James Barry

The world is full of information.

So much so, that it’s easy to think you know everything.

Such as this collection of random facts:

1. The ratio of ants to humans is 1 million to 1. For every 1 million ants, there is one human.
2. The tallest building in the world is currently (at the date of writing this) The Burj Khalifa, at 2,717 ft.
3. There are 6,500 dialects spoken across the world. (English and Mandarin are far and away the top two).

All data is seemingly at our fingertips. All we need is a smartphone and a nearby Starbucks.

But, there is a much larger collection of data that is not at our fingertips.

In fact, it doesn’t exist anywhere except inside people’s brains.

Hidden knowledge that never comes up.

Long-ago experiences, not readily shared.

Relationships between people that you never knew existed.

As humans, we are constantly creating information, whether we mean to or not.

Even as the amount of data in the world grows exponentially, the vast majority of it isn’t captured. It never will be.

Once you internalize this, you will realize that you need to assume you know nothing.

Because in most cases, you don’t know.

So if you want to be correct.

You must first accept that you know nothing.

Whether you should write consistently is an often debated topic.

Some believe writers can’t publish quality material if they have to adhere to a strict schedule.

Others have built giant empires by publishing their writing consistently. Some even daily.

The thing about consistency though, is it is not about your readers (most of the time). If you put out quality material, it will be consumed (assuming you’re distributing it correctly).

Consistency instead, is all about you.

It’s about building a new skill. Step by step. Brick by brick.

It’s about creating a system or a process to reliably produce ideas.

Consistency ensures that you can get through the highs, the lows, and everything in-between.

Consistency ensures that you don’t give up along the way.

Developing any new skill is hard, especially because if you care about becoming good, it will hurt when you are in fact bad.

So when you’re developing a new skill, practice it consistently.

When you’ve developed that skill, that is when you can take your time and make something great.

Being creative is difficult.

It’s time consuming and does not happen on a clear schedule, but it can be incredibly rewarding.

I’ve tried to make the creative process more efficient over the past year. Here are the three improvements I wish I had made sooner:

Improvement Number 1: Invest in Note Taking

Trying to be creative and find new ideas without a clear process is inefficient. Stupidly inefficient.

That’s because the brain is literally an idea machine.

🧠 Sleep? Nah, let’s think about things.

🧠 Shower? What about this cool article idea?

🧠 Listening to a podcast while Driving? That topic would make a perfect article!

You could be putting in maximum effort, but if you are only writing down 50% of everything you learn and your new ideas, you’re 50% less productive.

We are all constantly producing seeds of what could be great content. However, if you never plant the seeds (i.e. write them down) they will never grow.

To tackle this problem I invested the two resources I have:

1. Time
2. Money

Investing in note-taking and your creative process is easily one of the best places to invest, because the more efficient you are, the more time you will save.

If you think time is your most valuable resource (it is), then put the time in to take proper notes.

Improvement Number 2: Consume the Proper Content.

For the first 10 years of my adultish life (i.e. late teens, early 20s), the content I consumed was either a business or self-help book.

That was a boring time in my reading life.

Today, I either read or listen to a much wider range of books and topics. Fiction, non-fiction, podcasts of all different shapes and sizes, and blogs I had never heard of.

Recently when I’ve been looking for specific takeaways to improve my day-to-day, I’ve listened to Creative Elements. It’s a podcast that only interviews content creators. It goes into minute detail on the creative process and provides a step-by-step guide on how to come up with ideas (which happens to be the area I need the most help currently).

For general learning, I listen to anything and everything. You never know what you’re going to learn from an autobiography, a fiction book, or a random blog. Just search for important takeaways and you will find them.

Improvement Number 3: Reduce Friction

You know what’s difficult? Pausing your life to take down your notes and ideas.

You know what’s easy(ish)? Creating a frictionless process to capture notes and ideas.

Here is how I built mine:

First, pick a note taking app. I use Roam Research and cannot recommend it highly enough.

Second, identify ways to take notes when you previously couldn’t. Here are a few recent improvements I’ve made:

• Use Airr when listening to podcasts so I can record audio clips that generated ideas.
• Use Audible‘s clip feature (same as above) to record Audiobook clips.
• Broke out my 6 year old Kindle to begin highlighting everything I think is important.
• Push all my notes / highlights into Roam (Where I write all my articles).

Third, choose a way to keep track of your ideas (ideally in the same note taking app). I have five buckets in Roam where I create content for my blog and social posts:

• 💡 Writing Ideas: New ideas go here. I use this as a bucket to write down anything that could ever become an article or post.
• 📑 Writing Outlines: Next step for any ideas is outlining them.
• ✍🏼 Writing Drafts: Once a real draft is fleshed out, it sits here for review before being published.
• 📗 Writing Published: This is where published articles go.
• 💀 Writing Graveyard: Not all ideas are created equal. Ideas that never made the cut go here. Maybe I’ll revisit them later. Probably not though.

Below is what this actually looks like in Roam.

This process is not perfect.

In fact, I’m always looking to improve it.

But it’s infinitely better than what I did a year ago, which was take NO notes ever.

To make any change, you first need to take a small step forward.

There are few things that I put 100% effort into.

That level of effort is scary for two reasons.

First, putting 100% of your effort requires a unique amount of dedication.

It will overshadow everything else in your life.

Second, putting 100% of your effort means that when you fail, it will hurt.

A LOT.

It’s emotionally draining knowing your best was not good enough.

So now we’re stuck at an impasse.

But to achieve great things, you need to give 100% effort.

Life is long though. Splitting your effort across many disciplines informs later choices.

So instead of striving for greatness out the gate.

Strive to do many things as possible.

So when you do finally put in 100% and dedicate your life.

You’ll be ok with it overshadowing everything else.

And you wont fail 🤞🏼.

At the start of 2020 I was unemployed.

I had just dissolved the business that I worked on for the past year.

So I started my job hunt and applied to my two “𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴”.

Here’s how the interview process went:

𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐀: Got to the reference stage. Then they froze hiring.
𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐁: Got to the project stage. My project wasn’t good enough.

I was absolutey crushed.

Recently, I decided to check in on both the companies

𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐀: Everybody who interviewed me has quit / left.
𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐁: Laid off half of their employees.

Now I work at a company I love.

With coworkers I respect.

Sometimes, not getting what you want is exactly what you need.