Morning routines, creative ruts and killer ideas

Stories I’ve loved on Medium this week — 19.11.16

I read a lot. So, each Saturday, I share the Stories I’ve loved from around Medium over the last seven days.

Enjoy.

Get out of your creative rut

Start work at a reasonable hour. Do your creative work in the morning. Answer email in the afternoon. Write tests for your code. Keep your desk clean. Backup your hard drive.

Stop feeling guilty about your morning routine.

But here’s what I know. Life is hard. It’s really fucking hard, and a new morning routine won’t change that. It won’t make it all magically better. It won’t fix your problems. It might make you feel better — which is great — but at the end of the day, it’s okay to not feel invincible. Or thankful. Or positive.

7 Common Elements I Must Have in My Morning Routine

I will never do anything beginning with “re” before I write something new.

A Brief Letter To A Worried Writer

I’ve got plenty of writer friends who’ve gotten bigger and better reviews. And then there are folks who would likely look at me and say I was ahead of them. But the truth is the sun shines on all of us and the rain falls on all of us and we all die, so let’s just skip over the part where you stew for six days because your friend Daria got a book deal and you didn’t. Stew for six minutes, and then go use the energy of the stewing to write something.

I’m jealous of smokers.

And there’s a built in timer on it, the length of smoking a cigarette, so that you have a reasonable excuse to leave when you discover that the other person is a wanker and you don’t want to speak to them anymore.

The Unfinished Story of how Snap(chat) Spectacles’ is Executing the Best Marketing Campaign in…

So from taking us from the doorstep of Snapchat’s ‘humble’ beachfront beginnings, to the actual state park Evan first gave the Spectacles a true test run, Snap is poetically leveraging a soft product launch to build a brand identity around places. Real, tangible places that belong to everyone.

Feel free to steal these killer ideas

Action figures/dolls of Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss and James Altucher.

GaryVee: Interchangeable Jets jerseys and sneakers. You can place him nearby when working at home or in the office, a la Elf on the Shelf, and when he senses that you have been still for too long, he yells out “Ideas are shit” or “Fuck you’re gonna” or “Be a practitioner, dick”.

Thanks for reading Chapter 188!

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And check out the previous weeks of stories I’ve loved on Medium:

Evil above, 8 before 8 and the problem with TGIF

More reasons not to buy the S*n, proving assholes wrong, and making the world a better place

A secret weapon, money lessons and a post from the distant past