Reclaiming my attention and pushing out the middleman

In July 2018, I sent out my first Wednesday Wisdom newsletter to 28 subscribers.

Six years later, I'm still sending out Wednesday Wisdom every week, and it reaches over 12,000 people. How good is that?

It's no coincidence that my LinkedIn audience has grown from 200 to over 40,000 in that time. Many people who engage with my work visit my website and sign up for the newsletter. I feel very fortunate to have built an audience here.

The early internet feels cute now

Email newsletters and blogs feel like the halcyon days of a bygone era. We all watched live TV, called each other on landlines, popped in for visits, and didn't have high-powered computers in our pockets, destroying our focus and breaking social bonds.

You know, the Internet, but before it got yuck. Before algorithms, sponsored content, surveillance capitalism, disinformation, AI, and dude-bros ruined it all. I loved the old internet: Classic Reddit, clunky but functional WordPress blogs, Google without ads, and email newsletters written by actual people that feel like the faxes of 2024.

Why email newsletters are a nice relationship

For a reader, you choose if you want them and when you read them (if you want to at all.) You might sit down with a cup of tea, open the mail, and read whatever thoughts have popped into someone's head lately. If you're lucky, there's little to no advertising involved, and you won't be followed around the internet for the rest of the day by pushy browser ads because you read it.

For a writer, you're not entering a weird algorithmic Pinball machine. You're not trying to game the system with SEO keywords for Google or clickbait hooks on a social media post, or go viral, whatever that means any more. It feels cleaner and nicer. You just say stuff you think people will appreciate.

There is also a lovely thing about having a direct connection with your readers, which I cherish. Many of my regular readers have been reading my work for years, and they will sometimes reply to tell me how their lives are going and what's happening with them. I love those emails.

I also adore anecdotes where Wednesday Wisdom has been quietly forwarded around the leadership team or posted on the company intranet.

I get a particular buzz when people email to tell me they're changing email addresses or jobs and want to ensure they don't miss out on their WW fix. It feels like confirmation that I'm doing a good thing and saying useful stuff.

LinkedIn would like to erode that relationship

This 'newsletter' service I'm contacting you on is a clever and sensible move for LinkedIn. It mimics a newsletter by coming to your email, so your defences are down. Readers either don't notice or don't mind.

Writers are grateful too. Maintaining a good email marketing platform with an up-to-date database is difficult and expensive, and LinkedIn takes all that fuss away while delivering an audience - for free! How good! Why not?

But I don't trust it, and I don't like what it means for email. I don't want LinkedIn worming its way into the email relationship I have with my readers or making me, or them, more dependent on social media. I get why they have - of course they are; they would be stupid not to. But I'm not keen on it.

I would like to make our relationship more direct

I'm reducing the time and investment that goes into my LinkedIn, planning a total website overhaul that makes the BUCKETLOAD of useful content I've created over the last 6 years easy to find, access, and share, and reinvesting in the quality and format of my email newsletter.

I want a clean, beautiful, well-archived and organised blog and resource centre that you can enjoy on your own time and when you're looking for something, not when you get a sponsored piece of content flash in front of your face on your news feed.

I want a quality email newsletter with loyal readers free to come and go whenever they please.

And I'm busy plotting and planning all of that right now. Stay tuned.

I'm reclaiming my attention, and we can do it together

It's been three years since I stopped Facebooking and took my phone out of my bedroom.

it's been two years since I stopped Instagramming and removed all social media from my phone.

It's been ages since I scrolled mindlessly or posted content in the moment rather than on a preplanned schedule. I exploit LinkedIn now. I post content, but I don't read it. When I open it and scroll, I put it down again in distaste. There's lots of dude-bro and bot shit on my feed. Not a fan.

I've gone further on my attention quest recently. I've shut down my live online programmes to focus on in-person connection and solitary creation and set even tighter boundaries around tech.

It's great, but I reckon there's more to go! I want my attention and time to be my own, and I want that for you, too. Playing the user-generated content game isn't aligned with that—I'm helping them keep you stuck on the platform, and I don't love that.

We've got better stuff to do than flap around on social media, you and me.

Make it official with me, baby

So, if you don't mind, I want our relationship to be more direct and honest. Let's take the next step together. Let's move in....box.

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