Hey,
I want to ask something. When it comes to sharing your work, do you share the process or only the end product? Up until now, I was one of those who only shared the end product. But then I read this book and it completely changed my perspective. So, with this…
One Thing I Learned
Show Your Work
I read this book by Austin Kleon last month: “Show Your Work! 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered”. And it has been one of the most interesting and useful ideas I have come across in recent times. Kleon encourages readers to share their work and put an end to the destructive myth of ‘the lone genius’. The book notes that when we share our process we are not only keeping a record of our own progress but also making ourselves findable to like-minded people.
Throughout the book, Kleon addresses artists. However, you shouldn’t restrict the definition of an artist only to someone who exhibits her paintings in a gallery or is associated with a theatre. An artist is anyone who uses their creative genius to make something new. From a coder who uses a new algorithm that reduces the time complexity to half, an entrepreneur who is relentlessly pursuing an idea, or a writer who makes you believe in magic, dragons, aliens.
I strongly recommend that you read this book. It’s a short read, hardly 200 pages most of which are illustrations.
One Plugin to Try
Audioblogs: I recently came across this Chrome extension that reads blog posts using an AI-generated voice, and can send the audio file to your podcast player. I haven’t used this enough yet to form an opinion, but I was intrigued by the idea. So, I thought I would share it with you and you can give it a try and see how you like it. I feel it will especially come in handy when I am in the middle of something like a drive, or doing laundry and want to read a particular article.
One Question from the Readers
If you could suggest one productivity app, what would it be?
Well, it’s very difficult to pick one tool or app that is good for all use cases because your choice of an app depends on what you want to do. I see my use cases can be broadly classified into the following three categories -
Create
Consume
Connect and Collaborate
So, I will give you my top picks of all three categories, and hopefully, that would be helpful.
Create
Notion: This is my favorite productivity app at the moment. I use Notion to plan out my to-dos, my YouTube workflow, general note-taking, etc. What I absolutely love about Notion is its simple yet highly customizable UI. If you are interested to know about the story of Notion, you can check out my article here.
Consume
Kindle: I have been a long-time user of the Kindle app. One of the best things about the app is the ability to highlight text which can then be synchronized with Notion and I can have all the ideas I find interesting from books in one place. Even if you don’t have a Kindle I recommend you install the Kindle app and try using it as your primary consumption application.
Connect and Collaborate
Slack: Out of all the apps I use to connect and collaborate with people, I feel that Slack is the most ‘productive’ one. I mean there’s hardly any scope for mindless scrolling :P
This issue’s Bonus Section - Moments from my Life
I finally went out to eat yesterday after nearly 11 months. It is nice to see order being restored to things around us as we continue our fight with the pandemic. However, it’s important that we follow all safety protocols to the best of our abilities. How have your social interactions changed in the light of COVID? Let me know by replying to this mail. 😀
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See you soon. Cheers!