🥃 Old Fashioned

OK, we've messed up...

Do you ever go down a rabbit hole so deep that you forget how the surface of the earth looks?

When it comes to tech, the last decade has felt like that, from a slow creep in 2012 to a tumble into the pits by 2020.

A few 2020 rabbit holes that are seemingly impossible to escape.

• The way we get news feat. Twitter, Facebook and some influencer.

• Everyone and their grandmother create content feat. YouTube, TikTok, Twitch

• If we can do it on our phone, we’ll use that over anything.

And that last point there, that’s where you can find the good old fashioned gold.

I figured this out a while ago when I was painstakingly doing something on my phone that I could better do elsewhere - and that thing was note-taking.

🗒 Notes by Hand

This has improved my productivity, research, brainstorming, and information retention.

All you need:

1. A Notepad

2. A Pen

If you’re already doing this as your go-to note-taking, trust me when I say, you’re one of the few.

If you hit the productivity category on the App or Play stores, you’ll be bombarded with every version of a note-taking app imaginable.

If you’re scrolling through Reddit, every other day someone will say “Hey I had a productivity problem, so I made an app for it.”

Relying on the black box of procrastination aka. Your phone, for your productivity, is an endeavour that goes beyond downloading new apps - you need to create a whole host of different habits to give yourself a chance.

For that reason alone, try keeping it away, and switch to a big ole yellow lined pad.

Its memory retention and blank slate features are unbeatable.

1 | 🧠 Big Brain Energy

Writing by hand improves information retention - you’ll learn more effectively. Why? Because your mind encodes the information differently. You’re physically going through the motions to get thought on paper.

Typing sacrifices speed for retention.

That’s fantastic when for writing quickly, but when learning, it’s a different story.

• Use typing for information transfer.

• Use handwriting for information retention.

2 | 🧙‍♀️ You’re a Wizard Harry

Having a blank slate with no rules? No limitation? No distractions? - what is this wizardry?

You’ll naturally take notes in a very personal chaotic way. Your hands move in sync with how you’re thinking, you make mistakes, they’re irreversible, and that’s good.

You see where you made them, you cross them out, and you can look back on how you were thinking.

You gain a visual representation of the mess that is your mind. Seeing it on paper is much more effective than following the rules and design elements that a note-taking app confines you to.

There’s a reason why we use whiteboards to brainstorm. The same principles apply to pen and paper.

• We’re more fluid.

• Ideas are more natural to display visually.

• We have total control.

So throw all this in your productivity toolkit - it’ll be helpful, I promise!

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🔗 Link Dump

I’ve got a relaxed set of internet things for you today - little lessons and cocktails for the week ahead.

• 🔥 Hot off the press: Something that a lot of first-time entrepreneurs should keep in mind. And six ideas that have truly changed the way I live my life.

• 🍸 Found this relatively underrated channel that has a great video on Whiskey for beginners, also a good tutorial for a Negroni - see, I’m looking after you. 😉

• 🐣 A great thread by an ex-Facebook manager on how being open to feedback and active in the process of improvement changed his career.

• 💸 A cool thread on how people made their first $1000 online.

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🤴 Vanity Metrics

I’ve been writing a lot more recently, and an old habit has snuck back into the hen-house, what habit you say? - Obsessively checking my stats and analytics.

Here’s the thing with that, regardless of your platform.

If you’re checking your analytics:

• You’re not writing, filming, editing, or making your product better.

• You don’t honestly see a reflection of the quality of your work.

• The best-case scenario is that you feel OK that the metrics are positive, the worst case is you feel horrible that they’re slightly worse than yesterday. Here are some YouTubers talking about their personal experience.

My old strategy, and now my current one is to check these metrics once a day, or nothing.

The real metrics for me recently are all qualitative.

1. Write down some questions/criteria that I personally judge my work by.

2. Answer the questions when my draft is complete.

3. If I’m satisfied, I post, if not, I continue drafting.

And it can be as simple as, “Does this story land with a strong point?” or “Am I bored while reading this?” or “Does this have value?”

And then I move on with my life. If any of you creators are having the same issue, I hope you can ditch the analytics for a while and see how things change.

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Hope you enjoyed this light read, ladies and gents. I love writing these emails and sharing my thoughts every week. Let me know if you want me to talk about anything in particular for the coming weeks.

You can see what I’m up to on Instagram and other socials @sahkilic - feel free to have a chat.

Talk next week,

✌ Sah