> We have a very powerful myth in our culture, the myth of the self-made man or woman. But let’s be honest. There’s no such thing. Success requires help — and usually lots of it. It’s impossible to discount the influence of our social circle. – [Your Best Year Ever](https://amzn.to/30TxZkn)

The hardest part of COVID for me has been kids underfoot. Not seeing people regularly, was already my life. Most of my interaction with ordering coffee and I’m still doing that. I then walk out the door and take it to the park to work instead of sitting in the coffee shop.

This doesn’t mean I don’t surround myself with people though. Most of my opportunities have come from interacting with people over the years.

> I released a new [course on how to use TickTick over on SkillShare](https://skl.sh/2ExpXVv). I’d love it if you joined me there and learned all the ins and outs of TickTick.

I write for [Nexcess](https://blog.nexcess.net/author/cmchale/) because [Chris Lema](https://chrislema.com) reached out to me. Then when there were some staffing changes I saw that [Patrick](https://www.speakinginbytes.com/) was working there now and reached out to him about continuing writing because my emails had gone unanswered for a while. Both of these people I’ve met and interacted with in person. I’ve emailed them and helped them out at times, and they’ve provided advice to me.

I write for [The Sweet Setup](https://thesweetsetup.com/author/curtis/) because years ago [Jon](https://jonchristopher.us/) recommended me to Shawn for Membership work on one of his sites. Then I helped with WooCommerce and still get the occasional call for coding help. I offered to write for them and brought some topics to the table.

That got me in touch with [Matthew Cassinelli](https://www.matthewcassinelli.com/), who I’ve started to interact with more. This has got me interaction with other Mac bloggers and magazine writers…who knows where that will go.

I’m not self-made. My [email list](https://curtismchale.ca/subscribe) is full of cool people that reach out to me with support and ideas They ask me questions about my workflows and bring up points I miss. They even correct my grammar, which is sometimes fairly terrible.

I guess my question today is, what steps are you taking to surround yourself with connections? When was the last time you reached out to help someone because you had the knowledge they lacked?

## I Shipped

As noted above, I started the week on Sunday by releasing a new course on SkillShare on how I use TickTick to keep my various businesses running. Go take [my course on TickTick](https://skl.sh/2ExpXVv), there is a 2-week free trial.

Monday I talked about the [quick add syntax in TickTick](https://curtismchale.ca/2020/08/10/ticktick-quick-add-syntax).

Tuesday I showed you how I [find glyphs fast in macOS](https://curtismchale.ca/2020/08/12/find-glyphs-on-macos-with-glyphfinder). That’s stuff like ⌘ and other symbols I want to type regularly.

Friday I released a [review of Designing Your Life](https://curtismchale.ca/2020/08/14/designing-your-life-by-bill-burnett-and-dave-evans). It’s a book about building a life that you want to live. I think its strength is all the activities it has you do. Only read it if you’re going to do the work because other books are better in the genre.

Over at Nexcess, I talked about [building a smart category and tag infrastructure for your site](https://blog.nexcess.net/creating-a-smart-scalable-tag-category-infrastructure/).