Jamie Thingelstad

I noticed that it was four years ago today that I signed up to back Indie Microblogging on Kickstarter. Micro.blog has evolved so much since launch and has firmly taken the place as my favorite blogging platform.

Micro.blog removes the friction from publishing, and is deceptively powerful. I’ve consolidated over 15 years of blogging across a few different systems into micro.blog. I have thousands of posts and it continues to be a delight to use. It strikes the perfect compromise of power and ease-of-use. It is the easiest way I know to get a photo on the web.

I’m amazed at what has been created, and I continue to be excited about the improvements being made. If you are looking for a home on the web, I would strongly endorse micro.blog.

Writing to describe myself or one of my projects is hard for me. Those little “About” boxes all over profile pages on the web fill me with dread. For the Weekly Thing having a strong description is critical and I knew it needed improvement. I found Josh Spector’s Five-Day Plan to Grow Your Newsletter and his first item was to improve your description. I liked his framework so gave it a go.

This is what I started with.

The Weekly Thing is a weekly newsletter highlighting helpful, interesting, or insightful articles from the week. I am a voracious reader of technology, culture, leadership, privacy, and many other topics as my interests roam. Each article I share is framed with personal commentary combining my decades of experiences. My goal is to positively impact your journey with knowledge and insight.

It is certainly accurate, but I didn’t love it. I don’t think it represented what you actually got by subscribing. It didn’t even include my name.

I wanted to make sure that it

• included a solid description of what you would expect to get
• included my name so you know who it came from
• included some validation points like quotes and subscriber count
• referenced that I include more than just links

I took Spector’s framework as a starter and then worked it over and over. This is what I finished with.

Join over 1,000 subscribers to the Weekly Thing by Jamie Thingelstad!

Each Saturday morning, you will get my thoughts on technology, leadership, productivity, culture, privacy, and anything else interesting. I add commentary combining my decades of experience leading teams and building technology. I also include my personal writing, what I’m currently into, and a photograph of the week. There is even a fortune at the end! 🥠

A friend once described the Weekly Thing as a “direct feed from Jamie’s brain.” 🧠 There are no ads, your email will never be shared, your privacy will be protected, and it is free.

Subscribe now and positively impact your journey with knowledge, insight, and perspective!

Here is what others have to say. 🙌

“I’m a better person and leader because of the Weekly Thing!” — Jenny
“I look forward to reading what you are digging.” — David
“I don’t find the interesting links you share anywhere else!” — Andy
“It’s a perfect start to every Saturday!” — Phil

I took the time to run the confirmation email, where this same text is included, through Mail Tester. The previous message was too short and was being heavily penalized by spam tools. The new length and text scored a perfect 10/10 score. For newsletter authors this is an important thing to get right!

I’m not A/B testing and I don’t use surveillance tools on my signup page but I should still be able to see if signups increase, and very important if the number of unconfirmed subscribers, that seem to never get the confirmation email, drops.

Snowy trail taking Lucky for a walk.

The kids thinking about summer on the frozen pool. 🥶😊

The new Good Day Coffee in Faribault has some incredibly good pie! Recommended if you are in the area.

I so enjoyed these articles from CJ Chilvers on personal websites and link posts. He captures a lot of what I love about my own website and why I have given my link blog a real place online. Thanks to another wonderful personal website from Patrick Rhone for highlighting these.

There are still great, independent, personal websites out there. You just have to find them. It is worth the effort. Come join us out here! 👋

As part of our Martin Luther King day we all watched Selma tonight. It is a powerful movie and a stark reminder of how recent the events of the civil rights movement are. The portrayal of Dr. King is wonderful as well.

Starting to read The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich. My book club is reading this. Looks interesting, and long. 📚

I was able to attend the 2021 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Breakfast this morning. It was a great way to reflect on the messages of King as part of the holiday.

I was impressed that this was the 31st year of this event. General Mills took some incredible leadership in making this event happen, and in bringing diversity and equity to their organization. It was also great to see the fabulous work of the UNCF highlighted.

My brother Isaiah and his family visited this last weekend and on Saturday we noted the 5th year since we first met. In those five years we have gotten to know each other really well. We even took a trip to Chicago together. Our families have also gotten close and our kids have great cousin time together.

It would have been easy for us to go through our whole lives having never met. I’m really glad that we did and that we have gotten to know each other so well.

Plus it is fun that I get to be the older brother. 😋

Lucky and I at Victoria-Evergreen Park in Minnetonka.

We are trying something new thinking about our family and how we use our devices, most notably our iPhones. We all have enabled Screen Time on our devices and we are doing a weekly Family Screen Time Review. We just did our first review which went really well. We are making it up as we go. We decided to do two things, taking turns through the family at each step, parents first then kids.

1. Share key data about our screen time. No judging, just data. How much on average did we use our phones. How many pickups did we have. What apps and websites we spent the most time on. The thought is for this to just be sharing and data.
2. Highlight a surprise or insight. After we have all shared our data we then share a highlight or insight that we took from our data. The intent again is that this is reflecting on you, not on other peoples data. Mine for example was surprise that I spent so much time on a particularly website. During this step, we might take a further step of creating a rule or limit that will help curb that in the future.

This first week I had spent 2h 43m on average per day on my phone. My most frequently used apps were Safari, Unread and Mail. I averaged 55 pickups a day. My insight or surprise was that I spent 2h 5m on the New York Times website that week. That was more than I would want to spend. So, I created a rule to limit that website to 20m a day.

The review was pretty easy, took about 15 minutes and had plenty of laughs as well as everyone went through their data. There was some pride in high and low numbers. At worst, we gained awareness and had a discussion about the relationship with our devices. At best, we created some structure to help guide us in the future as well.

I think a key part of this needs to maintain a shared introspection. Not judging other peoples data or creating rules for them. Instead, having a dialogue and leading by example for our kids. I’m looking forward to doing a few more of these.