Adam’s Daily Post

Remember paper?

When you write digital notes, you focus on structure and form, not just ideas. You have billion-dollar companies competing for your attention while you try to focus. You risk over-writing and under-thinking.

When you fill a digital calendar, you focus on what you can fit into the day, not just what belongs in the day. You have no visible scribbles nor edits to remind you of miscalculated estimates, setting you up to repeat past mistakes.

Paper plays an important role in digital lives. Human creativity thrives on motion and feel, and paper is better at both of those things.

Maybe incorporate a little more of it into your workflow. Your digital output will thank you for it.

Slack is powerful.

I don’t mean the business communication platform (though that is powerful, too).

I mean a little bit of margin between activities.

Whether it’s slack between time blocks,

Or it’s slack at the end of each week,

Or it’s slack at the end of each month,

Have some.

There are few assets as powerful as slack, at ensuring your goals get met.

There’s something strangely alluring about ugly tools.

My favourite animation app looks like it came straight out of the 90s.

My favourite text editors did come straight out of the 90s.

My Gmail interface has a calendar box in it, Salesforce to-dos in there, all on top of Gmail’s regular (somewhat cluttered) interface.

I think it’s kind of beautiful.

While the manicured, minimalist interfaces call you to perfect what you’re doing, they seemingly judge every typo and false start. You can feel yourself hesitating at the keyboard, not wanting to soil the prettiness with your imperfections.

But ugly interfaces? They don’t care. Make a mess. They do. Try things. They won’t judge.

Long live ugly.

My family knows me well.

This Christmas, I was greeted with some delightful little plastic toys. They now adorn my desk, as expected.

Some people subscribe to expensive productivity services to get their boost.

Others require very specific blends of coffee in pursuit of their operational gains.

Me?

A few silly toys on my desk that I feel like are cheering me on is my jam.

Find your jam.

The smartphone with the best reviews isn’t automatically the best one for you and your specific needs.

The home that inspires the most envy in others isn’t automatically the one you’ll find most fulfilling.

The profession everyone aspires to isn’t automatically the one you’ll be glad you invested your life into when it’s all over.

Don’t choose for what is best for the greatest number of people.

Choose for what is best for you, your needs, and your philosophies.

Choose what’s best for you, not just what’s “best”.

Isn’t that better?

“Latest and greatest”

Just because it’s “latest”, it’s not automatically “greatest”.

For instance:

• Most of my sites run on a system from 2008.
• Both of my writing apps first launched in 1991.
• Yet other parts of my stack are less than a year old!

Use latest IF “latest IS greatest”.

Use old and stable IF stable is still superior.

Best is best.

“You’re not charging enough!”

“You’re overpriced!”

I figure it this way:

If we can do a great job at something, but it takes a certain amount of time to make it great, then that time needs to be factored into price.

If we can do an equally-great job with less, we might need to be charging less anyway.

If we need that time but compromise on price, then we compromise on service, which is a total disservice to the customer.

Let price be dictated by the experience they want, not the line-items in your plan.

The market may be obsessed with AI…

But it’s desperate for craftsmen.

Those who don’t:

• farm creative out to ‘chippity’
• hand you over to cheap labour
• saturate markets with low quality

Here’s what smart businesses want:

• They want teams who strive for the best
• They want teams who sweat the details
• They want teams who care the most

They know delegating to the least experienced won’t help them grow.

They know commoditized creative won’t help them stand out.

They know when you’re cutting corners on them.

Which do you prefer to work with:
People in the first list, or people in the second?

Be the show. Not the commercial break.

Here’s how:

Don’t pitch.

• There’s too much good material out there
• Pithy pitching take you out of the race

Don’t use ad spend as a crutch.

• Organic is increasingly a litmus test
• Ad spend won’t save bad material

Don’t make it about you.

• Make it about what they want
• Make it how they like receiving it

Don’t behave like a commercial break.

• Behave like a beloved show
• Plan a series, episodes, a world

You have to work harder to build great things.

But great things work harder for your right back.

Isn’t that better?

“Are my competitors better than us?”
“Are they giving better service than us?”
“Are they smarter than us?”

More likely they’re either:

• Sharing more value than you,
• More enjoyable than you,
• Both.

Most of us are online to learn, or to laugh.

So combine the two.

Your competitors won’t know what hit ‘em.