Archive of posts from February 2026

Which way of working makes you faster?

Take two tasks you need to think through and work out, but you’ve not had time to think through yet. Write them both down right now anywhere; Apple Notes, paper, whatever.

Day 1: Try to solve the first one in your digital toolkit, in your current normal environment. If you listen to music, listen. If you’re into coffee, do coffee. The usual.

Day 2: Try to solve the second one without the digital toolkit. Turn off the music. No coffee, just water. Sit with a paper notebook and pen instead. Save the treats (coffee & music) as a five-minute gift to yourself after you’ve worked out the task on paper.

Day 3: Ask yourself, which day did you get more meaningful output done? Which felt better during the task? Which felt better after having done it? Observe the difference. Mix/match to find your sweet-spot.

It’s entirely possible that you’re not doing the wrong things… you’re just doing them in a way that isn’t optimal for you.

Worth a shot. You never know, you may discover a far better way of working right under your nose.

Most brands think their offers are generous.

They’re not.

Take referral offers, for instance. You can certainly be more generous than you’re being now.

After all, a referral costs way less to get than the alternative, so make your referral offers fantastically generous. Not just in money, but in time, and effort.

Think of all the effort you’d put into winning business any other way. If you were to spend 75% the amount of time and money you would have spent doing that, instead simply loving on whoever referred (or their referrer too, split the love), then you’re winning while saving 25%.

It pays more to give more.

We can accelerate our learning by being like child.

Brains shift from growth to retention in our 30s. Fight it by doing new things.

One small bit of the thing you want to learn or to be good at, daily.

Have prizes for doing well.

Have someone to compete against or play with.

Make something terrible daily.

Prioritize making learning fun, just as important as the actual lesson itself.

Do as kids do. They learn the world, fast.

If they can learn the whole world and have a blast doing it, maybe they’re onto something?

You don’t need to love your clients.

But it’s important to love what you do.

Liking them helps.

If you want to be popular, do whatever is popular, regardless of taste, talent, preference, or dreams.

If you want to be good, forget about popular, and focus on taste, talent, preference, and dreams.

Notice how they’re not the same thing.

If you’re addicted to your phone…

…You could just not have one.

Ultimately, it’s your choice.

For some reason, social feeds are offering me “operating system wars” at the moment.

Where Mac users are distraught with Apple’s many recent design changes, are ready to move to Windows, but became frustrated that Microsoft went all-in on Copilot at their moment of exodus, so they considered Linux, but can’t get their favorite commercial software there, and on and on it goes.

It’s like a soap opera.

A silly, cheesy, dramatic soap opera.

Who cares.

Work on your craft, use whatever gives you access to the tools you need to what you do, and let that be that.

The excess drama doesn’t make you better.

Photoshop changed a lot in the last 20 years.
But I still use it the same way as I did 20 years ago.

Lots of tablet, stylus, pens and notebook brands have come along in the last 20 years.
But I still use the exact same ones I used 20 years ago.

Not because I dislike change (I don’t). But because I found what works, and focused on mastering my craft, rather than tinkering with tools.

Forget tinkering. Focus on mastery.

In English class back at school, a teacher would give you a “prompt” to write about.

And then you’d write about it.

The teacher wasn’t the author of your work.
The teacher simply motivated the work.

You authored the work.
And you became a better writer for it.

The world, currently, seems confused about the difference between the prompter, the author, and who becomes better for it.

The lines haven’t been redrawn, however much the big AI companies would like you to believe otherwise.

Social networks make you feel you’ll miss out on something important if you don’t check them again in an hour.

They’re lying.

For the longest time, I thought “process” starved the creative process.

That it was a “business thing” that was at odds at “art things”.

But it’s not the case.

A creative process is a solo endeavour until there is a process through which others can contribute.

For solo creative processes, that’s fine. There’s still a process, but it lives in your head, fine.

For creative processes that require the contribution of others, that’s not fine. That process needs to come out of your head. It needs defining. It needs to show what success looks like. It needs to show what’s OK and not OK. It needs to show how contributions take place, and what happens, in what order.

“Process” doesn’t starve the creative process.

It enables it to become multiplayer.

What a lovely thing that is.

I had a call a few days ago with a nice guy who’s building his business, who is one of many who have meetings with me periodically to seek guidance on their way.

I asked this particular chap to write and publish an idea every day, something I ask many people to do.

Most say they’ll try, then don’t do it.

This tells me two things:
One, they can’t stick to their action items.
Two, they can’t stick to their word.

I have high hopes that he will stick with it.
But it raises a question worth thinking about:

Do you have any “small hard things” like this that you do?

I write every day, I draw every day, and I walk every day.
Three small hard things. Every day.

What are yours?

Optimization is a trap.
Productivity is a trap.
Efficiency is a trap.

These things tell creative minds to cut some corners, don’t sweat the details, and remove the superfluous.

But the world doesn’t need more homogenized, generic, just-good-enough mediocrity.

It needs some people to care enough to do so much better than that.

If you’re one of them, don’t worry so much about optimizing, productivity, or efficiency.

Consider redirecting some of that energy toward making great work.

Photographers complain about AI generating photos… then use AI to generate website assets.

Website designers complain about AI generating website assets… then use AI to generate photos.

Each thinks their thing should be protected, while the other is throw-away.

Neither are correct.

Fast-food chains and gourmet restaurants co-exist just fine. Each serving different clientele.

The complainers are usually producing fast-food for fast-food clients while wanting to be paid like a gourmet restaurant.

Choose what you make. Choose who you make it for.

Not all games divide players into winners and losers.

Take Dungeons & Dragons, for instance.

It’s a game loved by many. There are stories, dice, challenges, and resolutions.

Except everyone who shows up is on the same side, even when they’re not.

Everyone is in it together, invested in the story, enjoying the journey as well as the outcome.

Everyone leaves feeling satisfied, and eager to do it again next week.

Whatever game you’re playing right now, whether it’s a game of sales and marketing, getting picked for a project, or anything else…

…Look for D&D rules, the version of your game where everyone wins.

It’s often right there, if you’re prepared to look for it.

We need less more.

AI can generate 500 video clips in an instant. But how many are worth watching?

Before it, offshore content factories would create 50 for you in a day. Same question applies?

Quality isn’t going down. Mediocrity is getting faster.

We don’t want more.

We want better.

We don’t get better by working harder and harder for hard clients.

We get better by getting better and better for better clients.

Lowering standards creates short-term wins and long-term losses.

Raising standards creates short-term losses and long-term gains

So either be impatient and produce mediocre work,
or be patient and produce great work.

Try not to mix and match.
It’ll drive you crazy.

“Time well spent” is an ambiguous goal for time.

It’s easier to look at time two-dimensionally, waiting for someone else to tell us what we should do with our time, or what is worthwhile.

But that’s not usually the answer we need.

The answer we need might be in finding comfort in the true, ambiguous goal for time.

To look at the day, to listen to our gut, and follow that toward “time well spent”.

Sometimes, it might be working on your craft. Other times, it might be going for a long walk with your loved ones.

Both are time well spent.

There are so many good ways to spend your time.

Ignore what others tell you it should be that your instinct disagrees with.

And definitely ignore all the bad ways to spend your time, such as doom-scrolling.

We don’t have infinite time. It passes faster than we think it will.

Make sure it’s time well spent.

The riskiest thing you can do, is what everyone else is doing.

After all, they’ve already got that covered. What does it matter if you do it, too?

Keep your uniqueness. Keep whats makes you special. Make it yours.

We need that.

I’ve created artwork for over 20 years.

Yet I feel like I’m learning more than ever.

And I feel like I’m more novice than ever, as a result of all the new avenues that continue to open up as my skills continue to grow.

The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

I find, if we can live with that ever-expanding “holy moly, there’s still so much to learn” feeling, eventually it becomes a joy, a privilege, an excitement.

Excited for the next 20.

Boring will not make you stand out.

Boring will not earn you a place in their consideration set.

Boring will not make them think of you when they move in-market.

Boring will not take you where you probably want to go.

When you giving out free cookies, some people still say no.

The goal isn’t to get them to buy your cookies.

The goal is to simply let them take that cookie.

That one cookie. Om nom nom.

Then another next week. Om nom nom.

Then maybe the week after, they’ll wonder what other flavors you’ve got.

“Love” is a verb.

So is “brand”.

Most people mistake both of these as nouns.

My experience of AI so far:

Best case: useful sidekick for people with, or eager to develop, skills.

Worst case: useful for helping those talented people’s skills atrophy.

My expectation: We’ll see both more sidekicks, and more skill atrophy.

While I like to write all my own words, my own emails, my own code, my own everything…

Even if you do like to generate things…

Remember to at least keep up the skill, and stay comfortable with blank canvases, and the tension of the creative process.

Because it’ll become alien faster than you think it will.

It still surprises me when people tell me they’ve been reading my stuff for years, and I have no idea who they are.

Never saw them in a comment, a newsletter reply, anywhere. Yet they were there.

Followers? Comments? Likes? These are lousy metrics.

Most of the time, the most valuable “metrics” are invisible.

But that doesn’t mean they’re any less valuable, or that lousy alternatives become any less lousy.

Optimize for loyalty, for making change happen, for being missed if you were gone.

Instead of trying to make it good, make it less bad.

Instead of blaming complexity, make it a little less complex.

Instead of blaming competition, stop trying to blend in so much.

Instead of dwelling on the outcome, focus more on the input.

The difference between stuck and unstuck is often how we choose to see things.

Instead of worrying about whether AI will take your job…

Invest your time in things that don’t change.

An “AI artist” with no hands-on skill as an artist, who hasn’t learned how to lay their own lines, define their own volumes, render their own renders?

An “AI writer” with no hands-on skill as a writer, who hasn’t learned how to pace a story, build and release tension, and lead somewhere worth going?

An “AI developer” with no hands-on skill as a developer, who hasn’t learned how to spot trouble ahead, maintain codebases, or fix six-year-old code?

Their struggles remain, because not only are they outsourcing the task, but also the taste and direction that determines great work.

So whether you’re on “team craft” or “team AI”, invest in the craft anyway.

Without taste, you won’t know when your slop is slop.