Struggling to Write All Day, Every Day ✍️

Hey, y'all 👋

I'm in Athens, it's 40°C every day, and the North of the city was on fire 😢

Climate change is very real.

If you are working to tackle climate change, please get in touch.

I'm happy to support you.

... now off to this week's letter 👇

Wrestling With My Creative Demons 👹

Over the past weeks I finished some of the common tasks when starting a business:

Long story short: the fun stuff is done.

Now it's time to build.

My company's first product?

An email-based course.

Writing as a Daily Task

This week I realized that I write all day, every day.

If you have stared at a blank page you know what I'm talking about.

There are a couple of tricks (outlining content; outlining the lesson; starting with the last paragraph; etc.) you can use to make your life easier. But it's still tough.

Why?

My guess is that it is a creative task. You literally create something from scratch: zero to a hundred.

If you are anything like me then your professional life has two distinct modes:

Proactive: Strategic planning; New product development; etc.
Reactive: Meetings; Feedback; Customer support; Maintenance; etc.

Paul Graham calls this "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule"

Reactive work is easier since it doesn't start from net zero.

That's why I think writing is difficult for me.

Once upon a time I thought

Learning from Neil Gaiman: Writing as a Craft

"Anything can be fixed. the only thing that can't be fixed is the perfection of a blank page."Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is one of the most prolific fiction writers of the past decades.

Listening to him talk or reading about his mental models feels like getting an MFA in Creative Writing.

The gist of it: Get started and keep going ✍️

Writing is a manifestation of ideas.

In no particular order, here are a couple of shoutouts:

This week Phil started a newsletter to build his personal brand. He works in M&A and writes weekly about the latest news & trends in the German landscape.
My buddy's Ryan & Dom write about all things related to accelerated learning (they call it 'Superlearning')
Nate writes one of the coolest newsletters out there. Design + creator journey.

There are many more I will mention in the coming weeks.

The cool thing is, once something is written it's there to stay.

Write it once, share it forever.

If you are interested in writing and want to read more on the topic you can check my evergreen blog post about writing techniques, best practices, and personal learnings 👇

A Guide to Better Writing (in 5 Steps)

Writing is hard. But it doesn't have to be. A few tricks can take your writing from so-so to o-ho!

I'll stick to the "writing narrative" of this issue.

I started a dedicated bi-weekly newsletter that covers 'remote work' exclusively.

Here's a sample if that sounds relevant to you 👇

Push vs. Pull Communication 🤜 - Issue #2 | Revue

This issue covers 2 helpful frameworks:

Push vs. Pull Communication
SSoT (Single-Source-of-Truth)

"The 80/20 of Remote Team Leadership" - My Email-Based Course

Later this week I'm planning to send out the first email of the EBC as a freebie.

If you are interested in reading it, sign up here.

An Interesting Observation: Less Is More

Over the past weeks, my open rates for this newsletter have dropped from ~50% to ~40% per issue.

BUT...

But I kept receiving more and more private messages saying something along these lines:

Loved the [ADD STORY]
Really enjoyed this issue
etc.

This is cool to see.

I'd rather have a few people who love this than 1000s who archive these issues immediately.

Thanks for your support 🙏

...

Stay happy, stay healthy 🙌

Art