One of my big personal goals for 2022 is to write more.

In service of this, I’ve invested in two programs and communities that I believe will arm me with some new skills and frameworks, while also creating accountability to show up for myself:

I’m working on fine-tuning my Personal Knowledge System (PKM) for faster recall of thoughts, ideas, and information.

I’ve never had a shortage of ideas to write about, but I’ve struggled with the fundamentals of putting the words down, and hitting publish. It’s time to shift this pattern.

I’ll expand more on why I enrolled in these programs in a future essay, but as a result I’ve made two actionable commitments to myself and shared them publicly:

• I’ll ship my weekly newsletter, The Wizard’s Chest, every Friday in 2022.
• I’ll write and publish a 250-300 minimum word essay once per day through at least the end of March, at which time I’ll re-evaluate the strategy against other possibilities.

Given these goals, I’m trying to create habits and environments that support making writing an achievable daily practice.

I’ve optimized my 12.9 inch iPad Pro as a writing specific environment for minimal distraction and removed anything that isn’t essential to generating creative output.

In the past I’ve struggled to use my iPad Pro as a true work machine, but I think it’s the perfect device for writing, especially since it’s so portable.

The question becomes what are the “essential” tools required to output writing for the internet?

Here are my thoughts so far:

Safari Browser only

I’ve removed all extensions and bookmarks other than the ones listed further down on this page.

Obsidian

Obsidian is where I write my drafts. It’s also where I organize my links and topics I’ll consider writing about in the future.

Drafts App

I use the Mac share button to save any reference links or ideas to Drafts that come up during the week that I haven’t yet organized in Obsidian.

Apple Music

Right now I’m really enjoying this Lofi playlist of tracks to write to.

Browser Bookmarks:

That’s it.

This is a work in progress, folks.