Dear Friends,
It’s been a while. As I am almost in the 12th week of my book authoring process, things are starting to get more real. I have now written around 14000+ words exploring the idea of “Process Oriented Thinking”. Writing the weekly newsletter became a bit challenging because of the tight deadlines from my publisher. However, the newsletter is something I want to keep writing.
So here are a few changes I am making to the newsletter to make it something worth reading for my 760+ subscribers.
Newsletter Rebranding.
Visual Wisdom Newsletter is now Asok’s Letter.
When I started the Visual Wisdom newsletter in June 2020, it was a casual experiment. It was the lockdown time and I wanted to see if I can write consistently and figure out how this newsletter thing. I leaned into my love of visuals to add some extra kick to the content. Almost 10 months later, the newsletter grew to 760+ subscribers.
During this past 10 months or so, writing 36 newsletter issues was an amazing learning experience. It showed me how to leverage writing to supercharge my learning and build an audience at the same time.
The type of content you create sends a message about who you are and your key interests. Most of my content was based on the mental models by famous thinkers and authors. Since the visual aspect of it was a salient feature of the newsletter, a lot of people assumed that I am an illustrator who was wrote stuff.
I even started getting offers for making illustrations for others. I even did a few of them free of cost since I liked what they were doing and I believe in the power of a gift economy. However, I would like to think of myself as a writer who likes to draw, not the other way around. With the new name, I hope to write more original content along with visuals that support the concepts.
The benefit of an eponymous newsletter is that I can choose to alter the content based on what I am currently interested in. I felt that “Visual Wisdom” would somehow constraint me to keep creating visuals of mental models. With a name like “Asok’s Letter”, I can be flexible with my writing while still sharing content that is valuable for the readers.
For example, as I writing my book, it would make more sense to share snippets of what I am writing instead of sharing random mental models. It is inevitable that I will continue to reference the ideas and mental models of others in my work. However, that would not be the primary focus of the newsletter.
Cadence: I will be switching to a monthly edition until I am done with the book manuscript. Elon Musk was right. Context switching is what rots the brain. The monthly cadence will let me share valuable content to my readers while allowing myself to work deeply on the book.
My Content Triangle
If you write a lot, you will eventually figure out the things that you are passionate about. In my experience, the books you read gravitates towards your top interests and the writings you produce gravitates towards your top insights. I have observed that my interests and insights fall broadly into these categories.
Strategy
Innovation
Decision Making.
My future writing, whether in the form of articles, newsletters or books, would be focused on the intersection of these domains. These are topics I will never stop being passionate about which is a good heuristic for deciding what to write about.
My upcoming book.
I have learned that writing a book is an exercise of evolution. You start with a seed of on an idea and as you start researching and writing it slowly transforms into something you could have never imagined. When I started writing, the title of the book was ,"The Process Mindset”. Over time, the book took many turns.
My current working title is “The Process is The Product”. It’s an exploration of the philosophy that drives exceptional leaders and organization that allows them to keep winning in the long term.
Edison's greatest invention was not the light bulb, it was the process of invention itself. Tesla's greatest innovation is not the Model 3 or Model S, it is the Gigafactory that makes electric cars feasible. Walt Disney's greatest innovation is not the Disney world or animation movies, it is the creative process that allows Disney to churn out creative products.
A great product can help a company survive in the short term. However, it's a great process that allows companies to thrive in the long term. I am close to my 20K milestone coming up on May 10 and I am excited to share more updates and sneak peeks with you in the coming months. Stay tuned!
That’s it for this week! Please let me know your thoughts on this issue, the changes to the newsletter or any feedback (positive or negative) that may help me with improving this newsletter.
This is awesome Asok. Happy to see your newsletter again after a long time. And glad to hear about your book writing process. All the very best. Looking forward 👍