Positively packaging pressure
Plan Your Next #126
👋 Good morning from Los Angeles! I'm Nate Kadlac, and this is #126 of Plan Your Next. A Sunday newsletter that connects design, creativity, and how you prepare for your next thing.
💡 What’s new?
✍️ I started a more design-focused blog, and wrote two pieces on how the easiest rule to learn—the rule of thirds—can change how you see the world. More to come!
⚡️ My friend Khe Hy is launching the next cohort of his Supercharge Your Productivity course. I met Khe last year after sharing an interest in design, becoming a #girldad, and looking to live a more intentional life. His 10k framework and course helped me as I left my full-time role and dove into the unknown. I highly recomend it and you can check it out here. Enrollment closes Oct 3rd.
Positively packing pressure
Just over two years ago, this newsletter was dead in the water, and I wasn’t writing anything worth a damn. Dust spilled from the keyboard. I was proud of a few pieces, but with fifty subscribers consisting of family and friends, I was lost. This newsletter lingered in those same fifty inboxes for over a year between 2018-2019. Then I just stopped writing.
I was like a flat tire sitting at a keyboard. I didn’t share my writing or my ideas publicly, and I was putting absolutely zero pressure on myself to produce. I didn’t know what growing a newsletter looked like because I wasn’t telling people about it. You can’t drive on a flat tire, and you can’t write without some motivation.
Strangely, I work great under pressure. Give me a deadline, some space to maneuver, and I’ll show up with diamonds. More will be accomplished in the last ten percent than the first ninety.
Sometimes, you need to manufacture pressure to create a biological combustion, rocketing you past what you thought you were capable of.
In early 2020 when we were all locked inside, I thought about what I wanted my life to look like once we made it back outside. What I did next changed my life, and introduced me to people outside of my own circle.
I enrolled in Write of Passage, and for the first time in my life, experienced what it was like to have people give feedback and edit my writing. I suddenly felt like I owed it to myself to bring this newsletter back to life, and inflate the flat tire that was my inability to write.
I committed to a weekly newsletter, not because I thought I thought it was going to write incredible essays every week, but because I needed the additional pressure it took to write consistently. It’s the reason I sit here on my bed on a Saturday afternoon punching out some words into this letter.
But why stop there? Why not also write articles for my own site, or start writing for my other site? Or writing a book? There are no hardcore growth strategies at play here. This is about placing abundant pressure on myself to create art everyday. To give myself multiple reasons not to quit.
I’ll never be satisfied with what I’m capable of doing any day of the week, because there’s just too much to do. But I have enough fingers and elbows digging into different pressure points to make sure I do something. And as long as I feel the pressure to do something, I’ll be producing just enough.
p.s. Having kids will definitely add plenty of pressure to create in between naps.
⚡️ Two creative hits for you to check out next
🍎 Darkboard: And ultralight ergonomic drawing board for the iPad
Astropad, a Minneapolis based company just created a Kickstarter campaign for its newest product. A drawing board for the iPad made out of premium foam. This thing just looks comfy.
🎤 Founders podcast by David Serena
I’ve been digging through the back catalog of this incredible podcast, titled Founders. David reads the biographies of famous founders—usually retired or passed—and creates episodes based on the books. Of course many legends like Steve Jobs or Edwin Land have multiple books written about them, so you’ll find multiple podcasts on these same people. The latest episode I listened to was on Bob Dylan, which I highly recommend.
👋 See you next Sunday
My calendar is always open to chat about your next adventure, crazy idea, or if you’re feeling creatively stuck.
My goal is to help more people give a damn about what they’re creating next, through my writing, teaching, and design. If you want to support my journey, the best ways are to make better design decisions in the most efficient way, communicate stories with better slide decks, or discover your visual style in my live workshops.
Or, if you want to sponsor this newsletter, please reach out. (Starting at $50)
Have a great week,
p.s. Words are just words, but if these words made you feel something, would you let me know by tapping on the heart below?
Khe’s course looks great. I’m a mentor in Write of Passage this time around but will check it out.