Hello, fellow tinkerer 👋

Earlier this week, I drove my teenager to an overnight camp. It was more than 3 hours round trip, so I had a lot of car time. I'm currently listening to David Sedaris's new book The Land and Its People.

I listened to an interview Sedaris gave about his process for writing essays. If you're not familiar with him, he's a humorist, and his essays are self-deprecating and semi-autobiographical. He tests out material in front of live audiences for a long time before writing the final version, seeing what lands and gets a laugh.

As someone whose work is almost entirely online, this was fascinating to me. I never read my own work aloud. But I'm considering starting a podcast in 2027, a variation of my blog, so maybe I need to start doing that?

If you're a writer and listen to your work, can you reply back and let me know — do you read it aloud yourself, or do you use some type of read-aloud tool?

1) Reflection:

I wrote recently about how much the LinkedIn algorithm has changed. I know many people hate the platform, but I used to enjoy it. Now it's overrun with AI slop.

However, LinkedIn is trying to do something about that and recently added a flag:

(Admittedly, it took me a bit to find this — seems like it's only available on the web version and not mobile right now.)

It's not the first time we've seen huge platform shifts. X/Twitter. Instagram used to be a place for photos and now is a place for Reels. It's sometimes exhausting because you either have to adapt or acknowledge that your posts will have very limited reach. At least this AI slop button might clean up my feed....

2) Tip

LinkedIn has always suppressed external links because it wants to keep people on the site. Hard for me, when I'm trying to share links to resources I've created for fellow solopreneurs or free live sessions I'm hosting.

I recently started a LinkedIn newsletter, with the theory that LinkedIn won't suppress its own product and then I can put links in the newsletter. I also include a few paragraphs of tips/advice specifically for people running for solo businesses.

Bi-weekly. If you're interested, you can subscribe here and get a notification when I publish a new issue.

3) Product

My friend Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax recently released a tote bag that says "Tax the Rich." In addition to being a tax expert, Hannah is also an artist who lost her studio in Hurricane Helene. The money from tote bag sales will help her rebuild her studio. You can buy one here.

I was a guest on Hannah's podcast a few months ago, and you can listen here.

Want more ideas?

→ Scott Siff, founder of Pivoters, talks about why people have outdated ideas about workers 55+. Read the article here.
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→ I wrote about the tools I have connected to Claude, like Airtable, Notion, and my Google Drive here.

That's it for this issue of Tinkering! See you again in two weeks.

Cheers,
Anna

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