Adding a Now Page

Earlier this week I launched a Now Page, based on an idea put forward by Derek Sivers about including pages about what you’re focused on right now alongside the customary About and Contact pages.

Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about the background of this person or business. For short, people just call it an “about page”.

Most websites have a link that says “contact”. It goes to a page that tells you how to contact this person or business. For short, people just call it a “contact page”.

So a website with a link that says “now” goes to a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life. For short, we call it a “now page”.

from about NowNowNow.com

I first came across the idea on Warren Ellis’ blog, where he plumbed the flaws of the concept; namely, if you want it to be effective, people need to go and update their Now page on he regular and that’s not an instinctive habit.

Mine is largely reposting content from the blog. This works better for me because I spend more time thinking about blog content than I do overall site structure. I’m more likely to look at an empty day in the schedule and post an update than I am head over to a static page and update it (as are most authors, to be honest; just look at the sheer number of out-of-date bios and book pages on author sites around the internet).

Short version, every time I post an update with the Status tag here, the site will automatically display the latest copy on www.PeterMBall.com/now along with a date-stamp.

Folks who follow the blog regularly will get updates about where my focus is–a net win given that I’m starting to work with folks outside my household–while other folks who want to check on the status of things can click over to the static Now page and get a quick precis of where my head’s at.