Incubation — The Key to the Creative Process

Reading Time: 4 minutes What is Incubation? Incubation happens in your mind when you’re not actively working on a project. It is “unconscious processing” that goes on in your mind automatically. As Kadavy explains in his book Mind Management Not Time Management, “Even when you aren’t consciously thinking about something, your brain is incredibly active – something scientists call …

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Condemn More, Understand Less — The Danger of Outrage Culture

Reading Time: 3 minutes We live in a culture of outrage. The news media and social media intentionally feed this culture. It’s an enemy of intentional living because it’s pure manipulation. It’s the opposite of thoughtful and deliberate reasoning and thinking. It’s the direct result of news media and social media using “click-bait” to grab your attention and manipulate …

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A Review of How To Calm Your Mind, by Chris Bailey

Reading Time: 7 minutes Chris Bailey’s latest book, How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times is a mixture of many positives and, unfortunately, some negatives.  Bailey has produced some excellent work in the area of productivity. My go-to book to recommend to someone interested in an introduction to productivity is Bailey’s The Productivity Project. I’ve also benefitted from his Hyperfocus: …

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Susan Kare Mac Icon Prints

Reading Time: 2 minutes My wife surprised me at Christmas with an original Happy Macintosh icon print by Susan Kare. Susan was the artist who created the icons for the original Mac interface. Her icons literally brought a smiling face to a computer. At a time with only bland PCs with no graphics, DOS interfaces, and in-line commands, her …

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How I’m Using Craft in My Productivity Workflows

Reading Time: 4 minutes I’ve been using Craft for a couple of years now, much more so since last summer. I was initially attracted to Craft because it is a beautiful environment to work in, and enables me to easily create attractive and functional documents. As I’ve worked more with Craft I’ve found myself using it for a number …

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Realizing My Role as a Guide — Applying the StoryBrand Framework to Uncover My Mission

Reading Time: 4 minutes Sometimes great insights come from the least expected sources. Who would guess that a book about business marketing would help me to better understand and articulate what my role is in writing this blog and doing presentations? Building a Story Brand My friend Joe Moyer (who writes the excellent blog 24Letters) recently told me about …

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My Year With MacSparky Labs: Gaining Skills, Enhancing Productivity, and Exploring Creativity

Reading Time: < 1 minute A year ago, David Sparks (aka MacSparky) announced that he had shut down his half-time law practice and was going to dedicate his full time to producing MacSparky creative work. When Sparks announced his membership program, MacSparky Labs, in early January of this year, I immediately joined the highest level of membership (there are three …

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Keychron is Having a 20% Sale

Reading Time: < 1 minute If you’re interested in buying a Keychron mechanical keyboard or other parts, Keychron is having a site-wide 20% off sale now through Monday, March 7th. Keychron makes a number of mechanical keyboards that are very popular with Mac users. A few months ago I purchased a Keychron Q1 QMK Custom Mechanical Keyboard. I got a …

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An Interesting Apple News Day – Now We Don’t, Now we do!

Reading Time: < 1 minute Early this morning, around 6:30 am, I read the posts collected on my RSS reader, Feedly. There were at least two articles from major Apple news blogs stating that there would not be an Apple event next week as many expected. The articles expressed disappointment. A few hours later, I visited the MacSparky website to …

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