Hello, fellow tinkerer 👋

Since May, I’ve been consistently hosting two live sessions per month. They’re mostly aimed at a solopreneur audience (though not exclusively), and I focus on topics like tools, automation, and AI.

If you’ve got an idea for a topic you’d like me to cover, I’d love to hear from you! Reply to this email and let me know.

1) Reflection:

My kids started school this week — two in high school (yikes) and a fourth grader. My oldest can drive now, so actually drives to school (double yikes).

The night before the first day of school, I read my daughter Glennon Doyle’s essay, “The Talk” from 2012. I used to read it to my older kids when they were around that age. One of my favorite lines is, “We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.” You can read more here.

2) Product

I took two big trips this summer, to New York and San Francisco. I absolutely love trip planning and I’m really detailed about it: what I’m going to do, where I’m going to eat, and how I’m going to get around. That’s not everyone’s jam when they travel, but it sure is mine.

For the trips this year, I actually used Claude to help me sort through some things, like looking up local restaurants or transportation options. I still got recommendations from humans, but Claude did the logistics research.

I’m hosting a free live session later this month on Travel Planning With Claude on August 27th @ 10:00 am CT. Register here.

3) Tip

It’s been really rainy (stormy) in my area for weeks now. I used to love a weather app called Dark Sky, but it was acquired by Apple and later shut down.

The makers of Dark Sky have released a new app, the ACME Weather App. It will notify you if you need an umbrella because of upcoming rain, and also has some fun features like rainbow alerts and sunset alerts.

Want more ideas?

→ If you love capturing ideas from things you read (like articles) or things you listen to (like podcasts or videos), here’s a full idea capture system for different types of media.
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→ I finally have a system for updating a Canva presentation based on a Google Doc. Read how here.

→ Check out this free workshop on August 20th (tomorrow!): Strategic planning for freelancers.

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

Cheers,
Anna

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