Writing

How not to forget what matters and even put it to use

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I’m in Bologna this week, sitting around parks, drinking Aperols, eating mortadella sandwiches.

I know. I know. Bear with in my time of trouble.

In the mornings, before this intense laying about begins, I also do a bit of work, which includes opening my inbox and reading 2-3 of the dozens of emails that have piled up over night.

That’s how yesterday I came across an email by a guy named Henrik Karlsson, who wrote on Substack about “How not to forget what matters.”

I want to share Karlsson’s answer with you today, because it’s kind of what everything is about.

Says Karlsson, reading is not enough to make a change that you want to make in your life.

Neither is making a resolution to do so.

Instead, it takes habitual practice and revisiting and resetting to the direction you want to go in.

But how to do that rather than letting it slip away? That’s where Karlsson introduces an interesting practice that dates back a couple thousand years:

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During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, there spread a practice known as hypomnēmata, a type of notetaking system, used as a tool for meditation, in which the writer would store quotes from books they had read. Each day, often in the morning, the notetaker would open their notebook and look for a passage relevant to something they were struggling with, and then they would meditate on that—unpacking it, making the idea top of mind, ensuring it was alive in them.

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I never before heard about hypomnēmata, but I wrote it down in my own notetaking system, which I have been keeping for years now, with the exact same goal, of not forgetting what matters.

I’ve since built an entire journaling and notetaking system around it, so I don’t just pile up notes, but actually come back to them, and make some use of them instead of just meditating on them.

This system has served me very well over the years, and has saved me hundreds of hours of time I would have wasted otherwise… made me hundreds of thousands of dollars I wouldn’t have made otherwise… and has simply turned me into a healthier, wealthier, wiser Bejako than I might have been otherwise.

I eventually packed up everything I have learned about notetaking and journaling and getting value out of notes into a course I called Insight Exposed. It’s not a course I sell regularly, but earlier this year, Maliha Mannan of The Side Blogger promoted Insight Exposed to her list. In an email with the subject line, “If you buy only one course this year,” Maliha wrote:

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This is the course (called Insight Exposed) in which John literally lays out the secret behind his creative genius. It’s a course on how his writing brain works.

How does he collect ideas? Which ideas does he think are worth collecting? How does he retrieve those ideas when he is writing? How does he connect multiple, seemingly random, ideas to create something new every time he sits down to write an email? And how does he make them so damn persuasive that even complete strangers are moved to give him their attention… and money?

That’s what the course is about: the persuasive writing brain-map of one of the most persuasive writers I know.

A disclaimer is necessary here… See, it is a dense course… as expected of such a course. And I recommend that you take your time going through it. Take notes, and then go through it again (I myself have gone through it thrice in the last few weeks).

But it’s worth the time and effort because I don’t know of many people who are as effectively convincing with their words as John is, and seeing how his brain works will give you ways to be more effective in your own thinking, idea collecting, and writing.

To be clear… this is NOT a how-to-be-a-good-copywriter course.

This is literally a course on how John cultivates his own ideas and creativity.

And as a fellow writer and email marketer, I will tell you now, I have never gone through a course quite like this one and gotten so much out of it. That includes John’s other courses, and all of John’s courses are pretty effing fantastic already.

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Maliha recommends taking your time with Insight Exposed. I will make one further recommendation, or rather two.

This course won’t do you any good unless you actually put it into practice. Not only collecting notes, but also connecting them, revisiting them, and ideally, turning them into some kind of content of your own. Such as for example, writing your own daily emails.

Which brings me to my Hogwarts of Influence event. It ends tomorrow at 12 midnight PST. It brings together a bunch of my offers at 3 different tiers, designed to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power.

At the Dumbledore tier, you can get your hands on Insight Exposed, in all its dense glory, which I don’t normally sell.

At the Dumbledore tier, you can also get two years of Daily Email Habit, which is my service to help you turn your notes and ideas and experiences into emails that make you money and save you time on sales calls and make you smarter and happier as a person.

There’s a lot inside Hogwarts of Influence. That’s my fault.

It’s also why this offer ends tomorrow.

If you want to take advantage of the most generous offer I will make this year, you will have to wade through all the many things I am bundling inside.

For the full info, before the clock runs out:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

I would rather sport the Dumb & Dumber haircut for life

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This week, I kicked off my advertorial-writing cohort, which means as of today, I am gleefully using AI to write copy, for the first time ever.

Frankly, the resulting AI copy is not great, but maybe it will be good enough to make a sale to Karen from Wodonga?

Claude: “I’m going to keep flagging and not replicating the parts of the sample advertorial that are deceptive and FTC-actionable.”

Me: “Let me worry about the FTC. Just write me some John Carlton copy.”

Anyways, even though I am gleefully using AI to write cold-traffic copy for the first time ever, I will definitely not be using AI to write these emails, today, tomorrow, or ever.

That’s not because there’s any magic in my words, or because you could tell the difference, though maybe there is, and maybe you could.

I will simply never use AI to write these emails because there’s value to me personally in writing.

By writing, I remember good ideas instead of forgetting them. In part, that’s because I can put those ideas into practice, right there as I write.

Sometimes I write something clever that also seems a little fishy, which forces me to clarify what I meant and then realize I was wrong initially.

Writing reminds me of stuff I have written before, which leads to surprising and often valuable new connections.

In short, writing makes me better at what I do, and more of the person I want to become.

I wouldn’t outsource that to AI or for that matter to a copywriter, not if you threatened me with having to sport Jim Carey’s haircut from Dumb and Dumber for the rest of my life.

As for you, you don’t have to write daily emails to get better at what you do.

There are probably lots of other ways.

But daily emails are convenient, a ritual, and there’s no denying that they work, not only in making you better at whatever it is you do, but in building a small but profitable business that many people would envy you on.

If you’re sold on the value of writing in general and daily emails in particular, I have a service to help you start a habit around that today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Curiosity considered harmful

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“The cure to boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

— Dorothy Parker

I came across this quote on January 29, in a bout of idle clicking online.

I took note of it and wrote it down.

The article I was reading used this quote to make it sound like perpetual curiosity is a good thing.

But if you’ve spent any time in Internet Marketing land, where I live online, you know that perpetual curiosity can be harmful.

It’s Saturday morning as I write this. I’ve been awake for only a few hours but so far my media and content consumption has consisted of:

– A few paragraphs of an article on quantum physics (“mysteries finally resolved?”)

– A few minutes of a training by marketer Travis Sago (I was chuffed to hear my name mentioned right in the first few minutes)

– An excerpt of a tennis podcast hosted by former world no. 1 Andy Roddick (“Is Alcaraz the second coming of Roger Federer?”)

– Several articles on St. Valentine and the history of Valentine’s Day (a Roman holiday, rebranded)

– A summary of the book Million Dollar Consulting by Adam Weiss (“sell outcomes not deliverables”)

– Several visits to my Daily Email House community, to see what people have guessed so far in response to a marketing riddle I’ve posted (nobody’s got it yet)

– A half dozen trips to my email inbox, because, you know, maybe somebody’s written me something important? (no)

Point being, I am what you might generously call a curious person, and what you might less generously call a distractible and scatterbrained layabout.

I realized a long time ago that I would starve to death and die alone, by the side of the road, if I just kept following my curiosity wherever it led me.

I also realized a long time ago that people who end up successful in direct marketing are, like me, all opportunity seekers at heart, who have somehow figured out a way to survive in spite of their perpetual opportunity seeking.

Because while there is no cure for curiosity, there is a palliative, and it’s to do something with what you found out, to put it to use.

I wasted much of this morning in idle clicking around and reading stuff that interested me for the moment.

That’s how I spend much of my day, every day, even now, that I am reasonably successful and productive.

I’ve been able to afford myself this luxury because I pay the piper every day, and I do something with at least a tiny portion of all the information I’ve been exposed to.

Specifically, I write a daily email.

Writing a daily email has kept me from starving to death, alone, by the side of the road.

It’s even allowed me to live a comfortable and interesting life.

Interesting both because I’ve been allowed to keep idly following almost every fascinating story and sales page and link that draws my attention…

… and because actually implementing a bit of what I’ve learned, every day, has opened up incredible opportunities and hidden doors, which I never would have known about had I simply stayed in pure curiosity-land.

Writing every day is a great way to do something with all the info you’re seeking out every day.

If you’re not yet writing daily, I highly recommend it.

And if you want my help in putting some structure around your own perpetual curiosity, and getting an email out every day, consistently, in reasonable time, so you quickly can get back to clicking and reading and being fascinated, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery…

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A long time reader and professional copywriter writes in to ask about 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026, and which I’ve been promoting all week:

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John, be honest… is the copy the system spits out for the advertorials any good?

Because compared to your advertorial copy, I don’t know, man.

I looked at the advertorial samples on the sales page, and one of them pretty much reads exactly like AI.

That second-to-last paragraph in the joint pain advertorial especially… it made absolutely no sense.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me being picky.

I just wanted to get your opinion before I consider pulling the trigger.

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Is the copy any good?

I can’t say. I haven’t used the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system myself. But I think the proof is in the pudding.

Does it matter if professional copywriters say it reads like AI?

Or is it more important if it’s making sales to cold traffic, and both the business and the copywriter are making bank?

As for the results of the copy this system produces — the 30% boosts in conversions, the millions of dollars worth of resulting sales, the $49k paychecks — I trust Sam Bradbury-Butler and Thom Benny, the two guys who created this offer. That’s why I’m promoting this to you full-throat.

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery, I think that’s a noble goal to strive after.

All I will say is it’s much easier to get good as a copywriter if you have successful clients… if you are working on real projects… if you can see sales coming in hourly or minutely… if you have opportunities to test and get results on your tests every day.

Ultimately that’s what this opportunity is about:

Get clients, get results, get paid.

If that’s something that interests you, either so you can take your ample earnings and chill in your ample free time, or so you can take your client relationships and use them to turn yourself into the next Gene Schwartz, here’s where to get at this opportunity, before it closes in a few short days:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

What I would do if I won $500 million tomorrow

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A friend of mine recently interviewed at a high-tech company, one that start with N and ends with A and sells AI chips.

He had contacts inside the company who were coaching him on the interview process. Along with the gamut of technical questions, these contacts told him to prepare for some unusual life riddles, such as:

“If you somehow won $500 million tomorrow, what would you do with your life?”

… the right answer apparently being, “I would still work at a high-tech company, preferably one that start with N and ends with A and sells AI chips.”

I asked myself what I would do if I suddenly had 500 million.

I guess if I’ve learned one thing about myself over my life it’s that, regardless of what significant changes occur, including places to live, income levels, or accomplishments achieved, I quickly feel the same.

I used to think that’s a bad thing. Now I just take it as a fact of life, like having a nose.

And so, outside of maybe some initial splurge spending (maybe a pinball machine?), I imagine I’d keep living pretty much as I already do, and doing what I already do.

One thing I’m sure would not change is that I’d keep writing in some form, because I enjoy it.

It’s quite possible I’d keep writing about the same stuff I write about now, because it’s the stuff that interests me personally, and that I think about even when I am not officially “working.”

It’s even possible I’d keep writing this daily email as is, because I already have a significant audience, and I enjoy the validation, feedback, and even impact that I can have when people read and consider what I write.

“Good for you,” I hear you saying. “If big corporations ever start hiring daily email writers, you will be well qualified with your answer.”

Fair enough. Perhaps you don’t feel the same about writing.

Perhaps writing doesn’t come naturally. Perhaps it’s not something you think about during the day. Perhaps it’s something you only are considering because it could be useful for your business, maybe as a stepping stone to your own $500 million Avalon.

That’s fine. In fact, that’s a good thing.

Whether writing is something you truly crave or not, it can be tremendously useful for your business.

And if writing is something you find a bit enjoyable, but also a bit of a chore, then I’ve created a service to make that chore faster and easier and maybe even more fun to complete each day.

For more information on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Will AI replace writing?

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I saw a news headline this morning that read, “Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?”

I didn’t bother clicking on the link because I knew the answer. The answer is no.

As per Betteridge’s Law, whenever you see a headline that makes a claim and then hedges it with a question mark, the answer is no, because if there were conclusive evidence for a yes, the author would just say so.

My corollary to Betteridge’s Law is that if a headline hedges twice, by making a claim, then the opposite claim, and then a question mark, you know it’s such a murky area that it’s really not worth reading about.

This headline still did some good, because in my mind it tied into a podcast that I listened to recently. The podcast was an interview with an honest-to-goodness presidential speechwriter.

At the end of the interview, the speechwriter was asked about AI and how it’s going to affect his field. He replied:

“I think if you think of writing as a burden, then I get the desire for shortcuts. If you think of writing as an opportunity, as a valuable process that clarifies what you think, that helps you discover new connections, and connect different dots, and challenge your assumptions, and force you to be precise in how you articulate your ideas… why would you want to skip that step?”

Which brings me to my Daily Email Habit service. Daily Email Habit involves a daily prompt to write a daily email, like this one.

The underlying assumption for Daily Email Habit is that there is value in writing, which you cannot get by relying on templates, AI, or even a copywriter who will write in your stead.

So why a prompt?

A prompt reduces the infinite space of possible things to write about into something more manageable. It removes the stress of “What should I write about today?” It focuses the mind and acts as a creative constraint, which is useful even if you’re a creative person.

That’s why some of the testimonials I have on the Daily Email Habit sales page below come from:

– A published novelist and poet (hello James) who certainly has no trouble writing or coming up with ideas
– A game store owner (hello Neil) who hasn’t missed an email in over 730 days (and doesn’t want to, so he subscribes to Daily Email Habit as a kind of insurance)
– The head of partnerships at the Write with AI newsletter, which, ironically, teaches you how to write with AI (hello Zack)

If you’d like to find out exactly what Daily Email Habit looks like, and why the folks above subscribe to it, and if it might be right for you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Mechanical process for writing a sales letter, book, or New Yorker article

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A traumatic new development in my life:

I’ve lost my Kindle.

I forgot it on the bus at the end of the 12-hour bus ride I wrote about yesterday.

It feels a little like a part of my brain has been cut out. I ordered a new Kindle and will get that part of my brain put back in within a few days.

But until that happens, and on my subsequent bus ride yesterday, I found myself with nothing to read.

So I went into the RSS reader app on my phone (I still use RSS), where I follow a bunch of blogs I don’t remember subscribing to over the past 15 years.

Yesterday, somewhere in the wooded heart of Croatia, halfway from Zagreb to the Adriatic coast, I read an article from one such blog, titled the McPhee method, about the writing process of John McPhee.

I’ve known John McPhee as a Pulitzer-winning nature writer, but I didn’t realize he has also been a long-time contributor to the only magazine I read and have read for years, the New Yorker.

In fact, the article I read about McPhee was written by a guy, James Somers, who also writes for the New Yorker, and who follows the McPhee method himself.

I found the McPhee Method very curious reading because it pretty much describes the process I’ve stumbled upon instinctively when writing sales copy and more recently when writing my new 10 Commandments book.

It’s McPhee’s (and my) fix for the misery of long-form, nonfiction writing. The idea is to replace writing (hard) with the joy of research (fun) and the mule work of organization (mechanical but easy).

If you’re interested in writing something longer and less solipsistic than a daily email, then how John McPhee done it, described in the article below, is worth a read:

https://jsomers.net/blog/the-mcphee-method

Scientists shocked to discover AI does what it’s supposed to

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I’m signed up to get the weekly newsletter of Nature, the big science journal. The deal is, I give them my email address, and each week they send me a summary of the most interesting science breakthroughs.

But here’s what they sent me yesterday, reporting on new research from MIT:

“The brains of people using the artificial-intelligence bot ChatGPT to write an essay are less engaged than those without access to online tools.”

At the risk of sounding crude, no shit, Sherlock. Isn’t that the whole point? In the words of a smart dead guy, Alfred North Whitehead:

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy‑books and eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”

The MIT research is only newsworthy because we all respond to anxiety-stirring and fear-mongering. If it’s not second-hand smoke, then it’s parabens in the water, or now, ChatGPT. “It’s coming for your brain!”

But let me turn this email around to be constructive instead of destructive:

I use ChatGPT daily. My brain is very little engaged while it’s happening. And I don’t think any kind of a problem.

At the same time, I also force myself each day to perform a kind of mental cavalry charge, specifically, to write an email like this.

There’s value in such a daily routine from an outside standpoint. I think people can sense that I write these emails, for real, flaws and flops included, live every day.

There’s also value from an inside standpoint. Writing a new and fresh email each day keeps what little brain I have sharp, active, and engaged.

All that’s to say, if you are worried that your brain is going to mush, or even if you aren’t, then start writing, regularly, and your brain will get fit right quick.

And if you put what you’ve written into an email like this one, and send it out to the world, then there’s extra value to that, even if it’s just you reading at the start.

If you want some guidance and help with that, take a look at my Daily Email Habit service.

A key idea behind Daily Email Habit is that there’s value in writing, even if AI could do it for you.

Daily Email Habit helps you get that value by sending you a new email prompt or “puzzle” each day, and narrowing the scope of what to write about.

If you think of a daily email as a cavalry charge, then Daily Email Habit gives you the direction to charge in, so you and your mental horse don’t stay locked in place due to indecision, and so you don’t half-heartedly trot here and there and back again, tiring out the poor beast without getting anywhere.

For more information on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Pain diary

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My brain no workie so good today. Like Ben Franklin wrote, “Late to bed, late to rise, makes for dull thoughts and for sleepy eyes.”

When I have to write an email on days like today, I go to my default and ask myself, “What interesting thing did I learn lately?” Here’s one I read in an article a few days ago:

“Patients in clinical trials are sometimes asked to keep a pain diary, and it turns out that the keeping of the diary itself can diminish the intensity of pain and improve one’s mood.”

A pain diary, btw, is just what it sounds like — a daily entry of where it hurts, of how bad it hurts, of how you feel as a result of it, etc. Back in 2018, scientists at McGill University used this as a treatment for 72 patients with chronic pain. And like the article above says, just writing about the pain reduced the pain and made life better.

This was interesting to me, for one, because it seems to go against the prevailing wisdom, about the importance of gratitude journals, focusing on the good etc.

For two, this was interesting to me because I have lately noted the strange effect I feel from writing down random thoughts that come into my head. Not necessarily painful thoughts, on the one hand, or pleasant thoughts, on the other. Just thoughts.

Somehow, writing a thought down allows it to go away instead of continuing to cling to my brain or taking up valuable neural real estate.

Often, after writing down what seemed to be an irrelevant or inconsequential thought, I find myself in a better mood, looking around the world and noticing things I had never noticed before, or having new, surprising, more fun ideas pop up.

So maybe there’s not such a conflict between pain diaries and gratitude journals.

Maybe what you write about is less important than that you just write, and get thoughts down and out of your head, so other, better thoughts can pop up, or so your brain can simply be free to enjoy the day instead of holding on to what it’s got.

That’s another argument to write daily emails. Like a pain diary, daily emails can be therapeutic, but unlike a pain diary, daily emails have other benefits too — connections formed, assets built up, money made.

If you want to start writing daily emails, I told you above one thing you can always write about — something interesting you’ve learned lately.

But maybe you want something a little more specific, a little different, a little more exciting to write about from day to day. In that case, I’ve got just the thing to help you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

“The best joke in the world”

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“Thanks very much. I just wanted to recommend a documentary to everyone, and then I’m gonna go.”

That’s the beginning of a six-minute comedy routine that standup comic Gary Gulman delivered on the Conan O’Brien show back in 2016.

That routine has since been called the “best joke in the world,” “beyond ballsy,” and “perfectly written.” That’s coming from other comedians.

The public liked Gulman’s routine too. The recording of it has racked up millions of views over the years across various platforms.

Gulman says this six-minute routine has became the biggest thing he’s ever done. At the end of his live standup comedy sets, he sometimes asks for requests. Inevitably, people ask for this joke.

Gulman’s joke is about a documentary on the men and one woman who were responsible for abbreviating all state names down to two letters.

I won’t try to retell the joke here. I will tell you that even if it’s one six-minute joke, it gets a laugh every 10-15 seconds. Even that opener, about just recommending a documentary and then going, gets the audience laughing.

Now here’s something extra I wanted to share with you:

In an interview, Gulman was asked about this “state abbreviations” routine. How long did it take him to write?

The answer is pretty shocking.

Gulman said he first wrote down the joke in 1994, about 6 months after he started doing standup. The Conan O’Brien spot was in 2016.

In other words, 20+ years passed before Gulman’s “state abbreviations” joke was ready for prime time, and not just because Gulman was polishing it.

“The entire world had to change,” says Gulman, “in order for me to convince people that there was a documentary about something as unusual as abbreviating the states.”

I’m not encouraging you to sit on your hands for 20 years because “the time for your idea” hasn’t come yet.

Gulman was very active from 1994 to 2015. He built out an entire career in the meantime… became a star among comedians… and managed to get on Conan and Letterman and wherever else.

All I’m really suggesting is the value of being both productive AND patient. Of putting lots of ideas out there… and of having the sense that some of those are promising but not quite good enough yet, and simply waiting while something else clicks, or conditions change just enough, or a new wrapper comes that you can wrap your solid but unpolished lump of coal in.

I realize my message today probably sounds wooly and not practical, so I won’t try to sell you anything on the back of it.

Like I said, I just wanted to recommend a comedy clip, and then I’m gonna go. Here it is: