Yesterday’s newsletter was called “You don’t need a vision,” and seemed to be a big hit with some folks. (A few people told me this was their favorite letter.) Took me a few hours to read and respond to all the comments.

In the letter, I suggest that instead of worrying about some grand vision for your life, you focus on practice:

Establish a daily practice and use it as a way of getting through your days. Sometimes creative work really is just going through the motions. You don’t necessarily need a vision. Stick to your practice, and things will appear.

There’s a Sex Pistols song with the lyric, “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it.”

That’s where I am. I don’t have a grand vision for the future… but I have a practice, and I am curious to see what turns up, and that’s why I get up in the morning.

I’ve had fun lately posting “rough drafts” — little mind maps — of the newsletter online as a kind of #showyourwork style tease.

On a micro level, I rarely have a “vision” for the Tuesday newsletter — I think about it often throughout the week, and I keep a list of potential topics, but I wait for Monday morning to wake up, do some kind of exercise, and then work on it most of the day. (I block off all of Monday on my calendar to write.)

Read the newsletter here.