I love the comment acknowledging that finishing is itself a skill. Up until now I’ve thought that “being bad at follow through” is my mortal flaw, but it’s great to recontexualize it as something I can work on, like writing itself. It is really fun that hitting “publish” on imperfect works teaches me more about how to write better than leaving a million unpublished, unfinished drafts in Google docs.
Yes! I used to think that my inability to finish things was a personality trait: a sign I was fundamentally lazy, unable to execute, unserious about my work…
It's been so liberating to reframe it as a skill I don't have yet—but I will, as long as I keep on working at it! And totally agree that the imperfect, finished work has so much value.
I absolutely loved this piece and really resonate with the low barriers to starting new things and the difficulty in finishing them. I’m so torn on the note-taking piece; I recently read that MLK Jr inadvertently plagiarized many of his speeches and even written work because of his style of note taking and it’s made me hyper aware of how to best take notes, attribute ideas, and have some cohesion to that strategy
Thank you—so kind as I have been enjoying your Substack enormously as well! And it's interesting (and a bit troubling) to hear about MLK Jr.'s inadvertent plagiarization.
I keep on changing up my notetaking and research strategy…right now I use Zotero quite heavily (I export my favorite online essays as PDFs and annotate them there) + Notion for extracting my favorite quotes and clustering them into themes, which then turn into an essay. I'm really trying to keep context and attribution at each stage: it's not just about remembering who said what, but also in what context, since so many thinkers have very specific and subtle applications of their arguments. I would hate to repurpose someone's argument in a sloppy way!
Thanks for your comment; it's definitely made me reflect a bit on how to notetake in a respectful way.
I love the comment acknowledging that finishing is itself a skill. Up until now I’ve thought that “being bad at follow through” is my mortal flaw, but it’s great to recontexualize it as something I can work on, like writing itself. It is really fun that hitting “publish” on imperfect works teaches me more about how to write better than leaving a million unpublished, unfinished drafts in Google docs.
Yes! I used to think that my inability to finish things was a personality trait: a sign I was fundamentally lazy, unable to execute, unserious about my work…
It's been so liberating to reframe it as a skill I don't have yet—but I will, as long as I keep on working at it! And totally agree that the imperfect, finished work has so much value.
I absolutely loved this piece and really resonate with the low barriers to starting new things and the difficulty in finishing them. I’m so torn on the note-taking piece; I recently read that MLK Jr inadvertently plagiarized many of his speeches and even written work because of his style of note taking and it’s made me hyper aware of how to best take notes, attribute ideas, and have some cohesion to that strategy
Thank you—so kind as I have been enjoying your Substack enormously as well! And it's interesting (and a bit troubling) to hear about MLK Jr.'s inadvertent plagiarization.
I keep on changing up my notetaking and research strategy…right now I use Zotero quite heavily (I export my favorite online essays as PDFs and annotate them there) + Notion for extracting my favorite quotes and clustering them into themes, which then turn into an essay. I'm really trying to keep context and attribution at each stage: it's not just about remembering who said what, but also in what context, since so many thinkers have very specific and subtle applications of their arguments. I would hate to repurpose someone's argument in a sloppy way!
Thanks for your comment; it's definitely made me reflect a bit on how to notetake in a respectful way.
Loved this read and all the linked articles as well! Wow