Welcome to 2024!
Did you all make it through? What about your New Year’s resolutions? Statistically 23% of people quit in their first week!
Even if you have, I’m glad you haven’t quit this newsletter.
So let’s get on with the content.
Interesting links
Adrien Liard shares a flick through his sketchbooks.
The sketchnote army podcast just completed its 14 seasons 😱 a massive achievement and if you’d like to catch up on this season, you might like this complication episode with all the tips shared throughout the season.
Although I believe in the benefits of drawing your sketchnotes, you don’t have to (they might _technically_ have another name but who cares.. Take a look at this example from Quill Shadow.
What is your information diet?
What you feed your mind, determines your appetite – Zig Ziglar
In 2014, a whistleblower exposed Facebook's secret mood manipulation experiments. Facebook found that when it put more negative content in people's feeds, users became sadder.
It’s not just your social media feed though. The websites you visit, tv you watch, books you read and even the people you hang around with will all shape your thoughts and opinions.
Make sure you control your information diet, not the algorithms.
Here’s a quick step to help.
Write down the different channels where you get your information (social media channels, websites, radio, books, religious texts etc).
Put the main sources for each one (list the ones that come top of mind).
Put a guestimate (or better still track your time for a week) for how long you spend on each.
Visit each and gain a sample of the information there (i.e. if you visit a news website, what are the top stories there. What content is suggested in your YouTube feed etc).
This is to see what information your sources are giving you, not what you think they are. It might turn out that you think a social platform is very positive, but the majority is very negative.
Evaluate your sources: now you can decide if you’d like to increase or decrease the time you spend on any source. You may want to replace some with others.
A bonus trick: If there’s a social network you want to cut from your life. Make a fake icon on your phone replicating the network but have it redirect to a different source.
My general rule of thumb is to reduce the short and temporary information (i.e. news headlines) and replace it with longer-term information (high-quality books). While both have their place, too much of the former makes me feel more negative.
One more thing…
I had hoped to start the Sketch 30 program last week but life, lack of a stable internet connection and a small case of perfectionism got in the way.
My family and I will be back in Poland next weekend so I won’t be launching sooner than the end of the month.
It’s not what I wanted, but I’m okay with it. It would have been great to kick off with the other New Year trends, but you don’t have to wait a whole year.
Anytime is a good time to start.
See you next week!
Chris