That’s tooooo much, man!

Rebooting is a biweekly newsletter about how we can use technology to take better care of ourselves.

Some housekeeping: I’ll be taking an extra week off between issues to recharge for a moment, but I’ll be back January 14 with a fresh issue. In the meantime, I hope y’all have a lovely holiday and a great start to the new year. Be well.

A year ago, my tata passed away. Months later, as a friend and I sifted through my nana and tata’s belongings, I found some of his old paintings—some proudly hung in their bedroom, some shyly tucked away in a folder, forever unfinished but still a beautiful token of his love for the world around him. I hadn’t given much thought to taking up drawing since my tata gave me mini art lessons when I was 8, but his passing reignited that spark.

At the time, my artistic abilities were qualitatively indistinguishable from a hand-painted turkey you’d find in a kindergarten art class. But since then, I’ve made a point to keep working at it, sneaking in YouTube tutorials when I can and making a silly doodle here and there. I wish I could say I stayed diligent about it all year, but life’s bummers and a general lack of life management skills left me with sporadic chunks of hard work that haven’t gotten me as far along as I’d hoped.

Still, I try to focus on the fact that I’ve made at least some progress from the barely recognizable figures I could whip up a year-and-a-half ago, and go into the next week a little bit more prepared to set aside some time to dig into my sketchbook. That’s taken a lot of troubleshooting, and fiddling with different ways to track my work and take time management more seriously. It’ll surely change just as I settle into a routine, but for now, I’ve found a couple apps have helped me stay on top of the hobbies and projects I want to dedicate some time to, but always struggle to act on.

Bear with me

Not all of my side projects are writing-focused, but they all require some note taking, and Bear is the best app I’ve found to store any information I’ll have to come back to later, and its tag-oriented system makes it easy to keep all my notes clumped together for whichever projects they’re relevant to. Any time I come across an article that’ll help me learn about a new bartending technique or a story I could use for the next newsletter, I toss it into Bear with the appropriate tags, and it shows up instantly across all my devices. You can do this with plenty of other apps (most notably Evernote, or the lesser-known but better cross-platform alternative, Notion), but Bear’s thoughtful and minimal interface makes it easy to focus on the content that matters, and it’s easy to organize in a way that makes all your data accessible without jumping through hurdles.

One day at at time

I’ve written about Day One before, but it’s more than a repository for all my daily musings and the (more than) occasional petty thought. Once a week, I write an entry about the progress I’ve made on any side projects I want to see to completion. Right now that’s a fictional story that’s been brewing in my mind for too long, getting back into making cocktails after leaving my bartending job, or tips on how to teach my pup new tricks and distract him from marking his territory all over my new apartment. Rather than just updating my journal with how much progress I’ve made, I like to write about how I feel about each project and where I’m at with it. It’s not a tangible metric, but I kind of like that since I don’t feel as bad when I don’t hit some arbitrary goal, and it’s a nice way to touch base and make sure it’s still something I’d like to keep working on.

I’ve got an idea

I’ve had this idea for a fictional story brewing in my head since the end of 2015. It started as a few funny jokes in my notepad, but quickly piled onto a 3,200-word text file full of ideas. Some funny jokes, some thoughtful ideas on how to move the story forward, and some entirely incomprehensible gibberish I thought up at 2 a.m. at a Dennys. I would’ve lost all those ideas, though, if it weren’t for Drafts, which acts as my idea dump for anything noteworthy my mind comes up with. Any time that light bulb hovers over me, I toss the idea into Drafts, and when I get home at the end of the day I scroll through my inbox and send the ideas I like to the respective note in Bear so I can whittle it into something digestible later.

Put a pin in it

Don’t let your snooty art friends fool you—nothing is original. Without a consistent source of inspiration, my ideas start to fall flat and I may find myself in a rut of sameness that makes me feel like my last bit of work was the last good thing I’ll ever make. I use Pinterest and Reddit to comb through pretty pictures that inspire my next scene, or just make me feel good enough to write something worthwhile. Reddit, on the other hand, is a great spot for me to find how-to’s on things like making sure my succulents don’t die of neglect, or how to make my penmanship look a little nicer, because nothing helps you hone in on your weird new passion like huddling around with a bunch of other weirdos.

Stay on top of Things

I’ve tried every to-do list app out there, but I always come back to Things. Aside from being a gorgeous and thorough to-do list manager, its calendar integration gives me a dead simple way to glance at my day and see when I can peck away at my keyboard for a few minutes, or set aside some time to dive into a book about a new hobby.

Whether you see a project through to the finish line ultimately depends on how diligent you are, but if you aren’t prepared for hitting roadblocks and don’t have a way to keep yourself motivated, you’re setting yourself up for failure. A few useful apps can help put your mind at ease buy keeping your work safe and ready to whip out whenever inspiration strikes, and finding a way to track your progress without harping on you for missing your goals can help keep you motivated when things get murky. I checked my journal yesterday, and even though I just got back into sketching, I’ve already started to be a bit kinder to myself about the time I spend doodling away. Just be sure—and I’m not speaking from experience or anything—to not turn managing your side project into its own side project.

In the News:

Our attention spans are changing, and so must game design (Polygon): One of the coolest feelings as a kid was spending all weekend grinding through Pokémon to finally get your Charmeleon to level 36 and evolve it to Charizard. One of the worst feelings was having your thunder stolen moments later by some punk who proudly flaunted his status as his save’s newly appointed Pokémon champion. That feeling doesn’t really exist in a lot of games out today, and the shift towards games that have to immediately grasp your attention has been jarring, but it’s pretty great to be able to blitz through a game of Overwatch before heading out with your friends for the night without having to hold up your Uber driver while you scramble to a checkpoint (please don’t keep your drivers waiting).

How Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ finally hit no. 1 (The New York Times): While these are all interesting points, the main reason this song was able to hit no. 1 is because it’s an absolute banger. Set aside a few minutes to read up on how the best Christmas song of our generation was able to climb to the top spot. 

Something Nice: 

Starting a new show with your loved ones: Chances are your household’s jam-packed full of people right now, and getting started on a new show will surely keep your family entertained and dodge the bullet of holiday political barking matches. My girlfriend and I just finished Watchmen, which you should absolutely check out, and my roommate and I have been throwing on Living With Yourself in the background while we gab about our days. Oh, and if you really wanna get in the holiday spirit, make everyone a Tom and Jerry. 

As always, if you have any questions, feedback, or just want to say hello, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter.

My thanks to Medea Giordano for editing this issue.