Tuesday Letter #20 - Start Small, Be Nice, and Proofreading Tips
Hey, Happy Wednesday!
Last week I told you guys that I have started a “proper” Zettelkasten. I’m still collecting notes and making connections. I am not ready to publish my thoughts to the world, but I would love to start sharing with you. So, starting this week, I will be devoting a small section of this newsletter to an output of connected notes from my slip box. Hope you enjoy it.
I hope you enjoy this week’s “Tuesday Letter”, even though it comes out on Wednesday :)
📜 Quote of the week
All big things come from small beginnings.
Start small!
💡 Project Ideas
A tool that helps people track their collection. A sort of archiving tool that will make it easy for people to track their hobby collection. Collections, like postmarks, coins, guitars, anything. The archive will track the date of acquisition, cost, photos, and other relevant features (further research needs to be done).
🗄️ Zettlekasten Output
As I mentioned in the header, this is a new section. I will go to my zettlekasten and get a random note. I will then try to look at all connections and write a small interconnected post. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. I’ll be honest I don’t feel 100% comfortable doing this since I am opening up and might look a little silly. Well, I trust you guys :) Anyway, let’s get this started.
Getting what you want - Nice Man Edition
As a general rule in life, you should provide more value to society than you consume. This should be, at the very least, your goal. Let me elaborate.
If, for example, you are a writer / blogger and are making a cold outreach to your fellow blogger for a guest post or a mention, you are consuming. Well, in that scenario, you should never ask for something in the first communication with that person. You should at least start with an introduction or letting them know what you did for them (mentioned them in your post, for example). I hear this recommendation from Nat Eliason first from his post “How Nat Eliason Grew A Website To 10K Visitors In A Month”.
The goal here is to introduce yourself and potentially make friends. If you are a good person and stick to this workflow, you will eventually achieve your goal, more often than not. If you are not a good person and are simply using the intro message as an excuse to ask for something, then at some point, there will be a negative view of your ways, and this won’t work for you.
Another great example is for business owners. I have had many interactions with Customer Service. Whenever I had a good experience, I have then “marked” the company as “Great” in my head. This made it more likely for me to do business with them in the future and recommending someone else does too. This is because that company didn’t want to take anything from me (more money, for example). Rather, they were looking to provide me with help and relief. For that reason, I was more likely to buy more and recommend my friends more, also. This is what the goal of the business, get more sales. This “Be awesome to your customers and good things follow.” thought comes from the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg.
You can get the things you want, as a person, or business, while staying nice. The mindset one needs to keep is to produce more than consume.
🐔 Tweet of the week
My favorite proofreading trick is to listen to my articles using before I publish them.
Free Text to Speech Online with Natural Voices
Whenever someone responds to a personal email of mine, I get very embarrassed. This is because I re-read the email I’ve sent, and they are often poorly written—full of grammatical or other errors. The weird thing is that when I read them after writing the first time, they seem fine. Always. This will help me take a different look at my writing.
🙏🏻 Small Ask
If you have some time, please give me some feedback. To be more precise, please answer the folliwing questions (you don’t have to answer all of them):
- Do you read the newsletter?
- Do you like the content?
- If so, which sections do you like the most?
- Would you like to see more?
- Do you wish to see better styling (more emojis, smaller paragraphs, more images, etc.)