh - UnHerd

All of which should serve as a wake-up call to the West that it is not only its financial, economic and military muscle that is currently atrophying. So too is its ability to market its culturally conditioned assumptions as universal. The concept of the secular is not, as many in West like to think, a neutral one. Quite the opposite. As the very word betrays, it derives from the distinctive theology and history of Latin Christendom: for ‘saeculum’, the word given by the Romans to the endless flux of things, was counterpointed by St Augustine and his heirs to the religio, the ‘bond’, that, so Augustine had taught, joined the pilgrim Church on its journey through the centuries to the radiant eternity of the City of God.

I thought of the XKCD standards comic, where people try to unify things by a standard but just add another competitor in the process. I wonder if that’s how the future will see secularism. Admittedly many different religious systems have already passed away (which is different from the standards comic), and I’m sure there are other issues I haven’t thought of.

Posing for selfies - Seth’s Blog

The irony is that the people we’re most likely to want to trust and engage with are the ones who don’t pose. They’re consistent, committed and clear, but they’re not faking it.

Figure out what you want to say, the change you seek to make, the story you want to tell–and then tell it. Wholeheartedly and with intent.

Posing is unnecessary.

🔗 A look inside Paradise Street — Hoxton Mini Press

This week we’re looking inside Paradise Street. This uplifting, irresistibly nostalgic book, the fourth in our Vintage Britain series, celebrates, among other things, the physicality of spending time outdoors.

Enjoy the look back in time.

The forgotten political roots of Bridge over Troubled Water - BBC Culture

Simon talked about using the primetime opportunity as a Trojan horse for “a home movie about where he thought the nation was”. Directed by actor Charles Grodin, Songs of America used the duo’s hits to soundtrack footage of riots, marches and the war in Vietnam, much to the horror of sponsors AT&T, who demanded their $600,000 investment back.

More after today’s post on Bridge over Troubled Waters.

🔗 Expert sandwich tips that will change your lunches for ever - BBC Food

Got to try some of these!

Dashboard was a technically unviable photoshop mockup that was very easy to kill. We had to choose between shipping on time, and making a fancy dashboard. We chose shipping.

Some people are still upset about it today.

Those people will never ship.

• John O’Nolan, founder of ghost sharing some of his anecdotes from 7 years of Ghost on Twitter

I remember backing the ghost Kickstarter and being extremely excited about its potential and possibility but the initial version really did disappointment. I don’t think it was just the dashboard for me, but it felt not as blog focused or friendly as the Kickstarter had made out. I kept track of ghost, intending to use it, but it seemed to shift to be more for businesses and not blogging focused like the original vision (and ironically the exact critique it leveled at WordPress). Despite having a year of ghost pro hosting from my backer level I never redeemed it and now it seems impossible to do so. Funnily enough, just last month I spun up a digital ocean server to give ghost a go after seeing the 3.0 version and being impressed.

I always try to give makers the benefit of the doubt, you never know the real reasons behind what they are doing or the data they have in their hands that we don’t. At the same time, sometimes people just made bad choices.

Regardless of the dashboard and merits of shipping, it’s not a great sign for the head of a company who makes a blogging platform to choose to write a tweet thread rather than a blog post. He could, of course, do both.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Writing) Go a week without

• very • rather • really • quite • so • of course • in fact

Benjamine Dreyer on Twitter Thought I’d share this as well to go along with that last bit of writing advice. “Of course” is one of those zombie phrases that still rises from my fingers no matter how many times I try to kill it… but that’s what editing is for…of course.

🎥 Why We Still Love Film: Analog Photography in the Digital Age | NBC Left Field
As someone who still shoots film (on multiple cameras) I loved this. The production is top-notch and features some of my favourite YouTubers. I also love the contrast with this week’s ATP where they said that downloading images off an SD card is too slow (although I kind of understand that frustration). Now I’d better take my last rolls of film to the local developer and get out a new one.

Dark Patterns Website

Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn’t mean to, like buying or signing up for something. The purpose of this site is to spread awareness and to shame companies that use them.

I’m sure you’ve seen examples of this on the web. Some mild ones are the “Accept” button being clear and bold while the “decline” button is greyed out, hard to tell it is a button and not where you expect it should be.

Fiona Hill, Boris Johnson and the tyranny of the plummy British accent - from the Financial Times

Accent discrimination is standard in Britain. In a poll by ComRes and ITV in 2013, 28 per cent reported experiencing it. Recruiters favour the 3 per cent of Britons who speak “the Queen’s English”, says Lance Workman, psychologist at the University of South Wales.

How 10 Famous Artists Would Plate Thanksgiving Dinner

In this fun series of photos titled Thanksgiving Special, San Francisco-based artist Hannah Rothstein imagines Thanksgiving dinners as plated by famous artists throughout history.

🎥 How Ryan Holiday Reads - YouTube

When I see a copy of one of my books and it’s filled with notes, highlighters and folded pages, that doesn’t hurt my feelings as an author, that’s like the highest praise you can give a book.

I love little looks behind a writer’s life and approach like this.

1. Read and highlight (add bookmarks)
2. Put notes on notecards

🔗 Desirable difficulties from Wikipedia

A desirable difficulty is a learning task that requires a considerable but desirable amount of effort, thereby improving long-term performance. The term was first coined by Robert A. Bjork in 1994. As the name suggests, desirable difficulties should be both desirable and difficult. Research suggests that while difficult tasks might slow down learning initially, the long term benefits are greater than with easy tasks. However, to be desirable, the tasks must also be accomplishable.

This concept came up in Range: Why generatlists trumph in a specialized world.