Since picking through a few ‘self-help books’ and business related topics I read through Ryan Holidays Ego is the Enemy. As many people that talk about the book note, I too spent the entire time reading it nodding along. Noticing traits in me and others that highlight how dangerous the Ego can be.
So, I sat down whilst on holiday and typed out a follow-up post about my battles with ego and my desire to keep moving forward.
Simon Woods wrote:
One of the things I wish we could take back as a result of the web: Hype culture. I much prefer being unaware of when something is being made until it is actually done. Release dates, months-long campaigns of hype, and a laser focus on the process are all bad for our culture.
I had never really thought about this until Simons post. This is a huge drain on my motivation to check out a service now, as many seem to release half baked products and then build the hype around it first before actually solving a problem.
For the past two decades there has been a battle to collect as much information about you as possible. Data centres are filled full of so much of your data that they could make a pretty accurate copy of your inner workings. This has been so blatant and marketed so well that many people think it has to be done to get the most out of technology – and feel powerless to do anything else.
After spending some time setting up posting films to micropub, I really wanted to get my reading sorted. There are great options out there like indiebookclub – but I wanted to automate it and make it possible every time I finish a book on my kindle.
With nothing fitting the bill I delved into the API (which is pretty good by the way) and came up with a solution. It relies on a developer key from Goodreads so I don’t promise how long this will work, they could pull this or remove your access to it at any point.
Vishal Kataria wrote:
Every artist whose work made an impact did more than just his work. He appreciated the opportunities he got to clear the path for patrons which in turn, helped him see how things worked on the inside and opened new doors for him. Rather than getting angry about having to “serve others,” artists saw this as ways to add value to their patrons. In the process, they added value to their own work and lives.
Kim Lyons for The Verge:
Most of Mozilla’s revenue comes from search engine companies like Google— as well as Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China— that pay for their search engine to be the default option in Firefox. I really like Mozilla, their approach to something has been a bit strange, and they have wasted loads of time messing around with an OS and VR, but at the end of it all they have the open web as a whole at their heart.
That’s the easy bit right. Sitting in the chair, then you’ve got to sort all your desk out, check out Twitter for a bit, change writing apps 3 times and then what?
Talking about writing is easy, what’s hard is actually writing anything and hitting publish. Deciding to do things, saying you are going to do things, anyone can do those two parts. Don’t believe me there is a whole book about it — but are you actually going to do something about it?
A year or so I wrote about the trouble with letting your ego in, what I really should of titled it is when I let my ego in, but stopped short because of well….ego.
It’s easy to write a blog post giving imaginary readers advice like you are someone that should be looked up to. Someone worthy of giving advice that has been learnt from previous mistakes; but my ego is funny like that and makes me think that I am.
When thinking about my smartphone usage I always long for something simpler. A life not filled with beeps and bings, one without a phone at all — but there is always something in the way. A need to be contacted, a reason to have emails pushed to your phone at all hours of the day or a drive to be contactable. So when all reasons in the world seem to conspire against you, at some point something has to give and I wasn’t prepared to change my stance.
Last week Chris Wilson opened up his newsletter ‘Learn, Create, Share’ with the following quote.
“Your problem,” my brother explained “is the same as mine. We’re bad at self-promotion because we were taught not to be boastful.”
Undoubtedly this isn’t the reason I never made it as a writer or content producer, but it is something that I really don’t want to ever do. Sell myself to an online following is great if you can make a living out of it.