This post is about Flyby Biographies and some other updates coming soon. It's a toasty 3-minute read. A refreshing change from the 15-minute-long space odyssey from last week.
In the post, Learn, Apply, Grow, Repeat. I announced the arrival of Flyby Biographies and conducted a poll on whether we should incorporate this into the book club. The results were as follows:
After zooming out and thinking about this, I've decided to keep these separate from the book club. Instead, this section will focus more on exciting stories, specific concepts, or ideas I found in the biographies I read and will be slightly different than the book review style.
I might even read and research the subject from various angles and write a post about the lessons learned. If I come across a biography worth re-reading, I'll add that as a book club pick (just like this month's pick, an autobiography). I planned to do this already, so the book club will stay as is. I'll also link to the book(s) somewhere in the post if you want to read it yourself.
So, for now, the book club will continue to be one book per month. I've noticed for the longer books (>300 pages), it seems to take me about two weeks to prepare these reviews as of now. One week to read the book, take notes, re-read my highlights, etc. Another week to write up the notes and structure and polish them into a post. Biographies tend to be even bigger, often 400-500 pages or longer. If we were to have two books per month, this publication would end up just being about book reviews, which is not my vision. And without a vision, where are we even going?
Once my schedule clears up (I am also building a tech "startup" at the moment) and I can get these reviews done in a week, we might increase the frequency to twice a month. This might even happen as time passes, and I get faster at this. But for now, let's stick to one. I might occasionally pick some shorter books (<250 pages), and we can have two of those in a month. There are also loads of book recommendations scattered throughout the flyby universe, so you'll likely always have something to read if you need more juice. I often re-read the best books over and over again. This helps form deeper connections as you grow and see things from a higher perspective. You can find some of my top picks here.
As for the biographies, these will be intermittent, with no fixed schedule. They'll just fly by every now and then (get it?). I've already written the outline for the first two posts, so these should be out soon. One of them will likely be in the best posts so far category. It's already kinda become my own vision for a creative life. So stay tuned. It'll be a banger.
As far as the publication itself goes— in the other survey I polled in the last book review about post length, it seems short posts are *generally* more valued.
So, I'll also go back to writing shorter posts (such as this one) to fill in the gaps between the longer ones. I've updated my own routine to add back an hour a day of focused writing every day. I'm not sure how or when this stopped being the case. Sometimes, we can fall off track with everything else going on in life and not even realize it. But the best way forward is to get back up again and rebuild momentum. This is how you build one of the most powerful skills in life: discipline. I've now printed out my schedule and goals/systems and put them on my desk front and center. I used to have this before as well, but it probably got lost in the shuffle somewhere. You can do the same to make sure whatever's important to you is top of mind every day. I think it totally makes sense to review our Top Priorities every day. Otherwise, it's easy for the brain to forget and get distracted by the intricacies of life (i.e., stuff).
I also went back and read some of the original stories from the flyby fiction universe and realized these were really quite good. Some even struck a chord with my own stuff right now! Pretty cool, right? They also seem to be the highest-rated posts on here. So, I'll be bringing back the fiction universe with a bang. Personally, I enjoy writing them a lot as well, and it's super challenging to pull off. So win-win. #ScratchYourOwnItch
So, going forward, we'll have a mix of shorter posts (<= 5 minutes long), biographies, monthly book club, and fiction stories. As time passes, this will get refined and honed into something pretty cool. If we take the Lean Startup methodology, we are still kind of in the MVP stage of this publication. It's slowly evolving into what it's meant to be alongside your feedback. That is Flyby 2.0. I'm not sure how long this will take, but the direction will undoubtedly be up and better. 🚀🫶
Please help me improve! How did you like this post?
With your anonymous feedback, I can improve the newsletter.