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My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the weekly digest about creativity and productivity-boosting tools and resources, combined with useful insights, articles, and findings from the fields of design and tech. The newsletter built for the creative community.
Hey and welcome to Creativerly 233 👋Since I started working from home full-time in December 2022, I've created a structured routine to navigate this busy, modern life. These routines are ingrained into my daily life and are flexible yet firm. By incorporating these easy and normal parts of the day, I've found benefits in staying organized, saving time, and ensuring my well-being. What's even more crucial is that they assist in personal development, productivity, and mental health. By adhering to these everyday habits - such as waking up early, having a morning routine, regular exercise, reading a bit during lunch, and allocating time for concentrated work - I've fostered a positive space for success to thrive. For me, waking up at the break of dawn is a pleasure. I typically start my day with a round of stretch exercises, followed by enjoying a refreshing tea. After this, I create space for reading, writing, and journaling activities. An outdoor walk also forms a part of my day. I make sure to have chunks of productive work sessions interspersed throughout the day. In terms of hydration, I consume no less than 2 litres of water daily. Also, taking frequent rest breaks is a habit I stick to during my day. To make sure I establish this routine and form my patterns, I set up a structure, which I strictly followed every single day. Engaging in these activities consistently enhanced my focus, reduced my anxiety, and fostered resilience in facing life's challenges. With time, the cumulative effect of these daily rituals can lead to profound transformations. However, there comes a time when the very routines we rely on can become stagnant and limiting. It is important to occasionally switch up our routines, delving into the cognitive, emotional, and physical benefits of embracing change. Monotony can drain the joy and enthusiasm from our daily lives. I already realized this just a couple of weeks into my structured and organized daily routine that I strictly repeated. While I did indeed transform my life, build up habits, and enhanced my focus, I had the feeling that the strict routines I were following were limiting my personal growth and self-discovery. My days became bland pretty quickly. Day after day, I followed the same habits, the same routine, doing the same things over and over again. It was time to shake up my routines to infuse novelty and excitement back into my days. Switching up routines from time to time exposes you to new experiences, ideas, and perspectives. I no longer force myself into strict routines just for the sake of building up habits. I still stick to my previously mentioned habits, also my routines, but I do not put them into a strict structure. Switching up the tea I am drinking, the stretching sessions I am doing, and the focused work blocks I am setting up, helped me establish joyful and enthusiastic routines and days. While routines offer stability and structure, it is crucial to recognize the value of occasionally switching them up. Embracing change stimulates cognitive flexibility, breaks the monotony, and expands our comfort zones. Switching up your routines does not mean coming up with completely new ones, it can be small, mundane changes that have a big impact on your mental health, personal development, productivity, and comfort.
Synthical is one of those apps that leveraged the technology of AI in a powerful, purposeful, and lovely way. Synthical helps you discover, learn, and share research incredibly easily, powered by AI. The main goal of Synthical is to make science a bit easier for all people. By gathering articles from sources like Arxiv, Biorxiv, Medrxiv, and Chemrxiv, Synthical makes science accessible to everyone. Over three million articles are already part of Synthical. The database gets continually updated with fresh content, so you can keep up with science. No matter if you are striving for topics and areas like Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Biology, or anything else, Synthical got you covered. Synthical has been built by fellow researchers who experienced the pain of the currently existing tools. They felt the need to build the contemporary tool researchers can use to understand complex concepts. Synthical not only gives you the possibility to read articles within a beautiful interface, but it also has the power to distil the most important information from those articles and simplify it fast and easily with the power of AI. The AI Synthical is using is capable of understanding semantics to process text from the different articles. It provides an incredible combination of AI-powered research, seamless collaboration features, and a vast repository of open science articles. If you ever wanted to simplify and enhance your work process while doing research, Synthical is the tool you should give a try. In case you are working across a team, Synthical is ready for team collaboration. With just a few clicks you are able to create a folder and share it with your colleagues either by email or by a link. With those folders you can structure and organise your research materials within Synthical. As already mentioned, Synthical features a beautiful user interface design. The first time I discovered Synthical, I immediately recognized that it was crafted with love for detail. I was also surprised since I would have not associated such a beautifully designed piece of software with the field of research, as I always had the impression that there is not that much innovation when it comes to software within that field. But Synthical proved me wrong. You can give Synthical a try right away. It is free for everyone. The majority of AI-powered features are paid though. Those features include the summarization and simplification of articles, two core functionalities of Synthical. Therefore, to get access to them, you need to pay $8 per month. Once you build a product, you probably want to showcase it to potential customers, arouse interest, and give them an idea what they can achieve with your product and how it can help them or boost their workflows. With Floik, you can turn product flows into interactive content - demos, videos and step-by-step guides, all on a single platform. With Floik‘s all-in-one platform you are able to capture and showcase your product perfectly. Say goodbye to gathering loads of different screenshots scattered around your computer and typing notes in different apps. Floik is the one solution to showcase what you have built. The whole workflow in Floik consists of three easy and simple steps. First, you capture the product flow. With just a few clicks, you can turn product workflows into interactive demos, videos, and beautifully crafted step-by-step guides, all at the same time. Secondly, Floik lets you tailor the output to your needs. It offers you a dedicated editor interface to edit any doc or slide by trimming, cropping, blurring, adding call-to-actions, and transforming your voice into an AI-powered one. Thirdly, it is all about the engagement. Share your flows anywhere in the web, integrate with your CRM, and view real-time insights on interactions with your flows. If you ever wanted to supercharge your product-led growth, Floik is definitely worth taking a look at. By giving prospects a sneak peek of your product with interactive demos and product teasers, you are able to shorten your sales cycles and drive product-qualified leads. The onboarding is one of the most important parts of your product. With Floik you can accelerate your users' time-to-value during the onboarding since it gives you the possibility to place visual how-to guides and explainer videos in context. Besides that, Floik also helps you increasing customer satisfaction. If you struggled with retaining your customers, Floik lets you upsell with ease using self-serve interactive guides and product walkthroughs. The Starter Plan is free-to-use, includes one user, 10 Flos, the possibility to generate Flos in multiple format, working with any web app, quick customization, and shareable Flos with links and embeds. The Pro Plan will cost you $29 per month and includes one user, but unlimited Flos and formats, custom branding, downloads as mp4, AI VoiceOver, and insights and analytics. The Teams Plan will cost you $149 per month and gives you access to unlimited users, a team library, up to two integrations, SSO integration, and advanced analytics.
 Standing Out in 2023: Doing Content Right
Whenever I get asked about resources on the topic of starting a newsletter, a blog, or a publishing side-project or business in general, there is only one I recommend, Doing Content Right by Steph Smith. No matter if you want to create a blog, write a newsletter, grow your audience, or try to get your content to stand out, after taking Steph's course you will know why you can still start a successful, evergreen blog in 2023 and onward, you will know how to identify a niche and stand out in a sea of competition, how to distribute your content across dozens of channels, how to do SEO right, and a lot more.
Steph Smith has led large publications teams in the past, and scaled her personal blog to 400k page views in its first year, she led Trends by The Hustle, and currently works as a Podcast host at a16z. If there is one person from whom you should learn about doing content right, Steph Smith is precisely that person.
By buying the course, you get access to 270 pages in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI format, a community of hundreds of creators, 22 actionable exercises, 12 video sessions going over the material, and a bonus section on podcasting.
The course has sold over 3900+ times, and it has over 160 five-star ratings. Use the code INTERNET to get 50% off. If the code is no longer working you can also use the code philipp20 to get 20% off your purchase. This is a paid promotions or affiliate link to support Creativerly. If you are interested in putting your tool, product, or resource in front of over 2000 creative minds, consider advertising in Creativerly and book a sponsor or classified ad spot. Find all the important information at creativerly.com/advertise.
Fresh Updates & NewsSetapp is a suite of over 240 apps for macOS and iOS, accessible with a single subscription. If you are using loads of different productivity, utility, or design apps, chances are high that they are part of Setapp, meaning you could save on some subscriptions easily, and replace them with just a single one. Recently, Setapp introduced its AI assistant. With the Setapp AI assistant, you have a companion by your side to instantly find an app for your task. Just type in what you need, and the Setapp AI assistant will do the rest of the work. Besides that, Setapp offers a dedicated app collection featuring AI apps called "AI toolkit". This gives you access to AI apps like Alphas, Plus, Lumina Neo, Taskheat, or TypingMind. Setapp Personal starts at $9.99 per month for 1 Mac. The Mac + iOS Plan will cost you $12.49 per month for 1 Mac and 4 iOS Devices. The Power User Plan for 4 Macs and 4 iOS devices will cost you $14.99 per month. Pocket, Mozilla's read-it-later app announced that it is retiring its macOS app. The changes will go into effect on Tuesday, August 15. and after that date, users will no longer be able to use the app, since it will no longer work. Pocket decided to replace the macOS app with the Pocket iOS app for Apple Silicon Macs instead. This means that all models introduced in late 2020 and later will be able to run the Pocket iOS app for Apple Silicon Macs. If you do not own a model like that, you will not be able to use the app. Follow the linked article to receive more information about why Pocket and Mozilla decided on this move. Geneva is a lovely community tool that is used by loads of local communities. It has grown into an app powering lively, dynamic spaces where people in the same cities are connecting over shared interests and making plans to meet up out of the group chat. The recently released Geneva 2.0 is the online place to find your offline people. With this update, Geneva introduces a new navigation. While Geneva is still a group chat app, the new tab bar brings some more organization to the app, making it easier to navigate between your groups and DM conversations, finding new communities popping up near you in Discovery, and seeing when and where people are getting together for events and hangouts. Additionally, Geneva 2.0 includes new public and private group settings. Public groups allow members to join immediately, while Private groups will require admin approval. This will make it easier to find groups you are looking for and people to find the groups you have started.
Mental Wealth❯ How you can "think different" – 'In college, I was told to not major in psychology because… well how many psychologists does the world need? Turns out, that was far too narrow a definition. To know psychology is to know human behavior. And to know human behavior is to build products that work for people and P&L statements. It’s a surprisingly rare skill in a world that worships data and code.' ❯ We’re Mostly Trying to Escape This Moment – 'Much of our days, we’re trying to escape. In fact, you might call this the primary occupation of the human animal. What are we trying to escape? What’s happening in this moment, right now. Most people will outright reject that idea, but I know this to be true of myself, and it’s been true for so many people I’ve worked with and known.' ❯ The Illusion Of AI’s Existential Risk – 'It is a well-known Hollywood plotline: the rise of superintelligent AI threatens human extinction. So much so that the release of publicly-available AI, like ChatGPT, has led to a frenzy of concern. On May 30, the San Francisco-based research group, the Center for AI Safety, released a succinct statement signed by some of the field’s top experts, stating that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” But focusing on the possibility of a rogue superintelligence killing off the human species may itself be harmful. It could distract regulators, the public and other AI researchers from work that mitigates more pressing risks, such as mass surveillance, disinformation and manipulation, military misuse of AI and the inadequacy of our current economic paradigm in a world where AI plays an increasingly prominent role. Refocusing on these present concerns can align the goals of multiple stakeholders and serve to contravene longer-term existential risks.' ❯ How to Stop Worrying About Work on Vacation – 'Ping. It’s the sound of your email, Microsoft Teams, or Slack notification interrupting you during what’s supposed to be a relaxing family vacation or a fun-filled, let-it-all-hang-out friends trip. You know you shouldn’t respond (c’mon, you’re out of the office for a reason, right?) and yet you can’t help yourself from peeking (maybe it’s important!). So you answer, and next thing you know you’re spending your time off, well, back on the clock.'
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Appendix❯ Featured Newsletter A couple of months ago, I realized that I am spending increasingly time on my phone whenever I am taking a break from work. Somehow, taking a break transformed into grabbing my phone and scrolling through social media. I wouldn't call it an efficient break, since scrolling through social media does not recharge my batteries, instead it drains them even more.
With the help of Clo S., founder of This Too Shall Grow, where as a certified digital wellness coach, she helps people build better relationships with their devices, her incredible Digital Wellness newsletter and her outstanding blog posts, I started to create a healthier relationship with my digital devices and social media.
In her newsletter, Clo shares science-based insights and actionable tips, which help you learn how to make your devices support your productivity, mental health, and well-being. It is read by over 1400 folks. Besides that, Clo is publishing lovely blog posts, like 'How to take Better Breaks (and actually take them)' which is one of my all-time favorites.
Sign up for the Digital Wellness newsletter by Clo S. for free and receive 3 PDF guides on digital wellbeing and mindful tech, science-based articles, and news and discounts on the best digital wellbeing and mindful tech tools. It is one of my favorite newsletters, sign up now and you will learn why.
❯ Quick Bits
Till next time! 👋 Support: Do you have a friend who is looking for inspiration, news about design, and useful tools and apps? Forward this newsletter to a friend or simply share this issue and show some support. You can also show some love by simply clicking the button down below and keep this newsletter a sustainable side-project by buying me a coffee. ☕️ 🥰
Some of the links in my newsletter and my blog posts are affiliate links. Those links are marked by an asterisk. If you buy something through the link, the product will not cost you anything more, but I will receive a small commission which not only supports Creativerly and my work but also helps me to keep this publication a sustainable side-project. Creativerly is proudly published with Ghost*.
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