No. 21 | Seven rules
I don’t eat hamburgers for breakfast and I don’t want to hear Pink Floyd north of noon. Pink Floyd after midnight but before going to sleep is acceptable but should be used sparingly.
No. 20 | Seven simple pleasures
1) Books. Read them, buy them, gift them. Cover your coffee table, your dresser, your backseat. Steal them from your exes and send them anonymously to lovers and enemies. Arrange them by color or theme or chronology or in a just-so secret way only you understand. Spend all day in a book store and buy … Read more
No. 19 | Seven objects that are almost always with me
1) A Kokuyo Neo Critz pen case People ask about this thing all the time. It’s much easier to maintain a routine with my notebooks when I always have the same stuff with me — pens, pencil, 3M tabs, a little pencil sharpener, etc. It unzips to stand up as its own pencil cup. A very good travel companion. … Read more
No. 17 | Seven goals for this new year (and how I did in the last)
1) Read 40 books. I have this broken out as two goals: read 20 works of non-fiction and read 20 works of fiction. I was in a bad reading slump before 2016. I read, certainly, but it wasn’t a strong habit, and I wasn’t keeping track. I wouldn’t be surprised if I read as few as five books … Read more
No. 16 | Seven things I’ve been saying a lot lately
“That’s disappointing and unsurprising.” See: every news story since, oh, November 8 or so.
No. 15 | Seven lists I keep
My PEOPLE list is sort of a grown-up version of covering my bedroom with pictures cut out from magazines. Each list item is simply the name of a person whose life and/or creative output I want to turn my attention to from time to time.
The Only Bad Idea in Brainstorming
Going through some old scans and found this card from when I was working on a talk about brainstorming. This still stands out to me as one of the more important aspects of a sucessful ideation meeting: Decide at the beginning what you’re going to do at the end. If you don’t constrain a brainstorming conversation … Read more
No. 13 | Seven apps I’ve never deleted
Sometimes I do longform writing in Drafts, like if I’m at a show by myself and the second band is taking forever to get going.