"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together" – Vincent Van Gogh

This is a thread of all of Vincent's paintings of sunflowers. 🌻

First series: The Paris Sunflowers

Sunflowers, study (F377), Oil on canvas, 21 x 27 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Sunflowers (F375), Oil on canvas, 43.2 x 61 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

I have a horrible feeling that learning a whole bunch of stuff about Personal Knowledge Management and getting nerdy about tools and workflows has made me rather less effective at managing my personal knowledge and if not less effective then certainly more anxious

I have a talking point that I want to bang on about more in different ways

that is "you can only respond to what you notice"

not being able to notice something (if it lies outside your awareness) renders you choiceless

expanding your capacity to notice things gives you agency "expanded awareness" is experienced spatially, but extends just as effectively into conceptual spaces

if you can't notice the bus coming, you can't step out of the way

if you can't notice the belief you hold, you can't question it

I'm sick (testing negative for COVID though) and it's funny that the absence of a positive COVID test kinda makes me feel like whatever it is that is making me feel crappy is somehow... illegitimate?

weird times, to need a positive test to feel like feeling sick is justified "well I don't have COVID"

"yes but I clearly feel unwell"

"yes but there are no tests for that"

...

"but this is how things *have always been*"

Literally just had a nightmare about ghosts and woke up with my heart racing at 5am, how’s everyone else doing? 😂 No Oura I’m pretty sure I had more REM than that, because you know, all the ghosts

I've decided to stop doing launches for my course for reasons I'll explain in more detail soon.

This means that my Alexander Technique online course is now available for purchase any time if you are the kind of person who might want to buy it.

There is hype in the quoted tweet

https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft/status/1422200818871283716

The fact that I can tweet and then someone gives me $250 is wild

The more time I spend outside the happier I feel.

The more time I spend inside the unhappier I feel.

I resolve to spend as much time outside as I can manage, even to the extent of changing my lifestyle, work and where I live.

https://twitter.com/grimhood/status/1436941753718738951

make 100 blobs

https://twitter.com/this_is_silvia/status/1430893210922934279

Sell 100 blobs

https://twitter.com/this_is_silvia/status/1431303320937930752?s=20

Went to the theatre last night. If anyone around London can go see Paradise by Kae Tempest at the NT I *highly* recommend it.

Just read this in @Julian's monthly newsletter where he says the bloggers least worth reading are the ones who publish regularly.

He says he regrets following people who publish newsletters weekly.

I... think I agree, though can't tell if this is cope for my own inconsistency. So let's look at the options.

The usual case for publishing a weekly newsletter is that it's a forcing function to get you to read and think on a consistent basis.

Which is true, but it doesn't mean that what you put out on a weekly basis is any good.

It's just not nothing.

New note on the mental reframe I made that helped me see that quitting my job was actually a no-regrets move.

michaelashcroft.org/notebook/quitt… @sashachapin

New note on how and why I've decided to pay myself properly as a solopreneur (still getting used to that word).

If this sounds familiar as Profit First, it is Profit First, which I think is great and I'll be writing more about it.

michaelashcroft.org/notebook/payin… @sashachapin

Turns out that doing every aspect of running a business on your own is quite a complex endeavour huh as he swings wildly between thinking about new materials for the course, getting a Profit First system going again and hanging out in the community forum answering questions

1/ "the mere copying of quotes almost always changes their meaning by stripping them out of context, even though the words aren’t changed."

From How To Take Smart Notes, which I'm reading in the @RoamBookClub with @beauhaan

I'm going to riff on how profound this is below. 2/ An idea sits within a wider context.

A sentence within a paragraph, a paragraph within a page, a page within a chapter, a chapter within a book, a book within a body of work, a body of work within a life of knowledge, experiences, memories and beliefs.

They are inseparable.

I increasingly see thoughts as being mapped onto my field of spatial awareness.

"The idea that I could eat a cookie" has a felt sense of being 'over there' in space.

I notice a collapse of awareness around the idea, which limits my ability to choose not to eat the cookie. I also notice a subjective compression of space between "me as the observer" and "the idea that I could eat the cookie".

This compression indicates a habitual response.

I 'inhibit' this response by gently reasserting that space between, allowing that thought to be where it is.

For someone now living an entirely self-directed life my calendar is ludicrously full of 'stuff' that is getting in the way.

I need go to Walden Pond or something Seriously I have like 3x more meetings this week than I would have in a normal week at my old consulting job

Tomorrow is my last day of work before I start my own adventures.

I have many thoughts, feelings and reflections that I’ll share in time, but for now I want to talk about a reframe that really helped me take the leap: the idea that even failure is a success.

(Yes it’s a thread) I’ve wanted to make a move like this for a long time, but I’ve always been worried about how I’d survive without a job.

Interestingly, the amount of money I have saved (about $40k) isn’t what gave me the confidence to quit.

No, that came from making $5k from my online course.

What is an egregore?

Wrong answers only.

Egregore is the bitter taste in Al's mouth when he realised the election was taken from him. Egregore is a character from the Russian translation of Winnie the Pooh

https://twitter.com/robertskmiles/status/1354402489265778697?s=20

I quit my consulting job.

In February I will be self-employed and doing the online creator thing, alongside some freelancing.

I'm so grateful to so many people here for helping make it happen and for being part of the journey. 🙏

Here's a thread on what I'll be doing next. 👇 I've always done all the things, but the last year and a half dialled that up to 11.

It started with taking Building A Second Brain (thanks @fortelabs) and Write of Passage (thanks @david_perell).

I've long aspired to be some kind of creator, but didn't know how.

Now I do.

1/ When I started my journey as a creator, I was held back by the idea of finding my niche or personal monopoly.

I was totally sold by @david_perell's framing of this valuable thing, but I believed that I couldn't create until I found it.

I felt trapped by it.

I was wrong 👇 2/ I began taking Twitter seriously in Sept 2019 and at some point came across @visakanv.

Visa has a 'memex' in his profile banner image that contains the words "be so prolific that you don't recognise yourself."

That was the solution to my problem.

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1146876326529257472?s=20

1] I want to learn to communicate the benefits of Alexander Technique clearly.

So let's start with something concrete: Alexander Technique has massively improved my public speaking ability.

A thread 👇

(And here's my ultimate guide to public speaking: michaelashcroft.org/blog/my-ultima…) 2] First of all, let me say that I used to be someone who would do anything to avoid public speaking.

During a presentation at my first job I was so anxious I was visibly shaking. I had to put my notes down.

I kept my head down when asked to 'report back' during team meetings.