#022 Get Up
Thanks for all your answers last week. Truly amazing to hear from some of you who gain so much from this newsletter, and in return, it gives me the courage to keep going.
Nine weeks into writing this as a weekly exercise and I feel like on week 2 of getting back in shape at the gym. I woke up early this morning with approximately 0% of this newsletter done. My eyes cracked open and in my head I’m going back in forth…
There are no real consequences if I don’t publish today, are there?
Come on you got this
Write about how you’ve been busy and haven’t had time to write this (lol)
Get out of bed and write the damn thing
At 6:04am I counted down from 5 and ripped my covers off, took an ice cold shower, and got back to work.
I’m working on a new process this week that will help me get ahead and prioritize writing. If it works, I’ll let you know how it goes. This newsletter is short again as I’m editing right down to the wire. I promise to give this more love and care moving forward. For both me and you. Thanks for the patience and love and all your time spent reading these words.
— Alex
Ideas from me
I. DEEP WORK
Encourage yourself to tackle deeply creative and difficult work first thing in the morning. Responding to emails is easier to accomplish but quickly drains your capacity to focus & solve problems later in the day.
Choose the difficulty of discipline over the ease of distraction
II. ORIGINALITY
Loosely on the topic of creation vs curation, I’m asking myself this…
Why are we so blindly obsessed with originality, being the creator, or having our name at the top of the credits? I’m trying to let go of the pressure of having to start from zero every time. I want to find dots that already exist and find ways to connect them.
The world may very well have enough stuff in it, we often times just need to find ways for all that stuff to work together in new and innovative ways.
III. WEAK SIGNAL
Generally, people are late to be receptive of new ideas and approaches that have been good for us all along. For anyone in the early stages of initiating change, keep going. Trust that your cause is a collective human experience, and that it will eventually build momentum, leading you down a path where you’ll meet others with that similar vision for the world.
Quote from somebody else
“Everyone is constantly trying to articulate the secret languages in their head to the outside world. If your language is too secret, then no one can understand; if your language is completely public, then there’s no mystery. There’s no longer the pleasure of decoding.”
Links worth sharing
Last week I asked if any of you reading had links that you thought were worth sharing. Here are some of my favorites in addition to a few other things that I consumed this week.
🎧 Art, Ownership, and Business: An Essay By Saba
🐤 Twitter is competing against products like Substack with Super Follows
👜 Glob is the definitive reusable bag with hopes to push us all closer to a plastic-free lifestyle. Go have fun on the website’s homepage. Naming, Identity, Web Design, and Creative Direction all done by us at MW Studio.
👩💻 I’m Just Doing My Job by Seth Godin
📰 Question Everything: A Conversation with OK-RM’s Rory McGrath
🎥 Solange released a Director’s Cut of When I Get Home on the Criterion Channel to celebrate the 2yr anniversary of the album.
🙇♂️ How People Learn to Become Resilient
Thanks for another week!
Common Discourse is a weekly briefing designed to help others (and myself) think through creativity, focus, and intentional work. It hits your inbox every Tuesday at 9:17am.
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