Active Recall
Active Recall
002 (of maybe 260)
0:00
-5:15

002 (of maybe 260)

I need to write a pre-amble for this initial set of issues:

I wanted to write a year’s worth of daily newsletters in November, channeling the spirit of NanoWriMo. These first 17 issues were recorded on Nov 2nd and Nov 3rd.

I guess if I keep it up with this system then I need to consider that the release of an issue will always be some time after I actually recorded things. If I actually did finish a year of daily newsletters by the end of this month, then the last one would be scheduled out near October next year.

I should draw this out because there are a few different timelines. (This is like a dumb version of Recursion—great book I read earlier this year.) For this initial set:

  • Timeline 1, the initial recordings (Nov 2 & 3) — These are the initial 17 recordings. I had a free weekend. It was the weekend of the New York marathon and UFC 244 at Madison Square Garden. I edited all the audio.

  • Timeline 2, transcription and notes (Nov 4 to 10th) — My goal is to add notes and schedule them to be sent out by the end of next weekend. And also do another batch of recording.

  • Timeline 3, release (Nov 3 to Nov 25th) — Assuming weekday releases, the 17th episode would have a 22-day gap between initial recording to release.

If I stick to this and follow through on doing 260 of these (a year’s worth of weekday issues) by the end of the month, then the gap would be something like… okay shout out to Wolfram for this calculation:

(And if this is a newsletter then I better start sharing some links. Check out Stephen Wolfram’s work setup. It’s long. There’s an AMA also.)

The last episode could have 334 days between initial recording and release (Nov 30 to Oct 29, 2020).

There might be some interesting things as a result of that. By interesting I mean in the design-feedback form: “interesting.”

It’ll be confusing.

For instance, right now I want to reference issue #007 where I talk about the Indie Hackers podcast with Patio11 (and an AMA also, also.)

Actually I’m realizing I don’t need to mention my own issue at all. Just need to grab this quote from that interview, in a section where Patrick talks about writing:

What do you do on a blog? You write about what you did today, and so I would write about what I did today. And I did that for about two years, and I realized that's the things that were really landing with people, and stuff that I could look back a year later and say, hey, that thing that I wrote was actually useful

He says he wrote 3 million words over the course of a decade.

Oh yeah but the reason I bring it up is that, because of this increasing gap between when I record and when it’s released, I should probably focus a little more on evergreen topics.

Oh yeah the show notes

I mentioned Ben Horowitz’s book What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture and creating a shocking rule. He also has rules about shocking rules, here are 2 of them.

It must raise the question “Why?” Your rule should be so bizarre and shocking that everybody who hears it is compelled to ask, “Are you serious?”

People must encounter the rule almost daily. If your incredibly memorable rule applies only to situations people face once a year, it’s irrelevant.

Shocking rules help turn your (Simon Sinek uppercase’d) Why from an idea to action. From what you think to what you do.

Do the verb.

Why think about writing a newsletter when I can be a newsletter-er?

Other links for things I mentioned

0 Comments