tl;dr
100 posts: i’m writing 100 posts by the end of the year, and i have 64 posts to go. run away now before its too late.
3 drops (music, design, writing), 1 newsletter: CSIF is splitting into 3 separate drops on 3 different days. Mondays is for Music, Wednesday is for Design, and Friday is for writing.
Profiles, Short Stories, and General Essays: I have 19 essays to write. They’re going to mainly be short and punchy. I’ll write profiles on cool people where I’ll share 3 lessons (at least I’ll try to lol), short stories, and general essays.
New Writing System: I share my system of how I’ll be able to accomplish all this.
Survey: I’ll now have a link where you can give me feedback and stuff.
I am going to write 100 articles by the end of this year, and you’re going to love them. If not, this is your warning shot. Unsubscribe and run away. I won’t be offended. If you choose to stay, at least for this article, you’ll see what I have cooking.
Here’s a quick overview of where I am at:
the numbers
as i write this:
today is September 8th, 2023
days left til’ Dec 31st: 114 days
weeks left til’ Dec 31st: 16 weeks and 2 days
number of articles I’ve written: 32 (19 CSIF + 13 essays)
As of that last article and this article, we’ll be at 34 articles. 100 - 34 = 64. We need 64 more articles to get to the goal.
Cool Stuff I Found, In 3 Distinct Parts
Cool Stuff I Found (CSIF) is a series dedicated to honing my ability to curate across all the type of stuff I consume. Thus far I’ve had 19 editions. If I continue writing these till the end of the year, I’ll have 16 more editions of CSIF (bringing the total count up to 35 editions). 16 more editions is great but here’s a couple of my concerns:
If I only write 16 more editions of CSIF, I still have to write 29 posts to reach my goal. Curation is much easier than creation. Writing 29 essays would take me forever, and probably be a goal of its own.
Developing a content library that can consistently provide 3 items per category is extremely time consuming and forced
I want to index more on creating a system that makes production easy while providing highly curated content.
Each edition becomes a bit too long. I generally want to give you short bite-sized content that you can skim in 10-15 seconds max with an occasional essay to give your brain something to think about.
As it stands, CSIF has three parts:
This newsletter is broken up into the following:
I. Articles + Essays I’ve read
II. Visual Art + Media
III. Music I’ve been listening to
From now on, CSIF will be three separate releases on 3 separate days with an intensive focus per category that are ideally less than 100 words per email.
Music Makes Me Feel, Mondays. In this series, I’ll share new artists that I’ve found, music videos/media, or playlists that caught my attention. The goal of this series to focus ideally on 1 thing at a time. Be it 1 artist, 1 genre, 1 album — the key is oneness. I want us to dive deep together into a rabbithole that I’ve gone into, and hopefully you’ll tag along.
Designs That Speak, Wednesdays. Part of creating an aesthetic taste is understanding how to curate aesthetic pieces, and trying to get a sense of why something resonates with you. I’m going to use Wednesdays as a space to explore different aesthetics across fashion, architecture, graphic design, and experiential design that catches my interest.
Writing Makes You think, Fridays. If you haven’t noticed the pattern, a lot of the writers that I share generally write takes on life. Sometimes they’re shared because they’re something that’s top of mind in my life, or sometimes these authors put the topic on the top of my mind. Either way, I want to take one essay a week and distill it down the it’s core concern and write a prompt for all of us to consider. I’ll be sharing my answer in 160 chars or less in the newsletter to kick start things.
Well that brings us up to posting 3x a week while I promised you at least 4x a week. Fret not!
Essays
I have at least 19 different essays I’ll have to write. Similar to the pattern I’ve established above, I generally want these essays to be punchier, short in length but I also want the room to breath and go off and explore. So I have a couple categories of essays I’ll be writing in, that I’ll be releasing on Thursdays.
Profiles, be it friends or founders of brands who have caught my interest, I want to deep dive into the lives of people across Fashion, Tech, and Culture to draw out 3 lessons that I can share with you all
Short Stories, much of what brings me joy in life is listening to the stories of my friends and telling stories myself. i want to use this series to be able to share my own stories or stories that my friends have told me
Notes On Life, the last category here is just notes that I take in my head that I want to share with you all. Reflections on life, world-building, routines, friendships, event collectives. This is my misc category, if you will.
All essays that I produce on my own, distinct from the posts where I’m curating, will have tags at the top that’ll let you know what series they belong to and what categories are being discussed. I’ll try to be as up front about it as possible.
Why is this time any different?
Why should you believe that I’ll follow through on this? That’s a question that I am grappling with myself that I think you’re going to think when I hit this publish button. So I’m going to very open with you. This time is different because I have a plan AND a system in place. Matter fact, let me show you.
Notion Calendar
Each post has a slot in my calendar where I can write my notes, dump my thoughts + inspo. I also have a ready made template per post, here’s an example:
Also, I’ve already starting dumping my thoughts:
To be honest, I just need 30-45 minutes of research to get a weeks worth of content. And to get an essay out the door, I need about 15 minutes of writing a day. So I’ve booked it on my calendar.
This system is in place for me to succeed.
Getting your feedback
Sadly, substack is usually a 1 way street. But we can change that. Starting now, at the end of every newsletter drop, I’ll have a link where you can give me feedback, suggestions, etc.
here’s the link if you’re curious.
Like I said, this email is the warning shot. Please unsubscribe if you think this is going to clutter your inbox. But do know that I don’t intend to send you bullshit every week, and that I want to be as highly intentional with this as possible. I’m just increasing the volume because I need more reps to improve how I structure newsletters. You’re the unfortunate (or fortunate) guinea pig. But that’s why we’re friends, haha, right? …right?
Best,
Haroon
Love the plan and excited to read!