Journals

Announcing: Insight Exposed

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Today, I’m launching a new course, Insight Exposed. It reveals the secret weapon behind my ability to write insightful content: my own home-brewed journaling, note-taking, and archiving system.

The launch will run through this Saturday. I have a lot more to say about Insight Exposed, but since this course is only available to people who are signed up to my email list, there’s no sense in sharing all that publicly.

In case you are interested in Insight Exposed, or in developing your own journaling and note-taking system, one that could save you hundreds of hours of work, you might want to get on my email list. Click here to do that.

It may be a long time since you read this subject line

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I was standing in the kitchen this morning, making coffee for myself, when I had the idea for this email. I had to stop the coffee making and go write the idea down. Here it is:

A few weeks ago, a science paper went viral on the internet. It was titled, “Consciousness as a memory system.”

The paper gives a new theory of consciousness:

We don’t experience reality directly, the paper claims. We’re not looking out through any kind of window onto the reality outside.

We don’t even experience reality in any kind of real-time but transformed way. We’re not looking at a colorful cartoon that’s generated live, based on what’s going on outside right now.

Instead, we only have conscious experiences of our memories and of our imagined memories.

What you’re really looking at, right now, is a sketchbook, full of shifting drawings and notes of things that happened some time ago, or that never happened at all.

Maybe this new theory turns out to be false or obvious. Maybe it turns out to be profound and true. I personally find it interesting because it speaks to a practical experience I keep having:

If you don’t remember it, it might as well never have happened.

​​That’s why I had to stop the coffee making and go write down my idea for this email.

I’ve been writing newsletter for four years.

It’s more difficult than it might seem to write a 500-600-word email like this every day.

There are lots of stops, starts, discarded sentences and paragraphs.

To make it more complicated, my best ideas don’t happen while standing at my desk and trying to work. My best ideas often happen in a dim flash, while I’m in the shower, while driving, while trying to make coffee. Sometimes entire phrases, arguments, outlines for things I want to say, names, product concepts, inspired analogies, light up in my head. A moment later, that dim flash fades away.

You’ve probably heard the advice that, if you’re trying to make a habit of writing, then take notes all the time of interesting thoughts or observations you have.

It’s good advice, so let me repeat it:

If you’re trying to make a habit of writing, then take notes all the time of the interesting thoughts or observations you have.

And then, figure out a way to organize and store those notes into something that will be useful tomorrow, a month from now, even a year from now.

Now, get ready, because you’re about to have a conscious experience of a memory of a sales pitch:

I write a daily email newsletter. Many people say it’s interesting and insightful.

Search your memory banks right now. See whether you have a conscious experience of a memory of wanting to read more of my writing. If you find the answer is yes, then click here and fill out the form that appears.

3 ways for freelancers to lose less

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A few days ago, I wrote a post about loser’s games:

Situations in life where the outcome is all about what the loser does… rather than what the winner does.

I wrapped up that post with advice given to amateur tennis players. “Lose less. Avoid trying too hard. And keep the ball in play.”

To which a freelance copywritress wrote in to ask:

“How do you lose less in freelancing? Not trying too hard and keeping the ball in the game is straightforward. But I wasn’t able to figure out how I could lose less. Any insights or tips would be much appreciated by this seasoned loser.”

My answer was that losing less is about all the stuff that’s really 100% within our control, but we muck up for reasons of our own. Like…

There’s a great job that you want to apply to, but you convince yourself not to do it, or you don’t do it in time.

Or…

Client comes to you and says, “Here’s what I need” and you say, “Yes boss” instead of saying, “What’s the ultimate goal you’re looking to achieve by doing this?”

Or…

You hear 50k times that you’re charging too little and yet you still don’t raise your rates.

Basically, losing is self-sabotage and mistakes that we really can’t blame on anybody else. And losing less is not doing that.

Of course, maybe that’s just deflecting the question. How exactly do you not make mistakes and avoid self-sabotage, whatever form it takes?

I’ve got three unsexy but true ideas for you:

1. Habit. Start small and low risk. Build from there.

2. Willpower. Sleep. Eat. Drink your orange juice. Grit your teeth.

3. Self-awareness.

Because those three losing behaviors above, those are all things I did and sometimes still do. But maybe they aren’t exactly your own.

Whatever yours are, identify them. In the spur of the moment those losing behaviors just happen. You shrug them off, either blaming circumstance or yourself.

But if you take time and identify them… that can sometimes be all you need to change when loserliness threatens next.

I’ve got my own homebrewed journaling system for this. In fact I’ve got close to 30 separate journals, for different aspects of my life.

In each journal, I ask myself, what happened? What did I do right? What could I have done better?

This doesn’t always mean I never act like a seasoned loser. But when I do act like a loser, that goes into a journal, and maybe reduces the chance of it happening again. And if you sometimes play loser’s games… this might be worth a try for you too.

By the way, one of the journals I keep is all about interesting and novel ideas for emails. Because I write a daily email newsletter. If you’d like to read some of the ideas I write about, you can sign up for it here.