Put Things Off is a refreshingly useless compendium of observations, short stories, unwelcome advice, and autobiographical titbits by Nick Cernis, a British writer and web developer with a phobia of clowns.
Put Things Off is not a blog but a web column, differing also from the printed kind in that it regularly abuses the semicolon, doesn’t rub off on your hands, and will never feature a scathing critique of the wheelie bin.
What you’ll find here
Topics range from the moderately sensible to the unabashedly irrelevant, artlessly spanning fields such as small business, the joy of low-tech living, the mixed blessings of the iPhone, the delightful habit of regular reading, and the trouble with budget bog roll. In short, Put Things Off gave up chasing a single area of interest months ago because, frankly, doing so would display a lack of imagination.
Occasionally and often by accident, Put Things Off serves tips that make life better. Inbox Heaven, a brief piece on the subject of managing email, has been viewed by over 100,000 people, 14 percent of whom read it to the end. Conversely, Moleskine: The Guide has been solely responsible for bankrupting several small island nations including Iceland, Britain, and the Polynesian realms of Tuvalu and Tralalala-dingdong.
In an attempt to encourage people to read it as well as look at the pictures, Put Things Off saw a grand relaunch in 2009. It will shortly offer short stories, the first of which is called “Total Recall” and subtitled “a short story about Eddie, the goldfish with a photographic memory and a remarkable gift”. While most content on Put Things Off is free, short stories will cost one pound, largely because it irritates those who’d love to read them but don’t like to pay for things.
Put Things Off is written, designed, and coded by Nick Cernis on an iMac and iPhone using Evernote, Fireworks, and TextMate.
About Nick Cernis
Nick Cernis (pronounced Churnis) has been an egg collector, a waiter, a sound engineer, a television salesman, an animator, a print designer, and a failed rock guitarist. He has danced badly on live TV, moved house 26 times across three countries, and flitted between 37 hobbies and sports, two of which he is now OK at. Today he is a web developer and writer who lives in West Yorkshire in the UK.
Outside of Put Things Off Nick runs Goburo Ltd — a friendly web design agency — with his partner, Hayley. Together they listen to people’s ideas and create beautiful websites to help them publish and earn a living online. They also give free estimates, which you can request here.
In 2009 Nick designed and coded Put Things Off for iPhone, a laid-back electronic to-do list that he describes as ‘like having a nagging girlfriend, without the girlfriend’. It quickly became the top-selling productivity app in Britain and America, a sure sign that people will buy anything to pretend they’re working.
You can follow Nick on Twitter or contact him through this site.
