DO IT FOR A DECADE

This is so spot on, from Joan Westenberg, from their piece “There is Only One Hack: Do it for a Decade.”

Social media rewards visible bursts of activity. You can post about your new productivity system, your ambitious goals, your monk mode month, locktober etc. You get likes and followers for performing optimization. But you don’t get progress.

When I think of how I started a music blog in 2001, I sometimes get confused, like… wait, was it really that long ago?

All the different people I worked with, the oppurtintues that came up, the things I fucked up, made up, and made right… I can’t believe that next year it’ll be 25 years of somehow still being in the game.

It’s absolutely not about arriving, or outrunning a bear – you just have to run faster than you friends, and never stop, I guess.

(link via Bradley Spitzer)

HYPER-SPECIFIC WRITING WITH AI

Listened to this on mydrive home today, and it was just fun hearing all the different zigs-and-zags on the subject of AI, particularly that a lot of writing that used to be on a subject (like “how do I write a good newsletter?”) can now tailored via AI to be specific about the platform you want to use, the style in which you want to write it, and all sorts of other hyper-specific points in a way that no single “how to” article could ever provide.

And that’s fascinating to me.

THE MINIMAL LIFE

Finding this post from Jeremy Maluf is gonna be bad.

If you didn’t know, there was a point in my life where I was “The Bike Nerd.” I had a Tumblr for it, where I would post photos similar to the above.

One morning in 2010, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I woke up, took my bed apart, left it on the curb, and rode away. I rode to Rutherford, NJ that day, about 31 miles, on my single speed bike.

I’m not saying I have the itch to get rid of everything and bike across the country again, but I’m not not saying it, either.

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

October 1st is here, along with crisp morning air, a long walk, and coffee from a local joint called Four Monkeys.

This time of year is magic for me. Since I’ve been working in the “music biz” since the mid 2000s and all, things always slowed down around this time. The flow of press releases, big news, tours, the overall volume of information kinda calmed down, and I always try to form these months around that, even though it’s a different era.

The world ain’t gonna form around my vibes, so I will bring the vibes I need, in both work and personal life, and that means being more present, more morning walks, less stressing about the things I have no control over.