I am in an experiment to use email to write to myself for a Private Thoughts blog. I use the email compose to write what’s in my mind. Then I send them to an email address that’s dedicated for collecting my blog posts.
If I write an email per day to my Private Thoughts blog. That’d be 365 posts per year. More than enough for me to curate a book of my thoughts every year from the 300+ articles. Say, pick 12 topics from the articles and merge several short posts together into 1 topic. Then I’ll have 12 chapters and different subsections in that book.
It will be like Thoughts of the Year Book.
The question is, will I be able to write 1 email post per day?
I believe I can.
If this project is requiring me to write 1 blog post per day, to public. That would be difficult because for sure, at some point, I will be hesitate to publish my thoughts to the public. That’s like having myself naked in public looking for criticism.
But if it is about writing a private thoughts log that only I can read it. I would be fine.
If I write an email per day to my Private Thoughts blog. That’d be 365 posts per year. More than enough for me to curate a book of my thoughts every year from the 300+ articles. Say, pick 12 topics from the articles and merge several short posts together into 1 topic. Then I’ll have 12 chapters and different subsections in that book.
It will be like Thoughts of the Year Book.
The question is, will I be able to write 1 email post per day?
I believe I can.
If this project is requiring me to write 1 blog post per day, to public. That would be difficult because for sure, at some point, I will be hesitate to publish my thoughts to the public. That’s like having myself naked in public looking for criticism.
But if it is about writing a private thoughts log that only I can read it. I would be fine.
I’m also trying to keep the email count minimal and not overwhelming. So I’m trying to send myself a private thought log every day. I may have more than one idea per day. For those hype time, I will write the title and maybe 1 or 2 paragraphs to save in drafts. The next day, I’ll finish it and send the email out.
Why email? Doesn’t Evernote (or iA, or Bear, or any) software provides better writing experiences?
Sure they do. But email provides me the mindset that I’m explaining this to someone, to an audience. Although only I can read the email. So you may imagine that this email is writing to the future myself.
By using email, it forces me to click the “send” button. Otherwise, those thought notes just sit in my Evernote inbox forever and I never touch them again.
By clicking the “send” button, the email compose forces me to publish it and mark it as done.
Done is Beautiful. — Offscreen
Inspiring from HEY World
This idea was inspired by HEY World.
Jason Fried introduced HEY World in his post Hey, World. Then I’m thinking: Oh! Treating the email compose editor as the blog post writer can really be a thing.
Several reasons that this idea sounds:
Emails are supposed to be short and precious. So that I won’t write a very long post trying to explain the history of the universe.
Emails are communication to audiences. So that I am targeting this post to someone. It may be someone in public if this is a blog post. It may be my future me if this is an email to myself. The writing tone will be like I’m sharing something to someone, to convince, to persuade a thought, or to pitch an idea.
Emails are done when sent. There are no more “living documents” in the note inbox. Most of my previous private thoughts post was half-done-half-written sitting inside the inbox among my notes software. Some in iA Writer, some in Evernote, some in Amplenote, half-written. Emails are done every time I click “Send”. If I have to update anything after the email sent, I send a revised one. Every time, it is marked as Done. Done is Beautiful.
—Thomas Mak, 2021-03-09