Newsletter No. 5

CJ Chilvers and I emailed back and forth briefly. I have been reading CJ’s newsletter for many years. I find newsletters to be an engaging medium, partly because the subscriber has made a tacit choice in subscribing, and partly because the writer knows their’s audience’s intention and wants to make it count.

CJ send me a link to Mike Crittenden’s blog post about writing 5x more but 5x less. This advice was poignant. I tend to write on and on, tackling evermore large topics. Nothing wrong in writing longer text. However, unelss you write full-time, you produce long articles infrequently. Writing infrequently prevents formation of the habit of writing and sharing.

Austin Kleon further makes this point in his book Show Your Work. Writing longer means you show less work.

Another benefit of writing shorter — the brevity invariably leave gaps in the idea. These gaps are essential in growing ideas. Itay Talgam makes this case in his book The Ignorant Maestro and also in this very popular TED Talk on Leadership.

With this I posted five articles last week. This is a new habit for me and one I am hoping to stick with all year.

2021 In Review

Here I got into what worked and what didn’t last year. 2021 was a challenging but illuminating year.

Books I Read in December

I list the books I read in December. I had 10 days off from work which allowed me to finish six books, one of which was 530 pages excluding index and notes!

My Reading Habit

I have started reading more and this post explains how I am trying to do this. I am hoping this is a habit that will grow and morph this year. Just last week I finished two books but I lost harmony between reading and understanding.

Fleeting Notes

I go into the first step of understanding when I read books. Understanding gives meaning. Or else reading regresses into watching mindless TV.

Literature Notes

This is the second step of understanding. Writing Literature Notes is like re-reading the important parts of the book well enough to be able to explain it to someone!

I am traveling for work next week. This will be a good chance to practice reading in a very distracting and noisy environment of airport gates and airplanes. If I can be successful in reading on a plane, I will treat myself to a pair of noise-cancelling headphones!

Newsletter No. 3

I finshed reading Ian McEwan’s The Daydreamer. I kept looking for Leguin’s “Rhythm” in the book but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It felt like my mind’s eye was trying to focus on a fuzzy shape that never fully revealed itself.

I started reading Grace Paley, another author recommended by Leguin. The writing has that intoxicating quality that is so rare. It is literature like this that inspires the vocation of writing in me.

I can generally manage 8 to 10 hours of vocational reading and writing work after doing 40 to 50 hours of work-work. But last week was particularly busy at work. By 5 PM on Friday I counted sixty hours of critical pricing work and deadlines throughout the week. About 20 of those were deep-work hours in 90 minute stretches with no distractions and no email. For those who haven’t tried deep-work, it is like High-Intensity-Interval-Training compared to regular work which is like a walk on a treadmill while watching HGTV. Anyway, nothing other than work-work got done last week.

I did post a new podcast episode from my new podcast studio last Sunday. Thanks for subscribing if you listened to it! Recording is so much easier now that I have my own space. Most of the editing knowledge came back to me, largely because my past self left my future self notes in easy to find text files right inside the Podcast folder. Good job past Abhishek!

Unfortunately, new blog posts might be a little delayed in the next few weeks, but hopefully not much longer. We adopted a dog yesterday from the Humane Society. We named her Ruby. She is three, she had five puppies recently and her previous people surrendered her. We don’t know why those people surrendered this dog. She is sweet. All we know is her old people didn’t teach her any discipline. So she is an anxious mess in our home, possibly living indoors for the first time. To top it all, my wife and I are used to being parents to timid and well adjusted dogs. Just like Ruby, we also find ourselves in uncharted waters.

I am going to walk her for a good hour early in the mornings. Cesar Milan says this is the best thing you can do with your dog. But 6 AM to 7:30 AM is the time I usually block for deep reading and writing. I am not sure where the deep reading and writing block will move to yet. There is a good chance walks with Ruby will lead to clearer thinking. Who knows.

Right now Ruby is anxious and she needs walks. And a lot of love. And we all could use a lot of discipline.

Newsletter No. 2

Rhythm and cadence have occupied my mind this month. I am trying to pay attention to the rhythm in various things such as literature, how I do creative work, and how I like to take breaks. By paying attention to the natural rhythms I am trying to build a new rhythm of sorts.

Rational thinking, which dominates my brain, wants to set the metronome first and then cast the rhythm. I certainly tried to do so with this newsletter last weekend. I set the metronome to a weekly cadence — which I failed to do last week. I should have probably set the metronome after the rhythm has set.

Staying with the metaphor a bit longer… setting the metronome first would work only if I was trying to play someone else's music. What I am trying to do is find my own tune in exploring thoughts, ideas and skills. But nothing I am doing is new: blogging, podcasting, reading and thinking. Others do it more and better. It feels easier to imitate.

I see other creative people who I admire produce so much work and it makes me think I can do it too. But I need to remember that I spend 40 to 50 hours a week doing my day-job which is also creative and very analytical and takes a lot of mental energy. It also pays the bills. I can not share a large majority of the work I do in my day-job because we are under strict NDAs with our clients. So it seems that the work I can share is small and slow.

I don't want this to be an excuse. So I have started a time-block Plan from 6 AM to 6 PM for both, my professional job and my personal creative work. It is a challenging schedule but I deviated from it on only a few days in the last two weeks. By all measures it is working.

Here is the stuff I have written in the last two weeks:

Van Neistat

I discovered Van Neistat's new youtube channel. It reminds me of one of my favorite short movies on YouTube called 10 Bullets. Read the post here

Fiction and Non Fiction

I've been reading too much non fiction and discovered a hunger for fiction, like I was starved of something essential. I tried to explore that idea. I have to admit, my writing is not great in this one. As I read it now, it feels like I wrote before the idea had fully crystalized. Read the post here

Rhythm

I explore another rendition of the Rhythm thought with which I opened this letter. This time I hit up the writings of Ursula Le Guin. Read the post here

On the podcast front I am nearly finished writing the copy of my next episode. I am also close to having my recording studio set up so I don’t have to juggle the home computer that my wife also uses for her work. I should post the episode soon. You can find it listen on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and Stitcher. Search for "Sighthound Studio" on Google Podcast, or directly use RSS in your podcast app.