Yesterday I disturbed the spider ecosystem thriving on Tiny Porch, the official name of the front deck of my backyard Tiny House.

I'd been meaning to do it all summer. But I'd been avoiding it, instead breezing through the Tiny Porch and into my summer office.

Kidding myself about the growing number of feathery webs. Ignoring the small, growing piles of spider trash—the chewier parts of a fly, the husk of a beetle—stacked in makeshift rubbish dumps on the floor.

Then I started noticing more and more egg sacs—cement-colored balls that look springy, like they're made out of a woolly mattress.

I knew if I didn't sweep out the place soon, I'd be dealing with a new colony. I thought of them as immigrants, invading my space, in need of deportation.

Then again, they likely saw themselves as natives, and me as the immigrant, invading their space.

Anyway... I can't get into all that today.

I knew a colony was imminent because I've read Charlotte's Web many times over. That scene where Charlotte's egg sac finally cracks open, spilling thousands of baby spiders into the barn? That scene thrills Wilbur the pig. His new friends are here!

But that exact scene playing out on Tiny Porch is not the story of a naïve little pig tickled (pink?) to have a thousand new friends.

Instead it's pure horror: thousands of minuscule spiders spilling out of their torn woolly mattress and setting up house in the crevices of Tiny Porch.

So, I swept them away. But in deference to Wilbur, and because I am not a monster, I first deposited the spidey sacs at the base of a tree behind the Tiny, where I'd hoped they'd be sheltered well enough.

I was going to pay Emily to clean it. Emily is like a second daughter to me, so I'd be happy to pass her some cash. But I decided to do it myself, because—after so many hours behind a computer and in full-on conference mode in Toronto last week—I needed to give my brain a break.

Also, Emily said she was afraid of spiders.

So I washed down the walls and screens (so satisfying to see the hydrated dust pool down the walls). Finally, I swabbed the decking dramatically, like a high-spirited sailor happy in the sunshine.

It was a picture-perfect breezy day, which only added to the Hollywood musical, mop-as-dance-partner feel of the moment.

It was only later that I thought of the obvious metaphor—cleaning out the cobwebs, reclaiming a space. The satisfaction of doing the claiming yourself. Of finishing your own unfinished business. Giving yourself a clean-slate. A spider-free spot to do your best work.

Georgetown professor Cal Newport says the details of the physical space you work in can substantially up the quality of what you produce. Giving yourself a place you feel good in helps you maximize what you get out of your brain.

Cal calls this principle "location-boosted cognition." A place free of cobwebs, actual and metaphorical, is especially important for anyone who does a lot of thinking work—like marketers, like writers.

To be honest, Cal's description of "maximizing brain output" feels a little bloodless to me. But then again, his job is to create bloodless names for what goes on inside Tiny Houses tucked under a copse of trees in late August.

Especially in late August, when (as Thoreau wrote) "the year is full of warnings of its lateness, as is life." (h/t to Austin Kleon for reminding me of that).

This time of year, he gets a little melancholy, that Thoreau. He saw late summer and early fall as the "night of the year."

Time is closing in—on the year, as it will eventually on our lives. (See? Melancholy.)

So Thoreau challenges us, in his classic heavy-handed way that's either wildly motivating or mildly depressing (or both): "What have we done with our talent?"

I also am a little melancholy this time of year. Which is maybe why I wanted to clear out my own cobwebs. I wanted to clear the path I walk through on my way to do my best work. To up my "location-boosted cognition."

I guess I could ask you the same big question: What are the cobwebs you need to clear?

But that feels unnecessarily... I don't know... moralistic? Heavy?

I'll just leave things here with a question or two—as the last full week of August rolls into fall:

How can you boost your own location—Actual? Metaphorical? You pick!

What business from the year is still unfinished? And what can you do this week to finish it?

Tweet me. Email me. Send me a signal. Let me know.

I'd love to hear.

If all you consume is clickbait media, pretty soon you'll look down at the pot-belly of ignorance, writes Shane Parrish:

I usually dislike the judgy, holier-than-thou attitudes of those who rail against the pleasure of a lighthearted social scroll.

It's a similar attitude to those who scoff at the pleasure of a mindless sitcom or a People magazine. Sheesh—lighten up, folks! Have you been reading Thoreau?

But I'm down with this one, for two reasons:

Marketers/writers can use his two filters, Time and Detail, as a way to discern what's worth spending the most effort (and money) on. (Most clickbait fails at both those things, Shane says.)

Time = How lasting is the theme or topic? How relevant is it historically, and how long will it be accurate? What will it look like in 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years?

Details = Can we serve up meaningful, accurate fluency in this area? Is this an expertise we want to claim? Is there enough to say about this theme to sustain us long-term? Can we tell lots of smaller stories about it?

In other words, don't fill your head with junk. And don't create junk, either.

I drew this imperfect chart as a guide. I say "imperfect" because it's not comprehensive and precise. But it's one way to think about where to focus your resources.

In this chart, I've subbed in "Timeless Themes" for Time. "More/Less Detail" refers to the detail inherent in the theme itself; the richness of the depths we might plumb.

Read Shane's full story.

I'm putting together a new talk on rethinking the email newsletter. My hypothesis is that many companies are missing the opportunity completely by focusing on the wrong things.

In my research I discovered this nugget from Adobe's 2018 Consumer Email Survey: Every day we spend an enormous amount of time (5.6 hours!) loitering around our email inboxes.

And we have a short fuse for a lot of what we see in there. The three most annoying phrases used in email:

Staaaaahhhhhp. Flip through the whole Adobe 2018 Consumer Email Survey on SlideShare.

Fogo Island Inn is on an island off another island in chilly waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland, Canada. Technically, it's in the Labrador Sea. But now I'm just showing off my ability to use Wikipedia.

Anyway, I've never been. But it looks spectacular. I want to go to there, as my best friend Tina Fey would say.

Economic and cultural resilience is a big part of the Fogo brand story. I love how they tell that story simply and in a quirky way: through an economic nutrition label, which details how the (many many) dollars guests pay for a one-night stay are used, and the impact the Inn has on Canada and the world.

I've talked sometimes about using a "hermit crab" approach in writing: How can you take a format that's familiar in one area, and let it be a home to another? Like: Writing a job description as a haiku. Or an executive bio as a recipe. That kind of thing.

Fogo does that. Plus, it's a creative way to answering an FUQ (Frequently Unasked Question) a lot of us have when we stay in chichi places: Why does this place cost so much? (I wrote about FUQs in another stellar issue.)

See more Fogo here.

I love it when companies masterfully combine words with pictures on Instagram. Too many of us think of Instagram as a solely visual play. But the magic formula is actually this:

strong writing + strong visuals = YAAASSSS

So, speaking of hermit-crab content, I love what the New York Public Library is doing with bringing novels to its Instagram stories feed.

Three jobs that will thrive as the rest of us are replaced by robots: Creators, composers, coaches. P.S. I'd add a fourth: Curators.

What if—before we sat down to write—we thought of all the ways things might go wrong? Check this out if you work with writers (or you are a writer).

This is what happens every minute of every day. You're not tired I'm tired.

LinkedIn asked me: What's in your bag? Update: I lost Woz's card.

Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman

This book hooked me from the first essay: "There are many joys of parenting, but ultimately we are robots training our upgrades to replace us." And that's not even the best line, as I soon found out. I'm savoring this one. Just read it. (Thanks, Nick Westergaard!) (BONUS: Aaron Draplin's cover art.)

September 25-26: Brand Manage Camp, Las Vegas

October 3-4: Digital Summit Charlotte

October 9: PRSA International, Austin, TX

October 10: Content Jam, Chicago

November 5-7: Healthcare Internet Conference, Scottsdale