So I'm trying to get more intentional with my sewing projects, by planning which fabrics to pair with which patterns, sketching out my design elements, and thinking through how various garments would pair with each other.
I just started a sewing notebook to do (ROUGH) sketches, but I came across this video which had a great template for projects (screenshot here). i don't have a printer, and wondered if you all have recommendations on good (ideally free) softwares you can use to track similar details.
thanks so much!

Hi everyone,
I used to use Asana as an operations manager for a small coaching firm. Now, as a stay-at-home mom, I use it as a management tool for my household. My husband and I create work requests through ticketing for one another, organize packing for trips, and most recently a huge project getting our house ready to sell.
Well, we just received an offer on our house yesterday, and the closing date is in exactly one month. We have a lot to do to get out of here (we are moving out of state). Anyway, I am sitting down to map out a project to do just that and was wondering if anyone had seen a project template that would be a good start. I am going to play around with a project management one, but I thought I would throw it out there to see if anyone has any ideas. Thanks!

Hi everyone. I am in loooove with my Libra Color and I would love to use it to journal with a template I have with a cognitive behavioral therapy guide. I have the document in my connected Google Drive and have downloaded it but I would like to be able to write on it and save the daily copies with my annotations somewhere. I am open to notebook or book collection but I really want to be able to write on the template page. Thoughts?

Hi,
For the benefit of the group, I wanted to share some feature requests I recently submitted to the RM Team:

• The ability to reassign page templates in bulk. That is, in the multipage view, be able to select two or more pages and to then reassign a new template.
• Provide the ability to choose a default sort order for Tags other than "Last Modified." There is a setting under Tags that allows for a sort order change, but it only offers the default value of "Last Modified."
• Allow us to assign one or more Tag(s) to a notebook under Notebook Settings, and that these Tags will then be automatically added to each page in that Notebook.
• Provide the ability to select a word on a page, then long press to bring up a context menu. From there, offer the ability to turn that word into a Tag.

I am still hoping for increased capability with shapes.

Hello!
I love Zim and have used it quite a bit over the years.
I'm thinking of setting my wife up with it, using the Journal plugin as a symptom tracker for her. But I think it would probably also be helpful to have a separate Journal section as a food tracker.
Conceivably, I might able to create a reasonable template to have one document serve both purposes, but I think her ADHD would be better served by having single-function pages.
Does anyone know if it's possible to have more than one calendar-controlled Journal space in a single notebook?

Hi all. I'm an academic researcher in human vision. I've been using OpenCV and JupyterLab for years now, and am looking to revamp my coding setup. I want to start pushing some open-source code to github, and am generally trying to move away from being an "academic" coder. I have a few questions about different editors, but am mostly just looking to hear what your set-up looks like, and what you like / don't like about it. Thanks!

1. Should I try out VS Code or Jetbrains?
2. What's the best code completion tool out there? The copilot extension in VS Code?
3. Any blogs / videos / tutorials you recommend that go through IDE set-up?
4. For those that work in Python, do you ever use jupyter notebooks? Should I move away from coding in notebooks?
5. Or should I just go all in, and start coding everything entirely in Google Colab?

This is the template that I use for most of my projects now. https://github.com/patrickmineault/zipf

My brother is 5 years older than me. He is 60 now. He was always a difficult child, troubled and extreme in anything he was doing. Hi IQ, excellent memory, loves history, aspects of genetics and science, but did poorly at school as he did not want to study. he only drew human profiles and angels in his notebooks. Never read a book from beginning to the end, but he would discuss it with others just by reading bits of it. He always thought he knew better than others. Studying was a waste of time. Working was a waste of time as well. He only ever wanted to be the centre of attention. Never looked for a job, so not a day of employment.
He disrespected any household rules and never to this day really cared about his parents, or show any interest in anyone in our large family. Totally detached and knows nothing about anyone.
If you disagree with him or challenge him, he gets furious. Never apologized to anyone, never said he was wrong or sorry.
He was into politics (back in the old country, opposition, was imprisoned and was very proud of it), parapsychology, astral body, hypnoses..and had the weirdest friends. He thrived by being surrounded by many people and listened to. Thrived on any attention he could get. Then he found the religion, in 1987, it is a sect, and became so extreme that the church kicked him out at some point. He was taking over from the properly educated and appointed preachers at the church. Formed his own groups that never lasted.
Religion meant manipulating others through fear. he would preach to anyone who would listen, especially troubled and mentally ill people. Those who desperately needed hope, like him. He is convinced his role was to convert people, he is on a higher mission. My mom, who is on medication for her mental issues was having a really hard time as he would scare her with: "the satan is living inside of you, you need to stop taking meds and fall on your knees and pray" and he would totally mess up her condition....His social posts and speeches are full of critique. He also condemns women who for example want to break out from abusive relationships. His view on women is very very backwards. Women have no rights and their only mission is to serve and pray.
HE lives from the so called "sponsors" who pay his bills. My parents gave him a little place to live, with his much younger wife that totally supports him and is very obedient (also never had a real job), two boys who are becoming defiant now with age. He does not like me as I refuse to send him money, and it all viewed through how much money he can get from someone (but I do send to my parents who in turn send to him and pay his bills). I could write so much. Do you know anyone similar?
I am really interested in hearing if you think this falls under Messiah complex that I have recently learnt about.

Context: I have this roommate (20M) named J. He’s in love w me and I’m not. I’ve told him over and over I’m not interested and we can sleep together and not date but he’ll just cry and basically force me into this weird limbo relationship thing we have. He basically freaks the fuck out if I hang out w other men, sleep w other people or leave the apt/go out without him. He tries to convince me to never leave the apt without him bc he’s worried. He guilts me into staying or being late bc he can’t sleep or eat alone.
Issue: We have roaches. Fucking disgusting. It’s mostly due to the neighbors but we still have them. The apartment complex has fumigated 4 times now and they keep coming back bc J and our other roommate C (24M) just don’t clean up or keep the standards the fumigators tell us to keep which are no food out and mop daily for 2 weeks btw.
J and C really don’t seem to mind the bugs as they’ll see some, shrug and walk away. Not even spray them. Ive made a cleaning schedule that they don’t follow no matter how many times I ask. They don’t take the trash out till I ask aka when it’s literally overflowing with bags of trash on the side of the actual trash can. J will take the trash out when I’m in the kitchen w him to show “how much he helps out around the house”They don’t wipe the counters off after they make food. Just leave the crumbs and the counter sticky etc. basically roach heaven up in here.
I’ve been caulking the gaps everywhere around the apt, baseboards, under counters, drawers, cabinets etc. to stop the roaches from coming in. I’ve also been organizing, decluttering, deep cleaning behind/under, creating itineraries and caulking every gap I see for everywhere. I do the itineraries bc we all have really bad object permanence and rebuy a lot of stuff. I’ve been doing this for every single place in the apartment. Im a full time student w a part time job working in an elementary school. A lot of my free time is either hw or creating lesson plans and activities for my students.
I’ve been asking for help but I get none then they get mad at me for not telling them explicitly what to do. I don’t think I should have to baby step these grown men into caring about living in roaches but okay. I asked J to clean out, organize, make an itinerary and caulk the main cabinet bc I had midterms to study for and I couldn’t go to the schools library bc there was a shooter threat and I was scared lmao so I biked to the city library. Also, he’s like 6’2 and can reach the top and back and I can’t. First thing he asked was, “you can’t reach it w the stool?” Lmao. The entire time I was explaining he kept brushing me off and saying “I got it, I got it”. Making me feel like I’m over explaining and being annoying so I left to the library to do midterms.
I came back and he just reorganized everything, made a general map of where stuff it (this square is snacks, this square is Tupperware etc) and only caulked the bottom shelf that’s on the ground. He didn’t wipe down the shelves that are covered in roaches and roach shit. He didn’t caulk the shelves or the outline of the cabinet. He didn’t make an itinerary. He showed me the cabinet all proud and I voiced my concerns about how he literally did it completely wrong and how he’s gonna have to do it again. I told him, “I told you exactly what to do and told you to call with questions. Why didn’t you call me?” His excuses were: “the bugs can’t get into the cabinet through the shelves if they bottom is caulked off” “I couldn’t find the paper for the itinerary” “I didn’t know you wanted me to wipe the shelves out” “I didn’t wanna bug you” “I forgot what you said”
He literally wrote down this little map on a notebook. He said, “I use this for school, I can’t use this one” but he literally just did?
He basically shut down and ignored me so I had to ask, “did me criticizing the cabinet hurt your feelings?” he said yes and I had to hold him and explain that when criticize it isn’t an attack on your character, I just need it done. I can’t do it all. I explained my frustrations bc I told him explicitly what to do and asked why he didn’t do it and he said he forgot. I said, “why didn’t you write it down” he said, “bc I thought I got it” when him forgetting is a consistent problem. I asked why he didn’t call me and he said, “I didn’t wanna bother you, I got it”. I said, “you obviously didn’t have it. Why didn’t you just do it, why do I have to ask you? If there’s dead roaches and roach droppings where we put our food, why do I have to baby step you through wiping that out?” He just said he didn’t know he was supposed to do it.
We have this exact same conversation about 3 times a month?
1) please take initiative with literally anything, having to ask is exhausting. If something needs to get done, just do it. I shouldn’t have to ask for simple household things like fix the rug if the dogs scratch it up
(Quick story about the rug: I tried to “test” if J or C would fix the doorway rug bc it was messed up, kinda in a ball bc the dogs scratched it and moved it. You couldn’t open the door properly bc of the rug. A simple household “no one’s fault” task that affects us all. They didn’t fix it for a month. I counted the days. I was very frustrated and asked why they literally don’t do anything at all unless I baby step them. I asked, “why don’t you guys just do something that you see needs to get done?”. J blew up at me saying, “why do you expect us to do everything? Why didn’t you fix the rug, they’re your dogs. You live here too so don’t get mad at us for not fixing a simple thing when you didn’t do it either”. I fixed the rug and continue to fix the rug now.)
2) when you face a barrier please try to find another way to solve the problem instead of giving up such as, asking me, googling it etc
Anyways, this was about a week ago and he still hasn’t redone the cabinet even tho I’ve asked everyday. I’m so tired. J and I been living together for like 2 years and no matter how much I cry, ask, put sticky notes, text, call etc etc, nothing changes. It’s like having children. I’m so tired, like legitimately. I wanna give up. I’m tired of the same conversations over and over. I rather just do it by myself but idk if I should give up.
Should I try to hold him accountable for the upkeep of OUR apartment or should I just shut up and do it myself?

When i use LLMs in my local machine using the Ollama Framework ,I use CLI to test the models out after downloading and the response i get for chat models is usually clear (sometimes it hallucinates). but mostly clear.
Then when i use Langchain to build functions usingPromptTemplate ,SequenceChains the model will suddenly loose control and starts to generate random output almost endlessly for 40-50mins or even more until i interrupt the notebook kernel.
It is generating question answer pairs , or endless paragraphs
I've experienced this behavior in many models; Gemma , LLaMa 2 , Qwen , Phi 2 ( this one breaks often ) All around 2-5 B parameters
What is happening here ?? Is it due to some internal prompt inside these Langchain abstractions??? idk what is causing this behavior . I always keep the temperature param at 0 still this happens

My name is Gabriel , I'm currently on a quest to find a co-founder to collaborate on a product invention idea and startup company. I'm looking for a mechanical/industrial engineer and electrical engineer. The idea I'm working on is for the fitness/health market, which was estimated at 78 Billion in 2021. My invention aims to solve a common problem in an elegant and intelligent fashion. It not only has the potential to be a very useful and successful product, but It has the potential to build a very successful and ever growing business around it. The goal is to validate the product in the market and evolve the MVP to a product that can be integrated with already existing fitness/health apps. I truly believe that with the right team my idea can become a mainstream household product.
At the moment there are no products that solve my problem in the manner that my idea does. There are however other attempts to solve this problem from a few companies, but due to lack of efficiency in their products they don't truly solve the problem. My idea can solve the problem and also has a built in business strategy within the solution. It has the ability to disrupt the business and change the landscape in the health and fitness industry.
Currently, I only have sketches of the product idea, ideas for mechanisms, product and feature development plan, and a business plan in progress. I currently do not have the skillset to develop this product myself, but I am determined to share my idea and partner up with the right person/persons to turn it into a reality. I am willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. I'll sell the house and liquidate all my assets if that's what it takes to succeed. This is an idea that I have had for a few years that has evolved a lot during that time. It sat as an idea in my notebook where I planned on touching back on it when I have the time and financial resources to launch it myself, however, I've realized that's not the most strategic route. I want to connect with self-starters and visionaries who are creative, motivated, intelligent, ambitious and passionate about their work. Someone who can see the potential and is equally excited and motivated to bring it to life.
A little bit about myself: I'm 33 years old, homeowner, working fulltime at the moment, I grew up in NJ and lived there until 2023. Ever since I was a child I was always intrigued with just about everything, especially how things functioned. I would always become obsessed with trying to fix things that people told me weren't working properly. During my adolescent years I had a lot of difficulty in school, couldn't concentrate and my grades dropped, I was also diagnosed with ADHD around that time. Subsequently, I got involved with the wrong crowd and ended up losing total interest in my academics to the point that I dropped out of high school at 16. I started working right after dropping out first at a movie theater, then I worked at a few pizzerias after that and other similar jobs. It wasn't until I was in my early 20's that I realized that without an education and a solid plan I would likely not achieve the life I wanted for my future self and future family. At 24, I took my GED test and enrolled in my local community college. I ended up graduating with my associate in 1 year with a 3.7 GPA, I then transferred to TCNJ and graduated with my bachelor's in Criminology. After college life didn't exactly go as planned and life took me in another direction. My hunger for inventing and thinking of ideas for bettering existing products, processes, and wanting to improve things is with me every single day. I think of inventions and business ideas EVERY SINGLE DAY. I don't want to continue to let time pass without me shooting every possible shot I can to redirect my life towards where my passions lie. I'm a firm believer that just about anything is possible with determination, resilience and discipline. I really hope that this post makes it to the right people and I’m very excited to see where this journey will lead us. If you are interested in and think you would be a good fit please reach out and we can coordinate a meeting to go over the idea. An NDA is required to be signed prior to meeting. Thanks, Gabriel

I recently purchased a Kindle Scribe and I very much appreciate the native experience of the notebooks. However, I am wondering what the best / intended use is for some of the templates (such as the dotted, weekly, monthly, and the one with the 4 boxes and lines). Right now, I am just using the lined templates.
What templates do you all use and how do you use them?

I'm very excited to announce that I've finetuned Llama3-Instruct:8b to generate Cypher statements based on the GPT-4o synthetic dataset I've generated at the start of the week. I have used the inspiration from Geraldus Wilsen to use Unsloth and updated it a bit to use chat prompt template (system, user, assistant messages). Please test it out and let me know how it goes as I used mostly default finetuning arguments because I don't really know what I'm doing 😃 . I have also added example code to show how to implement it with LangChain!
Links:
Finetuning notebook with docs: https://github.com/neo4j-labs/text2cyphetree/main/finetuning/unsloth-llama3#using-chat-prompt-template
HuggingFace model:https://huggingface.co/tomasonjo/text2cypher-demo-16bit
Ollama models: https://ollama.com/tomasonjo/llama3-text2cypher-demo

Apologies, I'm going nuts trying to google all of this, and figured I should ask the brain trust. My ideal setup:
Surface Pro 9 as a main note-taking machine, mostly with pen. Don't care much about draw-to-text, but to-do lists would be nice. Automatically sync by OneDrive or DropBox across 4 machines.
It would be cool to set up a page template that, when opened, simply titles itself with the date. Graph paper background.
I'll have one master notebook for work, to a folder with daily meeting notes (the auto-dated sheets), and another set of special meeting notes that I'll title myself (vendors, customer, etc.). One page within OneNote that I can keep handy that has an overview of current project status would be awesome.
This seems like it should all be doable, but I'm new to OneNote and there's a bit of a learning curve. Thanks

All of my life I've been trying to live up to her standards. She constantly makes new rules to follow, which is hard to keep up with. I don't know what I'm doing wrong because she can be illogical. I wish I could find somewhere else to go, but my hours have been cut from my job that's no fault of my own, and now I'm looking for a new job to financially support myself. In the meantime, I'm stuck dealing with the narcissistic abuse from her.
I stopped drinking but now I have the habit of smoking and I go outside. She controls where I can smoke. She complains that the smoke won't get on her outside furniture. Whenever I have shade, she complains the neighbor would be affected. So I have to go near the corner of the fence with no shade.
Before I cook, she already makes an argument that I would make a mess, even though I always clean up after myself. I have to clean everything before I start eating because if I just take a break and eat while the hot pan is cooling on the stove, she would rant and rave about me being a slob.
I have to check to make sure everything is clean, including myself. When I work out at home and sweat, she shames me, complaining that I am dirty and I reek because I sweat during a workout.
On my days off, if I binge-watch my favorite show she makes me feel guilty for sitting and relaxing.
I help her with her taxes every year, and she feels like she is entitled to have me deal with it because I stay with her.
Whenever I put my foot down and say no to something, she makes me feel like I have committed a crime. I do the household chores as usual. But she complains that I didn't water enough, or didn't at all, even though I have this morning.
We have cameras all over the house and when she is away she spies on me. She will call me at 6 am or 10 pm asking if I took the garbage bin out, or “why are you sleeping on my couch?”
After a few days of the house to myself, she unexpectedly showed up, and then whatever I had on the table she would shame me and say “Look at all of this stuff. Get all of your things out of here” when it's just my notebook and pen on the kitchen table that I set down for a minute to Use the bathroom.
Her favorite thing to tell me is that reliable and doesn't help at all. When I always do the chores around the house, help her with anything technical, and her personal handyman, dictionary, and interpreter for her postage letters.
It depresses me, and sometimes I feel like I'm suffering. I'm never praised or acknowledged for the good things I've done. Only the bad.
I emotionally detach myself from her because of her years of verbal abuse. She's called me a tramp, hobo, nasty, evil, disrespectful, ridiculous.
I just want to share because I don't think I'm alone and maybe this post can resonate with someone. Also, any ideas to cope while living with someone like this?

Not sure why I feel compelled to post this, but I do.
The past few years have been really rough. I’m ready to let all of this go and I guess a small part of me thinks that maybe writing it out will put a cap on it.
I don’t think that I’ve ever been”normal” per se. Growing up I never had a lot of friends, and to be honest I still really don’t but I’ve always preferred it that way. As a child I never had much interest in doing anything other than reading my books and writing little short stories in my notebook. I’ve always had friends, I’ve just never been one of those super popular kids that bops around from group to group. When I was 10 years old I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and anorexia. I spent the next few years going in and out of treatment programs, undergoing a multitude of therapy and medications, and writing my silly little stories. Unfortunately I was also sexually assaulted, but I’ve forgiven my attacker and I feel healed from it now. I guess when I look back on it, it feels like I’ve never had a completely stable life, despite coming from a stable household. It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I worry that I’m some sort of “privileged white girl” stereotype. My life shouldn’t have felt that hard, but every day it did. I’ve always lived on the brink of something, but I’ve never been able to put my finger on what it was.
I’ve been an actor since I was 3 years old. I’ve performed in musicals regionally and in New York City, where I now live. When I turned 18 I decided to move here to go to college and I’ve now been here for 7 years. In hindsight, a mostly emotionally unstable teenager probably had no right in moving to New York City by herself: but I don’t regret it. I’m scared to think that if I hadn’t left my hometown that maybe I never would have.
College was fine. I quickly settled in and found a group of friends. It was mostly comprised of couples, including myself as I soon after began dating one of the boys in the group. I felt like maybe I was finally recovering, like maybe I could finally be happy, like maybe I could let myself. But the truth was that at the time I was far from healed and engaged in some chaotic behaviors, drinking too much and staying out too late with people that didn’t have my best interests at heart. My relationship with my boyfriend needed to end. It turned very toxic and he wouldn’t let me break up with him. I found myself turning into a very dishonest person, lying about my past because I was embarrassed over being less successful as an artist than my peers and embarrassed about my partying habits. Every time I tried to break up with my boyfriend he would throw these things in my face, call me a liar or a horrible person, refuse to leave my apartment, and even once had the police called on me after I left his apartment in the middle of the night during a fight. Eventually I managed to escape that relationship, but not one of my friends understood how it had gotten so bad for me. They blamed me for everything. I’ll never forgive them, but I understand now. We were all young and stupi.
But then, I had nothing (or so it felt). I quickly spiraled back into a depressive state and began having suicidal ideations. It was the hardest point of my life. I wasn’t eating, waan’t sleeping, had no one to talk to, and even when I did I felt I couldn’t get two words out without crying. I knew I needed to change my life, but I didn’t know how to. So I went back to the hospital.
Well, that was several years ago. I think I’ve finally acknowledged that I’m getting in the way of myself being happy, letting myself be free of these horrible memories. I quit acting because I realized it no longer brings me joy. I’m still drinking, but dramatically less so and I believe there may be a day of sobriety in my future. I still find myself wanting to lie when things get difficult, but I’m working on that now. I recently graduated from college and have an internship as well as a part time job in the works. I have a boyfriend who I love more than anything, but if I’m being honest I’m terrified that I’m pushing him away with my neurotic behavior.
I just want to be stable, to be happy, to make good on the goals that I set out to do. But every day I feel like I’m walking through sand. Sometimes touching things, a panic or a spoon, leaves my body with intense feelings of pain. I don’t want to die anymore. These are progress steps. I want to let myself live in the moment and just BE. It’s so hard to do so when you’ve spent your entire life waiting for the next shoe to drop. I used to think I wouldn’t live past 18; why? No reason. I just couldn’t picture myself as an adult. Truthfully, I still don’t. I’m not perfect. But I’m proud of myself for being better than I was. I finished school! It took me six years, but I did it. I’m finally working in a field I’m excited and passionate to learn more about. I want to start a Substack and start writing books of my own. I want to untrain my brain to think that everyone in my life will hurt me or leave me. I want to believe I am good. It’s a process, but I’m working on it.
I’m posting this for me. I don’t need opinions or advice, I don’t need medication or therapy recommendations. I just wanted to let someone out there know that when everything feels hard, there’s usually a way through. Everything works out in due time. I’m still figuring mine out, but I know tomorrow will be better than today. I can say that now.

I feel like I’ve always had a pretty clear goal in my head of where I wanted to head in my life wether it was a month from now or 5 years from now. Recently I’ve hit a point where I don’t know what to do with my life as I’m sure many people at my age do but I really don’t know how to go about it. I feel like time is passing by me so fast and I have not accomplished much since I graduated high school. I graduated hs during COVID and I definitely feel like that stunted my progress keeping me in a certain phase that I can’t seem to outgrow. I still feel 18 and I am not taking life as serious as I should especially right now. I’m just very conflicted right now.
Before graduating high school I had goals and dreams of getting into FIDM for fashion design and I felt it in my heart every time i walked into my fashion design class that that’s what I wanted to do. Unfortunately one of my parents disapproved and especially coming from an immigrant household, I feel like that’s a common thing but they wanted more from me and getting a degree in design or anything creative arts related was not it. Of course that crushed me and out of anger and sadness I threw away all of my sketches and put away my sewing machine and I have not touched anything related to fashion design since. I do still love fashion but it’s not the same and I haven’t found anything else in my life that has lit a spark in me the way that class did. I had a plan B in case things didn’t go smoothly and that was to pursue a business degree so I did, I went to cc for two years after taking a gap year and I finished and got my associates this past December in acct, business and Econ.
I was so burnt out from taking too many classes last year to graduate on time since I had felt so behind. I really didn't want to start the new year at my local uni, I just needed a break, a chance to relax and not think about school for once. Then last minute I got in and decided to explore computer science, which had intrigued me for a while. But every time I went to class, I felt miserable and I was unable to motivate myself to do the work. Eventually I dropped some classes and kept the core classes only . And now with the semester coming to an end I still don’t know what to do next. My Econ classes did interest me the most out of all the classes I took in cc but I don’t know if that’s what I really want to do, I feel like I need to speak with people from every career that I’m interested in to see if that’s the route I wanna take. I also decided to dig into my younger self and recall what interested me when I was younger and it was art and animals. I remember telling myself that I wanted to work with animals and become a vet in fact I have it written in a notebook somewhere and I did some research but it sounds extremely stressful and the school part is time consuming of course but I don’t know yet. As for art I have not drawn in a year so it’s definitely not in my books to pursue something related to art.
I know I’m not supposed to have my life figured out and that’s okay, that’s not what I want to do right now. What I want is to know what next step I have to take to reach my ultimate goal which is to just be financially independent and be financially successful. I know people say money isn’t everything but it definitely makes a difference in one’s quality of living and I definitely do not want to be living paycheck to paycheck struggling. I’m the first one in my family to go to college and one of my siblings works in the food industry and the way he talks about work and the way his life is I do not want to end up like that (no offense). I know that if I don’t act now that that’s where I’ll end up because we have very similar tendencies and I just want a great career and a good life.
But the thing about me is that I’ve become extremely lazy and I was supposedly going to take the extra time I had after dropping some of the classes to explore new things and find what peaked my interest and just live life but I never did and I keep wasting time and I never do anything or if I do I only do it for 2 weeks then stop, I can never finish anything and the thing is I’m pretty self aware of everything that I do and all my bad habits but I somehow cannot change that or don’t know how. And I feel like I’m just wasting my life away and another thing is that I’m not living it up to the fullest but I don’t know how to start living. I have thought about going to a therapist but I don’t have a job yet so paying for it would be a bit difficult hence why I’m coming onto Reddit as a last resort. sorry for the super long post I just had to let everything out.

Hi—Confused Newbie here; please be gentle yet descriptive, if possible.
First, is there a simple way to access new templates or notebook covers using only the device itself?
Somehow—perhaps bc I started with Kindle Scribe—I envisioned that I might be able to use an app or a web link on the Supernote to look for such things, via a community forum or even a template store. I thought there might be at least a few “sample” covers or even templates preloaded into the “MyStyle” folder, to allow me to play around with the concept of personalization.
Second, is there any way to quickly send a self-made template via an email address? (Again, I am accustomed to Kindle Scribe).
Third— my other devices are an iPhone, a Windows 10 PC, an iPad, and a Kindle Scribe. Assuming I find (on reddit, or elsewhere online) or create what I need template-wise, what is the quickest/easiest way to get that over to my Supernote for use? I get confused among Supernote iOS app, Supernote cloud, Supernote partner app on PC etc.
I got the Supernote to help myself feel less scattered at a time when my bandwidth is limited, but I feel in serious need of a hand-holding tutorial (re: this basic stuff, as well as headings, TOC, links, keywords, stars, etc. ).
I’m not sure how to best use SN as an optimization tool, when figuring it out feels kind of DIY in a way I currently can’t swing. It’s like I have so many questions and can’t even find a basic organized place to write them down, never mind ask them.
(I think my ADHD doesn’t mix well with the user manual being buried onboard—I need like a programmed text or Socratic experiential workshop or something so it clicks. Not proud, not proud. )
Thank you all so much for your help.

Is there a reason why this feature isn’t available? I’m in nursing school right now and I like to switch between a blank pages or Cornell Notes or regular lined templates in the same notebook. Not being able too is a real pain and one of the biggest reasons I’ve mostly switched to Noteful.

Marketing is one of the most crucial operation for a Shopify store. There are lot’s of tactics Marketing is one of the most crucial operation for a Shopify store. There are lot’s of tactics to grow quickly and none of them not working. Well, if you looking for a way to create solid marketing plan, then this guide is for you. In this guide you’ll learn

• Definition of Marketing
• Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market
• Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding
• Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy
• Inbound and Outbound Marketing Channels
• Marketing Plan Template
• FAQs

Definition of Marketing

American Marketing Association defines marketing as activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Source
What do you see here?

1. Marketing is not about activities, it contains activities, set of institutions and process.
2. Function of marketing is not generating sales. It’s creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that has value.
3. In this post we’ll focus on Shopify stores marketing. However in the big picture marketing has not limited with companies. Marketing can be done within organization or society.

Let’s summarize what marketing definition for a Shopify store. Marketing will create, communicate, deliver and exchange offers that have value for customers. As you can see main subject in here is customers. Because of this, I’ll put customers as the center of this guide. Everything we’ll do has to something with them.

Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market

This is a practical guide for marketing so I want to continue with a hypothetical Shopify stores for each steps.
Let’s say we have a Shopify store that has some high-end, organic baby clothes targeting new parents.

Market Research

How can we do the market research?
Let’s say you have a new Shopify store that has less than 500 order per month. You can hire expensive agencies, expensive experts to research the market, create market reports for you, etc. Even if you do that, I highly suspicious if it helps you.
However you can talk with your new-parent friends. Ask them about how do they decide to buy baby clothes? What they are looking for before completing their purchases? Do they get any expert opinion before making buying decision? How do they search online and what they want to see? Is there any great YouTube channels about this.
Don’t have any friends? Checkout your friends not a new-parents but parents and ask similar questions to them. If you also don’t have them, try to make new born friends. I know how hard it is but let’s be honest here. If you don’t know anybody in your target audience, how do you manage to get know them? All of the successful stores I saw they have direct relationship with their target audience.
When you make your research with real people, then you can extend your project to online. Try to search as they do. What do you find? Deep in dive and take your notes.

Competitor Analysis

When you done this market research, you’ll also see there are some other brands. This is a huge subject but let’s call these brands as competitor for now.
Now it’s time to analyze them.

1. Checkout their branding strategy.
2. What are their value propositions?
3. What is hot about them? Return guarantee, free shipping etc.
4. What is not hot about them? Poor product or store design, low UX on the website, etc.
5. What people think about them? Google reviews, Trust pilot reviews, product reviews on the store.
6. Are there any partnership or influencer program they’re running?
7. What is their Google/YouTube campaign strategy? Check it here.
8. What is their Facebook/Instagram campaign strategy? Check it here.

Create a spreadsheet with all of this information. We’ll use this when working on positioning and marketing strategy.

Define Your Target Market

What do you say about our target market? Can all of new parents be our target market?
Nope, it can’t. You need to deep dive into your market and find a sub-segment, a niche that will need your products much better than anybody else and afford it easily.
This is what I called ideal customer profile (ICP). Check out what is ideal customer profile and how to create your ideal customer profile posts to learn more about the concept.
For our hypothetical store, ICP can be something like this;
Demographics

• Age: 25-45 years old
• Gender: Primarily women, but also some men
• Education: College degree or higher
• Income: $75,000+ per household
• Location: Urban areas
• Occupation: Professionals, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home parents

Psychographics

• Values: Health, wellness, sustainability, social responsibility
• Lifestyle: Active, eco-conscious, family-oriented
• Interests: Organic food, natural products, children’s activities
• Media consumption: Social media, parenting blogs, magazines
• Shopping habits: Researches purchases thoroughly, values quality over price

Pain Points

• Concerns about harmful chemicals in baby clothes
• Difficulty finding stylish and affordable organic baby clothes
• Wants to make sustainable choices for their children

Needs

• High-quality, organic baby clothes that are safe and healthy for their children
• Unique and stylish designs that make their children look and feel good
• A brand that shares their values and commitment to sustainability

Buying Behaviors

• Researches products online before making a purchase
• Reads reviews and testimonials from other parents
• Shops at specialty stores and online retailers
• Willing to pay a premium for quality and sustainability

After creating ICP, it’s important to spend some time on empathy map. Don’t forget to check it, too.
Now we know our baby clothes Shopify store market, customer’s buying process and our ideal customer profile.

Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding

I’ll follow the American Marketing Association (AMA) in here too.
First look at brand definition. AMA defines brand as “any distinctive feature like a name, term, design, or symbol that identifies goods or services”.
Branding is for creating and managing your brand’s identity. It involves your mission, values, culture and public image.
I’m not an expert on brand, but I know how branding can be effective for your conversions and performance. Here are some checklist for you.

1. Design consistency is the key. Your visual identity should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
2. Copy consistency is the key. Your communication style should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
3. Experience consistency is the key. Let’s say your brand looks like a high-end brand and when a new visitor visit your store first they see is an annoying popup saying want to get 10% OFF. This is simply how to destroy your brand.
4. Craft a story and stick to it. What makes you create this brand? Faces behind the brand. This is a huge leverage for creating trust and building bonds.

Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy

So far we identified our target market and ideal customer profile. Check out competitors and creates the branding for our store.
Now it’s time to work on go-to-market strategy and crafting our marketing strategy.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Let’s say you recently launched your Shopify store or add a new line of products.
You need a plan to introduce your store or new products to the market. This is what we called go-to-market(GTM) strategy.
Main goal of the GTM is letting people know that there is a new brand or product line. It’s similar to launch marketing. Key message here is there is a new products/brand launched and it offer the best for you. Give it a try, you’ll love it.
All of your messages and communication should be parallel to this process.
Our focus is convincing people to try our products/brand. So I always offer a special campaign just for the launch to give people to a reason to try your products/brand.
For our hypothetical Shopify store we can run a special campaign for launch like;

• Free shipping until X date.
• 5 different boy and girl bundle with 40% OFF to try our products.

Marketing Strategy

This is your plan of actions to sell or advertise your products. Now we can talk about selling part of the marketing.
Let’s say you have GREAT advertising creatives and a huge budget and just spending it. Don’t wait to crack the code and having lot’s of sales.
Your marketing strategy should be follow sales funnel. If you don’t have a high-converting sales funnel, you can’t expect people to buy from you. Check out How to Build High Converting Sales Funnel For Shopify post.
AIDA Sales Funnel Framework
Now we can continue with our hypothetical store example. We’re selling high-end, organic baby clothes on our store. We crafted our ICP, empathy map, work on branding and created our story.

Example Marketing Strategy

First step we’ll work on attention step. Our focus is getting attention of our target market attention.
We can create a educative e-book like “7 Harmful Chemicals Commonly Used in Baby Clothes and How to Avoid Them” and run some campaigns targeted new parents on social network (Facebook, Instagram or YouTube)
This ads will land on a landing page that gives brief information about why we should pay attention to chemicals in baby clothes for our little ones and make a promise like “I spend my last 5 years about researching chemicals on baby clothes and prepare this book for you and your little one”. Also there can be a quick video about our story explaining our expertise in this field and why we’re building this brand.
We can ask for their email address to share the book with them. When they enter their email address, we’ll send them this ebook.
After first email with the ebook, we can send a few more emails with easy to digest information about chemicals.
This will create an expertise image on our target customers and start to create a bond with them. Not a bad start, right?
At the same time we can use this content on our social media, right? Quick videos, infographics and posts about the chemicals in the baby clothes.
After getting a few thousands subscribers we can organize a webinar to answer questions. This will also a great content for re-used social media content and creating trust and expert image.
Then we can share a time-limited promotion with this people for a bundle. Like we’re running a campaign and these 5 chemical free baby clothes bundles 10% discounted until next week!
We can send emails about it and use this campaign for remarketing for only people who show interest in our e-book and webinar.
This is a very brief template of marketing plan.
Now let’s take a look at more common one.

• Post product photos on social media with lot’s of hashtags
• Run a Meta campaign without any targeting, land people on product detail page
• Give them WELCOME10 discount if they enter their email address
• Send them 15 emails in the next 5 days to maximize your sales.

It’s time for you. Which one do you want to choose? All of the experts recommending this without even asking who are your customers. Can you believe it?
Don’t forget that marketing strategy is not a hope. It’s a well documented plan of actions designed for turning strangers into customers.

Inbound and Outbound Marketing Channels

Inside the marketing strategy, channels plays a vital role. There are lot’s of ways to group channels. I’ll use most basic one.
Inbound Marketing Channels: With the inbound marketing your customers will find you and start the interaction. Most common channel for inbound marketing is organic search engine optimization.
After creating high quality content, when customers search something online, they can see your articles and first interaction happens.
Outbound Marketing Channels: With the outbound marketing you reach out to customers. Facebook/Instagram/YouTube ads, influencer marketing, display ads, podcast ads can be count in this category.
As you can imagine inbound marketing channels takes lot’s of efforts and time however over the time you’ll have organic marketing channel and it brings you customer without needing any budget.
Outbound marketing channels generally works with advertisement models and you need budgets to run these channels.
Most of time I recommend to start with outbound marketing channels and then invest inbound marketing channels overtime. Don’t forget to check Mastering Paid Ads For Shopify post.
Succesful marketing plans should be supported by high converting growth and conversion plans. Don’t forget to check Growth Guide For Shopify and Conversion Optimization Guide For Shopify too.
to grow quickly and none of them not working. Well, if you looking for a way to create solid marketing plan, then this guide is for you. In this guide you’ll learn

• Definition of Marketing
• Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market
• Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding
• Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy
• Inbound and Outbound Marketing Channels
• Marketing Plan Template
• FAQs

Definition of Marketing

American Marketing Association defines marketing as activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Source
What do you see here?

1. Marketing is not about activities, it contains activities, set of institutions and process.
2. Function of marketing is not generating sales. It’s creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that has value.
3. In this post we’ll focus on Shopify stores marketing. However in the big picture marketing has not limited with companies. Marketing can be done within organization or society.

Let’s summarize what marketing definition for a Shopify store. Marketing will create, communicate, deliver and exchange offers that have value for customers. As you can see main subject in here is customers. Because of this, I’ll put customers as the center of this guide. Everything we’ll do has to something with them.

Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market

This is a practical guide for marketing so I want to continue with a hypothetical Shopify stores for each steps.
Let’s say we have a Shopify store that has some high-end, organic baby clothes targeting new parents.

Market Research

How can we do the market research?
Let’s say you have a new Shopify store that has less than 500 order per month. You can hire expensive agencies, expensive experts to research the market, create market reports for you, etc. Even if you do that, I highly suspicious if it helps you.
However you can talk with your new-parent friends. Ask them about how do they decide to buy baby clothes? What they are looking for before completing their purchases? Do they get any expert opinion before making buying decision? How do they search online and what they want to see? Is there any great YouTube channels about this.
Don’t have any friends? Checkout your friends not a new-parents but parents and ask similar questions to them. If you also don’t have them, try to make new born friends. I know how hard it is but let’s be honest here. If you don’t know anybody in your target audience, how do you manage to get know them? All of the successful stores I saw they have direct relationship with their target audience.
When you make your research with real people, then you can extend your project to online. Try to search as they do. What do you find? Deep in dive and take your notes.

Competitor Analysis

When you done this market research, you’ll also see there are some other brands. This is a huge subject but let’s call these brands as competitor for now.
Now it’s time to analyze them.

1. Checkout their branding strategy.
2. What are their value propositions?
3. What is hot about them? Return guarantee, free shipping etc.
4. What is not hot about them? Poor product or store design, low UX on the website, etc.
5. What people think about them? Google reviews, Trust pilot reviews, product reviews on the store.
6. Are there any partnership or influencer program they’re running?
7. What is their Google/YouTube campaign strategy? Check it here.
8. What is their Facebook/Instagram campaign strategy? Check it here.

Create a spreadsheet with all of this information. We’ll use this when working on positioning and marketing strategy.

Define Your Target Market

What do you say about our target market? Can all of new parents be our target market?
Nope, it can’t. You need to deep dive into your market and find a sub-segment, a niche that will need your products much better than anybody else and afford it easily.
This is what I called ideal customer profile (ICP). Check out what is ideal customer profile and how to create your ideal customer profile posts to learn more about the concept.
For our hypothetical store, ICP can be something like this;
Demographics

• Age: 25-45 years old
• Gender: Primarily women, but also some men
• Education: College degree or higher
• Income: $75,000+ per household
• Location: Urban areas
• Occupation: Professionals, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home parents

Psychographics

• Values: Health, wellness, sustainability, social responsibility
• Lifestyle: Active, eco-conscious, family-oriented
• Interests: Organic food, natural products, children’s activities
• Media consumption: Social media, parenting blogs, magazines
• Shopping habits: Researches purchases thoroughly, values quality over price

Pain Points

• Concerns about harmful chemicals in baby clothes
• Difficulty finding stylish and affordable organic baby clothes
• Wants to make sustainable choices for their children

Needs

• High-quality, organic baby clothes that are safe and healthy for their children
• Unique and stylish designs that make their children look and feel good
• A brand that shares their values and commitment to sustainability

Buying Behaviors

• Researches products online before making a purchase
• Reads reviews and testimonials from other parents
• Shops at specialty stores and online retailers
• Willing to pay a premium for quality and sustainability

After creating ICP, it’s important to spend some time on empathy map. Don’t forget to check it, too.
Now we know our baby clothes Shopify store market, customer’s buying process and our ideal customer profile.

Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding

I’ll follow the American Marketing Association (AMA) in here too.
First look at brand definition. AMA defines brand as “any distinctive feature like a name, term, design, or symbol that identifies goods or services”.
Branding is for creating and managing your brand’s identity. It involves your mission, values, culture and public image.
I’m not an expert on brand, but I know how branding can be effective for your conversions and performance. Here are some checklist for you.

1. Design consistency is the key. Your visual identity should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
2. Copy consistency is the key. Your communication style should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
3. Experience consistency is the key. Let’s say your brand looks like a high-end brand and when a new visitor visit your store first they see is an annoying popup saying want to get 10% OFF. This is simply how to destroy your brand.
4. Craft a story and stick to it. What makes you create this brand? Faces behind the brand. This is a huge leverage for creating trust and building bonds.

Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy

So far we identified our target market and ideal customer profile. Check out competitors and creates the branding for our store.
Now it’s time to work on go-to-market strategy and crafting our marketing strategy.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Let’s say you recently launched your Shopify store or add a new line of products.
You need a plan to introduce your store or new products to the market. This is what we called go-to-market(GTM) strategy.
Main goal of the GTM is letting people know that there is a new brand or product line. It’s similar to launch marketing. Key message here is there is a new products/brand launched and it offer the best for you. Give it a try, you’ll love it.
All of your messages and communication should be parallel to this process.
Our focus is convincing people to try our products/brand. So I always offer a special campaign just for the launch to give people to a reason to try your products/brand.
For our hypothetical Shopify store we can run a special campaign for launch like;

• Free shipping until X date.
• 5 different boy and girl bundle with 40% OFF to try our products.

Marketing Strategy

This is your plan of actions to sell or advertise your products. Now we can talk about selling part of the marketing.
Let’s say you have GREAT advertising creatives and a huge budget and just spending it. Don’t wait to crack the code and having lot’s of sales.
Your marketing strategy should be follow sales funnel. If you don’t have a high-converting sales funnel, you can’t expect people to buy from you. Check out How to Build High Converting Sales Funnel For Shopify post.
This article first published at MarketingLib.
Don't forget to check Growth Suite on Shopify App Store.