Three Wins

WIN 1

How do I capture ideas? I hope you’re picturing me in a grassy, golden hour meadow trying to catch an invisible butterfly.

It’s not like that. And I’m talking about the literal act of recording a note. Despite having the best pens, notebook, intentions, I need to capture them on my phone.

Voice memos? Get out of here. An app? Yes, but getting there is a field mine of distractions. My answer is an iPhone shortcut that opens my “Ideas Inbox” with my iPhone’s action button.

Opening a pre-existing document is the absolute win. In my case it’s a Notion doc, but for you, whatever you need. Push that Action Button, and you don’t have to see what app you had open last.

Capture your idea with voice dictation. And then close your phone without losing the moment. Without consciously thinking about how to take the note. It’s great! Frictionless. I made an Instagram reel about it here, and here are Perplexity’s directions on how to do it if you have an iPhone.

I set up my Ideas Inbox document like this:

• Begin

• Idea while knitting

• Here’s another idea

• Idea 1

I always have a point form called “begin” since it’s short and I can tap after it to get the cursor there, hit return, and then voice dictate my note. Newest ideas are always at the top.

WIN 2

Like a veil of shame lifting, i can almost physically feel the fear lifting off of me while sharing my work for youtube or anywhere online. I have a lot of that good, old imposter syndrome… But with a lot of trusted people asking me “who are the ‘they’?” that i’m worried about, I realize I’m not really worried about ‘em.

And a good reminder, without naming names, is that one of the literal coolest people I know, the actual person I cringed while imagining them watching my channel, reached out to say they loved my channel. Like the universe slapping me across the face saying “you’re still worried about this?”

Make your thing.

WIN 3

Walks. Seriously. Go for more walks. I go EVERY DAY by myself and I look forward to it. It’s like a new morning coffee. Craig Mod’s evangelism reached me this year and… I get it.

Walking is just enough work to make it too difficult to be on your phone. It’s not enough work that it feels like exercise, consuming your mind with the idea of stopping.

In nature is preferred.

No inputs. I don’t listen to anything… . That helps me hear bicycles approaching from the rear, but more importantly the quiet leads to pure processing—mental defragmentation.

Some days on the trail, I just want to keep walking. I imagine calling my wife for a ride 2 hours later and 10km down the road. But I turn around.

The idea of turning around feels like I’m repeating, but the return trip’s perspective is completely novel. This happens on road trips too. The drive back home has its own unique set of scenery. It’s own vibe.

I do 3, 4, or 5km every day depending on my schedule. At my pace, 4km takes me around an hour and I’m already over 5000 steps before breakfast.

This week’s video is about the creative wins in your life and specifically about reflecting on pulling off my best short film (in my opinion) yet. This win is not fully based on artistic merit or external validation… It’s just that I achieved a personal best baseline of quality across all aspects of it. The sum of the details.

Thanks for reading my newsletter.

I may send less-frequently as I push to post on YouTube weekly for the month of August. I feel like weekly newsletters is a bit much. You can always simply reply to this email to let me know your thoughts.

New video here