7 things worth sharing this week
What I’ve been reading, listening, laughing about this week that’s added value to my life and brain cells.
- NFTs and W3 — the (near) future of the internet very well explained on The Tim Ferriss Show if you want the best, simplest explanations about what these are.
My takeaway: copyrights (and “starving” artists) will become a thing of the past and the world will become the most creative it has ever been.
“Steal like an artist” will be the norm and we’re all going to be better (more creative, more outside the box, more exploratory, more free) for it. And credit (or token 😉) will be given where it’s due. - Write for grade 8 and below if you are a writer. It’s not dumbing it down, it‘s simplifying it for clarity — 2 totally different ballgames. Ernest Hemingway does if that doesn’t convince you. This article was such a trip analyzing best-sellers, awarded, and “fake” best-sellers using several readability tests like the Flesch score. You’ll wonder why academic papers are still being academic papers.
- The Voice’s Gymani’s version of Ariana’s POV was just way better than the original. I love this song.
- Blockchains are storage for digital assets like NFTs. It’s mindblowing how the geniuses are building these things of the future.
- Siri can’t hear “Hey, Siri” under a mask, unfortunately.
- Eyedropper is a neat color picker Chrome extension. Font Picker, in the same vein, makes it so easy to find out a font type. Install — right-click text — voila! Font details in an instant.
- I’ve been looking for ways to best organize my Swipe Files. I learned about this nifty writing tip way back 2010-ish when I was starting to dip my toes in writing.
In layman’s terms, you basically “pin” words, lines, a whole campaign that “sparks joy” or inspiration or admiration — something you think you can refer to later. This Swipe File becomes so helpful when stuck, out of ideas/creativity, just lacking in oomph.
Anyway, so my Swipe Files are, so far, everywhere — bookmarks, emails, notes, Evernotes, photo albums, etc. Now slowly “tagging” each one for easy search and collating “loose” files on iCloud files so I keep swiping and accessing regardless if I’m on mobile or laptop.
Well, if you’re an artist of any kind, you probably have your version of a Swipe File by way of a mood board, clippings, an album of pegs, etc.
To start an organized swipe file here’s what I learned:
a) Choose a cloud-based drive (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive) with enough storage for the future. I chose iCloud since I have a paid subscription, hence more space.
b) List your most frequently swiped kind of files. These will be your tags. Mine is power phrases, email copy, social media copy, headlines, to name some
c) Create one-level folders inside your Swipe File folder (e.g. Email Marketing, social media marketing, etc). Resist the urge to OC-organize these into more specific folders or you won’t know where to find ideas anymore.
d) Start swiping and saving to appropriate folders.
e) Tag each swipe file for easy search. If there’s just one thing you should do in this process, it’s this. It will save you a lot later when you need to find them.
These are my new learnings this week! Leave your best email address on Substack and I’ll send you my discoveries straight to your inbox next week! Let’s all learn something new every day!
PS. I’m loving Apple Music’s videoke-ish lyrics feature! I can finally sing with the right words 😅 while working without having to pause to Google lyrics! It’s nifty!
