14 Comments
User's avatar
Heartfelt Boundaries's avatar

How have I never heard of TK before? I’ve used a similar method for reminding myself to come back and add or finish something, but I love that some writing apps actually recognize TK and highlight it for us! Thanks for this!! 💙

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Lizzie Gray's avatar

Really useful - thank you 🙏

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Elizabeth Lord's avatar

This is a fantastic tip, thanks for sharing! I’ve wandered off and fallen in to a countless number of rabbit holes trying to find the thing that I needed for my writing, but inevitably, I got distracted! I’ll definitely be implementing this!

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Pamela Wang, PhD's avatar

Really surprised substack has this feature. Thanks for the tip.

My favourite advice is: Finish the project asap. Make it tiny and easy to ship.

We often try too hard to make everything perfect / organise it all. Project scope creep is absolutely deadly for ADHD motivation.

It’s better to make a crappy first draft. Then minor edits and hit publish. Even if it is still flawed. We can do better next time if we aren’t still struggling with our first draft.

Mindset shift from perfection to repeated iteration + real world feedback.

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Kym's avatar

This is a great way of working. I do something similar, as found I was getting hung up on the small stuff. What I was using was XXX and that works well for 'find' commands in Word too. TK seems the more widely used term though and that it is so clearly recognised by Substack is also helpful!

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P.G. Sundling's avatar

XXX is also the searchable token I was using. It's probably all those years in math where they used X for the variable name. When I hear TK, I think about the linux software.

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Raymond Drye's avatar

I can attest: this is a fantastic little trick. Getting a good flow with writing is both crucial and satisfying for our work, and the "tk" method works wonders for maintaining that state. While it's a great tip for anyone, it's especially useful for ADHD-ers. Great work, Jesse!

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Paige Meredith Ray's avatar

Love this.

I have used something in the past, where I type “____” to indicate to myself that there is something missing in this particular area, but I love the way of thinking that researching and drafting are two separate jobs.

Could you talk more about how the subject, editor automatically chooses/sees the TK and pops up that warning?

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Mara Melia's avatar

Wow this is really good tip 💪🏻

Does everyone write straight on substack?

My problem is I write on other places first, like Ulysses, and as I just write and leave the editing for later, I never post, because.. I never get to edit (too-bored, have-moved-on, etc). (You can tell as my posting frequency on here is… once a year, having accumulated a bunch of essays in Ulysses, my reMarkable, and Day One)

Maybe writing straight on here would solve this problem? 🤔

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Miranda Johansson's avatar

I've always put my own comments in texts with double parantesis like ((this)) but this TK might be more helpful to find stuff when needed!

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TheCosyReader's avatar

I’m obsessed with how simple, but effective this is. I haven’t heard of TK before, usually filing my mind blanks in text with “?????” Which is messy and stops the flow. TK is my new favourite.

Thank you for sharing.

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Ros Barber's avatar

Damn clever. My question is how come I am both a professional writer and ADHD and this is the first I am hearing of it? 😂 Thank you so much, Jesse, for sharing it.

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David Arthur's avatar

>...a conveniently rare combination of letters in English...

Unless you're writing about the Latke-Loving Cryptkeeper of Nootka Sound! 😀

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Juliana Rivera's avatar

I already do something like that! I just put "insert here"

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