Phil Bowell

I’ve been thinking a little more about the link I posted to Austin Kleon’s blog the other day. I finished it with the line

Instead there should just be turning up to write down a thought and seeing where it takes you.

It’s a sentiment that you hear quite regularly around the Internet these days. Just keep turning up every day and do the thing—whatever your thing is.

The phrase turning up is just a less intimidating way of saying be disciplined. Turning up to write a blog post everyday is a discipline, just as reading your bible every day is or getting up without pressing the snooze button.

As I get older I’m understanding more and more that learning to be disciplined is one of the most important things you can do. It can effect every area of your life and it’s easy to assume that discipline is something that you have or you don’t. That you’re either able to be disciplined or you’re not, but that’s not the case. Discipline, I’m learning, is something you can develop. It’s like a muscle, the more you work it the stronger it gets.

The hard part, I believe, is not getting started but maintaining and developing. Everyone can start something, doing it for a couple of days before they get distracted or it begins to feel like work, and then stopping because it requires effort to continue. But that’s where you need to begin exercising that muscle of discipline, when things feel too hard keep going regardless, over time how hard it feels will disappear and instead it will become something you do each and every day.

So join me in learning to be disciplined. Starting tomorrow morning decide what time you’re going to get up, set your alarm and then get up when it goes off. No snoozing, no rolling over, just turn off that alarm and get up. Then do it the next day, and the next, until it becomes something you just do.

Last week I moved Tweetbot out the dock on my iPhone and replaced it with Micro.blog. Haven’t looked back since, a much nicer community to interact with. I’m still checking Twitter but mostly for design/sports news.

Today when you say “nest egg” many think of money saved and put away, but a literal “nest egg” is a real or fake egg that you put in a nest to encourage a bird or a hen to lay more eggs there. So what Thoreau is saying is that by simply writing down a thought, you encourage more thoughts to come. When you have enough thoughts pushed together in the same space — a collage of thoughts, juxtaposed — they often lead to something totally new.

This is the magic of writing.

Austin Kleon wrapped up a recent post with the quote above. The post on one level is about journaling and writing in general, but do you know what else that quote describes? A blog.

A blog is nothing more than a series of thoughts written down over a period of time. When you think about it that way it’s incredibly freeing. There should be no pressure. Instead there should just be turning up to write down a thought and seeing where it takes you.

Firefox is becoming my favourite browser to develop websites in. The new CSS Grid layout inspector is excellent, reminiscent of InDesign in its display and so helpful in helping me to understand how the new layout stuff works.

I really like the idea of Micro Monday, kind of like Follow Friday on Twitter but better. For my first contribution I’m suggesting Colin Walker, his posts are interesting and his contributions to the community all warrant a follow.

Testing out the new @micron Micro.blog app. For a beta it already has some nicer interactions than the official app, just a bit less finesse. Good so far though.

Finally giving MarsEdit 4 a try, I used to use this app all the time. The new version seems really at home on the newer macOS versions.

Today has been one of those design days where everything felt rubbish. Hopefully when I return tomorrow there’ll be something in the pile worth developing.

Sometimes things need to change in order to grow and find new life.