Chris J Wilson

I used to find it really strange how often I’d see someone taking a course and they’d want help making their own course better (two examples I’ve seen, copywriter needs to improve the landing page of their copywriting course. Handletterer needs to improve thier lettering for their lettering course). Now, I still find it strange but I also think it’s a very smart decision. If you are a coach, you should be constantly improving to make sure you are providing the best advice possible. I do think there is a lower limit there (don’t teach what you are brand new to. And when you do start teaching, perhaps focus on the easiest aspects.) but it’s not completely unreasonable.

To give people (and myself) something to do during self-isolation/social distancing or whatever, I published my premium 30 days of sketchnoting course. 🥳

It’s 30 days of sketchnoting activites to build your sketchnoting skills (it works if you’ve never sketchnoted before, or if you have experience but want to expand your skillset).

It might be a bit rough around the edges so if you use the code MARCH20, you get 75% off (and I’m going to take it down after a week and correct any issues).

If $7 is too much for you, I have a couple of free sketchnote courses (but they don’t have videos).

I’m hoping to use the money from this course to pay for the hosting, add an email drip system and perhaps even get some new gear to make better videos for the next course (and add videos to the free courses).

P.s. If you know someone who is interested in sketchnoting, I’d love it if you shared these courses with them. Thank you.

I got to take part in some interviews today. I asked what aspect of their work they enjoyed the most and which they liked the least. For the first part, the candidate basically answers everything. I asked about what they liked the least and they answered a different question. I asked my question again and the candidate again avoided answering. I wonder if the candidate thought I was asking a “what’s your greatest weakness” type question when I really wasn’t. Avoiding my question, especially after I asked again, annoyed me.

I get a couple of emails a week with content people want me to share on a site I’m connected to. I think there has been two times when the content was actually relevant to the site and didn’t sound terrible. And yet, every time I get sent an approach email, it says differently.

There’s a good chance that if you are sending emails asking to guest post on someone’s site and you get no response, you are making the same mistakes.

Some simple advice

1. If you want to people to accept your invitations, then suggest relevant content.
2. look for content submission details. Some sites WANT more content and have an easily discovered page where you can submit content.
3. On the other hand, some sites DON’T want your content and won’t accept it even if it’s great. (e.g. This site is my own personal site, I will never accept a guest post on it. Start your own.)
4. Don’t use a stock approach email. They are easy to spot and I will ignore your message. (but you may get inspired)
5. If you don’t read a site, then be honest! Don’t fake “being a long time reader”. I’m more likely to read the “hey I’m looking for guest positing opportunities on {topic} and I came across your site. I was wondering if…” If you read my site, prove it subtley not just saying you read a post.
6. Even if you do everything right, I may have just deleted every email in my inbox because I got fed up. You can try emailing me again but there’s a good chance I’m ignoring you or have blocked you as you came across as spammy.

By the way, this was going to be a tweetstorm but I remembered the words of a friend and decided that a blog post would be better.

I try to treat everyone’s time at work as valuable. If there is something I can probably find out without bothering someone, I don’t disturb them. If I want to ask a question, I make sure I keep it short, clear and with any follow up questions I might need so that the other person only needs to respond once. I do this with supriror, people of the same rank, and inferiors. When a supriror asks me to do something that would take them less time, I get it. They probably have less time and its their perogative. But it shocks me the number of times people will send me a request for information that is easy to find (probably easier for them) and that they then have to wait for me to respond to. I don’t know if it’s laziness, lack of gumption, poor work culture, fear of taking the blame for any mistakes, my overeagerness or something else entirely but I’ve just sent five minutes looking up some information on the public company directory to send over to someone who could have done it themselves and didn’t launch something last night because “they were waiting for me”. 🙄

p.s. yes, I know that I’ve spent more time writing this than finding the information.

I just saw an example of Chicago style em dash format on the web (no spaces between words). Initially, I thought it was a hyphenated word and read it as such. Perhaps this was just the layout on the website as I never have issues with the Chicago approach in books. Regardless, I’m noting this as a point in favour of other style guides.

Generally, the more populous the area you are shooting in, the wider focal length you want.

• Centre of London: 28mm.
• Krakow/outer London: 35mm
• rural/ deserted streets: 50mm There are plenty of exceptions (some only use tele lenses. Some only wide. Also are street portraits street?) but I think this is a pretty good starting point.

I’ve seen some writing from aspiring writers which makes me roll my eyes (and some from professional writers too for that matter). Part of me wishes they wouldn’t bother writing about these topics again (e.g. the iPad sucks/ the iPad is the best thing ever as long as you have these 20 apps), but I’m keenly aware of the dangers of wishing a writer wouldn’t bother.

The creative process isn’t clean or easy. Creating is messy and involves mistakes.

In the words of Jake from Adventure time, sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something.

To get better at writing, we need first to write badly. Then slightly less badly (with a few missteps along the way) and eventually be sort of kinda good at something.

Even once we’ve “made it” we may create the occasional average product. As a follower of a creative, we can expect everything to be their best work, but with online publishing that won’t always be true. Admittedly, the skill of knowing what leads to pursue and when to kill a draft are important to develop. But as the ceramics class in Art & Fear showed that focusing on quantity leads to higher quality, so we too should be forgiving of the occasional misstep.

After all, if there is writing (or podcasts or video) that we do not like, we can always choose to ignore it.

It’s not like anyone is forcing you to follow it.

I really like MB-hosted micro.blog for the simplicity of publishing…but it’s not that easy to edit older posts. For example, if I wanted to write a list of authors I’m into right now, It would be tricky to find later. I could of course use a page — and that makes a lot of sense for this type of post…sorry, page. There are, however, occasions where I’d like more ways to revist old posts and update them. Then again, I never knew the best way to do this with WordPress: a new post, a note on the old post that it had been changed, just updating? Perhaps this is a bug which is a feature?