Finn Schubert

Blog

It wasn’t writer’s block. I needed a new format.

I’ve just spent the last half hour searching around for the right way to go about a book idea I have. Was I wasting this time? Or was it a real investment, the way a comfortable office chair is an investment? Tools for writing, and thinking carefully about my

Learning to Exist in Public

My public existence was not an equation to be solved to other people’s liking.

Maybe online writing is like squirreling away acorns

"Practice telling and retelling your story. Over time, it will clarify."

It wasn’t writer’s block. I needed a new workflow.

What had seemed like a willpower issue—(why am I not writing?) or an intelligence issue (am I not smart enough?) or a time issue (when can I write, I have a baby)—was really an issue of workflow and tools.

The false romance of knowledge management systems

All the smart people had a particular way that they processed and synthesized information, so I figured I should get one too. Maybe it started with Sarah Chappell’s series on how she researches. Maybe Tara McMullin had posted something similar about her process. Maybe I vaguely dreamed of having

Productivity app or futile bargain with the universe?

I tried out the Minimalist Phone app last week. I just happened to see it and was seduced by the prospect of a pretentiously blank lock screen. Simplicity to the point of ostentation. But most of all, I was seduced by the idea that maybe then I’d have some

Kitchen drawers and laundry baskets: On metaphors and data

“Metaphorical thinking half discovers and half invents the world it describes."