Matt’s Mix Tape, Vol. 94
Discover more from Steady Beats | Matt Tillotson
Hi, I’m Matt Tillotson and this is Matt’s Mix Tape, a weekly Mix of ideas on writing, content strategy, personal tech, and fitness for the Creator Age.
This week’s Mix:
Try the thing
The Spotlight Effect
Tech tools: Audio transcripts with Otter
A big week ahead for the iPad
Try the thing
I’ve been hosting 30-minute strategy calls to help creators and entrepreneurs with their writing, messaging, and content quandaries.
You can learn more about these courageous creators and their journeys in this thread.
What I’m finding, and what I found as a mentor in Write of Passage, is this:
We often wait for perfect conditions to make the thing we want to make.
We come up with a million reasons not to create:
We’re not good enough writers/artists/videographers/creators.
We don’t have the technical knowledge.
We don't have any subscribers.
We don't have a defined content strategy.
We don’t know what to write about.
Juila Saxena shared two key mindsets to use when a project feels too big:
Mindset #1: Everything is a version
If a project feels too big and intimidating, remove the most challenging part and save it for version 2.
The goal is to ship version 1 asap, even if it's far from perfect. It's the first step in a direction.
As you go along, you'll gain more experience, clarity, and resources to iterate and improve.
Mindset #2: Everything is an experiment
When you're too focused on succeeding, you might shy away from taking action if there's the possibility of failure.
But with an experimentation mindset, your goal is to learn. And you'll learn from success as well as from failure.
The thing is, getting unstuck is such a relief. Here’s what that looks like:
You have permission right now: make the thing you want to make.
Perfect conditions will never arrive. Never.
And remember, it’s just an experiment. Life is just a whole bunch of experiments.
The Spotlight Effect
Cam Houser runs the Minimum Viable Video course and nicely breaks down the three phases of camera confidence. Part one is about the horror of starting out making videos:
Cam says the “Spotlight Effect” is largely to blame for Phase One horrors:
The spotlight effect is a research backed phenomenon that shows that when we see flaws in ourselves, we magnify and amplify them. We see details that other people might not notice. And we criticize them pretty harshly. Now we do it to ourselves more than we would with others.
And here are the videos for Phase Two: Abiding, and Phase Three: Inspiring.
Next week, I start Ali Abdall’s YouTube course, and will begin my own journey through the phases.
I’m feeling dread. That’s a good sign growth is ahead.
Tech tools: Audio transcripts with Otter
What is Otter?
Otter turns your voice conversations into smart notes that you can easily search and share. You can use it to take notes at your meetings and interviews, capture your thoughts and ideas while you’re driving in the car, and transcribe your existing recordings and podcasts.
I keep finding more uses for Otter. This week, I used it to record my 30-minute strategy sessions. The ensuing transcripts make it easy for me to review our discussions and pull out insights
I can share the transcript with the people I talk with, which is a nice value-add for the strategy sessions.
Otter provides 600 minutes of free recording each month. After that, it’s about $8 a month which includes some other premium features and integrations.
A big week for Apple and the iPad
The iPad Pro is close to the perfect Creator Computer. It’s flexible form factor, touch inputs, and amazing screen make it the ideal hardware for all kinds of creativity.
But, the software …
iPadOS constrains the iPad. It limits media inputs and outputs, plug-ins, file management, application capabilities, and multi-tasking in ways that complicate or even block creative processes.
On Monday, Apple kicks off its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) with its keynote address at 1PM eastern.
Expectations are sky high for iPadOS 15, which will be unveiled during the address.
Apple stacked up major hardware updates in the iPad Pro line—the M1 processor, 8 or 16 GB of RAM, the XDR Liquid Retina Display—which seem to indicate far greater software capabilities are coming.
Is this the year Apple sets the iPad free? Here’s some of what I’m hoping for:
Stephen Robles of AppleInsider put together a nice feature wish list (and not just because he included my Tweet of mine in his presentation). He says:
Apple needs to totally revamp multitasking.
Stephen makes the point that “Spilt View” multitasking debuted in 2015 and hasn’t really changed. It’s time to let more apps run on-screen simultaneously, and to give users greater flexibility in placement and sizing of those apps.
Fernando Silva’s wish list includes nine features and probabilities that we will actually see them come to fruition. Fernando says:
I do believe that some sort of redesigned home screen is a 10 out of 10.
I agree. We should see widgets, like on the iPhone, which can be placed anywhere on the home screen. Fernando hopes we see the ability to drop files onto the Home Screen, just like on the Mac.
He also has a cool idea for an “infinite dock,” which would allow far more apps to be placed on the iPad’s bottom dock. You can check that out below.
(Stephen and Fernando are both local to Tampa Bay. We know our iPad stuff down here.)
This week’s Florida photo
The Alafia River, winding its way to Tampa Bay.
Welcome to eight new subscribers
As always, thank you for reading and sharing.
Please hit reply if you have questions, comments, or open rebuttals. (Or just want to say hi.)