Ordinary Skills Mixed Together Can Produce Great Things

Even though we might be only decently above average at doing certain things, if we combine them with other skills that we’re decent at, we have the potential to do something new and unique. Morgan Housel on mixing skills to create great things:

A couple ordinary things you don’t notice on their own create something spectacular when they mix together at the right time.

Morgan’s list of possible examples is worth a look. Here are a few of his:

- Curiosity across disciplines, most of which are outside your profession.

- A sensitive bullshit detector.

- Identifying what game you’re playing and not being persuaded by people playing different games.

What are some corollaries for musicians? Even before the pandemic, many of learned that putting together different skills can often lead to new career possibilities.

- combining the skills of teaching music with the skills of teaching online
- combining instrumental skill, pedagogical grounding, marketing savvy, and administrative proficiency in order to be successful, as well as discovering how to upgrade your abilities or find services in order to fill these gaps

What are some other possibilities? Leave a comment below.

(Image courtesy of Pathum Danthanarayana on Unsplash)

Five Friday Links

Here are five links to get your brain going for a weekend of rest and creativity:

- Anne Helen Peterson on How Our System Revenges Rest:

This is not a white paper with policy suggestions about the future of automation and UBI (although I am interviewing someone for the newsletter soon about how UBI has and could work!) It is a newsletter inviting you think about why it’s so enduringly hard to take even a day, let alone a week, away from work and everyday life — and why individual or even company policies are inadequate solutions to the structural problem of we should ideally be robots. It is asking you to think about why all of our technological advances have meant less rest, not more.

- 10 lessons in productivity and brainstorming from The Beatles by Tom Whitwell:

5. Embrace happy accidents

In All Things Must Pass, George wrote the line “A wind can blow those clouds away” but John misreads his handwriting as a “A mind can blow…” which stuck.

- 12 Rules for Living by Nate Meyvis:

1. Whenever possible, ask: “should I do this same thing again and again?” Getting compound returns is great. Getting diminishing returns is bad. Doing more and more of the same thing tends to get you one or the other, and figuring out which situation you’re in is often very tricky. Work at it.

- How to do nothing: the new guide to refocusing on the real world - Ellie Shechet in conversation with Jenny Odell in The Guardian:

What is the benefit of not saying things all the time?

I think interiority is really underrated right now. That could just be my own bias. I seem to spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to get away from other people. [Laughs] I think that there is a lot to be said for being alone with your thoughts for an extended period of time. Yesterday I spent all day by myself walking around thinking about stuff, and then I had drinks with a friend and we talked about the stuff that I was thinking about. But I didn’t tweet about it. I just don’t think that a bunch of strangers belong in that thought process, and I don’t want to apply the metrics of success to a budding idea.

- Thirst and Quenching, a short work for violin solo by Kati Agócs played by Rebecca Whitling:

(Image courtesy of ruedi häberli on Unsplash)

On the Call to Creative Work

Mary Oliver, from Of Power and Time from Upstream: Selected Essays:

It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.

There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

In the musical arts however, do try to be on time.

(Image courtesy of Pereanu Sebastian on Unsplash)

Why Blogging Still Matters

A few months ago, I received a query from someone researching a composer I mentioned 14 years ago on the Collaborative Piano Blog. They were trying to track down the recording of a work I had written about, including a video taken down years ago and a now-defunct classical music site. Fortunately I was able to find the site owner’s email, who tracked down the recording in their own archives to provide it to the researcher to listen to and reference for their upcoming book.

So much online stuff has disappeared in only 14 years. The firehose of information that we take for granted on the internet, including websites and YouTube videos, can be but ephemeral, and in just over a decade, much of our musical heritage can be lost, especially with performances of new works.

Fortunately, all my Collaborative Piano Blog archives are still live, and that was the only surviving piece of documentary evidence that proved a recording of the work in question had once existed publicly. If it had been a Facebook or Twitter post, all would be lost; searching for archival information is not the strong suit of social media.

That’s the power of blog writing. It might not have the immediate impact of social media, but with the passage of time, those blog posts and the places they link to might be the only remaining evidence of your work and the ideas, people, places, and things that you wrote about at a specific point in time. The burn rate might be much slower, but the upside of a blog remains and can compound over time.

Although I lament that my blogs might not get the same attention as, say, a picture of avocado toast I posted on Facebook a few days ago that received 80+ likes, it’s the blog posts that will be more easily searchable decades down the road, while ephemeral social media posts will be buried and largely inaccessible.

One of the bloggers whose immediacy and honesty inspired me in the first place was an anonymous writer who posted under the name of Canadienne, and talked about her life auditioning, traveling, and performing. Through my online connections, I found out that Canadienne was none other than Canadian soprano Erin Wall, who sadly passed away in October 2020. Although Erin was forced by gatekeepers to delete her entire blog at a certain point because of her unrelenting honesty, Canadienne still lives on at the Internet Archive. Here’s a snapshot of October 2005.

Most of all I miss the action and vitality of the 2005-2010 blogosphere. Years later, you can still get a sense of that vitality on the blogs from that time which are still online.

(Image courtesy of Vika Strawberrika on Unsplash)

20 Things I Like to Write About

“Primordial Matter”, acrylic on canvas, 48x24 by Wendy Hatala Foley

One of the challenges of blogging in 2022 is that it needs to survive in an online ecosystem that offers so many more ways to access exciting content. Yesterday I mentioned that blogging often feels like a liminal space, devoid of the human activity that once gave it vitality.

In order to make writing interesting for other people, it’s important to start by finding things I genuinely care about. So when I reflected on how to restart my writing this year, I went through the archives of Foley Music and Arts, the Collaborative Piano Blog, and my newsletter to make a listing of the subjects that I wrote about. Here are the main subject areas I found:

1. Collaborative piano. What it is, what it is not, its origin story, how to get work doing it, and the skills you’ll need.

2. Piano pedagogy. I’ve written two ebooks on the subject! Take a look at 31 Days to Better Practicing and Five Deep Breaths and a Pencil Behind the Ear.

3. Wendy’s new paintings. My wife is a fabulous painter! You can check out her paintings here and purchase any of them online. You can also find recent pics of her art in my newsletter.

4. Productivity. I’m no productivity guru. But I do have the ability to juggle multiple projects and keep an eye on the big picture. See 9 Mental Models and Organizational Systems I Use in Daily Life and Inbox Zero: The Basics.

5. Cognition. I’m fascinated by how we think and how better ways of organizing our storage of information and ways of thinking can improve ourselves. See 9 Mental Models and Organizational Systems I Use in Daily Life.

6. Technology. Using technology to enliven creative processes has been a fascination of mine for years. See How I Use My Music Staff and Craft to Create Detailed Lesson Notes.

7. Skills. The expertise that we need to cultivate, and how it changes over time. Check out What Are the Top Job Skills that You’ll Need in 2025? and Required and Preferred Skills for the Collaborative Pianist.

8. Dealing with the world around us. The world can be a strange place these days and we need to stay on top of things. Take a look at 4 Ideas to Understand the Present Through the Lens of the Past.

9. Reading. I love books and I read 36 of them in 2021.

10. Musician advice. Often my advice is from a different angle. See How to Get Lucky in a Pandemic (or Any Time) and Organize Your Practice Time Like a Stage Director.

11. Reflections about the blogosphere. Every year I publish a listing of my favorite blogs (and now newsletters). Here’s my 2021 edition (also 2020, 2019, and 2018).

12. Upcoming events. You’ll see these on the Collaborative Piano Blog more than here on Foley Music and Arts. But if you’re a collaborative pianists looking for a summer program in Europe, you might want to check out one of the collaborative piano positions at Musictheater Bavaria.

13. Videos. Often the videos I like are off the beaten path. Investigate John S. Gray’s L&R 3.75 and Nao on NPR’s Tiny Desk.

14. Academia. Like many whose professional identity has been informed by academia, I have a love/hate relationship with it. But there are lots of interesting things I write about, such as From Music School to the Opera World and The Culture of Practicing in Music Schools. I also curate a list of degree and diploma programs in collaborative piano.

15. My personal performing projects. Some of my favorite performances include An die Musik with Alia Ahmad, HBD!Project June, and lots more, going all the way back to a concert of African chamber music back in 2000.

16. Personal growth. I don’t like to stand still, and am always looking for ways to improve myself. See Optimism Might Be Fleeting: Let’s Focus on Growth Instead.

17. Stories from my creative process.I like to do cool stuff and then talk about how I did it. Take a look at How I Created a New Ebook for my Studio in 30 Days.

18. Week-to-week life in the profession. Yes, working in the arts can be a grind. One of my goals for the newsletter is to give regular status updates on the kind of things I’m encountering in my regular work. See April is the Cruelest Month.

19. Meaningful stuff from around the internet. Every so often I fade into the background and just post links to cool stuff. This is one of the original aims of blogging from the early days of the genre and I aim to continue this tradition. See Thursday Morning Coffee Links.

20. Links to all my current articles through the week. Too busy to keep up? Subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll send them to you every Sunday morning.

In retrospect, I’m glad that I started Foley Music and Arts in order to branch out into lines of inquiry beyond what I’ve traditionally written about in the Collaborative Piano Blog. The newsletter brings everything together from week to week. I’m gratified that several readers who responded to my first newsletter of the year mentioned the curational aspect of the newsletter as one of the things they found most meaningful.

(Image courtesy of Eric Karim Cornelis on Unsplash)

Ghost Piano Music: John S. Gray's L&R 3.75

The Aesthetics Wiki defines a liminal space as “a location which is a transition between two other locations, or states of being. Typically these are abandoned, and oftentimes empty - a mall at 4am or a school hallway during summer, for example. This makes it feel frozen and slightly unsettling, but also familiar to our minds.” In the Before Times when I used to examine in the US, one of my favorite free-time activities was seeking out malls to walk through and experience the feeling of familiarity, dislocation, loss, but at the same time an indefinable, barely perceptible comforting feeling of the past that imbues the present.

Since the start of the pandemic, this type of feeling has become familiar to many of us, especially with so many abandoned public places which were so recently full of people and activity. On Reddit there are active communities for liminal spaces and even dead malls (my personal favorite). Venkatesh Rao in his 2021 roundup suggests that the entire blogosphere now feels like a liminal space.

John S. Gray explores the sonorities of a familiar but long-gone piano in L&R 3.75. A short program note:

Original tracks recorded spring 2002 on an old 1904 Gourlay upright in Cape Breton. Piano subsequently destroyed in a house fire. Sounds digitally re-arranged and re-imagined in December 2021.

For more explorations of liminality in music, have a listen to The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the end of time, a 6-hour work that chronicles the stages of dementia, as well as Burial’s In McDonald’s, a two-minute ambient song that uses the sample of an unreleased fragment from Aaliyah, who died tragically 20 years ago.

(Image courtesy of Mick De Paola on Unsplash)

Books Read in 2021

Over the last few years I’ve been keeping track of all the books I read. Earlier this year I wrote about my reading objectives for the year, and how reading a lot can be bad or good. After some early stops and starts, I resumed reading in the summer and developed a habit of reading on the deck outside with my morning espresso for at least 30 minutes every day while the weather held. This was the impetus I needed to develop a strong habit for the rest of the year, and as of today (December 31) I've completed 36 books, with two more in progress. 

Stuff I’m interested in this year has varied. My main project in the first month of the year was writing an article for the NATS Journal on the correlation between the Tambora climate disaster of 1815-16 and the development of lieder, so Gillen D'Arcy Wood's book occupied me for much of January. I also read several books about neuroscience and cognition. I'm a Murakami fan, so I've been making his way through more of his novels and short-story collections, already having read 1Q84, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Killing Commendatore, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland (which remain my favorites). I've wanted to read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Herodotus' The Histories for years, and finally succeeded in making my way through them. And once again I fell victim to a seasonal late-year interest in poetry. 

Here’s the full list (books previously read are listed with an asterisk):

1. Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World by Gillen D’Arcy Wood

2. Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs

3. Memory Rescue by Daniel Amen

4. The Brain Warrior's Way by Daniel and Tana Amen

5. After Dark by Haruki Murakami

6. Making It All Work by David Allen

7. Biohack your Brain - Kristen Willeumeier

8. The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

9. Mindset by Carol Dweck

10. The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

11. The 4% Fix: How One Hour Can Change Your Life by Karma Brown

12. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

13. The Art of Logic in an Illogical World by Eugenia Cheng

14. Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot*

15. The Histories by Herodotus

16. Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami

17. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph

18. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

19. Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Olga Mecking

20. Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster*

21. Billy Summers by Stephen King

22. Victoria by A.N. Wilson

23. Busy: How to Thrive in a World of Too Much by Tony Crabbe

24. Dune by Frank Herbert*

25. The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul

26. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

27. Range by David Epstein

28. How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell

29. Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

30. milk and honey by rupi kaur

31. Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder

32. the sun and her flowers by rupi kaur

33. A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

34. The Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo*

35. Best Canadian Poetry 2021, edited by Souvankham Thammavongsa

36. Limitless by Jim Kwik

Here are the books which really stood out for me:

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. I plead guilty to reading way too many books about productivity, and Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals quickly put that to an end. As the title suggests, we're only alive for a short time, and Burkeman's book focuses on the importance of setting limits for ourselves rather than trying to do everything. 

Niksen: Introducing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Olga Mecking. In my time studying in the Netherlands, I noticed that many of my Dutch friends, in addition to being ruthlessly organized and hard-working, also had a tendency to loaf around and do nothing. Mecking's book examines this cultural phenomenon, and suggests that it might be a way of reclaiming our own sense of space, personal margin, and sanity. 

Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder. We were lied to in our high school and university poetry classes. The goal of poetry is not to analyze how poems are structured, but to directly experience them. Zapruder's way of reading poetry brings back the immediacy and delight that poetry needs to have, and he does an admirable job of explaining just what it is that sets apart poetic reading from the more matter-of-fact reading of prose, and why we need it. 

The Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo. Although I vowed not to read any more books about productivity this year, I've been wanting to reread Cirillo's book for a while. I've been putting his techniques to use and have found a definite increase in day-to-day focus while still allowing for plenty of down time. I'll write more about this method in the coming months. 

My reading goals for the coming year: perhaps reading less books, but reading them more deeply. Also I aim to reread more, especially the four books that stood out for me this year. 

(Image courtesy of Tom Hermans on Unsplash)

What Are the Top Job Skills That You'll Need in 2025?

At the June 22nd Future of Work event at the University of Rochester, Joe Testani’s keynote speech focused on job trends for the coming years. One of them was a list of the top 15 skills needed in 2025, as identified by the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Future of Jobs report:

1. Analytical thinking and innovation

2. Active learning and learning strategies

3. Complex problem solving

4. Critical thinking and analysis

5. Creativity, originality and initiative

6. Leadership and social influence

7. Technology use, monitoring and control

8. Technology design and programming

9. Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility

10. Reasoning, problem-soling and ideation

11. Emotional intelligence

12. Troubleshooting and user experience

13. Service orientation

14. Systems analysis and evaluation

15. Persuasion and negotiation

Compare these to the top job skills of 2015:

1. Complex problem soling

2. Coordinating with others

3. People management

4. Critical thinking

5. Negotiation

6. Quality control

7. Service orientation

8. Judgement and decision making

9. Active listening

10. Creativity

There’s a lot to unpack here. Looking at the transition from the 2015 to 2025 skills, it looks like there’s a lot less focus on simply maintaining a product, selling it, and managing people and a transition towards skill acquisition, a growth mindset, personal entrepreneurship, thinking through new situations, and a deep understanding of people. In many ways these 2025 skills look like they’re important in the present.

How do these skills relate to your current professional trajectory? How might you acquire these skills in order to build your career over the next few years? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

(Image courtesy of Markus Spiske on Unsplash)

Some Thoughts on Blogging

For years, I’ve been an advocate of blogging as a way to develop a body of work. Once you’ve got a blog up and running, part of its hidden benefit is having something to leverage. Angela Jiang on micro levers:

Many view the creation of content as an audience building tactic rather than a way of creating a micro lever. If you're aiming to become a consistent online creator, then by all means continue. But not everyone has that goal. Many just want to be able to create an edge for themselves and advance their intermediate goals - whether that's getting a dream job, breaking into an industry, or advancing in their field. If your goal is more like this, then it's more valuable to approach content creation as a way to create a micro lever. Scope your creation efforts to building a solid piece of work that can serve as proof of work. Share where you can but treat the audience building as a potential upside not an objective.

But creating mindless blog posts that are set up for views and search engines lessens your authentic voice and what it can accomplish. Cory Doctorow writes in The Memex Method, his reminiscence of 20 years of blogging:

There’s a version of the “why writers should blog” story that is tawdry and mercenary: “Blog,” the story goes, “and you will build a brand and a platform that you can use to promote your work.”

Virtually every sentence that contains the word “brand” is bullshit, and that one is no exception.

You need to create something that actually resonates with people, and a voice that is able to attract people to become your audience. Developing that voice doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s useful to be able to share the steps that get you there. Cory Doctorow:

When it comes to a (my) blogging method for writing longer, more synthetic work, the traditional relationship between research and writing is reversed. Traditionally, a writer identifies a subject of interest and researches it, then writes about it. In the (my) blogging method, the writer blogs about everything that seems interesting, until a subject gels out of all of those disparate, short pieces.

Blogging isn’t just a way to organize your research — it’s a way to do research for a book or essay or story or speech you don’t even know you want to write yet. It’s a way to discover what your future books and essays and stories and speeches will be about.

I agree with this way of thinking. Larger ideas emerge from a series of blog posts over time rather than announcing themselves with clarity the way one finds in a book. One of the ways to spot genuine blogs and newsletters is their desire to think and process ideas rather than just market stuff. The most interesting bloggers don’t always have things figured out, but they leave a trail of breadcrumbs that lead to more fully realized ideas later on.

Over the next while I’ll be working through some of these ideas and perhaps going back to a more spontaneous, fragmented process of blogging rather than always trying to have ideas worked out to fruition. Part of the fun of blogging is throwing ideas out there and seeing where they go.

(Image courtesy of Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash)

21 Blogs (and Newsletters) I Read in 2021

Wendy Hatala Foley, Petals of Memory, acrylic on canvas, 48x24

2021 is a year when we need to get our focus back after a year of unimaginable challenges. With some resolve and luck, we hope to get back to some semblance of regular life by the fall, which also includes getting our thoughts, habits, and aspirations on track.

Here are some of my favorite sources of independent writing. You can read more about how I put together the list here. I’m always on the hunt for more interesting places to find great writing, so leave a comment or contact me if you have anything to recommend. Also check out my weekly newsletter for regular updates on what I’m writing about and reading.

———

Birchtree - I generally don’t follow that many tech blogs, but Matt Birchler’s take is an honest look at cool products and software you could use, and how it might fit into your workflow. Also check out his companion newsletter and YouTube channel. 

cj chilvers - A long-running look at creativity, publishing, and time management from the author of A Lesser Photographer and The Van Halen Encyclopedia. This is one of my go-to blogs whenever I need inspiration on how to get my writing habit back on track or the best ways to structure a newsletter. 

Collaborative Fund - This is a blog written by members of an investment firm that finds the intersection between “people trying to make as much money as possible, and people trying to make the world a better place.” Although you’ll find many articles touching on political and social issues, the CF writers always try to find the undercurrents behind the story to give you a deeper perspective. 

Culture Study - Anne Helen Peterson looks for analysis and context to help understand the stories behind cultural trends. In particular, I like how she utilizes interviews to bring in multiple viewpoints of a situation. 

Greg Morris - This is my favorite kind of blog: one that has no specified subject and a wide scope, but still meanders around a few key ideas. Greg's writing has been inspirational to me on my way back into regular blogging, particularly in his idea of how important it is to start creating material on the independent web and allowing the structure to follow organically. Also see Greg Thinks Things.

Maneetpaul Singh - Maneetpaul’s posts are short and to the point, with wisdom on creating consistent content, building followers, and crafting your online profile. Also check out his YouTube channel. 

Marginal Revolution - Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok are economists, but this is one of the broadest blogs you'll find about current events. A particularly like the way that Alex and Tyler talk about the stories behind current affairs without being overtly political. MR is a blog that makes you think. 

Melanie Spanswick - Pianist, composer, teacher, blogger - Melanie does it all, and writes about it elegantly on her long-running blog. Serious pianists are going to find some exceptionally well-written articles about piano technique and pedagogy, both from Melanie and those she interviews. 

The Middleclass Artist - The classical musical world is not what you think it is, and Zach with his team of writers uncover the hidden stories of sexual harassment, young artist program scams, weight bias, and systemic discrimination that plague the industry. One can only hope that leaders in the field take heed before it's too late. 

mnmlscholar - JP is a teacher and researcher who shares his love of fountain pens and analog writing. What I enjoy here is that JP’s focus is not just on elegant writing instruments, but the process behind using them in his educational workflow. Down the rabbit hole we go…

Ness Labs - One of the most consistently fascinating blogs I've ever read, Ness Labs looks at neuroscience-based insights that you can put to use in your own life now. Anne-Laure Le Cunff's writing is the perfect balance of complexity and accessibility that speaks to a wide range of people. I'm a member of the Ness Labs community, a growing online gathering place for inquisitive minds .

Nicholas Bate - Short, succinct advice that gets to the point and helps you to put things into perspective. Over the years Nicholas' site has evolved into one of the best places to get fast and worthwhile information on how to structure your time and priorities. And it's still growing…

No Dead Guys - Rhonda Rizzo manages a dual life as pianist and writer, and her blog is packed with information on how to navigate the musical world from a grounded and resilient place. Also check out her novel The Waco Variations. 

Rebecca Toh - Sometimes the most meaningful blog articles are fleeting ones. Rebecca's posts tend to be short, but have a lot of meaning to unpack in tangential but meaningful ways. 

Rhoneisms - Patrick Rhone is another blogger that I’ve been following for over a decade, and his short articles and links emphasize compassion, mindfulness, and helping others in order to make the world a better place. 

Sam Radford - Sam's writing is a new discovery to me, and some of the subjects he covers include gratitude, reading, the writing life, and the challenges of returning to normal after the pandemic. All of these are interspersed with a lot of excellent book recommendations along the way.  

Sarah Avenir - Long, well thought-out essays are always a pleasure to read, and Sarah's articles, although infrequent, always provide lots of food for thought, especially on the subject of people-first growth.

Sharing is Caring - Sharing what you learn is at the heart of the independent web. Rika Sukenik's interests are varied, and her articles are just the right combination of personal anecdote, research, and calls to action. The footnotes in particular show the depth and diversity of Rika's interests. 

Susan Eichhorn Young - In the artistic life, sometimes we need a pep talk to help us see the big picture. Susan's blog lights the fire to reframe things in just the right way and help us on our journey, "with fierceness and fondness”. 

Wealest - Becoming successful is something that takes one step at a time, over a long time frame. Thomas Waschenfelder looks at the habits of Warren Buffett, Nassim Taleb, Naval Ravikant, and others in order to distill their habits in an easy-to-understand way. Wealest is also an excellent place to learn about focus, content creation, and marketing. 

Yina Huang - If you're looking for insights that help you to lead a better life, I highly recommend Yina's writing. Recent subjects include journaling, digital detox, and quantifying your development. Yina also has a great sense of humor and artfully uses gifs throughout her articles to illustrate her points. 

Thanks for reading! You can find my previous annual blog lists here:

- 2020
- 2019
- 2018