Salaam friends,

Here are the things crossing my mind for Increments this week. Please feel free to forward this to friends.

🏗️ Projects I’m working

For the past few months, I have been working on a picture book for children. This is way out of my comfort zone since I’m used to writing short stories. I’m defiantly going through a learning curve, and it has been fun. One of my teachers during my MFA program used to say that writing short stories teaches young writers the elements that make novels work. I think this children’s book is doing something similar for me. I have a 7-page draft, and I see most of the elements I would include in a 20-page story.

🧰 Tools for life

Last week I shared with you the app Todoist, which I use to capture ideas, tasks, quotes, and everything that I find interesting. At the end of each day, my page looks a mess. I put a parenthesis before each note defining what it is. For example, “(podcast) check out Ali Alhebashi for a possible future episode).”

Google Drive was the place where I used to organize everything. I'd transfer  information to documents or excel sheets. However, recently I discovered Notion, which is a super-friendly, text-responsive app that organizes things in a very efficient way. Notion is like combining Google Docs, Excel, and a text responsive feature (that’s the thing that when you type a date, it gets highlighted and added to either a calendar and if you click “/” a list of options pops up to tell the program what to do with the text you’re writing).

I know, it’s a little complicated, and maybe obsessive. But I promise, if you’re the type of person that handles multiple projects, and ideas flow in and out of your brain like a broken, blinking light, this will be worth learning how to use.

🎧 What am I listening to?

I’m listening to The Tim Ferriss with James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. In the episode, they talk about how both Tim and James take notes, capture ideas, run their business, and other nerdy stuff.

🔖 Quote I’m pondering

I’m pondering an Arabic quote from a poem that poorly translates to:

“Leaving the soul without knowledge or discipline (or etiquette)

[It’s like] leaving the sick without medicine nor a doctor.”

— Ahmed Shawqi

Please give me feedback on Instagram. What do you want more or less of? Or other suggestions? Just me a message @mohamedthewriter

Thank you for reading, and keep on creating!

Mohamed