What truly sets emails apart is the sanctuary they provide – no “seen” status looming over your shoulder, no pressure to reply immediately. Instead, you have the power to read and respond thoughtfully, at your own pace. The ability to flag, mark, and categorise emails grants extra control and organisation, which I appreciate too. Additionally, the capability to revisit email threads even years later is incredibly handy and adds to the reliability of email over instant messengers.<\/p>\n
Certainly, sometimes it’s handier to chat via a messenger app or share voice memos, a practice I often engage in with my family and close friends. The only messenger app I’m quite keen on is Telegram. It steers clear of ads, doesn’t sell user data, and it’s just all-around convenient, making WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and even iCloud Messages look pretty shoddy in comparison. Yet, even with its perks, Telegram still locks users within its own system, unlike email, which is a universal protocol compatible with Gmail, Yahoo, Hey, Superhuman, or any other email services and platforms.<\/p>\n
I’ve noticed that when I compose an email, I strive for clear, structured writing. Such asynchronous communication naturally helps me to convey my thoughts while paying attention to formatting, grammar, and other details, it’s as if the ‘send’ button almost creates friction, prompting a second thought before clicking it. And clear, structured writing often leads to clear, structured thinking – a valuable skill worth developing.<\/p>\n", "date_published": "2023-12-14T22:32:40+05:00", "date_modified": "2023-12-14T22:29:48+05:00", "tags": [ "Productivity", "Social media" ], "author": { "name": "Daniel Sokolovskiy", "url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/", "avatar": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1732048793" }, "_date_published_rfc2822": "Thu, 14 Dec 2023 22:32:40 +0500", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "124933", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": false, "links_required": null, "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "120634", "url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/all\/digital-monk\/", "title": "Digital monk", "content_html": "
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\n<\/div>\n<\/div>Hey guys, how’s it going?<\/p>\n
For the past months, I have started to pay more attention to my health (both physical and mental), as well as my digital life and how I use my time. Frankly, it was terrible. When you spend days surrounded by several computers and other gadgets, it’s very easy to get constantly distracted and stressed out, so I started taking this seriously and almost stopped browsing on social media, among other things. I had to re-engineer many of my habits, routine, and workspace.<\/p>\n
The funny thing is, the other day, I didn’t even notice that Facebook and Instagram were down for 6 hours until someone told me. I’ve unplugged myself to the point that sometimes I feel almost like a ‘digital monk’, but honestly, it’s starting to pay off.<\/p>\n
Countless overnight work and back pain have changed for early morning wake up and a yoga routine, shallow work and procrastination during the day have changed for deep and meaningful work. Took me years to realise the importance of it, but hey, better late than never.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I’m doing well (more than ever), so I hope you are too! And please bear with me, we’ll see the fruits of my inner transformation in the future, including the courses I’m working on and more projects. Also, next time Facebook is down, don’t forget that I have a website with up-to-date info with all the contact details<\/a> and more :-)<\/p>\n Keep in touch!<\/p>\n",
"date_published": "2021-10-06T14:33:43+05:00",
"date_modified": "2023-06-18T12:54:44+05:00",
"tags": [
"Social media"
],
"author": {
"name": "Daniel Sokolovskiy",
"url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/",
"avatar": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1732048793"
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"id": "120636",
"url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/all\/rss\/",
"title": "What is RSS and how to use it",
"content_html": " And also how to read blogs, media, and social media pages using RSS<\/p>\n To read interesting blogs and pages on the Internet, I use a thing called RSS. Turns out, not many people know about RSS, so I will tell you what it is and how to use it.<\/p>\n It usually goes like this. When you discover an interesting person or brand, you want to follow them. For example, you find and follow a musician on Instagram or another social network. You’re interested in the person or their work, so you subscribe to their page to get new content from them. Seems logical.<\/p>\n The problem is that the algorithmic social media feeds don’t do a very good job of showing you the content of the authors you subscribe to. To be clear, they don’t have that task at all.<\/p>\n Let’s suppose you are subscribed to the Facebook page of someone you are interested in, but that person rarely posts anything there, once a month or even once every three months. And if the page has few posts and its posts get not many ”likes,” the algorithm of the social networks considers this page “uninteresting” and may not show its new post in your feed. This is known to everyone trying to run their social media pages. In my experience, on average, posts on social networks are only shown to 10-15% of the page followers.<\/p>\n On top of that, as soon as you go to any social network, you are attacked from all sides by notifications, banners, reposts from some unknown friends, advertising, and cats. That is, even if you try to open Instagram or Facebook for something useful, you are inevitably confronted with a bunch of unnecessary information that no one asked for. (Of course, if the goal is just to kill time, then social networks are great, but that’s a conversation for another topic altogether).<\/p>\n In addition to social networks, there are periodicals, blogs and other sites. For example, in the post about the benefits of blogs<\/a> I advised starting blogging on your own domain. But it begs the question: how do you read content scattered across dozens of different sites? Usually, people follow pages on social media for this exact reason, to read all posts in one app. Also, most people and even brands don’t have their own standalone blogs, so there is no place to follow them except social networks. What to do then?<\/p>\n This is where it’s time to talk more about RSS.<\/p>\n RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication)<\/i> is a way to subscribe to any updated content. RSS can be used to subscribe to anything with a so-called feed<\/i>: blogs, social media pages, and even services like Soundcloud or YouTube.<\/p>\n It’s important to understand that RSS is not a specific app, but an open technology. Like email, for example. RSS has been around for decades, and it’s all the more surprising that so few people know about it.<\/p>\n To subscribe and read content using RSS, you need a special app, a reader<\/i>. It’s like for web surfing we use browsers such as Safari or Chrome, so for reading content on RSS you need an app too.<\/p>\n I use an app called Reeder 5<\/a>. Here is what it looks like:<\/p>\n If you are on a Mac, I highly recommend this particular reader: it looks great, works great and syncs quickly between devices via iCloud.<\/p>\n If you are a Windows user, check out Feedly<\/a>. It works right in your browser, like Gmail for email. Feedly is not as cool as Reeder, but nothing better for Windows as far as I know.<\/p>\n To add someone to my reader app, or to subscribe to someone, I click the “plus sign” at the top left (I press the ⌘+N shortcut, of course) and paste the page’s web address. This way I sort of form my personal newsfeed of those authors I’m interested in, even if one is on Instagram, another is on Facebook, and the third is a news website, for example.<\/p>\n The RSS reader allows you to group authors into folders, mark posts as unread, and add them to favourites. Also, there are no annoying ads, reposts, or other information garbage in RSS. That’s all great, but it’s not the best thing.<\/p>\n The best thing is that the content is waiting for you rather than demanding your attention here and now. Social networks are like this: if you haven’t been there for a day or two, all recent posts are already “drowned” in your feed. Many people develop the so-called FOMO because of this — an obsessive fear of missing out on something interesting that is provoked by social networking.<\/p>\n On the RSS, the posts are always waiting for you regardless of any algorithms and precisely in the chronological order in which the authors published them. Obviously, if you won’t open an RSS app for months, you may accumulate a lot of posts. Well, and that’s totally okay — they’ll be waiting, so take your time and enjoy reading later.<\/p>\n in RSS, the content is waiting for you rather than demanding your attention here and now<\/p>\n I’ve even noticed this: after I practically stopped To subscribe by RSS, all you have to do is put the page’s address into the reader, as I wrote above. But under the hood, things are a bit trickier: for a site to be added to the RSS reader, it must have a special file with special formatting, which is where all the new posts are collected. This file is called feed<\/i>. Most news sites and blogs have such a file.<\/p>\n Usually, you don’t need to know this because the reader finds this file on the site. For example, if you paste the address of my blog dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/<\/a> into the reader, the app will quietly search my feed link and actually subscribe to dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/rss\/<\/a>, because this is my blog’s feed address. You probably won’t even notice such technical detail, and again, this knowledge is usually unnecessary.<\/p>\n However, it’s a little different with social networks. If you paste a link to, for example, an Instagram profile, the reader will likely give you an error: “Sorry, there is no feed<\/i> at this address”. Social networks are doing everything they can to retain an audience within their platforms to show people more ads and simply don’t generate feeds for user pages. Social networks don’t want you to read their posts at a convenient time and in a convenient RSS reader, bypassing ads and notifications of new likes from your friends.<\/p>\n Fortunately, there are services like RSS Bridge<\/a> and RSS.app<\/a> that turn content from third-party services into feeds that readers can understand. Just exactly what we need! It works for Instagram, Telegram, Mixcloud, and many other sites that don’t generate the feed file themselves. I’ve been using these services for quite a long time, so I recommend them.<\/p>\n At different times my RSS reader has had anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred authors. From time to time I unsubscribe from some, and add others. It’s such a living, ongoing process. But if you’re just starting out or have decided to try using the RSS, here are a few sources and people I recommend subscribing to:<\/p>\n DJ TechTools<\/a>, DJ community. They write about equipment, software, artists, and industry news.<\/p>\n Sound On Sound: Recording & Mixing<\/a>, a podcast about recording and mixing music from one of the oldest music magazines. They share how to make transients, in what order to put the effects chain, how to use dynamic equalization, and other subtleties.<\/p>\n Concept Art World<\/a>, a showcase of digital artists and conceptual art. They post illustrations of stunning beauty. These works inspire half of the tracks I’ve written.<\/p>\n John 00 Fleming<\/a>, DJ, producer, and owner of the JOOF Recordings label, where I help him with A&R. Aside from announcing tours, new releases, and other typical artist content, John is one of the few who gives interesting behind-the-scenes details about his DJ career and perspective on the industry. You can learn a lot from him if you want to.<\/p>\n Blog posts about John Fleming<\/a><\/p>\n Jason Fried<\/a>, entrepreneur, co-author of Basecamp, Hey, and the books Rework and Remote. He gives an interesting perspective on business, management, marketing and PR.<\/p>\n Jason Fried on marketing by sharing<\/a><\/p>\n Ilya Birman<\/a> — designer, DJ, creator of the blog engine on which my blog runs. He writes about product and navigation design, music, philosophy, life.<\/p>\n Well, subscribe to my blog<\/a> too, of course!<\/p>\n If you know any cool authors or magazines to read – post link in the comments, I’d love to subscribe to them too.<\/p>\n",
"date_published": "2021-09-14T14:32:56+05:00",
"date_modified": "2023-12-09T02:38:42+05:00",
"tags": [
"Productivity",
"Social media"
],
"author": {
"name": "Daniel Sokolovskiy",
"url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/",
"avatar": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1732048793"
},
"_date_published_rfc2822": "Tue, 14 Sep 2021 14:32:56 +0500",
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"id": "120663",
"url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/all\/why-you-should-run-a-blog\/",
"title": "Why you should run a blog",
"content_html": " And where to start, what to write about, and why you shouldn’t blog on social networks<\/p>\n I enjoy reading the blogs of various people: marketers, designers, developers, promoters, entrepreneurs, editors, and specialists in other fields. And I noticed that among my reading list, there are very few representatives of the music industry. And I’m not talking about media, I’m talking about specialists’ blogs of people who would share their personal experiences.<\/p>\n And then I thought: what if someone wants to start a blog but does not know how? Or someone doubts why they need a blog when they have Instagram?<\/p>\n Whether you are a DJ, a music producer, a label manager, or a specialist of any kind (not just in the music industry), I’d like to encourage more good blogs, so in this post I’ll talk about the benefits of blogging and where to start.<\/p>\n There are different kinds of blogs<\/b> A personal blog<\/i> is when the author talks about daily life, posts family photos and reflects on current events. If the author is not a well-known media personality, such a blog is unlikely to be of interest to anyone except a small number of people he or she knows in person.<\/p>\n A professional blog<\/i> is when the specialist shares the intricacies of his profession, talks about the projects he has done, the problems and their solutions, new skills and useful observations. Such blogs are interesting to read, even if unfamiliar with the author.<\/p>\n Here I talk about the second type of blog specifically.<\/p>\n<\/div> When I talk to someone about starting a blog, I often hear a question along the lines of “Who’s going to read me?”. And it’s a reasonable question: If you don’t already have an audience of your own, you’ll probably be the only visitor of your blog, at least for a while. In addition, the Internet already has almost everything.<\/p>\n However, in my opinion, the main benefit of a blog is not that people read you at all. If you write interestingly and for a long period of time, sooner or later, you are sure to get an audience that reads you, but that’s a nice consequence<\/i>, kind of a bonus side-effect and not a reason to start writing.<\/p>\n Here are some good reasons to blog:<\/p>\n To systematize your experience.<\/b> Knowing and understanding something are not the same thing. When you explain something by writing a blog, you understand it much better. That’s exactly what happened to me with the advice series: it would seem that if I’m advising someone something, I’m probably good at it myself, right? But the truth is that I have become good at some things because I explain them to others. Thanks to the blog, the experience is better learned and solidified.<\/p>\n In the advice series<\/a>, I share my experiences and answer readers’ questions about music production, DJing, performing, marketing, management, and other aspects of the music industry<\/p>\n To improve your skills:<\/b> writing, language, discipline. It takes practice to become good at something. Being able to write clearly and present your thoughts in a clear, structured way is no exception. And who writes clearly, thinks clearly. Such skills are worth cultivating.<\/p>\n To spread knowledge<\/b> about yourself and your business. There is an interesting thing with specialist blogs: when you read the behind-the-scenes details of some profession, you inevitably notice that the author clearly knows his stuff, since he understands and talks about all these subtleties. That is how the reputation of an expert is formed. And such a reputation builds trust and opens up new opportunities.<\/p>\n Marketing by sharing<\/a> by Jason Fried<\/p>\n To save time<\/b> so you don’t have to explain the same thing over and over again. Imagine that you’ve written a large, comprehensive post about how you do business. And then in a conversation, someone asks you about this topic. And now, instead of telling everything all over again, you can kindly offer the person to read about it on your blog if he or she is interested. For example, I wrote this very post for this exact reason because I had to explain it several times.<\/p>\n To help people.<\/b> Most of the time you probably won’t even know it. People tend to react more strongly to things they don’t like than to be thankful for things that help them. Nevertheless, rest assured that the knowledge you share will help others learn something new, come to unusual conclusions, or inspire development in their field. Isn’t that great?<\/p>\n These are definitely not all the reasons for blogging, but they’re good enough to get you started.<\/p>\n Run a blog for yourself to systematize experiences, improve skills, and spread knowledge<\/p>\n Let’s say you’ve decided to blog. And then you might be confused: “So what is there to write about?”. The thing is, when you know something, all things seem simple and obvious to you, and you’d be like: “Everybody knows that!”<\/p>\n My advice is to write about what you’re doing and explain why<\/i> you’re doing it that way:<\/p>\n For example, an engineer does mastering of the tracks. How does he do it? What kind of equipment does he use? How is gear better than software plug-ins, and is it better? Does stem mastering really worth it? How to prepare tracks for mastering? How much headroom in volume should a producer leave and why? Is it necessary to do a separate mastering for each streaming platform? Is there really a “volume war” and should producers be worried? Can a DJ play non-mastered tracks? Why do we need mastering at all?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It would seem an ordinary routine that an engineer faces every day, but there is so much to tell! And so it is with almost all professions. Talk about it, and the blog will become your best portfolio.<\/p>\n Another thing I advise you to do is to define for yourself some topics or categories. For example, on this blog I write about DJing, performing, music, marketing, productivity, and professional growth. You don’t have to think of all of such topics ahead of time, but it may be easier for the authors to start writing by identifying a few similar topics in their field.<\/p>\n First, you need to decide where you want to write: on a third-party service or on your own standalone blog.<\/p>\n Third-party services<\/i> are so-called blogging platforms: sites on which you sign up and start a blog. Probably the most popular ones are Tumblr, Blogger, Medium.<\/p>\n A standalone blog<\/i> is a site that runs on your server and is under your control. I strongly recommend this option, and I explain why below.<\/p>\n To start your own standalone blog, you need three things:<\/p>\nThe problem with following on social media<\/h2>\n
What is RSS<\/h2>\n
How to use RSS<\/h2>\n
![\"Full](\"https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/rss-reeder-app-1.png\")
\n![\"Compact](\"https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/rss-reeder-app-2.png\")
\n<\/div>\nThe best thing about RSS<\/h2>\n
mindlessly spending hours<\/s> using social media, and instead started very selectively subscribing to specific authors of interest to me by RSS, I began to feel much better about myself. Less anxiety, less procrastination. More control, more usefulness. I can’t guarantee you’ll feel the same way, but this is how I feel.<\/p>\nHow to add social media pages to RSS<\/h2>\n
Bonus: who to subscribe to<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/why-you-should-run-a-blog-hero.jpg\")
\n<\/div>\n
\nFirst, let me clarify that blogs’ content and purpose can be different. I distinguish at least two main types: personal and professional blogs.<\/p>\nWhy blogging<\/h2>\n
What to write about<\/h2>\n
\n
Where to start<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/blogengine-en.jpg\")
\n