Issue No. 2 — Sunday, 3 July, 2022 By Jill Metcalfe

S U B S C R I B E

A L L I S S U E S

🙄 Some people

I’m writing this as I drink coffee in the lobby of my little hotel in Bristol. I’m back in the UK for the first time in over 3 years.

The only other person in the room is eating his black pudding and grilled tomatoes on toast while watching what sounds like a violent thriller on his iPad.

I switch to WhatsApp and start venting my frustration in the family group chat.

Hasn’t he heard of earphones? Doesn’t he realise he’s not the only person in the room? What could possibly be going through his head?

“Ugh, some people,” my daughter commiserates.

We exchange eye-roll emojis and I go back to pretending to work, while trying to block out the sounds of wet thwacking noises and terrified screams.

A couple of minutes later – “Excuse me?”

It’s him. “Is this too loud? Do you want me to turn it down?”

Me: “No, no! Don’t worry, it’s absolutely fine!”

Some people. 🙄

Photo of Bristol by Marcus Loke on Unsplash

What I’ve been up to this week

<aside> 📖 B O O K S

The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett

I’ve been reading sci-fi and fantasy since the age of 7 but never read any Terry Pratchett. I fixed that this week.

The Colour of Magic is the first book in the Discworld saga. It’s a comfortable and easy read and, for me, comes with a heavy dose of nostalgia.

Many of the characters could have come out of the 1970s British TV sitcoms I grew up watching.

But there are just two female characters, and neither of them wear any clothes to speak of. Both are lascivious temptresses. Another eye-roll incoming. 🙄

But it won’t stop me reading more.

Building a Second Brain – Tiago Forte

I held out for a few days but eventually cracked and bought this book on Kindle, after hearing Tiago say it contained everything he teaches in his course.

No earth-shattering revelations so far, but I’m enjoying thinking about the concept of “intermediate packets”, which are basically reusable assets or modules of work.

Read more about IPs in Ramses Oudt’s blog.

The God is Not Willing – Steven Erikson

Up next.

I’m ready for something to really get my teeth into. Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series was the most challenging fantasy saga I’ve ever read, but probably also the most rewarding.

This is the first book in a new series called Witness, and it’s set in the same universe.

Can’t wait to get started.

</aside>

<aside> 🛠️ T H I N G S I ‘ V E M A D E

• I’ve been using Twitter for one year now. I marked the occasion in the time-honoured fashion with a special tweet that has become my most popular post ever. (I actually joined Twitter 15 years ago this month but kept that fact quiet.)
• I started exploring automations using make.com and now have a Twitter Growth Factory page that imports my Tweets into Notion. The next step will be to bring in analytics. </aside>

<aside> 🎓 C O U R S E S I ‘ M T A K I N G

• I’m looking forward to starting Nate Kadlac’s 80/20 Design Challenge email-based course. If you have any interest in design and don’t already know Nate, sign up for his Sunday newsletter Plan Your Next. It’s one of the few I always open as soon as it drops.
• Nate and I are both alumni of Will Steiner’s beautifully crafted Mastering the Email-Based Course email-based course so I’m interested to see what he does with it. </aside>

<aside> 🪡 M O V I N G T H E N E E D L E

Not much needle-moving has occurred in the last month or more and I’m starting to get annoyed with myself.

Justin Welsh pinpointed the problem in his most recent newsletter.

Challenge 1: Context switching: being distracted continuously by little emails, DMs, etc. that end up taking you out of your creative or business flow state and waste tons of time. Challenge 2: Wrong focus: spending time doing things that feel productive but are actually part of the 80% of things that don’t move the needle. Challenge 3: Burnout: trying to balance a full-time job, a side hustle, and creating content for social media.

His “solution” is better productivity systems. But that’s pretty glib.

You can have world’s best system, but unless you know what your goal is, one of those 3 challenges will stick its foot out and trip you up every time.

The real solution is to set a goal and commit to achieving it.

And that’s something I have no idea how to do.

</aside>

I**’ll close with this tweet from Paul Millerd**, who’s very good at reminding people that it’s actually okay to be just okay. You don’t have to be great at everything, all the time.

https://twitter.com/p_millerd/status/1538745162108588032

<aside> 🖋️ If you haven’t already subscribed, sign up here to receive more of this nonsense in your inbox every Sunday-ish.

</aside>

<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/4d234c7e-ae6b-4beb-af25-e9f2d946774c/152573939-ink-sketch-lorgnette-1_2.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/4d234c7e-ae6b-4beb-af25-e9f2d946774c/152573939-ink-sketch-lorgnette-1_2.png" width="40px" /> The Lorgnette is created in Notion by Jill Metcalfe. Come and say hello on Twitter.

</aside>