Month: July 2016

In Technical Blogging: Turn Your Expertise into a Remarkable Online Presence, Antonio Cangiano shares his knowledge about setting up, running, and marketing a technical blog. There are good sections on creating good content that can apply to any sort of blog.

I’ve accepted that this 100 Posts, 100 Days project I have is, well, a blog. I thought it’d be good to read up on how I can approach this if I look at it as a blog. Here are some excerpts I enjoyed.

After picking the main topic, jot down a list of ten articles you could write for your blog.

Again, I think it’d be good to think of themes to write about and how they might break down into posts. Ten is a lot though.

What’s the reason your blog exists? Why did you start it in the first place? What’s your compelling story?

This question is way too deep. Because I want to exist? But it’s a good refresher. Why am I doing this in the first place? I wanted to be a better writer. I’ve been successful before when writing regularly. The things I wrote about opened doors in my career. I’d like to continue that.

Your goal is to make it just as obvious, to yourself first and then to readers, why your blog is worth following.

It’d be worth following because other people are probably trying to start writing habits of their own. And they aren’t novelists. It’d be good to take the Ben Orenstein and Sandi Metz idea of spreading the benefits of speaking at conferences, but for blogging. Ben also says blogging is important for capturing your beginner’s mind.

I can help someone.

I know it’s a long way off, but eventually it’d be good for this to also be funny. Because everyone likes the guy who’s trying too hard to be funny.

Write down goals for your blog. What do you want to get out of the blog you are starting? What do you expect from it in one month, three months, a year, three years?

• One month: Learn to enjoy writing, build the habit (I think I’m here now.)
• Three months: This will be around 100 posts. Seth Godin says you should find ten people to share with first. At this point I’d like to have, say, my first 3 or 4.
• One year: 150 posts? After hitting 100 posts I’d like to keep a weekly publishing schedule. The value of one weekly post would have to exceed the value of the 5 posts. I also need to define “value” in some measurable way.
• Three years

Right now I’m trying to review all the past books I’ve read through and highlighted to build up a set of book notes. A year from now it’d be great to write book notes once per week and a link collection once per week.

After picking the main topic, jot down a list of ten articles you could write for your blog. You don’t need to write the actual articles yet, just the titles. When you are done with this task, ask yourself whether doing this exercise left you excited or frustrated. Was it hard to come up with ten titles, or could you have kept going for ages? The main point of this exercise is to understand if you have enough to say about the topic at hand.

I’m learning that I’m not good at estimating how much I have to say about different topics. Sometimes it seems like things are going to spill out of my head, only to get stumped a couple paragraphs in. Other times I’ll be slow to start on an idea that seems like it might be a dud. Then I get into it and a few pages later I’m wondering if I should split it into multiple posts.

I’ll try this exercise out to see if I can pick a good theme to focus five posts on for a week. If I can think of ten titles then I might be able to write five posts and maybe one will be good.

I can start with a comparison of photography and writing. Before digital tools you had fewer shots at things. Now we can just fire away and post as we please. There are pros and cons to this. I need to focus on how to take advantage of digital convenience without falling in its traps.

Create lists of products (e.g., 5 Books Every Agile Developer Should Read). They can be cheesy or downright good advice. Opt for the latter.

Thank you for reading part one of my series: 5 Books Every Writer Writing 100 Posts in 100 Days Should Read.

In Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, Brian Wansink explains food habits people have and suggests ways to eat better. A lot of the book focuses a lot on eating less: “Cutting out our favorite foods is a bad idea. Cutting down on how much of them we eat is mindlessly do-able.” This keeps things practical because that’s the most immediately relatable concept. Assuming people eat a lot of bad food, getting the total amount down is a good first step. Then you can focus on quality and replacing bad food with good. Finally, you can earn the right to inconvenience your friends with your odd orders. Then take it one step further and share your thoughts on food.

It reminds me of 59 Seconds, where Richard Wiseman boils a bunch of research down to straightforward suggestions. Which, all, in turn reminds me of Derek Sivers’s “Just tell me what to do” directives approach.

Here are some of my highlights.

Simply thinking that a meal will taste good can lead you to eat more. You won’t even know it happened.

Not completely related, but it’s so rare now that I’ll eat somewhere without looking things up on Yelp. And then I end up liking everything. I like good food and am not picky. This means you should never ask me for food recommendations. I like everything. Since I think everything will taste good, I eat more of everything. Not a good combination.

Most diets are deprivation diets. We deprive ourselves or deny ourselves of something—carbohydrates, fat, red meat, snacks, pizza, breakfast, chocolate, and so forth. Unfortunately, deprivation diets don’t work for three reasons: 1) Our body fights against them; 2) our brain fights against them; and 3) our day-to-day environment fights against them.

That’s enough reasons for me to believe, and it’s easiest to change your environment. 59 Seconds has some eating tips also and suggests a very straightforward environment change: Put a mirror in your kitchen.

The more you think of something, the more of it you’ll eat.

Going through a paleo phase, one of the takeaways that stayed with me is the initial kitchen purge. You’ll eat what’s in there, period. I still don’t keep many snacks around. The brain is too strong and too dumb.

The bottom line: We all consume more from big packages, whatever the product.

In other words, volume trumps calories. We eat the volume we want, not the calories we want.

Here’s where we can start replacing low quality with high quality food.

A smart strategy is never to have more than two items on your plate at any one time. You can go back if you’re still hungry, but the lack of variety slows you down, and you end up eating less.

Variants of this conversation are happening at every buffet in America:

“I want to eat until I feel like garbage.”

“It’s gonna be awesome.”

At times, Mindless Eating seems like it’s explaining how to deceive your brain. Sometimes, that’s what’s needed because we’re idiots. If, like me, you don’t believe in yourself, check the book out..

I didn’t have the time to link to this elegantly, but I’d like to point people toward Bill Barnwell’s article about his own weight loss: The Easiest Way to Lose 125 Pounds is to Gain 175 Pounds. It’s the best health article I’ve read in the last few years.

In, Creative Confidence, Tom Kelley and David Kelley talk about creativity and how effective design thinking can be in traditionally non-creative fields. Here are some excerpts I enjoyed.

In our experience, one of the scariest snakes in the room is the fear of failure, which manifests itself in such ways as fear of being judged, fear of getting started, fear of the unknown. And while much has been said about fear of failure, it still is the single biggest obstacle people face to creative success.

I used to listen to the Dave Dameshek podcast a lot. One of his catchphrases and audio drops was “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.” My brother and I used to have incredible trouble saying we were wrong. Then one day it changed. I decided to make an effort to identify when I’m about to argue about something for the sake of not being wrong (when I know I’m wrong).

Being afraid of failure is similar. Sometimes it prevents people from starting in the first place. Or from admitting failure and fighting too long to save a sinking ship.

With prototypes, you go in with failure in mind. You test a prototype and see where things failed. The key is failing at a planned time and knowing there’s a chance to learn and fix it before it really counts.

The question hung in the air for a moment before Yo-Yo Ma delivered the bad news to Erik. Long after ascending to the top of his field, Yo-Yo Ma continues to practice as much as six hours a day.

DJ Q-Bert was a hero of mine in middle school, because I liked the idea of being a DJ. I saved up for turntables and then sort of expected to be a DJ, but I didn’t understand that it would take practice. DJ Q-Bert has been world class in his art.

One day hanging out with friends, a waitress let us know that some DJ was performing a set across the street at Turntable Lab. We went across the street and there he was, DJ Q-Bert. Someone asked what he did to practice. Did? I still practice every day.

Karaoke confidence, like creative confidence, depends on an absence of fear of failure and judgment.

There should be a book about Karaoke confidence. I’ve been part of my fair share of Karaoke nights. K-Town has a lot of places where you can book smaller rooms with friends to sing you heart out. Fear of failure and judgment can’t get past those doors. This is where you work out the moves. It’s the paper prototype.

There are other Karaoke places. The ones without rooms. The places where you sing in front of the entire bar. While people play pool and your goal is to at least have them look up. It’s the beta.

The analogy falls apart here. You can prototype things and then eventually release something to the real world based on iterations of that prototype. Professional singers probably don’t get their reps in various Karaoke lounges.

“Think of today as a prototype. What would you change?”

I thought this was great. I’m a designer in tech, so prototypes are a known concept to people I work with. After reading Creative Confidence, I started noticing prototypes and iteration in other fields. Even if they’re not calling it prototyping. Storyboards for filmmakers. Test kitchens and soft openings for chefs. Open mics for stand-up comedians. Situational drills for sports. Labbing in virtual sports like Madden. The list goes on and on.

Bird by Bird is one of my favorite books about the value of writing regularly. Anne Lamott weaves stories of her life with writing advice. Here are some of my favorite excerpts.

She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.

More thoughts on structure. That’s a pretty easy to remember sequence. Can this formula work for writing an article? A lot of nonfiction books are collections of short narratives.

Maybe I can practice this sequence with that formula.

Action: Me writing furiously in various Dunkin Donuts through three months.

Background: Why am I trying to write? Why three months? Why Dunkin Donuts?

Development: Then I learn through repetition (aka hearing it on various podcasts) that writing is really in the thinking and organization.

Climax: Me thinking furiously in various Dunkin Donuts.

Ending: Glory. Riches. A few new Medium followers. And a realization that all three of these are the same things.

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend.

Once you accept that perfection isn’t necessary, you’ll start shipping. I’m not sure about the idea that you should ship while you’re still embarrassed. It’s good to apply to an entire product that you’ll iterate on. But it’s not like each of these posts will be read multiple times by individuals. I’ve got one shot in a lot of cases.

That said, I’ve been posting plenty of things that I’m embarrassed about looking back. But I listened to a podcast with Seth Godin and they talk about people who look at things and are embarrassed when looking back and those that are happy with it and don’t dwell.

If I didn’t write something for fear that I’d look back on it and shake my head at how bad it is, I wouldn’t write at all.

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

I’m experiencing this right now. After getting over the initial inertia, thinking through different systems, setting those systems up, struggling to learn the proper length to aim for in a day, and plenty of other hiccups, it’s starting to be very rewarding.

I used to look forward to the coffee in the morning. Queue. Action. Reward. Now I look forward to the writing. It’s become the reward.

(I still like the coffee too.)

“Do it every day for a while,” my father kept saying. “Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.”

I’ve been doing this every day. I don’t think it qualifies for “a while” yet. I don’t know yet what would be the writing equivalent of scales. Maybe writing a page under the same template each day. It is a prearrangement with myself. It does feel rewarding to honor a commitment I made to myself. And I’m appreciating the feeling of finishing. With each post and eventually with the collective whole of 100 posts.

A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

I’m too slow to get to the down draft and too often that’s as far as I get. Hopefully focusing on writing one thing each day will encourage me to get to the up draft and then the third draft.

I went to the dentist this week. It’s been six years and luckily¹ I had no cavities. There was a portion where I had no idea what was going on but the dentist would poke around and call out numbers. I asked and they were checking the separation between the tooth and gum based on how deep the instrument could go in. Anyway, each check was a little painful but sometimes it’s good to do that thorough check to find out where things might be breaking down.

There’s some other design or career analogy here. Oh yeah it’s about upkeep. Dental hygiene is made up of daily routines. You can’t floss for an hour at the end of the month to make up for things. You can ignore your daily routine then go to the dentist and get cavities filled, but it’s not the same as if you were just following the proper routine daily.

These are book notes for Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder. I paused about 30 pages in on my first read, about a year ago. I was reading Nobody Wants to Read Your Shi* recently, and Steven Pressfield mentions Save the Cat as a great resource. I picked it back up and finished it this time around. Here are some excerpts I enjoyed.

The number one thing a good logline must have, the single most important element, is: irony.

Save the Cat stresses the importance of loglines. Nobody Wants to Read Your Shi* talks about concepts in ad campaigns. Good concepts lead to lots of good ad copy that works as a hole. A logline helps keep a movie anchored.

Now that the posts are adding up, I’m thinking about the bigger picture of this 100 days, 100 posts project. What’s my logline? Considering irony is important. Maybe that stacking two crappy pages each day leads to something valuable. But you need to believe.

Hopefully I have a better logline when I’m 100 days in. Though that’s working backwards.

Because liking the person we go on a journey with is the single most important element in drawing us into the story.

He describes Lara Croft as “cold and humorless” in the movie version of Tomb Raider. On the other hand, we’d probably be happy following Mark Watney on any journey he decides to take. As far as writing goes, maybe I need to start thinking about being likable. That didn’t work in 7th grade… but it might work this time.

The theme of every Golden Fleece movie is internal growth; how the incidents affect the hero is, in fact, the plot.

One of the best things in the book is the different nicknames for concepts. Maybe I can do a small sketch for five different concepts in the book. Save the Cat (make your main character likable), etc.

Now look at The Matrix and compare and contrast it with the Disney/Pixar hit Monsters, Inc. Yup. Same movie.

The most immediately applicable part of the book is Blake Snyder’s 15-step beat sheet. As far as 80/20 goes, the beat sheet is the crucial 20% of Save the Cat. Snyder points out how different movies apply these beats. Some more than others, but they’re there if you keep an eye out.

A team updates the Save the Cat website, and I was happy to see that their beat sheet list is still updated. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Independence Day
• Game of Thrones — pilot episode
• The Martian: It has one of my favorite “Fun and Games” sequences in recent years

Pick some movies you like and check the beat sheet out for an idea of how all the concepts can be found in different movies.

“This sure isn’t like the time I was the star fullback for the N.Y. Giants until my… accident.”

That’s one of Blake’s examples of bad dialogue you want to avoid writing. As far as things I want to pursue: I’d like to write how Blake Snyder writes. Save the Cat ‘s fun to read. Plenty of people disagree with that, and I imagine they’re out writing very sophisticated screenplays. Doing a little bit of searching, I’ve learned that it’s a polarizing book. And people will go as far as saying it’s ruined movies in the past few years¹.

Blake Snyder passed away in 2009. It would’ve been great to hear what he thinks about the industry today and if any of the tips would change (I doubt it). He comes across really encouraging in his writing:

Would you blanch if I told you it was just a matter of turning the crank again and again until something happens? Because that’s all it takes. Just keep turning the crank. Any inroad, any one at all, is a gigantic leap forward.

Screenplays tell stories in fewer words than novels. They have to. The rules are set. You can self-publish a 1200 page behemoth at your leisure, but (for all intents and purposes) you can’t quite self-produce your 250 page screenplay.

Hollywood is filled with storytellers, and successful nonfiction writers know how to tell interesting, concise stories. I can learn a lot about applying these lessons, even if I’m not writing a screenplay. I’ll read his other two books later this year—maybe before this 100 days, 100 posts project ends.

In the meantime, I’ll be thinking about structure and storytelling² in my future posts.

These are book notes for On Writing Well, by William Zinsser.

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.

Good writing comes in the editing. I need to set time aside to deliberately practice cutting sentences down. In a past technical writing internship, I learned the importance of simple sentences. If people are following directions, extra words distract.

One assignment that’s stuck with me comes from a software documentation class¹. It was probably the first or second assignment. We were supposed to write directions for something we’re familiar with, like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (Or maybe the entire class had to write steps for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.)

The next day, the teacher brought in the usual things for making PB&Js. He then took a random sheet from the stack and tried to follow the directions, of course following it word for word. Always failing. He demonstrated how you can cause confusion with too many words and too few.

Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know.

Asking this for every paragraph is good practice when outlining and writing a first draft.. Asking this for every sentence will help in editing and creating the second and third drafts. Asking this for every word is probably what separates good writers from the rest. Knowing the right answer separates the great.

What am I trying to say in this post? On Writing Well is a great book about improving as a writer.

I’m currently reading Save the Cat and Nobody wants to read your shi*. Both of them talk about underlying concepts in writing.

Zooming back, what am I trying to say in these 100 posts? Consistently working on something a little bit at a time (two pages a day) adds up.

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it’s not a question of gimmicks to “personalize” the author. It’s a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.

I’m currently using a gimmick in footnotes, but I think the footnotes are where I write things that are most alive. Maybe because they’re typically more personal thoughts. Somehow I need to bring that aliveness to the relevant points.

My vocabulary is okay. There’s a little bit of conflict there, because I want to expand the vocabulary of words I use. But then that gets away from the idea of writing how you speak. That’s the kind of writing that I enjoy reading. I mean, I’d probably say “has no bearing on” instead of “inconsequential”. I guess knowing which one to use when will come with experience.

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.

This is getting pretty deep. I’ve never thought of selling myself as a writer. Well, I guess I’ve thought it’d be cool to earn money through writing. And I know he didn’t really mean “sell” in monetary terms. More just making people believe in a subject. And in turn, making them believe in me as a writer. This just got deeper.

Something from earlier is stuck in my head: my footnotes have the most aliveness. I’ll continue trying to figure that out. I think it’s because the footnotes give a sense of who I am.

One underlying goal when writing documentation is writing in a way where you can hide the seams between people. It’s written like code. You shouldn’t be able to tell who wrote it. If I want to succeed in any way as a writer, I need to start shooting for the opposite.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.

Malcolm Gladwell estimates that finishing a book is probably 25% writing and 75% thinking about the writing. And it’s a cycle: learning to write clearly becomes learning to think clearly. That’s why you have to get the reps in. That’s why I’m trying to publish daily.

These are book notes for 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman.

“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.” In other words, to increase the likelihood that someone will like you, get that person to do you a favor.

The quote in the excerpt is from Benjamin Franklin. Something I really like from Derek Sivers is his idea of “directives”. He reads a lot and sometimes his friends really just want a “Just tell me what to do” summary. 59 Seconds gives a “Just tell me what to do” summary of research. It gives practical, straightforward advice for many aspects of life.

In short, when it comes to an instant fix for everyday happiness, certain types of writing have a surprisingly quick and large impact. Expressing gratitude, thinking about a perfect future, and affectionate writing have been scientifically proven to work—and all they require is a pen, a piece of paper, and a few moments of your time.

I’ve written daily in the past, but I haven’t tried publishing daily. When wrote daily I would try to write gratitudes and affirmations. It was a very successful period in my life. So I believe they work. 59 Seconds presents the science of why. I’ve heard Tim Ferriss mention the 5-Minute Journal multiple times.

From a psychological perspective, thinking and writing are very different. Thinking can often be somewhat unstructured, disorganized, and even chaotic. In contrast, writing encourages the creation of a storyline and structure that help people make sense of what has happened and work toward a solution. In short, talking can add to a sense of confusion, but writing provides a more systematic, solution-based approach.

+1 for writing. In On Writing Well, William Zinsser says “clear thinking becomes clear writing”. The other way around, as this excerpt talks about, writing helps clarify thinking. Just another positive aspect of writing and it sure makes all of this seem worth it.

It seems that presenting weaknesses early is seen as a sign of openness.

Humility helps. You want to end on a good note. And you’ll probably want to start on a good note, too. But present weakness closer to the beginning than to the end and it can help paint the rest of what you’re saying in a positive light. It’s always nice to be confident you’re talking to someone who has nothing to hide.

Successful participants broke their overall goal into a series of sub-goals and thereby created a step-by-step process that helped remove the fear and hesitation often associated with trying to achieve a major life change. These plans were especially powerful when the sub-goals were concrete, measurable, and time-based.

Hey, hey. Let’s check these goals out.

Overall goal: Publish 100 posts in 20 weeks. Sub-goals: Publish 5 posts each week.

Zooming in. Overall goal: Publish 5 posts a week. Sub-goals: Publish each day with a 2-day buffer each week for planning and life.

Zooming out. Overall goal: Improve as a writer and increase comfort with sharing my writing. Sub-goal: Publish 100 posts in 20 weeks.