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Exactly 80 years ago today, the world held its breath as the Allied forces launched the largest seaborne invasion in history, marking the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany’s occupation of Europe. Among the thousands of brave soldiers who set out to liberate the continent was Captain Alastair Bannerman, a devoted husband and father […]
Elsa Binder was twenty when, in October of 1941, German forces carried out a brutal massacre of thousands of Jews in her hometown of Stanislawów, Poland. Two months later, she and her family were compelled to enter the Stanisławów Ghetto, joining 20,000 others in a harrowing fight for survival. It was in this time of […]
Charles Baudelaire, born in Paris in 1821, is best known for Fleurs du Mal, a thrilling and controversial poetry collection that led to him being prosecuted when published in 1857. Sadly, his life was riddled with personal and financial struggles, and when he wrote this entry in his journal, Baudelaire’s health, both mental and physical, […]
Born in Belgium in 1912 and raised in the United States, May Sarton was a writer who mastered various literary forms during her career, from evocative poetry and compelling novels through to a number of deeply introspective journals in her later decades. One of her greatest is Journal of a Solitude, kept over the course […]
More in life
Whenever I talk about working in real-time, making decisions as you go, figuring things out now rather than before, I get a question like this... "If you don't have a backlog, or deep sets of prioritized, ranked items, how do you decide what to do next?" My answer: The same way you do when your made your list. You make decisions. We just make decisions about what to work on next as we go, looking forward, rather than making decisions as we went, looking backwards. Why work from what /seemed/ like a good idea before? Instead, work from appears to be a good idea now. You have more information now — why not use it? It's always baffled me how people who pluck work from long lists of past decisions think you can't make those same kinds of decisions now instead. It's all yay/nay decisions. Same process. Before wasn't magical. Before was just now, then. Why not look at now, now? Now is a far more accurate version of next. The backlog way is based on what you thought then. The non-backlog way is based on what you think now. I'll take now. One's stale, one's fresh. We'll take fresh. Then is further, now is closer. There's nothing special about having made decisions already. They aren't better, they aren't more accurate, they aren't more substantial just because they've been made. What they are, however, is older and often outdated. If you've got to believe in something, I'd suggest putting more faith in now. -Jason
Book sales, draft progress, secret projects, and more!
A recording from Alex Dobrenko` and Debbie Weil's live video
This is bizarrely what he taught me
A recording from Alex Dobrenko`'s live video
