09 Nov 2026 #misc
Creativity isn’t only coming up with fresh, brand-new ideas.
Mark Manson wrote in 5 boring ways to become more creative:
One of the most common criticisms of my books is that I didn’t “come up” with most of the advice I give.
Well… of course I didn’t! You really think I’m going to compete with Aristotle and The Buddha? This advice has been around for thousands of years. I simply repackaged it in interesting and novel ways, changed the emphasis on a few points, and added a couple of my own ideas to spice things up.
That made me think of love songs.
All love songs are:
- “I love you and can’t wait to be with you”
- “I love you, but there’s someone or something between us”
- “I’m with someone else, but the one I truly love is you”
You could probably come up with more categories.
Just because all love songs fall into one of those, it doesn’t make you put your AirPods down and say, “Oh I already hear that.”
And we’ve been writing and listening to love songs since we have human experience.
Creativity is repackaging old ideas in new ways.
It’s playing with fixed structures.
It’s stealing some multiple sources.
It’s filtering old ideas throught our lenses and stories.
All ideas inside 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life And Could Change Yours Too are old.
I put my fingerprints on them by sharing them from my experience.
That makes them unique.
Don’t try to be original. Repackage something old instead.
09 Nov 2026 #writing #bookwriting
Every content medium comes with their own reader’s behavior.
You can’t complaint about people not reading your social media posts.
Because people don’t read on social media.
They skim and scan down feeds.
Just take a look at someone “reading” on Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok:
Scroll, scroll… Go back for a few seconds, like… Scroll, scroll…
Just like Herbert Lui wrote in A good story needs a book:
When someone watches a video, they stay for a minute at most… But when someone reads your work, they are staying for potentially hours or days. They invest active time and energy into understanding your ideas, which then rattles around in their brain for the rest of the day. They are also making a decision to change, and letting you influence them.
Blog posts or essays live longer, and have more room to share deep ideas than tweets, carousels, or social media posts.
But the best medium to share and preserve stories are books.
They have longer life spans.
They give you more authority.
They receive way more readers’ attention.
Even if you don’t write a New York Times best-seller, but a mini book or a compilation of your best blog posts.
Nobody has ever said, “That tweet changed my life.”
But you’ve said that about books.
I’m preserving my best ideas and stories in books. Find them here.
07 Nov 2026 #misc
Creative block is real. Writer’s block is real.
Not every single day is productive.
Sometimes writing a daily post is a piece of cake.
Other times, a daily post is just to avoid breaking the chain.
In recent months, I went through an episode of stress that disrupted my sleep.
Writing didn’t flow for quite a while.
No aha moments. No rushing to capture a thunder of creativity.
To spark the joy of writing, I started a secret book project.
No deadlines. No announcements.
No other expectations than enjoying the process.
Since then, I’ve written one story after a casual encounter at a grocery store, another story after running errands on Halloween all day long, and a piece of poetry for the first time… and I’ve had to stop doing the dishes to write down ideas before I forget them.
Now that I connect the dots, I’ve done my best writing when I feel free.
To get your juices flowing, you need to sit down to write without pressure, guilt, or judgment. Just play!
06 Nov 2026 #mondaylinks
Hey there.
Quick update: This week, I finished the first draft of Street-Smart Coding in the Age of AI and already reached out to some of my loyal beta readers. You can preorder your ebook copy starting at just $1.
In case you missed last email, Street-Smart Coding in the Age of AI is book #3 in my Street-Smart Coding collection. It’s a short and actionable guide to help you leverage AI without becoming dependent on it. The first draft sits around 5K words. You can finish it over coffee.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. If you use Claude Code for VS Code, be aware it was recently compromised (5min).
#2. PHP2Shell vulnerability has taught us it’s time to start paying 40 years of technical debt (3min).
#3. If you still use Postman, be aware it was at some point installing Claude plugins and startup hooks. Here are the findings on the official GitHub repo (3min). I just uninstalled it.
#4. I’ve never had a portfolio. I joke that my blog is my portfolio. But if you have one, here’s how to rethink your portfolio in the age of AI (6min).
And in case you missed it, last week, to celebrate Halloween, I shared 4 posts to scare the coder inside you (1min) and, more recently, I wrote about C# new keyword and data annotations (2min).
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Preorder your copy of Street-Smart Coding in the Age of AI. A short and actionable guide to leverage AI without losing your skills.
See you next time,
Cesar
06 Nov 2026 #writing
AI content is too perfect… and soulless.
Em dashes were a clear giveaway of AI-generated content.
But you can instruct your LLM of choice not to use them and still sound robotic.
It’s. Not. That. It’s. This. Beep… Beep…
Maybe typos and imperfect sentences are a sign of human-written content.
To show there was a human behind my words, I stopped using AI to proof-read my writing.
You can instruct your LLM to add typos too.
Apart from personal stories and an interesting life, brevity is maybe the true sign of a human-written content.
I stopped writing 1,000-word SEO-optimized posts long time ago.
These days, anything longer than a tweet counts towards publishing.
100-200 words is my sweet spot.
AI can always add more fluff… and more fluff.
The bottleneck isn’t hitting a word count, but well-thought ideas that don’t need an AI-summary.
Nobody has ever complained about good ideas being concise.
Just like nobody has complained about 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life And Could Change Yours Too being too short.