Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. I enjoy the new perspectives they provide, especially interviews. Debbie Millman’s legendary design matters podcast, for example, is only one of many great shows where the host manages to stimulate a conversation that yields the most amazing stories and opinions. Another such conversation is the one I listened to last weekend: Tim Ferriss talks to Derek Sivers about his career as a professional musician, circus clown, speaker, entrepreneur, and many more interesting things. A wonderful conversation that I highly encourage you to listen to.

At one point, Derek mentions a project he has been working on and I really love the idea behind it, so I thought I’d share it with you: Many personal websites, including this one here, have an “about” page. It’s a page that tells you something about the background of a person or about the services provided. But what this page often doesn’t answer – and neither do Twitter or Facebook pages – is what this person really is up to at the moment. A page that answers questions like: What are you focused on at this point in your life? What have you just started working on that excites you like nothing else? Did you just move to a new town? Did you start a new career as a Jengascript wrangler? To answer all those questions, Derek suggests to create a “now page”. A page that tells visitors of your site “what you’d tell a friend you hadn’t seen in a year.”

If you want to get an idea of how such a page can look like, go to nownownow.com, a directory Derek has created. In about four years, he has collected almost 2000 examples of personal sites with a /now page.

And here is my own new “now page”.

~

ⓘ Webmentions are a way to notify other websites when you link to them, and to receive notifications when others link to you. Learn more about Webmentions.