Every day, I steal (I mean share… yeah! Share!) my favorite quotes from my weekly reading over at SmarterThanIAm.com. To spice things up, I plan to share my favorites here each week, all year long! Be sure to click the links and read the full posts, these are smart people saying really smart things.
Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan.
My soon-to-be Podcasting Co-host1 dropped a bomb on Twitter. He is leaving Google in light of some of their recent, questionable decisions. He is slowly but surely going to unravel as much of his life as possible from their services. And from my understanding, his life is rather raveled in them.
Showing themselves this kind of favoritism not only weakens their core service, it’s an indication that Google is willing to go far beyond leveraging their power in search. They are willing to mortgage it.
So much of my life is spent in Google. It’s spent there because I trust them with my data. My life is deeply entwined in their services; they are at the core of how I manage my communication, my scheduling and my network. They are my foundation. Sure, they are reading my emails, my search results and probably have a camera hidden somewhere in my house, but I knew that was the deal when I signed up. They serve me up ads, I get amazing services at low to no cost. Good for the goose…
But if Google is willing to risk what they’ve built in search, you have to stop for a second and ask: what’s sacred to them? We’re all big kids here, and we understand that they’re a business and not our buddy pals, but it certainly shows what kind of company they plan to become and worse yet betrays who they’ve always been. And that, I’m not sure I can continue to trust… but to be completely honest, I’m not sure I’m willing to unravel from it either. I’ve spent a lot of time getting my act together, building up a foundation for getting things done and Google plays several key roles in that structure. That may not seem like a big deal to others, but to when it’s something you’ve lacked for most of your life, you don’t give it up all that easily.
I’m not proud to admit it, but Google has me exactly where they want me… so deeply entwined in their services that I’ll just turn a blind eye whatever nonsense they try to pull. Just as Google is willing to leverage everything for dominance in social media, I can’t help but wonder if my own desire for their services will drive me to ignore their actions. Sure, in theory I can use all of Google’s services except search, where they make their money, but that seems like a pathetic and hypocritical attempt at “taking a stand.” And while I seriously admire Mike’s stance, I can’t help but remember Quit Facebook Day and question the futility of leaving either (then again, I’m probably just rationalizing staying). Hopefully the FTC does something, hopefully enough people with Google speak out and they back off a bit, but to be honest, I doubt it.
So at the end of the day, here’s the question… is Mike Vardy a man of morals? overreacting? Or just one of the first of many?
oh, yeah, I’m going to be doing a podcast with Mike Vardy… SURPRISE! [↩]
Note: You’re really going to want to know Markdown for this one (this will confuse and/or bore the crap out of you if you don’t). If you still need convincing, here are the reasons you should be using it to write for your blog and here’s a primer on how to get started with Markdown.
Unrelated side note: My post on being lazy proved to be one of my longer ones, so I recorded a podcast for you slackers. You should also feel free to be even lazier and download my Keyboard Maestro Macros and TextExpander Snippets.
There are parts of me that want to tell you how busy I am. To explain how my hectic schedule forces me to think long and hard about how I write. To share how this struggle set me on a path to figure out how to format my writing as quickly as possible for this site.
In truth, I’m lazy and that laziness has led me to figure out all of the shortcuts that let me to format my work for the web as quickly as humanly possible. Since I’m assuming that some among you are fairly lazy yourselves, it only seems fair that I spare you the work of figuring this out for yourself and share my tips and tricks.
Why Markdown?
Why would a lazy person write in Markdown? Easy! There is no faster way to format your text for the web. It’s easy to learn (you should be fluent in about an hour, even if you’ve never coded before1) and it’s fast to write in. It allows you to save all of your files in plain text, which is essentially the most universal format there is, and is easy for anyone who edits your work (and boy does my work need editing) to read (and correct).
Now in theory, once you’ve learned the basics, you’re good to go. The beauty of Markdown is that you don’t need aids to quickly format for the web. The thing is… we’re lazy and we want to do it faster and easier, so here’s how…
Making Markdown Even Faster
I currently use a mix of TextExpander (when formatting as I write) and Keyboard Maestro (when formatting something that’s already been written).
Wrapping Text
When creating links, bolding and italicizing text, you need to “wrap” your text. This means that your brackets, parentheses, asterisks and underscores need to appear before and after the word(s) you are formatting. There are several ways to speed this up, but in this case, the best option is actually the simplest: use an application that automatically does this for you. Both nvALT and Byword will automatically wrap brackets, parentheses and quotation marks (and I’m hoping that Scrivener adds this sometime soon) and Byword lets you use a keyboard shortcut for both bolding and italicizing text. I’ve also created TextExpander snippets for quickly writing bold and italic text and Keyboard Maestro macros when I need to format something that was already written that will work in any application2.
Links Four Ways
When writing in Markdown there are four primary ways I create links. Two use TextExpander and two harness Keyboard Maestro3.
No Text, No Link – Let’s say you are writing and want to quickly link to a domain that you know off the top of your head. All you need to do is use a pre-formatted TextExpander snippet that provides two blank fields: one for the text you want to use and another for the URL. The cursor moves to the end of the line so you can just keep typing after you’ve made your link without losing a step.
No Text, Link On The Clipboard – Now you’re writing and want to create a link for the URL on your clipboard. This time, you evoke another pre-formatted snippet, one that has a blank field for the text, but pastes the URL in its proper place. Once again, the cursor is placed at the end of the link and off you go.
Text, Link On The Clipboard – This is the most common link in my repertoire. I tend to format after I write, so the goal is to quickly highlight some text and create a link using the latest URL on the clipboard. Keyboard Maestro makes this fast and easy. Geek Tip: If you’re a LaunchBar user, their clipboard history speeds things up dramatically when creating multiple links. Just copy all of your links onto the clipboard, switch back to your text file and use the history to quickly find the one you need.
Text, No Link – Sometimes I forget to add a link or decide to add something after the fact. If I know the link off the top of my head, all I need to do is highlight the text, and use a Keyboard Maestro macro that asks me to enter the link.
All of these create what are known as inline links, so the Markdown savvy amongst you may be wondering about reference links. While I have a few snippets and macros for creating these, I honestly found it easier to create everything inline and use Brett Terpstra’s amazing service that converts all reference links into references. Why bother doing this? Simple, I have chimp grammar and my wife finds documents with reference links easier to edit.
Headers, Page Breaks, Block Quotes, Bullets And Numbered Lists
To be honest, there are probably some ways to speed these up, but like I said, I’m lazy. When creating links or bolding and italicizing text, I find macros and snippets to be extremely helpful. The same doesn’t really hold true when dealing with headers, page breaks, block quotes, bullet lists and numbered lists. With the exception of block quotes, typing them out the old fashioned way seems fastest to me. As far as block quotes are concerned, I’ve always found it easiest to highlight your text and use Byword’s Command-’ keyboard shortcut. In fact, Byword has a ton of great Markdown keyboard shortcuts for the lazy, including a few that speed up the creation of numbered and bullet lists.
Markdown On The Go
Once again, Brett Terpstra comes to the rescue with some fast and easy snippets that help you to format Markdown on your iPhone and iPad. You can subscribe to the URL and always have these at your fingertips, but I’ve found it faster to type on the phone and format on my Mac in Byword using all of the tricks above. I’ll occasionally create headers, lists and bold or italicize text, but I’ve found creating links to be a royal pain on iOS. While I’m yet to give it a go, fellow Markdown junky Mike Vardy swears by Writing Kit for creating Markdown on the iPad.
That Seems Like A Lot…
Now the truly lazy amongst you are probably groaning right about now that it sounds like a lot to setup and a lot to use. While the first part is very true, the second couldn’t be further from the truth. Once you commit a few keyboard shortcuts to muscle memory, you will be formatting your text faster than you ever could have imagined. As for the work, I’ve done it for you my lazy brethren. Here are my Keyboard Maestro Macros and TextExpander snippets for Markdown.
Everyone Has Their Own Way
Many Markdown lovers use and love Brett Terpstra’s Services, others love some of the powerful extensions that are available for TextMate and something tells me that Gabe from MacDrifter has some Keyboard Maestro magic up his sleeve. This is just the quickest way that I’ve found for formatting the words you see here for the web. But like I said, I’m lazy, so I’m betting there’s a better way. If you know one, share it below.
All of these could have been done in Keyboard Maestro, but I was already so deeply engrained in TextExpander by the time I got started with that app and didn’t see the need to change. [↩]
Again, this could all just as easily have been done entirely in Keyboard Maestro [↩]
Last week I shot this video with my friend Gini Dietrich about changing your domain. The quick six-minute interview covers both the motivation for making a move and some of the best practices when doing this. There’s been some interesting debate in the comments and I thought I’d clarify and expand my thinking for those of you who may be considering a change.
As readers of this site may remember, as far back as November of the year 2011 (oh, the good old days) this site was MichaelSchechter.me and had been for three years. To say I had done a crappy job with it over that time would be an understatement and since committing myself to doing it right in April of that glorious 2011 era, I felt the pull to make a change.
Before I get into why I think changing to A Better Mess was a good move, let me touch on why I thought sticking with MichaelSchechter.me wasn’t. There are two reasons to use your name as your URL:
You are going to use this site primarily to share personal stories and insights.
You are at the center of your business and this is a platform for spreading awareness and driving leads.
Neither of these are my primary goals for the site.
While I share personal stories, their purpose is always to emphasize the idea of being a Better Mess, not my personal life. I’m not talking about the day-to-day joys and challenges that come from raising two young children. I’m not talking about my marriage and how I could probably be a lot better at it (sorry honey, I love you). I don’t really dive that deep into my job, my industry or what it is like to work for a family business. It’s not that I think these aren’t areas worth examining and it’s not that I don’t pull from these experiences, it’s just that sharing my personal stories isn’t going to keep me writing. Had I made it my focus, I don’t think this site would be valuable enough for others or to me for that matter.
As for my business, while I frequently write and discuss my industry online, this is not the hub for that writing. I certainly write with the intention of being a better person and a better worker, but I always try to take a firm step back to make my own professional insights useful to others. And as for the family business aspect, well… I’m probably saving that for reality TV. As for turning the blog itself into a business, while I’m no stranger to affiliate links and may consider ways to monetize in the future, this site will always be more a part of my life than my livelihood.
There are also a few minor reasons. I wanted a fresh start, even though I did keep all of the content from my initial three-year journey. Also, Schechter is not the easiest name to spell or remember and “Michael Schechter: A Better Mess” isn’t something I’d want to look at every day (no matter how true it may be).
Now, when someone comes to the sight for the first time, it’s pretty darn clear what this is all about. It’s helped focus my efforts (no easy task) and keeps me from straying too far from the ideas I want to examine here. It sets a tone that I am still working at this; I’m no expert and I was concerned that “Michael Schechter: How Even You Can Be A Better Mess” would have come off as preaching rather than sharing what I’m learning through my own struggles. It also aligns me with several of the sites that serve as the inspiration for my own writing.
In truth, the name probably won’t matter much in the long run. I will either write good, useful content and a few of you will stick around or the value just won’t be there and it really won’t matter what I call the site. Just as many will feel more comfortable with a specific type of pen or some “write better” when using a specific application, I can’t help but feel more at home at my own site after making the change. Which is ironic when you consider that it actually required taking my own name off the site in to feel that way.
Note: If you haven’t read the original Spin Sucks post, check it out. There’s some great counterpoint in the comments.
The How To Be A Crappy Blogger series examines the mistakes and missteps that keep blogs like this from succeeding. Enjoy and learn from a look back at three years of unsuccessful blogging.
Back at the beginning, I let the writing lead the way. I was thrilled to be blogging and that excitement helped the posts come fast and furiously. This went on for just over a month. I didn’t have a posting schedule, but I was having no problem cranking out a few posts a week. Then I hit my first road bump; I can’t quite remember why now, but there is about a month-and-a-half gap. From then on out, I became yet another utterly inconsistent blogger.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. A blog is easy to start and hard to maintain. Much like a New Year’s resolution, everyone is enthusiastic when they decide want to eat better, quit smoking or exercise more. We rush right out, buy some healthy snacks, some nicorette or join a gym. Perhaps we even make it a month. Then we get busy, our resolve wavers and we realize that what seemed exciting at first look is really work.
Struggling isn’t a problem; that’s just the reality of attempting just about anything new. It’s what often happens next that is the problem. Instead of going back to the drawing board and deciding how to move forward, we settle into our infrequency. We crap rationalize with things like, “I’ll only write when I have something really important to say,” or “I’ll get back to blogging once I finish this project for work.” Rather than course correcting, the average blog dies a slow, painful and lingering demise. It’s a death march that not only disappoints your readers, it’s a public commitment that you’ve essentially neglected.
It’s cliché, but how you start things is how you finish them. Go in without a plan and things will not workout. If you expect that writing for your site will always be exciting then you are just setting yourself up for disappointment. You have to start by planning for the worst. You have to assume that the minute you put your site up is the minute you’re going to want to stop blogging. This ensures that you really, really want to do this and that you take the time to come up with a plan of attack.
Decide how often you are going to post and tell someone; hell tell everyone. Ask them to stay on your ass when you fall short. I post on this site five days a week. It was a challenge that I wanted to set for myself and I voiced it publicly to my readers (and asked my wife to ensure that I did). I wanted to see if I could actually get things done. Inconsistency has always been one of my greatest challenges throughout my life and this seemed like a great opportunity to finally do it right. I’ve been managing to make it happen since mid-April of last year, and I can assure you that it has not been without struggle (to be honest, I’m even a little behind the 8-ball with this week’s posts), but I didn’t start seeing growth in both my writing and my readership until I managed to become consistent.
It doesn’t have to be five days a week, but if you’re serious, I think you really have to commit to at least once a week. I’m certain that you will be able to throw plenty of examples of those who prove this theory wrong at me, but chances are, you aren’t them. Make a commitment to yourself and make a commitment to the people who spend their time with you. Determine a frequency that is right for you and then take time to plan out how you can deliver the required amount of writing (this is often where we get ourselves into trouble). If you’ve never done this before, go slow. Even if you’re extremely productive at the beginning, store your writing up. In fact, wait a month before launching your site and just write. Hold things back, because I promise, the day will come when you don’t want to do it. There will come a time when you go to the well and the well is dry. That doesn’t mean that it’s the end of your blog, it doesn’t mean that the passion won’t return, it just means that you’re like the rest of us and you’ll be prepared for that eventuality. There are days where you will fall short, just be ready and even the most inconsistent amongst us (hi!) can hit publish with consistency.
Once I got consistent, people bothered to stick around. If you look at the chart below, it’s hard to argue the value of showing up. Especially when you consider that things only started heading in the right direction when I got my act together back in mid-April of 2011, a time when I had 20 subscribers.
Every day, I steal (I mean share… yeah! Share!) my favorite quotes from my weekly reading over at SmarterThanIAm.com. To spice things up, I plan to share my favorites here each week, all year long! Be sure to click the links and read the full posts, these are smart people saying really smart things.
What I think people call revolution later when successful, at the time just kind of feels like uncommon sense.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been infatuated with the creative process. The act of transforming some nebulous concept from my mind to something feels like magic and still amazes me every time it happens. Whenever I get in a rut, creating something pulls me out.
Each day, we repeat movements, thought patterns, ways of interacting with others … and in this repeated practice, we are becoming (or have already become) good at these things. If you constantly check Facebook or Twitter, that is practice, and you are forming that habit, though it’s usually not with too much awareness.
When you smoke, or eat junk food, or speak rudely to others, or put yourself down internally, this is something you are practicing to be good at. You may already be good at these things.
What if, instead, we practiced consciously, deliberately, and became good at the things we really want to be good at?
You’ll often hear me say I’m bad at making good habits. While I’ve been working hard to buck this trend, it’s been my experience that bad habits tend to be exceptionally easy to form and difficult to break, while good habits are far too easy to break yet damn near impossible to form.
As I continue to struggle to develop good and break the bad, I’m certain that Leo is right and that awareness is the key. That becoming mindful of your challenges and conscious about how you plan to overcome them is the only way that those of us who persistently struggle can win. When we leave things to chance, we quickly and unconsciously get good at all those things that are bad for us. No matter how good we get, we will always have to keep one eye trained on what we are doing and another that occasionally checks in to ensure we are still moving in the right direction.
It will never be easy, it will never feel natural and it will likely never become a habit. However, if you regularly force yourself to think about where you want to excel, what you want to overcome and what is most likely to help you achieve success, there will be a far better chance that the things you practice turn out to be good for you.
Hi, I'm Michael Schechter. I struggle with creativity and productivity (Read: I have ADHD). I tend to write about how we can improve at both pursuits through the use of technology. More often than not, I end up rambling on about how all kinds of Apple geekery are helping me get my life together...
I also steal and share your best ideas and quotes on my Tumblr blog, Smarter Than I Am.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been infatuated with the creative process. The act of transforming some nebulous concept from my mind to something feels like magic and still amazes me every time it happens. Whenever I get in a rut, creating something pulls me out. - David Sparks (Hat tip to Todd Chandler)
Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan.
