Naming the Newsletter

What? #

I needed a name for my newsletter. It being called “Newsletter” just wouldn’t do. That “name” was a relict of Start before you are ready.

Why? #

Words mean things.

The best names convey an essence of what lay beyond. “The Power of Now” is about the energy of the present moment, “The 4-Hour Workweek” about the idea that you can work dramatically less, “Using your Brain –– For a change” about making your neurology work for you.

“Newsletter” is just a category descriptor. What it conveys is: generic, unoriginal, lazy, etc.

Simply, a fitting name for my newsletter would improve the perception it’s contents.

How? #

I generate 10¹ ideas for a name everyday, until I have a good selection (inspired by James Altuchers idea generation practice.)

My list of ideas #

Here is the raw list of what I came up with. Some of these are awful, but I needed to get those out of my system, to get at the better ones that would come after. I’m sharing the whole list to give you a sense of the progression. Feel free to just skip straight to the meta discussion.

Sunday:

• weekly update
• challenging
• better every week
• evolving
• challenge update
• more from me
• progress report
• progressive enhancement
• bit by bit
• step by step
• every week’s a challenge
• challenged weekly
• challenged news
• all the evolution
• hardly structured (too deep)

Monday:

• the hard report
• the retort report (off topic)
• daring updates
• daring progression (double meaning)
• daring darling
• daring change
• daring development (1. hard development, 2. challenging progress itself)
• growth report
• changing for the better
• keeping up the momentum
• keeping up with evolution
• winding progression
• the winding ways (analogy for change)
• wandering to victory
• the winding road of progress
• the winding approach
• roundabout rise
• daring drive

Tuesday:

• demanding more of yourself
• down the road (analogy for progress)
• further along (sound more like a coaching format or a podcast)
• another week, another way
• the long road to rising/riches
• the winding path of betterment
• the winding path of development
• the winding path to nowhere
• a winding path of progress
• demanding development (double meaning)
• endearing evolution
• endearing development

Wednesday:

• stimulating growth (double meaning)
• stimulating progress (double meaning)
• stimulate positive change
• stimulating transformation
• flowing towards transformation
• a winding way of awakening
• a winding way of advancement
• a winding walk of competence
• a winding walk to transformation (too on the nose)
• winding up on top
• winding up better
• a small step for man
• the smallest of changes

Thursday:

• continuous improvement
• inspiring incremental improvement
• incremental improvement report
• choosing to pursue
• choosing to improve
• choosing transformation

Friday:

• wafting waves of success
• wafting winds of change

Saturday:

• undoubtedly better
• mastering the path forward
• IMprovement (incremental momentum)
• various ways to evolve
• wasting daylight
• the inner game of progress
• now that’s a challenge!
• enhance! (zoom-in in movies)

Ok, towards the finish I was going off the deep end 😂.

Effects #

Thinking of names confronted me with the questions of: What am I doing with the newsletter? What does it stand for? How can I capture that in a word? Or an image?

Themes #

To me, the newsletter is about continuous personal development and growth.

The three images I came up with that embodied this were:

• Walking a winding path. Progress has it’s twists and turns but you just have to keep going and you will make it to the end. The path not straight-forward and differs for each individual. We’re all own our own journey.
• A river flowing downstream. The river flows continuously. The water that it is made up of has a lot of power. The river will make it’s own way.
• A (sun)flower waving in the wind (see my logo.) The winds might blow in this or that direction, but the flower remains stoic. The flower needs to keep growing or it will wither away, it goes through it’s own lifes journey.

Tools used #

Because I played around with alliterations, I created myself a list of nouns to reference what I wanted the newsletter to symbolize.

• challenge
• progress
• evolution
• development
• change
• growth
• momentum
• enhancement
• transformation
• shift

I expanded this list by looking through Synonyms and having Claude generate me a noun with a similar meaning, but starting with the letter X.

Also: Merriam Webster for definitions.

Picking a winner #

I went through and picked a selection of contenders (bolded in the list above), which I weeded down to five candidates.

• Flowing towards Transformation
• A Winding Path of Progress
• Changing for the Better
• Winding up Better
• Wafting Winds of Change

With input from my wife, I decided on A Winding Path of Progress, which had been my favorite picture all along.

Creating a logo #

I had already envisioned a logo to go along with this title while I conceived it. I wanted a twisting road making its way into the horizon. To image generation AI I went and with this prompt I got what I wanted:

winding path into the distance drawn in fine red line #d70000 on white background, minimalistic simple, no scenery

After some editing in GIMP (the linux photoshop), I had this final result:

I added some logic to my website, where on /newsletter routes it would display this logo, rather than my normal sunflower. Here is the code of how I did that in my hugo setup.

Conclusion #

This was fun and easy to do. The method of generating many ideas over time worked very well for me.

If you are now interested in checking out the newsletter, you can sign up below😉