Forem: heymichellemac

Managing Burnout Is A Life-Long Journey, That’s Why I’m Prioritizing Self-Care

heymichellemac — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 13:48:33 +0000

I've had a terrible few weeks with no creative output.

I was burned out, anxious, and unable to work on anything related to my creative practice. I'm just about seeing the other side of this burnout but I know it will happen again. I want to be able to manage this going forward so when it strikes I can accept it, deal with it, and move on.

So I'm writing this to my future self as much as I'm writing to you, dear reader, to share my perspective and advice on creative burnout and how to focus on self-care.

Signs Of Burn Out

Always trying to fill your mental space with something - You can't just watch TV, you have to also be scrolling Twitter. You can't just sit an enjoy a cup of coffee, you also have to listen to a podcast or watch a video.
Overdoing it on social media - You infinitely scroll all available social media platforms every chance you get. You're not looking for anything but you still scroll until you can tear yourself away and do something else.
Feeling pressure to create or always be working on something - You feel like you need to be chained to your computer to get stuff done. This results in headaches and an inability to do creative work.
Stress and anxiety become too much - Things get overwhelming and take up a lot of your headspace which results in stress and anxiety which further reduces your ability to be creative.
You're not leaving the house - You know when you're stuck in the house all day you're not feeling your best.
Healthy diet and water intake go out the window - You don't feel motivated to eat healthily and you're more likely to snack on junk food and have fizzy drinks over water.

Self-Care Steps

Practice focusing on 1 thing at a time and remember this throughout the day. Try sitting and drinking a coffee without watching a YouTube video. Try watching TV without opening your phone.
Set up limits on social media - Your phone allows you to set time limits on different apps so you can easily do this. Remove social media apps from your phone to limit the urge to reach for your phone. Limit social media to your computer.
Find ways to work that are away from the computer. Is there anything you can do in an analog way? Can you move some of your work to a different device like a tablet so you can work outside or in a coffee shop?
Put things into perspective - your current cause of burnout is with your day job but it has bled into everything else you do. Take a step back and remember your creative practice is something you do for fun as an escape from your day job. Of course, you'd like to eventually become a full-time online creative but for right now there is no pressure on you to make a full-time income with your creative practice. Reframe it as "I get to do" rather than "I have to do".
Prioritize exercise - exercise in any form is so helpful for you to help manage your anxiety and help you feel more like a person. Go for a walk or run or try skipping with a skipping rope.
Prioritize a healthy diet with lots of water - You will probably always be working on this but eating healthy and drinking lots of water is a no-brainer to ensure things are working how they should be.

Bonus Step: Create a self-care list. A list of fun things you can do when you're feeling low.
P.S. I welcome any ideas you have for this list 🙂

This article was originally published on my website: Go to the original article

Here's What Over 100 Creatives on Twitter Taught Me About Overcoming Creative Block

heymichellemac — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 12:11:40 +0000

Creative block is something I struggle with quite often as a creative.

Almost like clockwork every couple of months I run out of creative inspiration. I find it hard to string a few sentences together to write an article let alone design something like a Twitter graphic.

When this slump hits, I feel like I'll never get my creative mojo back. Then when I eventually recover, I just zoom along until the next block happens and I'm back to square one.

I needed a way to mitigate the worst effects of creative block when it inevitably hits.

So, I took to Twitter and researched how other creatives overcome their own creative block. I ended up looking at over 100 creatives during this process and most of them had these 5 tactics in common:

1 Go Outside For A Walk In Nature

It's simple and it works; not just for creative block but also for stress and anxiety. There's something about being outside near green trees and grass that does something to your mind and body to promote creativity.

Even if there's no greenery where you are, the act of changing your attention to something else like being outside for 10 - 15 minutes works wonders for unclogging your mind.

2 Switch To Pen & Paper

When you work in a design tool, for instance, you often get bogged down with how the tool itself works as opposed to what you want to create.

Taking a step back and working with pen and paper removes this friction and allows you to get clear on what you want to do. Once you've figured it out on paper you can go back to your design tool and knock it out.

3 Take A Break & Work On Something Else

Switching your attention to something less creatively demanding for a while helps to unclog your thinking. It gives your brain time to work in the background while you're doing something else.

When you return to the original creative work, you'll find you have an abundance of ideas that immediately come to mind.

4 Ask For Advice

An underrated but effective tactic. Ask for advice or help from peers, coworkers, or even your Twitter community.

For instance, plenty of creatives ask their audience for videos they should make when they can't think of any. Or you could share your idea with a coworker to get some advice on how to proceed.

5 Break Your Routine

Shock your system by doing something completely different. Go to a coffee shop or a library to do your work for a change, work outside for a few hours, or work in a different room of your house.

This will stimulate your mind and do a fantastic job of getting your creative juices flowing.

Is there anything particularly original here?

No. But, plenty of other people agree these tactics work.

Try them out and keep the ones that work in your creative arsenal for the next time you hit that creative block.

This article was originally published over on my website: Here's What Over 100 Creatives on Twitter Taught Me About Overcoming Creative Block

How I Use Obsidian To Take Action On The Content I Consume

heymichellemac — Mon, 09 May 2022 16:59:32 +0000

I consume a lot of articles, podcasts, and videos each week but I would never take action on this content.

I would read something that sparked an idea for me and think "this is a good idea to try out". Then I'd finish the article, take my notes, and never go back to try out the idea.

It wasn't until I saw this Tweet from Sam Williams that I realized I was missing something:

https://twitter.com/iamsam_williams/status/1520799214086799363

I realized I was missing a system for taking action. After replying to Sam's tweet, I decided to set up a system for this in my Obsidian vault:

https://twitter.com/MishaCreatrix/status/1521086152031281155

This article outlines the current process I've set up in Obsidian for taking action on the content I consume.

The Power-Ups Concept

Essentially, this system is a way for me to track initiatives I want to try based on the inspiration I get from articles I read, videos I watch, and so on.

Some examples of potential initiatives include:

Add a section to my weekly note for work I've published
Review/audit my Twitter lists to make sure they're up to date
Try morning pages

In my current system, I use the term Power-Ups instead of Initiatives.

If you didn't already know I'm a big video game nerd so whenever I can turn something into a game I do. I find it helps to keep me interested and motivated in what I'm doing. It's like my kind of gamification.

In my Obsidian vault, a Power-Up is a task item with #powerup at the end.

Here's what it looks like:

Power-Ups Note

As I have Power-Ups spread out across my notes, I wanted a way to collect them in one place to view them.

To do this, I created a Power-Ups note that lives in my Life OS directory.

Within this note I have 2 sections:

To Do - For items I want to do
Done - For items I've done

As it turns out, I didn't need any fancy plugins or complicated code snippets to achieve what I wanted. All I needed was an Obsidian query.

Here's the query I used for the To Do items:

tag:#powerup task-todo: "#powerup"

Here's the query I used for the Done items:

tag:#powerup task-done: "#powerup"

Here's the end result:

You might notice that each query embed is missing the heading section. I used the following CSS code snippet to remove it:

/* Hide the query text */
.internal-query-header-title, .internal-query-header-icon {
    display: none !important;
}

Weekly Template Power-Up Embed

To keep this list of Power-Ups top of mind, I needed to resurface them on a regular basis.

Checking in with this daily would be too much so I settled for a weekly basis and added a new section to my weekly note.

The Power-Ups section in my weekly note is simply an embed that links to the To Do section of the Power-Ups note.

Here's the code:

Here's the end result:

Each week I review this list and see which Power-Ups I will try out in the next week or so.

My Key Take Aways

If you don't have a system, you're relying on your own mind to remember things. This is a recipe for failure as our minds can only remember so much.
Basic Obsidian queries are more powerful than you think. Give it a try before you jump into Dataview or something more complex.
Having a habit of regular reflection allows you to check in with yourself, see where you are, and course-correct if you need to.
Take time to check in with your systems and tweak them. I honestly had a lot of fun implementing this system and learned a lot about Obsidian in the process.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: How I Use Obsidian To Take Action On The Content I Consume

How I Manage Ads For My Newsletter With Airtable And Gumroad

heymichellemac — Mon, 02 May 2022 09:35:42 +0000

My newsletter Design Insight now features a Classifieds section. For a fee, people can buy an ad spot in my newsletter to promote their product or service.

To make this process easier to manage I set up a Gumroad listing and combined it with an Airtable base. With this setup, I've automated most of the process to the point where I only need to check in on things once a week.

This article describes how I set up this process including how I created the Airtable base, published a form for user submissions, added automations, and set up the Gumroad listing.

User Flow

Here's the user flow for buying an ad spot:

A user navigates to the Gumroad listing.
They read about the ad spot and see the available ad spots from the embedded Airtable view.
They purchase an ad spot through Gumroad and are redirected to a form where they fill in detail related to the ad spot.
They fill in the form and press submit.
Airtable and I will handle the rest including adding it to the relevant newsletter edition.
If the user chose to be notified when their ad is live, I'll send them an email letting them know.

Airtable Base + Tables Setup

I started by setting up a new Airtable account. I'm currently using the free account and haven't run into any limitations.

I then created a new base to manage the ad spot data. I called it Design Insight Classifieds.

I knew I wanted 2 tables, one to manage the availability of ad spots and one to manage the booking details.

Table: Classified Availability

Fields:

Date - the date of the newsletter edition (Date field)
Slot 1 - I have space for 2 ad spots in each edition so each slot is accounted for here (Multiselect - Available + Booked)
Slot 2 - Same as above.
Fully Booked - This field denotes that a newsletter edition has both ad slots booked (Checkbox field)
Ad Bookings - This is a linked field that's linked to the Classified Bookings table below. When a record in Classified Bookings matches the Date field in this table (Classified Availability), it will be included in this field. This shows me which ad bookings are scheduled for each week.

Table: Classified Bookings

Fields:

Title - This is the title used for the ad in the newsletter (Text field)
Description - This is the main copy used for the ad in the newsletter (Long text field)
Link - This is the URL to the resource for the ad in the newsletter (URL field)
Ad Spot Availability - I wanted to give people the option to select when they'd like the ad to be in the newsletter. This field is linked to the Date field in the other table (Classified Availability). This means any dates included in that table will appear in this table (Classified Bookings).
Notify When Live - This denotes if the person submitting the ad spot wants to be emailed when the ad is live in the newsletter (Checkbox field)
Email - If the person chose to be notified when their ad is live, their email address is tracked in this field (Email field)

Views:

Public - I created a public view to be used in the Gumroad listing to show people what ad spots are available. It just shows the fields Date, Slot 1, and Slot 2. It is also filtered to only show records where Fully Booked is NOT checked. This means fully booked editions of the newsletter won't continue to show.
Private - This is the private view that has all the fields and no filters.

These tables evolved over time as I set up other components like the submission form and various automations.

Airtable Form Setup

Once I set up the tables I needed, the next thing was to create a form to handle user submissions.

I was originally going to manage this on a Google form but found out Airtable has a forms feature.

In Airtable, forms are managed as a type of view. In my case, I opened the Classified Bookings table and created a form view called Design Insight Ad Spot.

Form Fields:

Title - corresponds to the Title field. Required
Description - corresponds to the Description field. Required
Link - corresponds to the Link field. Required
Ad Spot Availability - corresponds to the Ad Spot Availability field. I turned on the option to "Limit record selection to a view" and chose the Public view. This means only records in the Public view will be shown. If you remember from above, the Public view only shows records where fully booked is NOT checked so users can only pick from available dates.
Notify Me When My Ad Is Live - corresponds to Notify When Live field.
Email - a conditional field that only shows if the field above is checked.

I've turned on the option to email me whenever the form is filled in so I can manually keep an eye on things for now.

As I'm on the free version of Airtable, there are limited customization options I can work with as regards the design but this works well for now.

The link to this form is presented to a user after they purchase an ad spot via Gumroad.

Before I marked this step as finished, I tested out submitting the form a few times to make sure everything worked as expected.

Airtable Calendar Setup

Similar to Forms, you can create Calendar views in Airtable.

This allows me to see which ad spots are scheduled for which newsletter edition. There's also the added convenience of linking this calendar to my Google calendar so I can view this from anywhere.

I created a Calendar view under the Classified Bookings table and called it Ad Calendar. I then selected the Ad Spot Availability field.

To link the calendar to my Google calendar, I selected Share view then selected Sync to an external calendar. This gave me a link which I then pasted into my calendar app.

Gumroad Listing Setup

OK, so by now I have the tables, form, and calendar set up so I have enough in place to put together the Gumroad listing.

I created a new product called Design Insight Ad Spot and started writing out the copy for the ad spot.

I included a background about the newsletter, various stats, and examples of newsletter ad spots.

At the bottom of the listing I pasted in the Public URL of the Classified Bookings table and it appeared perfectly.

I ensured the product URL was clear, created a cover image and thumbnail, and set the price.

The final step was to include the URL to the Design Insight Ad Spot form in the Content section of the product listing. To do this I put the URL into a text file and uploaded that to Gumroad. This allows me to add a short message after the purchase to thank the user for buying an ad spot.

I hit publish and then viewed the new listing to make sure everything looked good including the Airtable embed. You can see the live Gumroad listing here: Design Insight - Ad Spot.

Airtable Automations

Now that everything was set up and running, I wanted to experiment with some Airtable automations to make maintaining everything a bit easier.

This section could be a whole article in itself so I won't delve too deep into how it's all set up. I'll include screenshots where helpful to give an idea of how it's all working.

Some tips I found helpful for using Airtable automations:

You'll need to create sample records that fit the criteria you're trying to test otherwise you won't be able to test the automation properly.
Once you've created the automation, run the steps necessary to trigger the automation manually and make sure it works as expected.
Name your automations clearly so you know what they are at a glance.
If you're struggling to assemble the automation, write down what you want to happen on paper first. I got bogged down in the UI and found it quicker to write out the automation first.

Automation 1 - Mark fully booked issues as fully booked

When an issue of the newsletter is fully booked, an automation runs to check the checkbox "Fully booked" in the Classified Availability table.

This removes it from the Public Classified Availability view which also removes it from being selectable on the Design Insight Ad Spot form.

Automation 2 - Update Ad Spot Availability When Form Submitted

When the Design Insight Ad Spot form is submitted, mark the appropriate slot for that date as booked in the Classified Availability table.

This means I don't have to manually review every form submission and change the availability calendar for each slot to booked.

I've discussed a lot in this article I know. So if you have any questions for me on how any of this works, just let me know 🙂

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This Is How I Publish My Newsletter Every Week Without Fail

heymichellemac — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 11:29:43 +0000

At the time of writing this, I have published an edition of Design Insight every week for the last 49 weeks. Once I'm finished writing this article I'll be scheduling edition 50!

I say this not to brag but to take stock of where I'm at in this process of creating and sending out a weekly newsletter.

I wanted to document what goes into creating my newsletter each week with the hopes that someone may find it helpful for starting their own newsletter.

Here's an overview of the process:

I've divided things up into 4 sections:

Curating Content
Assembling Content
Publishing Content
Post-Publish

Curating Content

Curating content for Design Insight is probably the easiest and most enjoyable part of the process.

This is because I've set up a system for finding and capturing great content I think people will enjoy. It also helps that I have a standardized newsletter format (more on that in the next section) so I know what types of content I can collect.

Let's break down the different types of content I look for and how I curate the best resources to go into Design Insight each week.

Articles

Each edition of Design Insight has 3 articles that I've read, found interesting, and summarized into its 3 main ideas.

These articles can be about design, productivity, writing, creativity, or anything interesting to me that I think will be interesting to others.

I pick out these articles from my Library in Notion.

If you want to see how the Library Notion dashboard works, I wrote an article describing the system here: Notion Library Tour - How I Capture Knowledge On What I Watch & Read.

Essentially the Library is my hub for content consumption.

Any interesting articles, videos, or podcasts I save to read later end up in here for processing. I find this content from other newsletters, Twitter, Medium, and general online browsing.

The output of my content consumption practice is My Knowledge Vault of Digital Notes digital product which you may already be familiar with.

I'm essentially repurposing the work I already do for my Knowledge Vault and funneling it into Design Insight.

Tools + Resources

Each edition of Design Insight has 2 tools or resources relevant to the world of design, productivity, or creativity.

I find useful tools and resources pretty frequently from scrolling through my Twitter timeline. I'm lucky enough to be connected with some talented creators who are building really useful things so I'm happy to promote them in my newsletter.

Other places I find useful tools and resources include other newsletters and general online browsing.

This approach is less than glamorous but I capture all the tools and resources I think would be helpful into a Tools + Resources note in Obsidian. I then pick the best 2 from the list each week and mark them off so I know which ones I've already included.

This part of the process could certainly be improved but it works well enough for me right now.

Design Tips

Each edition of Design Insight has 1 design tip.

I try to find practical and useful design tips that people can learn from each week. It might be something you never thought to try before or something you know but probably could be better at practicing.

Right now I find design tips through Twitter.

I save useful tips to my bookmarks then at the end of each week export those into an Obsidian file entitled "Design Tips".

I then select the best design tip from the list each week and mark it off so I know I've included it in a previous edition.

I'd love to include different channels for finding actionable design tips so if you can think of any be sure to leave me a comment.

Assembling Content

Now is a good time to talk about the standardized format of the newsletter.

The format for Design Insight was inspired by James Clear's 3-2-1 newsletter format. I've followed this approach since the first edition of the newsletter even though some aspects have changed over time.

The current format is:

3 Articles
2 Tools and Resources
1 Design Tip

The standardized format means readers know what they're getting each week. It also makes it easier for me to assemble each edition of Design Insight because I can use a template.

The whole assembly process takes place in Obsidian using a Newsletter template.

Everything I've explained in the content curation section above means I only need to look in 3 places to find the content for Design Insight each week:

Notion library
Tools and Resources file
Design Tips file

For each edition I create a new note, add the template, fill in the content, then it's ready to be published.

I generally assemble a month's worth of editions at a time. This has been really helpful for weeks when I'm sick or something unexpected crops up.

Publishing Content

Once the newsletter is assembled it's time to publish in Substack. Well... more accurately, it's time to schedule.

I schedule each week's edition on Monday morning so it's checked off my list as early in the week as possible.

The first thing I do is finish assembling the newsletter for that week.

I include the 2 most popular links from the previous week. This requires going into Substack and checking the analytics from last week's edition.

A recent addition to Design Insight is Classified ads which I'm really proud of (article to follow on this process soon). I make sure these are filled in before moving everything into Substack.

The next step is just a copy and paste into Substack's editor. I give everything a final sanity check, correct any weird formatting, and it's good to go.

I create a cover image for that edition in Figma and add it to the newsletter.

I also make sure the URL is set to match the current edition.

I schedule the newsletter for Friday at 5 pm GMT and everything is ready to go!

Post-Publishing

After hitting schedule, I create a tweet about this week's edition to get people hyped up.

I try to vary this tweet each week but it generally gives you a sneak peek about what you'll find in this week's Design Insight.

https://twitter.com/MishaCreatrix/status/1513637187232837632

Once that's done, I update the Design Insight Tools + Resources digital product with the current resources. This resource gives people a way to access everything I mention in Design Insight in one place.

My Key Take Aways

I have published an edition of Design Insight every week for the last 49 weeks with this system, so I must be doing something right :P
Content curation is an enjoyable process for me because I have a trusted system in place to manage everything. I use Notion to manage my Library of content to consume.
Work smarter not harder. I was already curating content for another digital product so it wasn't much more work to repurpose that work for my newsletter.
Twitter is a great network to find things worth amplifying in a newsletter. I'm convinced you could just use Twitter to curate content for your newsletter.
Having a standardized newsletter format allows me to use a template that speeds up my workflow.
Batching multiple editions at once has been a game-changer for my level of output.
A tip I learned from Dylan @growthcurrency early on in my newsletter journey is to have the URL of the newsletter denote the edition. For instance, this week's edition will be https://designinsight.substack.com/p/050. This is much simpler than having the URL default to the title.
Repurposing my work into other digital products has been a great use of my time. I hope people find the Design Insight Tools + Resources helpful!

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: This Is How I Publish My Newsletter Every Week Without Fail

This 10 Step Checklist Will Instantly Improve Your Landing Page Design

heymichellemac — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:48:17 +0000

Having a poorly designed landing page is like choosing between an ugly-looking cake and a beautiful-looking cake. Sure the "ugly" cake might taste nice, but you're less inclined to try it in case it tastes like it looks. Chances are you'll pick the pretty-looking cake with the sprinkles, piped-icing, and striking colors (note to self: order some cake for lunch).

A well-designed landing page is more likely to convert users into customers.

Your landing page doesn't have to be a visual masterpiece, but there are some simple steps you can follow to instantly improve its visual quality. To turn it from an "ugly cake" to a "beautiful cake".

The goal of this article is to give you a checklist of actionable steps to improve the design of your landing page.

#1 Use a simple color palette

Color, or lack of color, is the first thing a user notices when landing on a landing page. Because of this, how you use color is an easy way to improve the aesthetics of your landing page.

Color can be used to convey meaning, emotion, and (arguably most importantly) your brand. However, you don't need to be an expert in color theory to create a simple but effective color palette for your landing page.

Here's an easy rule-of-thumb for creating a color palette:

• Use black and white as your base colors (text + background)
• Pick one accent color (buttons, links, important text, headings)
• Use two or three tints (lighter versions) and shades (darker versions) of the accent color if needed.

Here’s what my website looks like (screenshot below). As you can see the only colors used are black, grey, white, pink:

If you're looking for color inspiration, I recommend checking out the Trending section of the Coolors website.

If you want to improve your knowledge of color theory or if you just need a refresher, I wrote a starter guide for color theory you should bookmark and read later.

#2 Design in black and white

While color is the most noticeable aspect of your landing page, you shouldn't use any color when designing the wireframes and initial mockups. Stick to black, white, and shades of grey where needed.

This is a little trick you can easily forget about because you're so enthusiastic about adding color to your landing page right away.

The downside of adding color too early is it will distract you from getting the layout and content right. You become more focused on making sure everything is the right color rather than where everything should go.

Only add color when you're happy with the layout and the content of your landing page.

#3 Use 1 (max 2) easy to read fonts

The font you choose for your landing page will determine how easy your copy is to read.

Most, if not all users today will scan a website instead of reading everything from top to bottom. An easy-to-read font, combined with an effective page layout, is easy to scan. This means the user can quickly find what they're looking for on the page. When a user can't easily scan, they can't quickly see if the page has what they're looking for so they leave.

Your choice of font can also convey your branding or how your landing page looks and feels. With that said, avoid the temptation to go overly decorative with your font choice as this will end up affecting readability.

My recommendation is to pick 1 easy to read font.

If you're feeling particularly creative you could use 2, one for headings and one for body copy, but there's often no need for the added complexity. You can use other things like font weight, size, and color to make headings stand out from body copy.

Stick to the most popular fonts on Google Fonts when you're looking for a font to use. They are popular for a reason.

A good example of font choice affecting readability:

https://twitter.com/MishaCreatrix/status/1403880306965237761

#4 Limit options to avoid information overload

An effective landing page should only have one call to action whether it's subscribe, buy now, or sign up here.

If a user has too many choices, they become paralyzed and don't know what choice to make. This is what's known as the paradox of choice, a term coined by Psychologist Barry Schwartz.

Think about the last time you sat down to watch Netflix.

If you're like me, you spent more time scrolling through the thousands of TV Shows and Movies available instead of picking one to watch. This is the paradox of choice in action and you're doing the same thing with your landing page when you have too many options.

Limit your call to action to 1 thing and consider how you can simplify things like pricing options.

#5 Have a clear and concise headline and sub-headline

You may have seen this image or one like it floating around on Twitter or other design-related forums.

It shows the importance of your headline and sub-headline. These are the things your eye is immediately drawn to when looking at a web page.

An effective headline showcases the value your audience is getting rather than just what the product or service does.

Here are some great examples of headlines and sub-headlines:

Grayscale font landing page from Charli Marie

ChartMogul's landing page

Buy Me A Coffee's landing page

There is a whole lot more I could say about how to write the perfect headline and sub-headline but that would be an article in itself.

Instead, here are some excellent resources if you want to level up your copywriting game:

#6 Use a better call to action than Sign Up

We already mentioned how the goal of your landing page is to convert your audience into customers. This means your landing page will have a call to action (CTA) to prompt people to take that step. This is yet another opportunity for you to design something inviting.

Avoid using a generic CTA like "Sign Up" or "Buy Now".

Instead, you want to help people understand the value they receive by signing up or buying. For instance, if your landing page is for a piece of software, a CTA like "Start Building" or "Start Creating" is much more fun and inviting.

There's a fine line here between fun and overcomplicated so be mindful of keeping things clear instead of clever.

#7 Use good-quality photos of real people for your testimonials

Testimonials build trust in your product or service. This is why any well-designed landing page features testimonials in some shape or form.

However, if you have fake or inauthentic testimonials you are doing more harm than good to your credibility.

An effective way to improve your testimonials is to include high-quality images of the people behind them. People respond more positively when they see actual people beside something. Use this to your advantage by including photos of those people rather than a stock avatar, a generic image, or worse, no image at all.

#8 Show your product in action

It should go without saying that a photo is worth a thousand words.. although I just said it so... 🤔

My point here is people want to see what they're getting before they commit to buying, signing up, or joining. Rather than writing a whole lot of copy about how amazing your product is, a better way is to show your product in action. When people can visualize your product, they are more likely to try it out.

There are 3 main ways you can show this: screenshots, gifs, or videos.

Screenshots

A staple of any landing page is screenshots of your product.

Done well, this can be really impactful, but overdo it or choose poor quality screenshots and you'll put people off.

Pick high-quality screenshots that effectively show particular features or selling points of your product.

Brandbird does this really well.

Gifs

Gifs are slightly more engaging than still screenshots because they show your product working and moving. This is really useful for people looking to visualize what your product can do to help them.

Each Gif should be focused on one interaction or task and it should only be a few seconds long.

Notion does this really well.

Videos

The most immersive way to show your product in action is with video.

It gives you more space to showcase your product and show off what it can do. Plus most people will be inclined to watch a short video than to read a lot of text.

The Tweet100 landing page does this really well

#9 Highlight the recommended pricing plan

If your product or service is paid, you should include a pricing plan that's easy to access and understand. People want to know upfront how much something will cost them to determine if it's worth the time investigating the rest of your landing page.

To make an easy-to-understand pricing plan, it's important to visually differentiate between each one. A helpful way to do this is to highlight the recommended option. This could be the best value option or the option most people choose.

To make the recommended option stand out, you could:

• Change the coloring relative to the other pricing options
• Make it taller than the others
• Make the CTA more noticeable by making it larger, or a different color

ConvertKit does this well

Airtable also does this well

Also, if your product is free or offers a free trial be sure to say that so people know what to expect. Some people may want to try before they buy.

#10 Test your website on mobile, tablet, and desktop

More users are accessing the web on their phones than ever before and it's a trend that will only continue to increase.

This is why it's important to design your landing page for multiple screen sizes and test everything before you call your landing page finished.

If a landing page doesn't look well on a mobile device, it's so easy for someone to just press the back button and never return.

Most web browsers have a built in way to test the responsiveness of your website so if you don't have a variety of different devices to test on this works pretty well. At the very least you should test your landing page on your computer and your phone.

Landing Page Checklist Summary

Use a simple color palette
Design in black and white
Use 1 (max 2) easy to read fonts
Limit options to avoid information overload
Have a clear and concise headline and sub-headline
Use a better call to action than sign-up
Use good-quality photos of real people for your testimonials
Show your product in action
Highlight the recommended pricing plan
Test your website on mobile, tablet, and desktop

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: This 10 Step Checklist Will Instantly Improve Your Landing Page Design

How I Create And Repurpose Content To Have The Most Impact Online

heymichellemac — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 14:29:51 +0000

There are lots of ways to create and distribute content online these days.

There are so many social media and content platforms I've lost count. While this is a huge plus for online creators like me, it can also be challenging to know where to start. This is why learning where to focus your efforts to have the most impact is so important.

You can try to be everywhere sure, but without a proper system or guiding star, you'll burn out pretty quickly.

This is why I spent the last few weeks brainstorming my "Content Creation Conveyor Belt". I wanted to make sure I was focusing my content creation efforts in the right places online without sinking too much time into it each week. The saying work smarter, not harder comes to mind here.

This article is a walkthrough of my content creation process, how I repurpose my content, and the tools I use to make it happen.

How It Works - An Overview

Let's start with a bird's eye view of the whole system. Here's a mind map I created to summarize everything:

As you can see, the system starts with the smallest unit of content, the idea, then works its way up to a larger, more fleshed-out idea.

Each stage of the system requires repurposing, adding, and removing content to make it suitable for the platform it will live on.

It's important to say here that not every idea will work well on every platform. I've had some ideas that made great tweets and great articles but aren't suited for threads. I've also had ideas that immediately turned into articles (like this one) without testing them out as essays or threads. Keep this in mind if you are looking to try this out for yourself.

The way I think about this is twofold: which format I feel would have the most impact and how fleshed out I think the idea is.

Take the idea for this article as an example (how I create and repurpose content). I feel pretty strongly that it would be more helpful as an article than a super concise essay or thread. I also know a lot about this topic so it's something I can almost write stream of consciously without thinking about and refining the idea.

This part of the system is definitely a personal preference but it's how I operate right now.

I should also note here this idea isn't mine, I took great inspiration from Ev Chapman's article: The Bottom’s Up Approach To Writing That 99% Guarantees A Successful Article. I highly recommend you read this article to get a sense of how this approach works. If you're a content creator and don't know who Ev Chapman is, fix that now!

Initial ideas start life as Tweets.

If you think about it a Tweet is the best way to test an idea. It costs nothing, is very low effort, and can the results can be amazing.

I've often heard it said that a Tweet is like a lottery ticket.

Not sure where this idea originally came from but Alex Llull captures it really well in this Tweet:

https://twitter.com/AlexLlullTW/status/1468259087045562368

To manage the ideas for my Tweets, I use inboxes like Todoist, and a notebook to capture them as they come to me during the day.

I manage my Tweets in a Notion Dashboard I call the Tweet HUD. It allows me to refine the Tweet and repurpose it in different ways.

The best Tweets each week are repurposed to my Instagram using Poet.so. I use Poet.so to turn the Tweet into an image then manually post it on Instagram when I think of it. I'm not very regular about this process but it has been a proven way to increase my Instagram audience without much extra effort.

Essay/Thread

I use Twitter's Analytics to see my top-performing Tweets from the last week or so.

These best Tweets are perfect candidates to become atomic essays or threads. Sometimes I'll create both, sometimes I'll pick one, it depends on the idea and how well I think it would work.

Atomic essays are published on my website and on Typeshare.

Threads of course get published on Twitter. I use Zlappo to schedule my tweets and threads.

I manage writing my atomic essays and threads in Obsidian. I have dedicated folders for each type of content under a primary Content Creation folder.

Article

Essays or threads that did well are repurposed and expanded into longer-form articles.

Not all articles work like this though. This article for example I'm writing from scratch. I did share the mind map on Twitter but never turned the idea into a thread or an atomic essay.

I write my articles in Typora and manage them in Obsidian in an Articles folder.

Articles are published to my website and then cross-posted to Medium, Dev.to, and Hashnode. I also include a link to the article on my Changelog site.

Video

Now we come to the part of the process I don't actually follow yet. Currently, I don't have any video presence online but it's something I'm working on this year.

Here's how I plan to repurpose my content for video:

Articles will be turned into videos for YouTube. I'll either record myself speaking the article or talk to the camera off the cuff or with a rough outline.

These longer YouTube videos will be cut down into short snippets for Instagram, Twitter, and potentially TikTok.

Ship 30 for 30 does this to great effect:

https://twitter.com/ship30for30/status/1507800204493344771

Of course I'm sure this process will evolve as I start figuring everything out but for now this is the rough idea.

Podcast

Again, as with video, this isn't something I do yet but am hoping to get started with this year.

For the videos I created above, I can pull the audio out and create a podcast version of the content. Lots of popular podcasts + YouTube channels already do this so I'm not reinventing the wheel.

I plan to use Anchor to upload the podcasts as this service distributes content across all major podcasting services.

I could also pull out particular audio snippets and repurpose those on Twitter + Instagram.

Design Details is a super podcast that does this:

https://twitter.com/designdetailsfm/status/1506719010833924098

My Obsidian Setup For Content Creation

Little side tangent here but I'm sure there are lots of you wondering how this is all managed in Obsidian. Honestly, I could write a whole article about how I use Obsidian for content creation but for the purposes of this article, I'll keep it brief.

I have a Content Creation directory which is subdivided into the following directories:

atomic essays
threads
articles
videos
podcasts

Here's a screenshot:

Each type of content also has its own template. This means that each time I create a new article, for example, I can add the template and avoid writing things out from scratch.

Here's what my article template looks like for example:

Let me know if you'd like a more in-depth article on my Obsidian workflow for managing content creation ✍️

My Key Take Aways

I approach content creation with this mindset: create once use many times.
What works on one platform may not work on another. Consider how you can repurpose that idea in a way that will be most suited to the platform.
To avoid being overwhelmed, pick one to two platforms and start with those until you have the routine down. Then start adding more platforms whenever you like.
See what other ways people are repurposing their content across different platforms and try it out for yourself. There's no harm in experimenting.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: How I Create And Repurpose Content To Have The Most Impact Online

Jekyll - How To Display A Count Of Posts Per Tag Or Category

heymichellemac — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 09:59:48 +0000

My Changelog website is where I keep track of all my creative work online. It contains links to every article, newsletter edition, digital product, and project I create.

I built it in Jekyll, my static site generator of choice.

One of the first hurdles I had to navigate when building the site was how to display a stats page. This would summarize all my content under a few different parameters. I wanted to display counts of posts per categories as well as tags.

Here's how I accomplished setting up a display of post counts per category and tag.

Site Structure

Let's start with a summary of how things are set up on the Changelog site.

I have the following tags:

Coding
Creation
Design
Milestone
Productivity

These serve as the main buckets or topics I talk about most often. My niche if you will.

Milestone is slightly different. It denotes various markers I want to celebrate like hitting 500 Twitter followers or growing my Medium following.

Then I have categories:

Article
Book Notes
Digital Product
Github Repo
Newsletter
Website

These denote the type of content I've created.

Here's a screenshot of my stats page to show you the end result:

As you can see, each component shows the tag/category name and a count of the posts under that tag/category.

Each component also has a link to the relevant tag/category page to help with navigation.

I highly recommend you check out the live version of the site for more context: Changelog Stats

Display Post Count By Tag

This couldn't be simpler. All you need to add is the following code:

{{ site.tags.Creation | size }}

Just replace "Creation" with the name of your tag. The only thing that could potentially trip you up here is misspelling the tag name so be sure to double-check that.

Display Post Count By Category

Post count by category is equally as easy to implement. Just use the following code:

{{ site.categories.Article | size }}

Again, be sure to double-check spelling here as this is what usually trips me up.

Display Post Count Of All Posts

If you want a count of all posts on your website, here's the code:

{{ site.posts | size }}}

Super simple 👍

Count All Posts Minus A Specific Tag

Here's a fun one that will hopefully be helpful to you.

On my homepage, there is a picture of me and underneath it is a level counter. I set this up to try and gamify my content creation. The higher the level, the more content I've created.

To accomplish this, I needed to count all posts except for milestone type posts (as these aren't pieces of content I've created, they're just events).

Here's the pseudo-code: my current level = all posts - milestone posts. Then divide by 10 (this step is optional for you)

Here's the code I used to make that happen:

 {% assign count_posts = site.posts | size %}

 {% assign milestone_posts = site.tags.Milestone | size %}

 {% assign total_posts = count_posts | minus: milestone_posts %}

 <span class="font-bold pl-2">Level {{ total_posts | divided_by: 10 }}</span>

Pretty cool right?

Just replace the "Milestone" tag with your own tag.

In your case, you may not need "divided_by: 10" as this was something I added in to determine the level to display.

I hope you found this article helpful. I'm always finding new tips and techniques for building Jekyll websites and I really enjoy being able to share them with you!

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: Jekyll - How To Display A Count Of Posts Per Tag Or Category

Use Netflix To Easily Improve Your Design Skills

heymichellemac — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 10:45:44 +0000

Copying good designs is a great way to build your design skills if you're getting started in design.

When I say copying good designs, what I mean is finding a design you like and rebuilding it in your design tool of choice to learn how it's put together. You'll never share this work publicly, but with practice, you'll learn the features that make up effective design.

Copying websites will improve how you design websites. However, looking at design through different mediums is an even better way to improve your eye for design.

Let's look at how you can improve your design skills with Netflix.

Netflix for design inspiration

Netflix is an amazing resource when it comes to design.

Each movie or TV show has a range of cover art that entices users to watch. With that in mind, examining the cover art of great designs will help you to understand the use of color, typography, layout, and whitespace.

Let's dive into the process to see how it works.

Collect designs that are eye-catching

Start scrolling through Netflix and pay attention to the cover art. If one in particular immediately grabs your attention, take a screenshot or a photo and save it.

Do this until you have 5-10 good examples to work from.

The idea here is when something catches your eye, you want to understand why to be able to emulate that spark in your own designs.

Examine what makes each design effective

Once you have your collection of cover art, add them into a Figma file (or your design tool of choice).

This is where the magic starts to happen. You want to pick apart each design to understand how it's put together and what makes it so eye-catching.

Write a note under each design and ask yourself the following questions:

What caught my eye about this design?
Why did this catch my eye?
What is the subject matter?
What colors are used and how?
What font is used and what effect does it create?
How is the design structured? Is there a grid or is it more fluid?

These questions will help you understand the design elements used and how they work together to create an effective design.

You can spend as much or as little time as you want on this process but if you want to reign things in you can use a Pomodoro timer for each design.

Replicate the designs from scratch

Now that you've examined each design, it's time to replicate them.

Under each design, start re-creating it from scratch. You can create low or high-fidelity copies, it's up to you. The important thing here is the practice of replicating the design.

This not only cements your understanding of a design but also improves your ability to work in your design tool of choice.

These copied designs will never see the light of day but they are incredibly valuable when it comes to improving your understanding of design.

Over time and with continued practice, you'll be able to create brand new designs that take inspiration from what you learned from this creative exercise.

Consider other mediums

This exercise doesn't just have to apply to Netflix. Consider what other mediums you could take inspiration from: book covers, music artwork, video game box art. Any design medium that interests you will work perfectly.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: Use Netflix To Easily Improve Your Design Skills

This article started out as a Twitter thread which you can check out here: Original Twitter Thread

How Dark Souls Helps You To Think About Failure

heymichellemac — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 11:17:42 +0000

Dark Souls games are punishing for their level of difficulty.

They require your full attention, the ability to learn and recognize battle patterns, and the willingness to replay a section over 100 times before beating the boss. You can't just waltz into a Dark Souls game without knowing what to expect. You probably wouldn't enjoy the game at all.

With that said, Dark Souls games have a very strong and loyal fanbase. Even as someone who is terrible at them, I can still appreciate them and enjoy playing them.

But what is it that makes Dark Souls games so popular?

OK, well I'm not sure if I'll ever figure that out definitively...

BUT for me, Dark Souls is all about failure. Learning from your own failure, from the failure of others, and not seeing failure as the end of the world. When you can learn from the mistakes you made to finally beat the boss, your victory tastes so sweet.

There's also something to it that translates to how you should think about failure in life.

With that in mind, let's explore what Dark Souls can teach you about failure.

You Learn From The Failure Of Others

When a player dies in Dark Souls, they leave behind a bloodstain.

You see these in your own game and can interact with them. When you touch a bloodstain left behind by another player, you see the last 10 seconds of their life.

This is a really clever game mechanic as it gives you the chance to learn from the failure of other players. Perhaps there was a sneaky enemy that jumped out from behind something. Or maybe the other player fell through a trap door or off the edge of a tall building.

By avoiding the mistakes of other players, you'll make your journey through each area that much easier.

This perfectly mirrors life, in particular it makes me think about people sharing their failures publicly on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/jspector/status/1496925603030716421

A lot of people are open about sharing how/why they failed at something. Whether it's the things they wish they knew sooner, things to avoid, or things to do from the start. There's a lot of opportunity to learn from the failure of others.

Remember this the next time you see someone talk about a failure they experienced.

You Learn From Your Own Failure

When you die in Dark Souls you also leave behind a bloodstain. The bloodstain is placed at the location about 5 seconds before your death. Interacting with these bloodstains will recover some souls and liquid humanity.

As well as replenishing your souls etc., you also see the location of where you died. This is a great visual signifier for you to think about why you died there and how you can avoid it the next time around.

This is what it's like when you learn from your own failure in life.

You take the time to reflect on your failure, identify what could be better next time, then action those improvements. This is how you continuously get better. In fact, this is the practice of Kaizen in action.

Regular reflection is the best way to improve over time. I reflect on my failures during my weekly review process.

You Normalize Failure

Dark Souls is built for failure.

You play, you die, you play again, you die again. It's a big part of the game and what makes it so engaging for players. Ultimately, dying in the game gives you the chance to learn what worked and what didn't.

It also makes finally slaying the bosses so much more satisfying.

This is how you should think about failure in life. It shouldn't be the end of the world but an opportunity to learn.

That's not to say that you're going to fail all the time in life, but when you inevitably do fail, you'll learn from it and move on without difficulty.

You Think About The Advice You Take From Others

Another way you can see the remnants of other players in your game is through notes.

Players can leave notes in the game to share information with others. You may even see notes left behind by the game's developers.

These notes might be helpful and guide you through a tough challenge or warn you about an upcoming attack. But, they may also be unhelpful and trick you into jumping off a high ledge or point you in the wrong direction.

The main takeaway here as it applies to life is to take every piece of advice you are given with a pinch of salt.

Just because something worked for someone else, doesn't mean it will work for you. Think critically about the person giving the advice and don't just accept that what they're saying is a silver bullet to success.

Of course, learning from others is how we get better and I'm not saying to disregard everyone who gives you advice. Just remember you could be pointed in the wrong direction or tricked into jumping off a roof!

My Key Takeaways

This was a fun article to write so I hope you enjoyed it. Here are my main takeaways:

Take the time to learn from the failure of others. Learn where they went wrong and avoid making the same mistakes.
Make sure you reflect often on your own failure. Ask yourself: what went wrong, what could I do better next time? This is how you improve.
Failure is normal. Not to say you'll fail all the time but when you do fail, you'll realize it isn't the end of the world.
Consider the advice you accept from others. Be sure to try things out for yourself and don't be afraid to fail.

Is there anything you would add?

If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: How Dark Souls Helps You To Think About Failure

These 7 Books Will Change How You Think About Being A Creative

heymichellemac — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 11:58:08 +0000

I read some great books in 2021 that changed completely how I think about my creative practice, how I create, and how I get things done.

Before reading these books I had no system for creating, no way of managing my work, and no idea that I could create things others would find helpful. Slowly but surely, reading each book and applying what I learned has resulted in the creative practice that I live each day. I couldn't imagine working any differently.

Here are 7 of the best books all creatives should read this year:

1 The Accidental Creative

Author: Todd Henry

What You'll Learn

What creative constraints are and how you can use them to improve your creativity.
The importance of a regular creative practice and how to develop one for yourself.
How to deal with the assassins of creativity which include fear, expectation escalation, and dissonance.

The Book In 3 Ideas

Creative productivity comes in ebbs and flows. Some days we can be very creative but other days we can't think of anything creative or worthwhile.
A regular creative practice will help to develop your creativity muscle so you can generate creative insights on demand.
True freedom is healthy constraints.

Want to learn more: here are my book notes

2 Steal Like An Artist

Author: Austin Kleon

What You'll Learn

How to overcome impostor syndrome by understanding that nothing is original. This will allow you to focus on creating things you enjoy.
How to cultivate great sources of knowledge to learn and take inspiration from.
The importance of side projects and having a creative outlet.

The Book In 3 Ideas

Nothing is original. Everything is a mashup of existing ideas.
Garbage in, garbage out. It is up to you to consume interesting and high-quality content as this will shape what you create.
Use a blog as an incubator for great ideas. There are people that will find this content motivating and useful.

Want to learn more: here are my book notes

3 A Whack On The Side Of The Head

Author: Roger Von Oech

What You'll Learn

How to unlock the mental locks that limit your creativity. Once you learn this you'll find it so much easier to create.
How to challenge your thinking. Instead of being reigned in by your thinking, you'll learn to use your thinking process to your advantage.
How to generate creative ideas. The secret sauce of being creative.

The Book In 3 Ideas

Simply knowing something doesn't make you creative. What makes you creative is what you do with that knowledge.
In school, we are taught to find the right answer. This implies there is only one right answer. However, in life, there are many right answers.
Sometimes a failure can serve as a stepping stone to the right idea. Focus on what worked and understand what didn't.

4 Peak

Author: Anders Ericsson

What You'll Learn

What deliberate practice is and why it's beneficial.
How to harness deliberate practice and incorporate it into your life to achieve your goals/dreams.
Different mental models for thinking and how to think about your mind and your skills.

The Book In 3 Ideas

Everyone can improve with deliberate practice no matter how old you are.
The key to deliberate practices is to focus on what you're learning, observe where you are falling down, and fix it by trying different methods.
Well-defined and accurate mental representations are what separates beginners from experts. An expert's mental models will allow them to more effectively tackle a problem or perform a certain activity.

Want to learn more: here are my book notes

5 Getting Things Done

Author: David Allen

What You'll Learn

A powerful framework for organizing your tasks and ultimately your life
Your brain is for having ideas not holding them. Learn to write things down and get them out of your head.
How to set up a system for managing tasks. This system can be implemented with pen and paper or with a task management tool like Todoist. Whatever works for you.

The Book In 3 Ideas

Having a system you trust to hold your thoughts will give you peace of mind. This allows your mind to focus on your current task.
A "productivity system" will be different for everyone. The key is to take the parts that work for you and implement those.
Regular reflection of your systems and lists is necessary to stay clear and current.

Want to learn more: here are my book notes

6 The Bullet Journal Method

Author: Ryder Carrol

What You'll Learn

The value of self-reflection and why you should start practicing.
How to develop a system for writing down your thoughts, tasks, events, everything you need to manage in your life.
Writing things down empties your mind and allows you to focus on your work.

The Book In 3 Ideas

Self-reflection is an important system to help you learn from your experiences and improve.
Writing things down and getting them out of your mind will allow you to think more clearly.
Writing by hand allows you to slow down and carefully consider what you're writing. This allows you to write in your own words and makes remembering what you write down more effective.

Want to learn more: here are my book notes

7 How To Take Smart Notes

Author: Sönke Ahrens

What You'll Learn

How to take notes that you'll remember
Building a knowledge vault will remove the problem of the blank page
Writing notes in your own words will help your understanding

The Book In 3 Ideas

Cultivating a library of knowledge means you'll never have to start from a blank page. Creating becomes more enjoyable.
By writing book notes in your own words you cement your understanding of what you've read. This will help you learn information more effectively.
Creating a system that is organized for easy content retrieval will help you to achieve the "mind like water" that David Allen talks about in Getting Things Done.

Want to learn more: here are my book notes

If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: These 7 Books Will Change How You Think About Being A Creative

P.S. This article started out as a thread on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MishaCreatrix/status/1488899021225660418

I Scheduled My Creative Time For The Last 4 Weeks, Here's What I Learned

heymichellemac — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 10:39:50 +0000

Scheduled creative time is something I read about but never thought to try until recently.

I noticed I struggled to work on anything outside of my primary recurring tasks each week. I wanted to try my hands at building a Notion dashboard or creating a website, but tasks like writing and scheduling my newsletter always took priority.

Re-reading my notes from The Accidental Creative, it struck me that scheduled creative time might be the answer.

So, over the last 4 weeks, I scheduled 1-3 hours on a Friday into my calendar for scheduled creative time.

Here's what I learned about the process, about how I work, and my key takeaways from this experiment.

Background - What Is Scheduled Creative Time And Why Should I Care?

The idea of scheduled creative time as I learned about from The Accidental Creative is where you set aside dedicated time each week for the sole purpose of creating.

The reason this works is a regular practice of creation will exercise your brain's creative muscles. So, when it comes time to put together that mockup or presentation you have the creative mojo to produce something great.

Having an outlet like this for your creativity is a great way to try new things and see where your curiosity leads you.

If you want to learn more about how to establish a scheduled creativity routine, I wrote an article you can check out here: Why You Should Schedule Time For Creativity

Preparation - Scheduled Creative Time Set Up

My goal for this little experiment was to try it out for a month, document the results, and decide whether to make this a regular part of my week going forward.

Here's what I did to prepare:

I decided on a day to do this: Friday mornings.
I identified and removed any potential bottlenecks that would prevent me from doing this.
I created a rough list of things to work on during this time. I took a look at my projects list in Obsidian for some inspiration here.

Week 1

For the first week of scheduled creative time, I decided to combine my love of gaming with my passion for design.

I have no idea where the idea came from but I settled on creating a business card for a video game character.

Side note: write down every idea you have, you never know which ones you'll use!

In this case, I picked Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher. The Witcher 3 is probably in my top 3 list of favorite games so it made sense to pick Geralt because I know a lot about him and this game.

I created the business cards in Canva, exported them into visual mockups in Photoshop, then shared the end result on Twitter:

This week's creative time was spent combining my love of design + gaming.

I thought it would be fun to design a business card for a video game character.

In this case, I picked Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher. I think the result is pretty fun!

What are you creating this week? pic.twitter.com/lb6ZwdLoUQ
— Michelle The Creative 💎 (@MishaCreatrix) January 28, 2022

What I Enjoyed

Not having to worry about what I should be doing during this time. Because the time was scheduled in my calendar I didn't have to think about doing anything else.
I was able to get into a flow state which meant the time flew by.
Doing something different and slightly random was a fun experiment. I still made use of my design skills but was able to create something I wouldn't otherwise have created.

What I Didn't Enjoy

There were no strict time limits set at this point. This meant I worked on this until it was finished. While that can be a good thing, in my case, I would work better within a set time limit.
I didn't have any pre-defined ideas for what I would do with the results of my creative time. Should I share on social media or keep to myself? Should I publish on my website? Should I just share with my family and friends? I needed to decide on this going forward.

What I Learned

I work better within defined time blocks as I know where the edges are in my day.
I work well when a lot of the decision-making is already done so I can focus on simply creating. Taking time to plan my creative time in advance helps me to feel more free when creating.

Week 2

For this week's scheduled creative time, I wanted to create a Core Values page in Obsidian. This idea was inspired by this video from Nicole van der Hoeven:

https://youtu.be/T2Aeaq4sk7M

While this might not be the most creative thing I could do with my time, I felt this was a good use of my time. Especially given how the results would help me in the future i.e. a list of my core values that would drive my future goals.

The end result was a note that outlined my top 6 core values and gave a brief description of each one and what it means to me.

I highly recommend watching the video above for some inspiration if you're thinking of doing this for yourself.

What I Enjoyed

Learning about OKRs as opposed to SMART goals. This might be something I switch to going forward (I've actually made the switch and looking forward to setting next quarter's OKRs).
Seeing how my core values link to my goals was something I was really impressed with. At the start of the process, I wasn't sure how impactful this process would be but I was definitely incorrect here.
I had a more defined time to work in this week which was great. It did mean that my work spilled over as I couldn't get this done in the time allotted. I ended up finishing this over the weekend which I didn't mind.

What I Didn't Enjoy

It was difficult to not just copy and paste core values from other people online and use them as my own. I had to constantly remind myself that I was doing this for me and it would benefit me in the long term to do this in my own way from the start.

What I Learned

OKRs might be a good alternative to SMART goals.
Not everything you do during scheduled creative time will fit into a defined period of time. There may be weeks where something will spill over into next week's creative time and that's OK.

Week 3

This week, I decided to build a Notion dashboard to manage my tweet ideas.

This idea was inspired by the Endless Tweet Generator from Ev Chapman. I highly recommend you download this dashboard to get you started generating more tweets than you ever thought possible.

The end result of this creative time was a new Notion dashboard I call: Tweet HUD. As you can probably tell, I wanted to incorporate my love of gaming into this dashboard so I themed it like an RPG.

This week's scheduled creativity time was spent creating my own version of the Endless Tweet Generator Notion template by @evielync

I had a lot of fun building in @NotionHQ. I forgot how enjoyable the process is 😀

Incorporated my own gaming terminology which works well 😅 pic.twitter.com/TZwTdtxQDQ
— Michelle The Creative 💎 (@MishaCreatrix) February 11, 2022

What I Enjoyed

Building in Notion was a lot of fun.
I didn't feel guilty about spending time building something from scratch in Notion. This was my scheduled time for creating!
I enjoyed adding my own spin to something like this. I included gaming terminology to make it more engaging and fun for me to use.

What I Didn't Enjoy

Can't think of anything, really enjoyed this creative time 😃

What I Learned

Not to simply copy and paste something, but to take what works for me and use that to make it my own.
The value of repurposing content - from one tweet it's not that hard to generate 4-5 new tweets or ideas.

Week 4

This week I worked on a fun little website that came about from a pain point at work. It's a character counter and character generator.

This was my most challenging project to date during my scheduled creative time. It required me to create a full web page from scratch and use my JavaScript knowledge to make it work correctly.

The stack I used for this project was: HTML, Tailwind CSS, Vanilla JavaScript, deployed on Netlify.

Here's the web page if you want to see how it turned out: https://chartools.netlify.app/

What I Enjoyed

Building in Tailwind and using my very limited JavaScript skills to make something from scratch.
Trying out a dark mode implementation in Tailwind CSS. Turns out it's pretty easy once you understand how it works/
The challenge of figuring out the JavaScript needed to accomplish each task was just challenging enough.
This tool solves a pain point I had at work which made it really fun to work on.

What I Didn't Enjoy

Developing the design was a bit of a slow process, or at least slower than I thought it would be. Going forward I would break down a project like this and work on it over a couple of weeks.

What I Learned

It helps to vary what you do during scheduled creativity time each week. This keeps you interested and engaged with what you're doing.

My Key Take-Aways From This Experiment

If you're still with me, here's an overview of what I learned from doing this experiment over the last 4 weeks:

Creating dedicated time for this practice will help you to stick to it and you won't forget it easily.
Some people work better within defined time blocks. Consider setting a time limit on your scheduled creative time to help you focus.
Do as much planning as you're comfortable with before you start your scheduled creative time. Consider any potential roadblocks that might crop up and how you can prevent them ahead of time.
Don't be frustrated if you don't complete your project during one block of scheduled creative time. There's always next week or you could just continue working on it over the weekend.
Once you have the schedule and the preparation done, it becomes less about the process and more about creating. After 1-2 weeks, I could sit down and work on something without worrying about tracking my time, other work I needed to do, how long I should spend on the task.

As a result of this experiment, I've decided to continue with my scheduled creative time each Friday. I really enjoy this time each week and I feel that it's a great creative outlet.

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it with someone else who might find it useful 🤗

This article was originally published over on my website: I Scheduled My Creative Time For The Last 4 Weeks, Here's What I Learned