- Good morning friends, welcome to a new vlog.
It is, well, it feels like
it's the start of my week,
but actually it's Tuesday.
It was Easter weekend here.
And so I had Friday and Monday off
and four day weekends.
They're amazing.
I know when I turn my iMac on and sign into Slack
there's going to be a lot of
messages and work for me to do.
And so I'm delaying it a little bit
until it's the start
of my actual workday,
but what I'm actually gonna set up
right now is this keyboard.
This is one that my partner Mark was using
and then decided he preferred something
like he just preferred
not a mechanical keyboard anymore.
So I'm gonna try it out and see
if I like it because it is Bluetooth,
whereas my one that you would've seen me
make the keys of.
If you watched that video
I painted the cool pink purple blue keys myself
but it needs a wire to, to go into the computer.
So it'd be nice if this one worked out for me
though I would want to buy
a cuter key cap set for it.
So this is what it looks like.
I like the slimmer profile I think,
although I'm noticing it's got like
I think it's a US layout.
Mm yeah.
Versus mine, which is a UK layout, I guess
main difference being the return key.
The enter button on UK keyboards is like, yeah.
Large like that.
So I bet I'm gonna hit the wrong key
several times while I get used to this.
But yeah, we'll give it a try.
Let's get it set up.
It's definitely like clackier
than my current keyboard.
Ooh, where is it?
Over the weekend, the long weekend,
I read write useful books
by Rob Fitzpatrick and it was so good.
It gave me so many like breakthroughs
about why I've been struggling
with my book so much.
I kind of stopped talking about it a lot
in videos because I wasn't
making much progress on it.
And I was embarrassed about that
or like, I don't know
felt annoyed at myself.
And so didn't wanna talk about it.
But I have been trying recently
like actively trying to get back into it
and I've just been frustrated
with what I've ended up writing.
It just is like not feeling right.
And I realized through reading this book
where I was going wrong.
I'm like starting way too much at the,
at the beginning of, of like the design process,
basically in writing this book.
I intended it to be for
people who are marketing designers,
people have to design marketing materials
who were like already designers
but they just wanna know how to do it better.
Right? Like I feel like there's a lot
of content that can take you from zero to one
like teach you the basics of design
and then you can kind of iterate your way
from there from like one to five
if we're talking on
like a scale of design awesomeness
but it's much harder to progress past average
and to being great at your job.
And so that is what I wanna write my book for.
I wanna help designers be great at their jobs
so they can earn more salary, do better work,
have more impact all that stuff.
So yeah, I was writing about things
that like when I thought about it
my ideal audience already understood and knew.
I'm probably not making much sense
but I'm really excited to have read this book.
And I joined the community,
the useful books community that is set up
in sort of like as a companion to the book
because I feel like it's what I'm gonna need.
Some more accountability to get
this thing actually finished.
Today I'm stepping well out of
my introverted comfort zone
and I'm gonna join a writing accountability group
that meets on Tuesday mornings at 10:30.
So I'm gonna have to like adjust my work routine
a little bit to make up for this
but I think it'll be worth it.
So yeah, I'll get my workday started
at like 11:30 but the first one is today.
Sam wants to say something about it apparently.
Here we go, did you hear
meowing in the background?
But yeah, we're gonna meet some people
and do some writing together, live on Zoom.
I feel nervous, but I also know is what I need
to get this book written
because I really do want to get it written.
What do you think?
He thinks nothing he can't read.
Before I get into my day though,
I gotta go buy the cats some food.
Okay, let's do this.
Okay. Just got off the call.
It went really well.
It was really fun.
There was just like eight of us on the call.
So yeah, not too big a group
which was good for me being a newbie to it.
And I don't think I realized that the author
of the book himself was like leading the call.
I probably should have realized that.
But yeah. Anyway, that was cool too.
And I know this is gonna be really helpful for me
really inspiring to be kept on track
with people who are everyone else is obviously
much further ahead in the process than I was.
You might have noticed.
I switched back to using
the old keyboard of mine
because yeah, this layout is, is gonna take some,
getting used to, to type on, you know
on a layout that you're not used to.
I was hitting the wrong key.
And when you're trying to have like a 30 minute
focused writing time,
you need to be hitting the right keys.
Most of the time.
Now it's time to dig into
the mountain of Slack messages and emails
that I have for work.
And to do that,
I think I'm going to need another coffee.
Yeah, it's gonna be necessary.
Alright, it is a few days later.
I can't remember if I said,
but on the day that I had that writing call on Tuesday,
I sent out my newsletter that day
with two different like framings
of the problem that I could potentially
be trying to solve with my book.
And so I'm just checking in
on the results from that email and,
and seeing how it went
How I like to do things on my newsletter
which by the way is linked in the description.
If you're not on my email list, please sign up.
I send a weekly newsletter out.
So how I like to do things is I include
like a link that someone clicks
essentially to vote for something,
did a poll recently
about the design tool of choice.
That was pretty fun in the newsletter.
But yeah, in this one, it seems
like I'm trying to do statistics in my head.
99 people have voted for one option
63 for the other and 24 were like,
both of these would apply to me.
So what I'm gonna do next is set up.
Like I wanna know more information from
from these folks on yeah.
Why they appeal.
So I am going to send out a form that asks them
for more details on it and I'm setting up
a little converted automation to do so
to make that easier
and send the right form to the right people.
But if you're not on my email list
and you didn't get a chance to like participate
in this poll of mine before,
then what I would actually love for you to do
is to click the link in the description
to fill out a, a different form.
And you can tell me which one appeals to you most
which one speaks to you more to the like problem
that you are currently facing in your role.
And it is completely fine
if the answer is neither of them.
The book I was, have been reading
that I am obsessed with and talked about many times
in this vlog already, it talks about
how defining your audience
and like going for more
of a niche is a good idea because it means
that you can write specifically for those people.
And so I know my book is not gonna appeal
to all of you watching,
because I know not all of you are
marketing designers in tech
and that is specifically who I'm writing to.
But yeah, if you are a marketing designer in tech
or maybe you wanna be one,
then yeah, check out the form
it would be a huge help.
And I'm also gonna be building up
a list of beta readers as well.
So people who can get an early copy in exchange
for giving me feedback,
some pre mentoring sessions too,
so that I can dig in on the problems
that you are facing.
So yeah, this form is, is the start of all that.
Please fill it out
and let me know what you think.
I would appreciate it so much.
And I'm going to go on
and set up this automation now
I've been thinking about why it is
that reading this book has helped me so much
and like given me this new focus
this renewed motivation to work on my book.
And I think it's because in,
in tackling this as a project
it is so large and I don't know
such an unknown for me.
It's something I've never done before
that I felt like I was floundering
because I didn't have a good path to follow.
You know, like I knew what my end goal was
and I knew where I was now
and I had no clue how to really close that gap.
And I was trying a bunch of things
and that I just I thrive more
when I have a suggested path to follow.
Obviously I can like deviate from it when I wish.
But yeah, the, this has been very helpful.
I'll put a link in the description to this book
cause I've talked about it so much
that maybe you'll be interested
in checking it out too.
So it's motivating because it gives me a path
but it's also motivating for me
because I'm seeing the impact
that this book is having on me.
And I'm like, damn, I want my book
to have this impact on marketing designers.
Right? I want it to give them ah-ha moments
and make them feel like, okay,
I know what I need to do now.
And I have like clear suggestions
of things that I can try like a path to follow
to level up in my career.
I've had a very busy week of work
and I'm about to enter,
let me count it up for you.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
about five solid hours of meetings.
So I'm gonna go eat some lunch
before I get into that,
but I'll end this vlog here
because you've heard me
go on about the book enough.
I just hope that you enjoyed
hearing and seeing this little
behind the scenes of the process
of making it happen
and I will continue to update you
in vlogs from here on out.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for joining me on this journey
and I'll see you in a future video.
Bye.