More newsletter changes

The start of a new year typically seems to be the time I make improvements to my newsletter. Those I introduced back in Jan ’21 turned out to be goods one, for the most part. And most I’ve stuck with.

But, back then I wrote about my plans to share more of my own content and unfortunately I’ve struggled to do that. At least, in a way that I feel makes sense. So I’m going to give it another go. This time with a slightly different format. It’s been a good 5 years since I last changed the format and I feel a change might be what’s needed. Here’s how it will work.

A new format #

Instead of using the usual format, where I share mostly content authored by others, arranged under the following categories:

• Thought provoking
• Design and code
• Performance and sustainability
• Privacy and security
• Typography
• Something to watch

From now on, I will use the following structure for the newsletter:

• Highlights from last month
• Elsewhere on the web
• What I’m up to this month

Highlights from last month will contain personal highlights – what I was up to, how I spent my time, any news I may have, code I pushed live, content I published, and so on.

Elsewhere on the web will contain content from others that I enjoyed over the course of the previous month. Much like the content of my previous newsletters, but condensed into one section, with perhaps a smaller number of links. I may use categories to organise content, as I’ve been doing up until now, but that’s yet to be decided.

What I’m up to this month will provide a glimpse into the plans I have for the month ahead – what I’ll be working on, where I’ll be spending my time, and so on.

I hope these changes will encourage more reflection and concision decision making. Above all I hope they will help me focus on creating work and sharing it. It’s not that I don’t enjoy hunting down content to populate my newsletter with, but it feels like the right time to take the next step and focus on sharing more of my ow work.

Before I finish, I must give credit where credit is due. This format has been heavily inspired by Philip I. Thomas’s newsletter. I enjoyed learning about Philip’s vision for Postcard and in particular, Philip‘s post How to replace social media with a personal newsletter. Well worth a read if you’re interested in how things may end up working, post Twitter.

Oh, and there’s one more thing.

A new schedule #

If you are an existing subscriber, newsletters will now land in your inbox (or RSS reader, if that’s more your thing) on the 1st of every month - starting from February this year.

With the new structure in place, this small change should make much more sense. It certainly seems more logical than always having to check which date the last Friday of every month happens to fall – which is the way I’ve been doing it until now.

I understand if these changes are no longer in line with the reasons you signed up to recieve me newsletters. If this is indeed the case, you’re more than welcome to unsubscribe now, or at any time in the future, for that matter.

I’ll spend some time this month updating the welcome email new subscribers receive to reflect these changes.

Thanks for reading and see you on 1st of each month.