Dan Cullum

I’ve been using Ulysses for all my writing since August 2019. I’ve loved it since Day 1, and I thought I should share why I think it’s a great product.

First, what is Ulysses?

It’s a writing app, aimed specifically at creative writers.

What makes it great?

A simple, distraction-free interface

All I want is a clean screen, simple fonts, and to write in a comfortable, familiar place each day.

Ulysses makes it so easy write. Here’s a picture of what today’s post looks like in the editor.

Writing in Markdown

What are those hashtags and blue fonts?

Ulysses uses Markdown, which is a simple markup language that keeps your formatting consistent, regardless of your writing’s final destination. For example, if you place a # at the beginning of a line, the text on that line becomes Heading 1. If you use ## instead, the text becomes Heading 2.

People typically write in markdown because when the text is put through a markdown processor, it’s converted into HTML and usable for websites. However, markdown in Ulysses is helpful because it means you never have to leave the keyboard to format your work. All writing and formatting can be done just by typing.

Customisable organisation

Other writing apps that I’ve tried—like Evernote—have buggy and poor file organisation. It’s so frustrating to use a product every day that is sub-optimal.

Ulysses just works. And that may be its best quality.

There is seamless iCloud syncing, meaning I can write my blog on the train going into work (when we used to commute; remember that?), and then pick up where I left off on the desktop app later in the day.

I order all my posts in reverse date format, so today’s post starts with the label ’200503’, which allows me to quickly navigate and search my posts.

So who’s it for, and is it right for you?

If you write on a regular schedule, want a reliable, distraction-free interface, and good file and post management, Ulysses is an excellent product.

It’s made by a small team of people in Germany, and although it’s $40 per year, or $5 per month, it’s money I don’t hesitate to spend.

Note: This is not a paid post or advertisement; it’s just a blog post written by a fan!

My dining room table has been taken over by an A1 Flipchart Pad and black Sharpies.

No lines. More space.

I can’t work in ruled notebooks. Diagrams, arrows, and pictures are messed up by the light blue lines that stretch across the page.

A piece of A4 paper is also cramped. There isn’t enough space to properly explore an idea.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of an A1 Flipchart, though, is the feeling of openness and possibility each time I approach the pad.

Whatever the idea or topic, there is space to explore, the freedom to make mistakes, and the opportunity to try again.

Salt makes everything taste better.

It even makes ice cream taste better, and that’s a hard thing to do.

However, it’s effectiveness also makes it dangerous. It can become a crutch. We can become dependent on it to make a tasty meal.

But what if we throw away the salt? What then? What would we do differently? What spices would we find in the back of our cupboards? What condiments, flavours, aromatics, and methods would we seek out to bring life to our dishes?

This post isn’t about salt or cooking, though. It’s about constraints and creativity.

What happens when we remove the luxury items of time, cash, or “more humans” from any project we’re working on?

What would we do differently if we had less?

And do we need to have less in order to do things differently?

I’m really proud of my home country, New Zealand.

It was announced earlier this week that it had eliminated coronavirus.

To be clear, there are still people with the virus, but the government is confident there are no unknown cases of community transmission.

Despite this huge success, there are dissenting voices within the country. Echoes of “we should’ve opened the economy faster,” and “the government overreacted,” can be heard.

I think this logic is ludicrous, and here’s why.

In any normal situation (e.g., business, non-profit, investment), it’s hard to tell if you picked the right strategy. You can’t turn back the clock and choose a different approach to see if things would’ve played out differently.

However, in this global pandemic, every country is broadly facing the same virus, and a clear correlation has emerged between countries that have taken a more relaxed approach (e.g., the United Kingdom, and the United States), versus those who were vigilant and pre-cautionary at an extremely early stage (e.g., Australia, and New Zealand).

Sure, New Zealand has structural advantages (e.g., a population of 4.5 million people, and it’s a 3-hour flight to the nearest neighbouring country), but it still has achieved what no other country has been able to do.

The point here is that even in the face of wild success, there will always be dissenters.

In this case, and for the sake of my family and friends, I’m so glad my country “over reacted”. I’d take that any day over the alternative.

As promised, today I’m sharing the project I mentioned in this post.

I’ve had a small set of home recording equipment for 5 years, but I never got far enough up the learning curve enough to produce something I was happy to share.

So, like many others who are picking up old hobbies during the lockdown, I’m doing that with music and home recording.

I made this Work from Home parody video to share with my colleagues. It’s to the tune of Happy by Pharrell.

I hope you enjoy it!

When Seinfeld’s pilot episode aired in 1989, a research report said, “No viewer was eager to watch the show again.”

Audiences found the lead character to be wimpy, and they complained nothing happened in the show.

Did the writers, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, change anything, though?

Not a chance.

And fast forwarding to the finale, they clearly did something right: over 76 million people tuned in to watch it, and the series has since grossed over $3 billion in syndication fees.

There are competing hypotheses as to why Seinfeld succeeded despite its rough start. However, many of these end up coming back to David and Seinfeld’s unwavering vision and execution. They didn’t give up control, they micromanaged everything, and they prioritised what was funny. If it got a laugh, it went in; even if that meant “not much happened,” in that episode.

It’s got me thinking about the principles we consciously—or unconsciously—use when we build products, make art, or bring anything new into the world.

What balance do you strike between commitment to a vision, and bringing other people into your creative process?

In the next day or two, I’ll share a little project I’ve been working on. It’s along the same lines of my silent film debut from early in the lockdown—something to hopefully get my colleagues laughing.

Over the past few days, I’ve been completely absorbed in the process. I wake up and begin working on it, and almost forget to eat meals and hydrate properly.

Getting lost in the work is a gift; a precious one.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your actual job, a painting, a musical number, or a short film, it just matters that it happens; and that when you find it, you chase it.

I went to a small primary school. It was so small that when I started the 5-7 year olds were all in one class.

I had no older siblings to learn from, so this age gap resulted in some “educational” moments for me—the young kid.

I’ll always be grateful that my parents taught me the basics of reading and phonetics before I started school, but they never prepared me for Joel.

One morning, I arrived early and found one of the ‘Big 7-Year-Olds’ with a comic book.

He was silent. Dead silent. Not even a peep.

I walked over to him and said, “Hey Joel, what are you doing?”

“Mmh, reading,” he replied.

“How?” I asked.

“With my eyes,” he said.

“How are you reading when you’re not saying the words?” I managed to utter, even though I knew he was getting frustrated.

He looked at me with a blank stare and said, “I’m reading silently. I just hear the words in my mind.”

I remember running to the bookshelf, picking up the first book, and opening it up to find that I, too, could read silently.

I’d read so many books with my parents before bed, but we’d always say the words out loud. Joel taught me otherwise. He helped me discover silence.

And that, folks, is my first recollection of being mindblown.

There is a technique used in every film called ‘Save the Cat’.

It’s the moment the protagonist “saves a cat stuck in a tree,” and wins the adoration of viewers.

Of course, saving the cat is just a metaphor for a small, selfless act.

It’s the moment Aladdin, a thief, gives his only loaf of bread to a group of hungry children.

It’s the moment Annie stops a group of boys from bullying Sandy the Dog.

It’s the moment Katniss volunteers as tribute to protect her sister from entering into the Hunger Games.

So keep an eye out, and you’ll start seeing this technique in the films you watch and the stories you read. You may also find it a handy tool to include into your own storytelling.

H/T Blake Snyder for coining the Save the Cat idea back in 2005

“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” – Anais Nin

What would happen if we approached each day thinking that we may be wrong, that our opinions may be more subjective than we want to believe, or that we’re biased and partisan in complex and inexplicable ways.

Perhaps it’s that attitude that gives us a chance at understanding others—and our world—as they really are.

There is this great video where David Letterman discusses the internet with Bill Gates back in 1995.

Letterman—ever the comedian in search of a laugh—criticises the internet as a niche, unhelpful piece of technology.

“So I can listen to a recorded baseball game on the internet… ever heard of a radio?” is a paraphrased example of his questioning.

But 25 years on, Letterman’s commentary is so obviously wrong, and Gates’ vision so completely intact.

What technologies do we laugh about or dismiss today that will be completely normal in the future?

Neal Khosla believe eSports—where we watch people play video games—is definitely one. The rise of eCommerce may have faced criticism only a few years ago, but has become almost ubiquitous.

I suspect VR, AR, and Machine Learning are on similar trajectories.

Pre-pandemic: I would look at the best before date on items in the fridge, and just to be safe, if the item was past the date, I’d throw it out.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that now.

So what’s changed?

Mid-pandemic: the best before date is still a guide, but I’m now using my nose more than ever.

Milk 3 days past? But it still smells fresh and sweet? Then it’s going in my coffee.

There are a bunch of learnings here for me:

• Our senses are powerful, we just have to know when and how to use them
• Isolation and scarcity can be forcing functions to build better habits
• I’m learning how to act with greater care, prudence, and restraint in my own kitchen, and I think that’ll pay dividends over a lifetime

I had on-and-off sciatica for 5 years. It’s a nasty lower lumbar pain that also shoots discomfort down your glutei and hamstrings.

It started back in 2012, I was trying to throw someone in a pool on a hot summer’s day when I felt a sharp jolt in my lower back (I know, what a way to injure yourself).

The tingles that spread down my legs and across my lower back were unlike anything I’d felt before. I laid on the scorching cobblestones struggling to process the physical sensation, and was unsteady on my feet for the next hour.

When self-care and physiotherapy weren’t working, I was lucky to be referred through the New Zealand public healthcare system to one of the country’s top sports doctors. And at no cost, too!

“Deadlifts,” he said, “You need to do deadlifts. They will strengthen your entire core, your back will get better, and the pain will go away”

He recommended I buy Mark Lauren’s book, ‘You Are Your Own Gym,’ so I could do the less-strenuous bodyweight version of the deadlift.

I tried to follow his advice, but my execution and follow-through was poor. I lamented and all-but-accepted for 2-3 years that I just had to live with it. I still remember long hours in my first job, sitting in office chairs with searing pain in my back and legs.

However, when I moved to London and finally joined a gym, a kind personal trainer helped me learn the proper deadlifting technique.

Within 3 months, my sciatica was gone, and I’ve not had any persistent issues since.

The change and improvement was so dramatic that I was upset I hadn’t taken the doctor’s advice sooner.

It was also a lesson for me that sometimes when we feel pain, rest doesn’t make it better, stress does. Stress strengthens and prepares us for a new road ahead.

I started listening to the audio tapes of the late Zig Ziglar following Seth Godin’s glowing recommendation.

Ziglar was one of the pioneering motivation and personal development coaches of the 20th Century. He’s a joy to listen to, he’s hilarious, and the underlying principles of his talks remain relevant today.

One thing Ziglar encouraged his listeners to do was partake in daily affirmations: simple, positive statements describing goals in their completed states.

The idea is deceptively simple: if you consistently speak positives words about yourself out loud, you’ll begin to believe them, and your behaviour will change to make them true.

I was skeptical at first, but now I’m a bigger believer in this kind of positive self talk.

I’m going to paste Ziglar’s daily affirmation below. Have a read, and I’d love to hear if any of it resonates with you.

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For thirty days, first thing in the morning, last thing at night, by yourself, in front of a mirror, stand up straight, square your shoulders, look yourself in the eye and quietly, firmly say in the first-person present-tense:

“I, __, am a person of integrity, with a good attitude and specific goals.

• I have a high energy level, am enthusiastic, and take pride in my appearance and in what I do.
• I have a sense of humor, lots of faith, wisdom, and the vision, empathy and courage to use my talents effectively.
• I have character, and am knowledgeable. My convictions are strong and I have a healthy self-image, a passion for what is right, and a solid hope for the future.
• I am an honest, sincere, and hard-working person.
• I am tough, but fair and sensitive.
• I am disciplined, motivated, and focused.
• I am a good listener and patient, but take decisive action.
• I am bold and confident, yet humble.
• I am an encourager, a good finder, and a forgiving person.
• I am a student, a teacher, and a self-starter.
• I am obedient, loyal, responsible and dependable.
• I have a servant’s heart, am ambitious and a team-player.
• I am intelligent, competent, persistent and creative.
• I am health-conscious, “balanced” and “clean.”
• I am flexible, punctual and thrifty.
I am an honourable person who is truly grateful for the opportunity life has given me.

These are the qualities of the winner I was born to be and I fully intend to
develop these marvellous qualities with which I have been entrusted. Today is the first day of the rest of my life and it is WONDERFUL!

I had a professor at university who read voraciously.

In each class he’d speak for 2 hours without notes. He’d quote vast passages and ideas from books spanning the decades.

One day I asked him, “How do you remember all the knowledge from the books you read? It feels like you have it all at your fingertips.”

He paused, and then replied, “I don’t even try to take notes. I read a lot, but I trust the most important ideas will rise to the top, and that I’ll remember those ones in particular.”

Instead of trying to filter, he gave the most important ideas the space to emerge.

I’ve had varied success with this method over the years. It still isn’t my preferred way of reading, as I much prefer a pen or kindle highlight. However, it may be a method that piques your interest, and something you may like to try.