My former podcasting partner in crime, Ben Brooks, wrote an awesome review / gear guide for us on Tools & Toys. He covered basic EDC knives, outdoor knives, and hiking knives. I’ve long been a fan of Spyderco knives — I’ve got one of my own that I keep on me, and whenever I’m in doubt about a gift to give to a friend, the Sage 1 is my go-to pick because who doesn’t like a(nother) great pocket knife?

Seth Godin:

The thing is, everything worth doing is done to excess, poorly, immorally, inefficiently, by someone. But that doesn’t change the fact that the very same thing done right is worth doing.

I’ve been publishing my writing online — a.k.a. “blogging” — for almost a decade. And I’ve been doing this professionally for almost four years now. During that time I’ve seen and spoken with a lot of would-be writers who gave up (or quit before they even started) because they’re cynical and angry at all the folks out there who are contributing only to the noise.

If you’re waiting for all the shovel blogs and all the waste-of-bandwidth websites to go away before you start doing something great, you’ll never get started. Don’t let the spammers or the jerks or the goof-balls steal your dreams.

Speaking of big reviews recently published on our other websites, over on The Sweet Setup we spent a bunch of time using different apps and services for easy file / link / image sharing.

Dropbox, CloudApp, and Droplr were the main contenders and the latter is our favorite:

The Apple ecosystem has no shortage of ways to share files. There are countless apps and services that aim to make this as easy as possible. With a lot of the articles we write here at The Sweet Setup, we are comparing apps and services that are virtually identical outside of user interface. With this category, that is not the case. These apps, while appearing similar, all have a different focus.

With a plethora of options, what is our favorite cloud service/app for file sharing? With an incredible feature set, active development, and a sustainable business model, Droplr is our favorite way to share files, make simple annotations, and track links.

Over on Tools & Toys, Josh Ginter reviewed the DDC Stuff Sheath.

Symbolicons are a family of icon sets designed by Jory Raphael. They’re simple, friendly, and styled to visually match one another, which means they can be used pretty much anywhere to add flavor and style. With nine icon sets and over 2,400 icons available, the possibilities are endless.

As a thank you to Tools & Toys (and shawnblanc.net) readers, use the code TOOLSTOYS to get 20% off any individual icon set.

Or, use this super special link to get 40% off the master bundle (that’s every single icon from Symbolicons).

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My thanks to Jory for sponsoring the site this week to promote his truly awesome icon sets, Symbolicons. We use the Symbolicons web font over on The Sweet Setup, and it’s awesome.

If you need something for your app, your eBook, your website, your printed publication, your poster — whatever — the Symbolicons sets should be the first place you start looking. Naturally, the icon files are all neatly organized and professionally packaged. And the promotion you can get this week to save 40% off the master bundle (All 9 sets! 2,400 unique icons!) is an amazing deal.

Great interview this week with Kyle Gray over on The Sweet Setup. Kyle’s a full-time business marketing student and web developer at his university.

Some excellent ideas and advice here from Lucy Beer. It’s targeted towards customizing the WP Admin area for clients after you’ve built a custom site, but it’s just as relevant for those of us who run our own WP sites and want to clean things up to have easier access to the areas of the Dashboard we use most.

I used to never write in the browser, but WordPress has grown and improved significantly over the past couple of years. It’s now far more than just a good CMS, it’s also a good Web app.

The new site for 2015’s Circles Conference is now live. And, I’ll be there, giving the opening talk on the first day.

I attendee the very first Circle’s Conference in 2012, and it was fantastic. Kyle Steed gave the the opening talk on the first day, and I still remember what he said. He talked about the chasm between surface-level creative output and the truth of where creativity comes from. Drawing a contrast between things like using photoshop vs. actually solving design problems.

I missed the 2013 and 2014 Circles Conferences because my wife and I had a son and I went to XOXO (respectively). I’m very much looking forward to going back, not just as a speaker but as an attendee.

This next year’s lineup is absolutely fantastic. And I know that the crowd of attendees will be some of the nicest, funnest, most-creative folks you’ve ever met. So, mark it on your calendar. I’ll see you there.

P.S. The early-bird pricing runs through to the end of the year. If you register today, you can save 15% if you use the promo “CYBERMONDAY”.

It’s Thanksgiving week, and my book, Delight is in the Details, is on sale for 25-percent off.

For you, hopefully the holiday season will include a little bit of down time to do some extra reading as well as some time to think about new ideas and projects you want to tackle the upcoming year. Also, perhaps you’ve got a road trip and the need for something great to listen to.

Which is why Delight is in the Details is on sale this week. You can read it on your Kindle, iPad, or Computer; between the audio book and the interviews, there is 7 hours of audio; and the whole book and interview series is geared toward doing our best creative work.

If you’ve been on the fence about picking up a copy, now’s a great time.

This week I’m publishing an early episode of The Weekly Briefly because it’s Thanksgiving week. On today’s show I talk about the glories and the perils of running your own business. Why showing up every day is important for building an audience. Why trust and transparency are important for keeping an audience. And why doing our best creative work has very little to do with the tools we use, and quite a bit to do with knowing where our best creative work is born.

Sponsored By:

• TOM BIHN bags: designed and made in USA since 1972.

• The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.

TOM BIHN has been designing and making backpacks and travel bags since 1972 — it’s what we know. We use the best materials, innovative design and superior construction techniques to build a better bag.

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My thanks to TOM BIHN for sponsoring the site this week. They’ve got an incredible array of laptop bags, travel bags, backpacks, and more. Need something simple and low-profile to carry your iPad and a notebook? Check out the Cafe Bag. Need something handsome and rugged that you cantravel with? They’ve got you covered there, too.

Owen Williams (via The Tech Block):

When trimming down your notifications, ask yourself these questions: Am I willing to let this interrupt me at any given moment during my day? Is this information critical to my life?

Glancing in my iPhone’s system settings at the apps which I’ve granted permission to send me push notifications, I see a lot listed in there. However, most of them don’t actually send any push notifications. The notifications I do get on a regular basis are:

• ESPN: Injury / projection updates for my Fantasy Foobtall league
• Email: Emails from my VIP list (which is just my CPA and my wife)
• Twitter DMs
• Slack mentions and direct messages
• Flickr comments
• Dark Sky weather updates
• Calendar alerts
• Reminders: (time / location)
• Deliveries: when a delivery status changes
• Overcast: new podcast episodes are available
• Circa: breaking news alerts
• The Magazine: new issues available

I’ve decided to turn off notifications for Overcast, Deliveries, The Magazine, and Flickr.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d wager that most of you have a pretty conservative approach to push notifications as well. But what I just realized after reading Owen’s article and then thinking about what push notifications I have on, is that there’s a difference between needing to be informed of something and wanting to be informed.

With notifications from Overcast, Deliveries, and Flickr — yeah, it’s great to know when a new podcast episode is available or to know that my recent order is on the truck for delivery, but those are also bits of information that I seek out on my own anyway. And so the push notification is superfluous.

This week’s setup interview is with Faith Korpi, writer, ballet teacher, and co-host of the IRL Talk Podcast. I loved this bit at the end of Faith’s interview:

Well, my ideal setup would be a tree house high up in a tree guarded by panda bears. There’d be a desk with an old tangerine iMac that I’d use exclusively for writing and another desk with a new iMac that I’d use for recording and video editing. It’d be the only tree house in the world with Google Fiber and my internet speed would make you weep tears of joy.