Next week is vacation so I doubt I’ll be writing anything. Instead I’ll be enjoying a cabin in Northern BC.

In Search of Novelty

There’s another reason simplicity offends. It’s boring. And boredom is culturally taboo in high-status circles. – The Cult of Hard Mode

I think about this idea regularly, we look for new tools because of novelty because we’re bored or overwhelmed. It’s far easier to find a new tool instead of doing the hard work of being honest about the tasks you’re never going to do. When a piece of software updates it’s suddenly exciting again, much as we’re seeing iPadOS 26 suddenly seem to “revitalize” the iPad. While there is some substance to the updates if your big problem with iPadOS was windowing it doesn’t fix any of the other limitations of iPadOS.

We’ll continue to see blog posts and videos claiming iPadOS 26 is revolutionary, because it’s novel. In a number of months we’ll see a bunch of videos about how it’s not quite what people hoped for, and they’re back to using their computer instead of sticking with the iPad as they once claimed they would.

See there is status in doing hard things, just because. Entire careers have been launched by people who would spend 2 weeks figuring out a workaround so that they could use their iPad instead of spending 30 seconds doing the same task on any other desktop operating system.

The same thing goes for task management guru’s. They have some complex system they can train you on with their course. They can’t make it simple because if it’s simple then it’s not worth a course, it’s merely a blog post or single video.

Instead of going for the harder way, choose the simplest thing that will work for you. If all you need is a notebook for your tasks, don’t feel bad about it. Stick with it and keep using it. If you need to store ancillary data like links to websites, then use a task manager that makes this easy, and then do the hard work to reset your tasks to 0 instead of getting overwhelmed and switching to whatever the latest hot tool is.

The thing is, if it’s really hard someone has some course on it they’re willing to sell you. If it’s easy, that person is out there doing the work instead of showing off their complex system that you can buy for only three low payments of $99.

Be Who You Are

Creativity doesn’t reward pretending. It rewards owning your nature and sharpening it till the world can’t ignore it.

After thinking about doing things in “hard mode” I came across this excellent video about being more of who you are. That means not chasing what some other creative did because what worked for them may not work for you. Trust me, I have thousands spent in courses to prove this fact.

For me this means that I’m not bothering much with YouTube currently. Yes it was fun, but it never took off. I’ll keep writing and talking about books. I have some other ideas for writing projects aiming for next year and I’ll be happy with whatever that brings my way.

Tranquility

Yes, yes, one way we need to get to awesome is by mastering the ability to turn off the noise from everything around us in order to sit in those little ponds of tranquility where our thoughts and ideas can scramble and ferment and marinate and grow… – You Are Awesome Pg 215

If we avoid the “hard mode” trap of status, and then work to be more of who we are I guess the next step is letting ourselves have the time to sit and do whatever it is that we want to do. That means avoiding the siren’s call that constantly wants to steal our time and attention so it can be monetized.