Hey friends,
This issue is a little different from the usual, in that I'd like to tell you about this newsletter rebranding 🌟
It's hard to believe that it's been over six years since I sent out the very first edition of Sunday Snippets back in April 2018. It started off as an easy way for me to share thoughts, life experiences and book recommendations to an audience of around 264 people... and in the past 6+ years, somehow it's grown to an audience of hundreds of thousands of readers, which is pretty mental.
But now it's time for a change… in some ways a small change, in other ways a bigger one.
A few weeks ago, I was on a flight and reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. It's written in an interesting format that the author calls a Chautauqua - where he alternates between talking about a present-day motorcycle trip across the US with his son and friends, with philosophical musings about the nature of reality.
He might write something like, "It's 106 degrees, and we're getting on the bikes. I can hear the engines revving as we set off across the Great Plains. We stop at a service station, and John makes a comment about the wheels on his bike… That gets me thinking about the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, and how John's world view is structured in a way that's totally different to mine…" Then he'd dive into a few pages of philosophical reflection before returning to the journey narrative.
I then thought about another book I've been (very slowly) reading for the past year or so - Notes from a Fellow Traveller by Derren Brown, aimed at magicians and stage performers. Derren's one of my biggest inspirations in life, and in this book, I love how he doesn't position himself as a guru, but instead as merely a fellow traveller along the path. It's written in a similar style (sort of) as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Ie: Derren might start a chapter with something like: "It's Monday the 17th of June, and I'm in Portsmouth. I've just grabbed some breakfast, and I've got a show this evening. I've been here for the last three days, doing some reading, taking some photos around town, but today, I've been thinking about the strange relationship that a stage performer has with the audience..." He would then philosophise about that relationship, sharing his "notes", the stuff he's learned and observed over the years. It feels almost like a personal diary that's been published, and it's incredibly engaging.
As I was reading, I thought, "You know, it would be cool to write something in this style"… maybe a multi-volume series of mini books where I write about what's going on in my life, and share lessons and learnings that are coming up for me…
And then I realised something - wait a minute. That's sort of what my email newsletter's like… and I've been writing that for the past 6+ years.
So, inspired by these ideas - the Chautauqua-style blend of narrative and musing, and the concept of notes from a fellow traveller - I started thinking about how to capture the essence of what I've been doing with this newsletter. Sunday Snippets doesn't quite cut it… so I played around with different concepts: notes from life, notes of life, notes for life... and then it hit me: LifeNotes 📚
LifeNotes feels like the perfect way to describe what I've been doing all along - taking notes on life and sharing them with you, as a fellow traveller. So first I thought "huh that's a cool name for a series of books". But then I thought "wait a minute - why don't I rebrand the whole newsletter to LifeNotes? That's a cooler name than Sunday Snippets, and feels more exciting, and feels more aligned with where I want to take the newsletter".
So I floated the idea to my team, who were all broadly on board. There was part of me that was thinking "is anyone other than me really going to care about what this email newsletter's called?" But then the bigger part of me said: "screw it, even if no one else other than me cares, I feel better about writing a weekly email called LifeNotes rather than one called Sunday Snippets". Maybe this is just a third-life crisis hitting, but sometimes stuff needs a rebrand just to keep things fresh 😛
But in theory, this rebranding isn't just about a new name. It hopefully helps with a shift in how I think about these weekly emails.
So, what's changing with this newsletter? A few things:
1. Flexibility: We're no longer tied to Sundays. This means I can share ideas, learnings and notes with you as they come, rather than feeling the need to be tied to a specific publish day.
2. Expanded Content: You'll start seeing more of my raw notes from books, podcasts, and conversations. I'm hoping it'll feel like we're learning together in real-time. And I'm hoping that this format encourages me to take deeper notes on the stuff I do read and experience. We'll see how that turns out.
3. "Publish Most Weeks": While I'm still aiming to write weekly, I'm giving myself permission to skip a week if I don't have anything substantial to share. I like my friend Paul Millerd's approach to consistency with his newsletter: "Write most days, publish most weeks". "Most weeks" feels like a nice cadence. Not forcing it when there's nothing coming, but not throwing in the towel altogether either.
4. More Personal: I'd love LifeNotes to feel like you're literally getting an email from me that I've written directly in a Gmail compose window. I can't *actually* write it in a Gmail compose window, given that it's being sent to 300,000 people, but I'd like for it to have that general feeling. As such, we might experiment a little with the design of the emails. I'd love your thoughts and feedback :)
Looking ahead, I've got some ideas about where LifeNotes might go in the future. Perhaps a multi-volume series that compiles these notes into a travel diary through life. Or maybe it would be a cool name for a journaling app, or a book that compiles life lessons or something. But for now, I'm focused on making this newsletter a fun place for me to share notes that you'll hopefully find useful.
As always, I want to hear from you. What kind of stuff would you like to see in LifeNotes? What did you like most about Sunday Snippets, and what would you like to see more of? Please do hit reply and let me know - another big change in our backend infrastructure of these emails (which we're still in the process of nailing) is to make it easy for me to see your replies to the emails 😊
Have a great week,
Ali xx
