At the start of April, I unwrapped my new fox red Leuchturrm to begin filming a Bullet Journal setup video. It was to be my third and final Bullet Journal tutorial. I had grown tired of remaking the same video just for the sake of "content" but I felt like I needed to make one more before moving on. I still felt like there wasn't a good, all-in-one comprehensive guide on YouTube to set up and customize an individually tailored Bullet Journal for complete beginners and advanced users alike. My...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Writers know point of view is a critical tool for shaping the experience of the reader. But what about when the reader is also the writer, as is the case when journaling? You might be surprised to learn that I have a habit of writing in my journals in multiple points of view depending on the context. These different POVs allow me to look inside of my mind with varying degrees of distance and perspective, each one a specific tool to achieve certain desirable effects. I had never really thought...
16 days ago • 3 min read
A couple of months ago I published a video titled, "A paper calendar system that actually works." The video got a lot of positive feedback with many viewers sharing that they feel more in control of their time, attention, and responsibilities when they plan on paper versus a digital calendar. But not everyone had nice things to say. "Good god, talk about a waste of time and effort. Guy has a perfectly good system in his pocket, automated and works. Decides he'd reinvent the wheel by taking a...
23 days ago • 4 min read
The creative process always starts with an idea. Last year, during a sunny April morning dog walk around the park, I scribbled one of those ideas in my pocket notebook. I was just starting to grapple with what it meant to be a creator of things in the Age of AI. I was frustrated to hear more people start to argue that there's no difference between art made by a human and art made by a machine as long as it's good, whatever that means. When we typically talk about creativity we valorize the...
30 days ago • 3 min read
Almost two years ago I made the decision to track every dollar I make and spend. Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to. My debt had been growing like a California wildfire–uncontrolled and choking the life out of me. The problem started off small. I'd go out to dinner and put it on my credit card or buy a new pair of shoes and worry about the bill later. Something fun would come up and I would take an unpaid day off to enjoy life a little. At first I would pay off the card as soon...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
I used to hate being asked what my goals were. I would respond with some version of, "I have goals but I don't like to share them publicly" or, "I d0n't believe in setting goals, there's more to life than chasing achievement." But both these answers were lies. The truth was I didn't know what my goals were or what I wanted from life so I hid from the question under the veil of superiority. At that time I was rolling over in my bed each morning to mainline world news into my brain and worry...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
A reader recently reached out to ask how I use my pocket notebooks so I thought I'd share some of my favorite use cases that help me stay off my phone, reach my goals, and think on the go to hopefully inspire some new ideas for you to try out. 1) Capture I used to rely on my phone to capture notes, ideas, reminders, and tasks whenever they popped in my head. This would've been fine if that's all I did when I pulled out my phone but, that's not what I was doing. A quick note would lead to an...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
As I was leaving the cafe this morning I noticed the man sitting behind my wife was tapping his leg excessively. He was having a casual business discussion with another man who had an array of documents and paperwork in front of him. The leg-thumper was wearing running shorts and his frantic tapping was pushing his phone up and out of his pockets revealing to me a familiar red, square button that signals your phone to stop recording. I realized that the man in shorts was secretly recording...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
I was 33-years-old the first time I experienced living in a home without a tv. Three stories up an old brick apartment, I entered an AirBNB in Florence, Italy that my wife and I were about to live for the next four days. It was the second leg of our honeymoon and we were excited to explore the birthplace of the Renaissance. The wood floors creaked with each step as I explored the studio. A built-in bookshelf stocked with Italian novels and hefty art books lined one of the walls. The pull-out...
2 months ago • 3 min read