Making a product opens up new occasions

When you make your own product, you create an occasion to consider all the details. It’s an opportunity to care, and it’s not one that everyone decides to take up. For example, when I showed a friend an early version of The Consistency Journal, he noticed that the paper was rougher than he was used to. His favorite notebooks, from Kokuyo, had smooth paper. Even though I’d published Creative Doing already, I’d never really paid much attention to the paper. Now that my customers would be the ones writing in the book, I needed to make sure the paper encouraged them to keep coming back. Another occasion, also paper related: as I prepared to ship the first copy out, I also wanted to write a thank you note. I must have walked by Laywine’s dozens of times; I finally had a good reason to visit. I stepped out with my first purchase of Original Crown Mill. I also saw AJOTO’s 10th anniversary poster hanging on the wall at Laywine’s, which reminded me of In the Air, on the Ground, under the Sea…