Content Creation

Indexing

Create a library of written works.
It can unfold into a timeless asset.

Imagine if you had already started writing. With no index cards required, welcome to your very own collection of organized, articulated thoughts, eh!

You will have embraced the moments of your own thoughts. You will also have felt the nourishment of released energy that awaits within the art of writing. Even more, you also moved past the fear and began “shipping your art” by sharing it within a community as well.

With your library of writings in place, even if traffic is low, your future self can become a real-time index. Available any time, from any device, and you’ll remember them all because you created them!

This treasure trove becomes super handy and very valuable! You can effectively add thickness to any interaction. What a timeless gift to yourself and to those you seek to serve, beyond so many beautiful, but brief sparks in time.

Quick temperature check. The world is experiencing a mainstream surge in AI, but don’t let that become an excuse. Anyone can now unleash AI and #ChatUX is so sweet, but those who show ingenuity will never be out created. Along with helping us all maintain intensity, your own writings can represent a honest heart connected to different topic you’re also talking about… maybe even building realities around as well!

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“Reading helps us understand the world.
Writing helps us understand ourselves.”
– Ben McDougal, Roasted Reflections

Does writing take serious time? Yes. Does publishing your writing online spark hesitations? Yes. Will writing welcome a creative release and potentially deliver more art for you to ship? Also yes.

Start writing my friend, then get generous by sharing it with us.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Recursion

The achievement of writing every week for two years has me considering the future of this ambitious frequency.

For most of us, the recurring year-end audit includes a look back on how we spent our time. I love how writing helps me coordinate, understand, and translate thoughts, but the contemplative time poured into Roasted Reflections has also required intentional, lasting dedication.

As I sip on The Holiday Walk, considering what’s next, I wonder if I should give myself a break? Reducing the frequency would add ease and would subscribers even notice? Increased personal bandwidth and self-doubt aside, I still really enjoy shipping this art and I love considering how my writings will help unfold a life well lived. Along with personal growth, hearing how these weekly jolts help people is deeply rewarding and I believe we collectively have more to share.

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Ready to write more? Let’s collaborate on a Caffeinated Contribution!

Recursion is a computer science term that describes the process of defining a problem in terms of itself. This form of problem solving divides a problem into smaller parts of the same type. I’m quick to encourage others to start/continue writing so I’ve decided, at least for now, to keep building. By writing, I will uncover why and what to keep writing. Expanding this web of thoughts will feed an intrinsic motivation toward perpetual learning and will remained brewed to keep you building as well.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Time Trappers

We are all able to be trappers of time.

Time trapping is as old as time itself. What started as storytelling in ancient times, led to language that was translated into the written word. Humanity then brought the past to life with audio recording, photography, and video. Now, emerging technologies are allowing telepathic thoughts to mark our memories.

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Proof? Here’s a Nueralink Show & Tell.

Time trappers wield an ability to more actively revisit life experiences. To test your trapping skills, grab a device and open your favorite place to store creative content. Whether it’s writing, audio recordings, photos, video, or other types of art, go back to see what you captured yesterday and one week ago. Now travel back in time even more. Revisit this day last year, two years ago, five and ten years ago! As you enjoy your own nostalgia, consider the quantity, quality, and different types of content you’ve created.

Avoid distractions and stay in the moment, but if you’d like to enhance your time trapping capability, think of fun ways to create more content. This might be a day dedicated to taking an exorbitant amount of photos. Perhaps it’s trying a new app? Maybe it’s finally downloading the video from a memory card and trying your hand at editing it together? What if it’s taking the time to share time you’ve trapped with others? Whatever the exercise is, see if you can form a habit doing it for a few months. Set a milestone, then enjoy looking back at the results.

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What’s our first memory together?

Think about it. Many idea machines prefer to physically write into ideabooks. Music lovers often choose vinyl over endless streaming and how great is a live theater performance compared to any TV show? The time, skill, and passion from those generous enough to create art, makes thoughtful time trapping more strenuous, but more fulfilling in a way.

We are already cyborgs and biotech will further augment the way we seamlessly capture, organize, and share our realities. Until we autonomously enhance our bandwidth, telling a story, writing, recording audio, taking photos, or shooting video will still take manual effort. Let’s mitigate the risk of AI and optimized efficiency, but might the elbow grease required to set each time trap make our personal creations more memorable? Yes, but that will soon be an excuse. In the future, creativity may be the essential currency to add heartfelt context to our trapped time.

I’m without a thesis, but I’ve arrived at an appreciation for long-term, creative devotion. Caring enough to habitually go beyond what’s expected. When ambitious initiative is a fundamental part of your creative system, you’ll be a timeless time trapper who stays in focus, strategically organized, and inspired with lasting purpose.

By Ben McDougal, ago

100th

I’ve written into Roasted Reflections every week for almost two years and this is the 100th entry!

I put a lot of thought and energy into every one of these friendly jolts, each brewed to keep you building in different ways. Whether it’s taking the time to read, sharing a quick reply, crafting a caffeinated contribution, or just paying the good vibes forward, I want to thank everyone who starts your Wednesdays with me. As I reflect on this literary journey, here are things I’ve appreciated along with way.

– Writing helps us understand ourselves.

– Translating ideas into words is easier the more you do it.

– Verbal dictation can produce a base, then a round of editing brings things together.

– Having a home to organize your writings is more lasting and easier to share anywhere.

– It’s challenging to keep writings concise, but this makes more impact in less time.

– Attention is hard to earn, let alone keep. Stay curious, listen to those you seek to serve, and diversify content creation to stay interesting.

– If you’ve written a book, a complimenting library of shorter entries make it easy to connect ideas back to the book while sharing organized thoughts based on the context of any conversation.

– The thesaurus is a fun tool thats helps us learn new ways to express ideas with fresh vocabulary.

– Publicly publishing your art creates connection.

– I enjoy encouraging others to write.

– Writing is not free. It costs time.

– Without much financial capital involved, the ROI of this type of initiative comes in the form of intellectual, human, cultural, and network capital that churns evolving layers of satisfying value.

– Even so, doubt creeps in. I find myself wondering if I’ll run out of meaningful things to write about every week. Would anyone care if I quit sharing these reflections? If I do decide to quit or reduce the frequency, what’s my why and how might I change the way I ship this art? Would I miss the sense of connection or somehow lose momentum? Perhaps there’s peace knowing the impact can continue being made without weekly additions? I plan to push through these dips as long as I continue to enjoy the challenge, but it can be lonely when we give our best, so please know that I always welcome support from those who have walked this path before.

– Consistency requires sacrifice.

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If you like seeing Roasted Reflections land in your inbox each week, can you help me stay caffeinated? Share this link to invite a friend to subscribe.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Replicants

A friendly futurist and DAO developer within our web3dsm community shared this Ray Kurzweil interview that triggered my continued curiosity toward our neon future.

One tangent they take is interacting with replicants. There’s no single definition for what a replicant might be, but I imagine my replicant to be an artificially intelligent, bioengineered entity that has consciousness rooted in the human (or machine) it originated from. This humanoid would index everything I ever created, map the complexity of my network, understand the difference between internalized vs. externalized thoughts, have empathy for how I matured over time, and gain contextual insight from storytelling to form a foundational identity. This identity would support an operating system with core characteristics, essential rules, and different permission levels to guide autonomous growth.

With seemingly limitless advances in technology, interactions with different versions of our past and future self seem inevitable. We’re already speaking to holocaust surviving holograms, watching monkeys play video games with their brain, growing synthetic realities, and experimenting with nanorobotics. As the bandwidth of technology reaches escape velocity, what’s stopping us from pressing the record button to store every angle from every moment? At that speed, how can the linear evolution of humanity’s intelligence fuse with the exponential trajectory of machine learning? Even when it’s possible, do humans want to extend our lifespan?

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Days feel long, but years fly by.

There are more questions to ask and variables to consider, but as we think about futuristic interactions, how might we reconsider the way we spend our time? Would you live your life differently knowing future generations may interact with your own replicant? I have to think our thoughts and actions would be less careless with such a forward-focused mindset. It would also seem that staying in the moment would be more natural when every byte counts.

With a future that gives humans an opportunity to merge with machines, let’s avoid the numbness of endless distractions as we collectively consider ways to transcend time with purpose.

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“…if tomorrow I wake up and I’m sixty years old,I hope when I look in the mirror and ask have you lived,I look right back and say, “shiiit, you tell me!” -Machine Gun Kelly

By Ben McDougal, ago