Sophie Noel

Do what you love, but solve for distribution.

Rather than restricting your freedom, a routine gives you freedom by protecting you from the ups and downs of life and helping you take advantage of your limited time, energy, and talent. A routine establishes good habits that can lead to your best work.

A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.

This was one of William James’s favorite subjects. He thought you wanted to put part of your life on autopilot; by forming good habits, he said, we can “free our minds to advance to really interesting fields of action.”

Before jumping into a very competitive game I think you should look at the winners of that game and decide if you want to be like them first

There are all kinds of things you can do to develop and retain an audience -- break news, loudly talk about your own independence, make your Twitter avatar a photo of a cute girl -- but the single most important thing you can do is post regularly and never stop .

What most successful Substacks offer to subscribers is less a series of discrete and self-supporting pieces of writing--or, for that matter, a specific and tightly delimited subject or concept--and more a particular attitude or perspective, a set of passions and interests, and even an ongoing process of “thinking through,” to which subscribers are ... See more