Reading for Thinking

Tracy shares her overwhelmed feeling and that she needs to recalibrate her reading for thinking.

I did some of this when Trump got in office and continued to attack my country. Yes I could read everything he said, but he'd change his mind the next day and then I'd waste more time being stressed about whatever new stupid thing he said. I turned to some magazines to filter the information that would come my way.

On the whole, my withdrawal from political media has been excellent. I read about what is deemed important enough on a monthly cadence and don't worry so much about the rest of it.

My only issue is that as soon as I gave my address to these magazines one of them sold it to other companies and I get offers for so many things I don't care about.

I wish companies didn't do that.

I've also found that I'm reading less right now, which is actually normal for me. The sun comes out and I ride my bike more so reading time declines. I'll likely go from 10 - 12 books a month down to 2 or 3 until September comes around.

Life ebbs and flows, don't beat yourself up about that, do what's best for you and those around you.

Own your subscribers

Tom has a fairly frightening story for those that live on their publishing income. He thought he moved all his users from Substack to his new platform, but missed some and then when they saw renewal charges for a newsletter they weren't getting they got annoyed and disputed the charges.

I run my book club and this newsletter through Kit and use their payment services for the membership and to sell Analogue Productivity. At some point you do have to trust some platform because I'm not going to create relationships with banks to process payments, but I really hope in this instance that I do have good control of the emails and transactions I do have.

Oh yeah, if you like my writing you should become a member.

Upgrade yourself

Yup, investing in yourself is the best upgrade you can make most of the time. Don't go looking for the latest software, learn something so you can do your work better. So that you can be a better person.