My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.

This issue of Creativerly is sponsored by Almus, your AI BFF for journaling.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 345 👋

Well, you might be wondering why this newsletter landed in your inbox today, and not yesterday, which means it got delivered with a one day delay. So, yesterday was a packed day for me. When I put together the last touches for the newsletter, I was already super tired. And the result of that was that I clicked on "Save" rather than "Schedule" as I was finishing up the newsletter. I am sorry about that, but here is the newest edition of Creativerly, I hope you enjoy it.

My post about why there is still the need fora better Goodreads alternative became one of the most popular posts on Creativerly. And recently, I saw a spike in traffic. I went ahead to investigate, no news about Goodreads, no bigger sites linking to my post, it seemed like most of the traffic came from search engines. After a brief scroll through my timelines on Mastodon and Bluesky, I stumbled across a hand full of posts mentioning that literal.club, a Goodreads alternative, has been down for a couple of days now, without any kind of notice from their side. My posts from June 2024 mentions literal.club, as at that time already, things got quiet without informing their users.

As of writing this, literal.club is still not available, and there has not been any new update regarding what is going on. Now, I do not have that much insights, but objectively this is such a bummer since literal.club served a bunch of users, a kind of vibrant community, who used it to keep track of their reading list, as well as capturing highlights from the books they read.

All of this is a great example of why people have lost confidence in such platforms. They come and go. They grow immensely, get sold, and suddenly shut down. What is left are the users who have to move from one app to another or think of other ways to document their digital life without relying und such platforms.

Software is ephemeral.

Your journal holds the keys to your growth, but only if you can unlock them.

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This is a paid promotion 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 & News

Sublime introduces Chat →

After releasing Podcast Magic a couple of weeks ago, Sublime introduced its next product called Chat. Chat feeds your Sublime collections into ChatGPT or Claude to get responses that do not sound generic, but rather tailored to your own style. A starter pack has been prepared in order to give users a quick way to try out Chat and use it to for example create Great Ads, which provided ad ideas for your product or brand based on the provided references, Writing Examples, to draft something in the voice of specific authors, or Great Mission Statements, in order to write a mission statement which sticks.

I have been using Sublime for the past couple of weeks, mainly to work with all my highlights I created in Readwise, and leverage the community aspect of the app to dive deeper into specific topics, and see what others have captured related to the topics I am researching on. I am not very drawn to this new AI-powered feature, simply because all the portrayed use-cases are within the realm of writing, and I am not using AI within my practice of writing. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how Sublime is extending their product offering.

Space is a new app for guided planning and connecting your biggest goals to daily action →

Space is the most recent app I have stumbled across. Fun fact, I can not remember the last time I stumbled across a new app in the realm of managing tasks, projects, planning, and goal setting. Space is a task manager built on the idea of planning long-term first, in order to make short-term priorities obvious. Using the app on your Mac or iPhone, you get the chance to set big goals for the year, break them into quarterly milestones, and then decide what to tackle as a next, short-term priority. This approach has been entitled as "zoom out to zoom in" as it helps you prioritizing the smaller tasks, the ones that truly matters, over the urgent-but-unimportant tasks screaming for your attention.

Space is privacy-first, local-first, offers 2-way calendar sync with Google Calendar, syncs your tasks across your devices, and it is free-to-use as long as you like, as the only "limitation" is a recurring reminder to become a paid member. The Monthly Membership costs $8,99, the Yearly Membership $89,99, and the Lifetime Membership costs you $249,99.

Popt now supports Movies and TV Shows as tags →

In September, I published my deep dive about Popt, highlighting how it makes note-taking as smart, seamless, and simple as note-taking can get. A huge reason for that are Popt's auto-tagging system. Popt's system transforms tags into active connections, not just labels, but direct links to contacts, places, and dates. Those will get automatically suggested while you type. Thanks to Popt's newest updates you can now insert your favorite films and series in your notes too. This gives you the possibility to seamlessly curate your collection.

To get a more detailed look at how Popt's Movies and TV Show tags work, make sure to head over the linked blog post.

Mental Wealth

❯ How to do mental time travel – “You have a remarkable talent – the ability to step outside the present, and imagine the past and future in your mind’s eye. Known as ‘mental time-travel’, some psychologists propose it’s a trait that allowed our species to thrive.”

❯ Doing (and Directing) Great Design Requires Detail Obsession – “Every great design has one organizing detail that unlocks everything else, and the best design leaders never stop looking for it. Every good piece of design has at least one detail that is the “key” to unlocking an understanding of how it works. Good designers will notice that detail right away, while most people will respond to it subconsciously, sometimes never recognizing it for what it is or what it does.”

❯ Writing in the Age of Endless Options and Bad Advice on how to be Productive – “The abundance we live in should mean that we have time to write, read, or do whatever we want. For many though under the abundance lurks the truth that they want to be a famous author, not go through the pain and sacrifice of writing. When the rubber meets the road, doom scrolling is what we choose.”

❯ Is It Healthy to Distract Yourself From Stress? – “It’s a typical scenario. You’re faced with a lingering problem, like an argument with a friend, a looming deadline, or a difficult decision. You think you should try to tackle it, but all you really want to do is, well, anything else.”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

Substack is back in the news for the worst reasons. It is still bonkers that so many independent writers are using Substack to publish online. In my newest post Is there really a choice for independent writers in selecting a platform, I explored the ethical and financial dilemmas independent journalists face when choosing platforms like Substack.

❯ Quick Bits

Thank you to the sponsor of this issue, Almus, your AI BFF for journaling.

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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