Month: April 2019

Ulysses, Bear, or Apple Notes?  →

Over on The Sweet Setup, Curtis McHale wrote a detailed comparison between what we think are three of the best note-taking, writing, and research apps: Ulysses, Bear, and Apple Notes.

Now, I realize there are LOT of other apps out there in this space. I can think of several other excellent apps right the top of my head. But we chose to focus on three apps that are most commonly top-of-mind for most folks right now.

For me, personally, it’s no secret that I use Ulysses for just about everything. (I’m writing this very link post in Ulysses right now.) I also use Bear quite a bit — as my central spot for “throwaway notes” such as shopping lists, errands, and other tidbits of short-term data. I would prefer to use Apple Notes, but its UI is a deal breaker for me.

Ulysses, Bear, or Apple Notes?

Todd Henry’s Challenge Stability Matrix

Todd Henry Herding Tigers Workshop

Last week my production manager, Isaac, and I went to a workshop hosted by Todd Henry. And it was absolutely incredible.

(I’ll tell you more about the workshop in just a second.)

Todd is the author of Accidental Creative and an absolute inspiration to me personally. He does so well at articulating the challenges of creative life while offering truly helpful solutions. A few years ago I was able to connect with Todd for an interview discussing how to thrive under creative pressure, how to stay creatively focused, and the “myth” of work-life balance.

Todd’s workshop here in Kansas City was from on his book most-recent, Herding Tigers, which is all about leadership. (Todd has an online course version here.)

Specifically, the workshop hit on the challenges of leading a creative team.

Since the creative process is largely opaque — with a lot of complexity and intricacies that aren’t always obvious or measurable — then there can be a natural pressure and strain within the workplace.

Needless to say, I took copious notes.

So. Many. Notes.

One thing I especially loved, which was brand new to me, was the Challenge / Stability Matrix.

As a leader, you need to ensure that your company, your team, and each person within your team has the proper balance of challenging work plus stability.

This balance is unique for each team, as well as unique for each person.

You have your own needs and definitions for work that you consider challenging. And you also have your own different needs for what helps you feel stable and supported to do that work.

As you increase a team members challenges at work, you also need to increase their stability. Otherwise people will feel as if you are expecting things from them without giving them the resources they need. They will feel angry.

With the proper balance of challenge and stability, then people will be able to thrive.

Todd Henry Challenge Stability Matrix

This balance of challenge and stability is variable for every organization as well as every person on your team….

If someone on your team often acts irrationally angry, then perhaps they don’t have enough stability.

Or if someone is always asking for more work, then perhaps they are not being challenged enough.

Consider yourself, your co-workers, those you lead, and ask yourself if there is the proper blend of challenging work along with the stability needed to be able to thrive.

Todd Henry’s Challenge Stability Matrix

Productivity and Promises

Your productivity and your moral character are not intertwined.

Meaning: Getting things done does not make you a good or better person. And, conversely, failing to be “productive” does not make you a bad person.

Now…

There is, of course, a connection between your character and your follow-through.

If you tell someone that you will do something, or if you commit to something, then, of course, you want to follow through on your commitment. You want to keep your promises.

So, in that way, productivity is a means by which we can consistently follow through on our word and our commitments.

But productivity can only be connected to our moral character in as much as it helps us to be the people we have set out to be.

But this has gotten blurry. Because many “productive type things” get thrust upon us by other people. People who have expectations which they’ve projected upon us without our consent!

They want us to reply to their email within their desired timeframe. Or they want us to be available on Slack when they need us. Or whatever.

And then they have the audacity to be disappointed at us when we do not meet their unfair and un-agreed-upon expectations of what they consider to be “productive behavior”.

Well, shame on them. We had better things to do.

Productivity and Promises

An Excellent Sugar-Free BBQ Rub Recipe

Here at the Blanc house, we love to grill. We’re also trying to cut out sugar from our diet. Alas, brown sugar is one of the key ingredients in a good BBQ dry rub. So I made my own that is sugar free, and I think it turned out excellent.

But! Before I get ahead of myself… I’d first like to insert a few thousand words about traveling and discovering my inner chef. Then, I’d like to say something about the history of this recipe and how it has brought my family together in ways we never thought possible.

Sadly, I didn’t capture any photos of the food itself after being cooked. But I do have this neat iPhone photo of the spice jar I bought at Target filled with the spices.

Sugar-Free BBQ Rub

Okay. All joking aside, here’s the recipe. Enjoy!

The Recipe:

  • 2.5 Tablespoons Paprika
  • 1.5 Tablespoons Chili Powder
  • 1 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
  • 1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder
  • 1 Tablespoon Oregano
  • 1.5 Tablespoons Rosemary
  • 5 teaspoons Mustard Powder
  • 1 teaspoon Cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon Celery Salt
  • 2 teaspoons Ground Pepper
  • 2/3 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper

Directions: Put all the ingredients into a jar or whatever, mix them up, and use liberally as a dry rub or marinade before and during cooking. Goes great with chicken, beef, and pork.

An Excellent Sugar-Free BBQ Rub Recipe

Kevin Kelly: Backpacker and Photographer in Asia in the 1970s  →

This article by Kevin Kelly is absolutely delightful and fascinating. Don’t miss out on page 2, where he shares a whole bunch of interesting tidbits about his photography and film during his travels:

I was photographing with 35mm film. I left home with 500 rolls of film in my backpack. I had 500 rolls of cellophane-wrapped boxes of film, worth a lot of money in those parts back then, and yet over 10 years, no one ever looked inside my backpack, incuding coming back to the US.

I would send home maybe 20 or 30 rolls of film at a time in a box. I asked my mom to put them in a freezer when she got them. The first thing I would do when I was back home and earning money was to start getting my rolls of film developed. It was close to $5 a photo in today’s money just to develop and print the photos. So I had to really think about it each time I pressed that shutter. It was almost too expensive to experiment. It sounds crazy now, but I often didn’t see my pictures until years after taking them! So as you could imagine, there was this really long feedback loop between when I took the picture and when I got to actually see what it looked like. That’s a horrible way to do photography where you never see your images. To make it worse, I only had a manual camera, not automatic, so my exposure and focusing could be off and I wouldn’t know it. Every few months I would buy a roll of black and white film and get it developed locally just to make sure my cameras were working.

I was shooting two rolls of film a day while traveling, about 70 photos. When I was growing up, my family would shoot a roll of 24 photos in a year, which was pretty typical. You’d have three holidays on one roll. It was considered radical, extreme to be shooting as many photos as I was. When I would tell people I shot 70 per day their jaws would drop. They couldn’t imagine how you could find 70 things to take a photo of in one day! That many pictures in a day was considered insane.

It’s amazing how much the accessibility of photography and its workflows have changed since then. And as a result, it seems as if the general interest in and love of photography is exploding.

Kevin Kelly: Backpacker and Photographer in Asia in the 1970s

After 191 Workouts in a Row, Here are Three Things That Have Helped Me

Six months and nine days ago it was the first of October 2018 and I decided to do a workout every single day for the whole month. And I’ve been able to keep that streak going. According to the activity app in my phone I am up to 191 workouts in a row so far…

As I shared with newsletter subscribers back in early December when I was just 70 workouts in, there are a few things that have helped me to keep this going. Here they are, revisited after an additional 120 workouts…

  • Just 15 minutes per day. I’ve discovered that I don’t have to focus on closing all my rings. Instead, all I have to do is get in a single, 15-minute workout. With that, pretty much everything else takes care of itself and I am almost certain to close all my rings.

  • Having a plan: By knowing when and where I am going to work out each day, I am far more likely to actually show up. (This goes for anything, by the way: from writing, to practicing basketball, to reading with your kids.) Knowing the when and where takes out all the stress and procrastination — all that’s left is to show up.

  • Accountability: I’ve got two forms of accountability: (1) my twice-weekly spin class and (2) my Apple Watch friends. Having these two groups of folks that expect me to show up is a pretty great motivator to help me actually show up consistently when I’m not feeling it.

(Also, the achiever in me does not want to break the chain of all those closed rings and green dots on my Activity app.)

When I first began, it took a lot of mental energy to do a workout every single day. It was all I thought about — and it felt super inconvenient. It felt disruptive to my whole day.

However…

If you choose the right actions long enough, they begin to choose you back.

At first, you are pushing yourself toward your healthy habits. But then, after a while, your healthy habits begin to pull you forward.

After 191 Workouts in a Row, Here are Three Things That Have Helped Me

Keep Going  →

Austin Kleon’s new book just came out a few days ago. My copy arrived on Tuesday, and I’m excited to read it.

The book starts out with Austin sharing about how he has been writing and making art for over a decade, and yet it has not been getting any easier.

He writes:

Everything got better for me when I made peace with the fact that it might not ever get easier. The world is crazy. Creative work is hard. Life is short and art is long.

Whether you’re burned out, starting out, starting over, or wildly successful, the question is always the same: How to keep going?

Austin’s book came out at just the right time for me. Today — April 4 — happens to be the 8-year anniversary of when I began writing and blogging as my full-time gig. Yay!

I can definitely attest that it does not get “easier” and there is always a challenge to keep going. A lot has changed in the past 8 years. But wow, what a fun time and what a great job it has been so far. Let’s keep going!

Keep Going