“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” — Simon Sinek
I’m interested in why.
Why are you reading this? Why did you subscribe to this newsletter? Why will you share it (or not)?
I appreciate your interest more than you realize and believe the better I understand why you give it to me, the more value I can deliver to you.
If you want to post a response and tell me why, I’d appreciate it.
Now, on to this week’s ideas…
1. THE INTERESTED BECOME THE SUCCESSFUL
“The Interested value the past, present, and future equally. The Uninterested can’t see past the moment. The Interested care about why and how. The Uninterested care about who and what.”
If you’re reading this, you’re likely one of The Interested.
I believe there are two types of people in the world — the Interested and the Uninterested — and in this post I explain why The Interested ultimately become the successful.
2. WE NOW TRUST STRANGERS MORE THAN INSTITUTIONS
“Technology is creating new mechanisms that are enabling us to trust unknown people, companies and ideas. And yet at the same time, trust in institutions — banks, governments, and even churches — is collapsing.”
In this great new TED Talk, trust researcher Rachel Botsman breaks down how our concept of trust is changing and explains why trust enables change and innovation.
Using examples like Uber and Airbnb, she demonstrates how technology is creating trust between people in ways and at a scale that’s never before been seen.
3. THE MISSING KEY TO PRODUCTIVITY IS REFLECTION
“Taking time to reflect is not intuitive. Almost everyone prefers doing to thinking.”
There’s no shortage of productivity hacks out there and they all seem to revolve around doing things.
But this Jocelyn K. Glei post offers a counterintuitive suggestion — maybe the key to being productive is to take time to reflect on what you’ve already done?
She points out that reflecting on what you’ve done allows you to “articulate and codify” your experience, which in turn improves your future performance and deepens your understanding of the causal relationship between your actions and outcomes.
4. WE’RE STILL THE SAME UNITED STATES
“America is what we thought it was. It is still a 50–50 nation, dominated by negative partisanship, in which about half of the country will reliably vote to defeat the other half for the foreseeable future.”
This entire newsletter probably could have been links to ideas about the election and our new president, but I think we could all use a bit of a break from that for the moment.
However, this piece from The Atlantic is worth a read because it shares a reminder that the division of our nation at the moment isn’t new and the feelings being experienced by so many are essentially a mirror image of what the other half has felt before.
We live in a country where “one vote in 2,500 was the difference between electing a liberal Democrat and rewarding a candidate for the most openly racist campaign in generations.”
5. HOW BURGLARS WILL BREAK INTO YOUR HOUSE
“NRA sticker on car bumper = Lots of guns to steal.”
Every once in a while, some media outlet comes up with a genuinely great idea for a story.
In this case, Portland’s NBC news affiliate surveyed 86 convicted burglarsabout how they broke into homes and shared their answers to help the community learn to be safer.
The findings include that most burglars enter through unlocked doors or windows, they search the master bedroom for valuables first, they typically break in during the early morning or afternoon, and every single burglar interviewed said they would knock on the front door before breaking in.
6. HOW TO GAMIFY YOUR LIFE TO ACCOMPLISH YOUR GOALS
“Unsuccessful people make decisions based on current circumstances while successful people make decisions based on where they desire to be.”
One of the quickest ways to improve at anything is to add game mechanics to it.
In this post, Benjamin P. Hardy suggest four ways you can gamify your lifeincluding to compete with those way ahead of you, to engage in time-based challenges, and to make big changes every few years.
7. WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A WINNING BRAND IN 2017
“User growth times engagement equals an audience that we can interrupt with ads — we think that is a failed strategy for both offline and online players.”
NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway (whose amazing talks I’ve featured before) has a new talk in which he breaks down what he sees as being the keys to being a successful brand in 2017.
The core of Galloway’s talk is that the traditional model of monetizing an engaged audience with advertising is doomed and companies who rely on it are headed for trouble.
Instead, he suggests the near future will be dominated by companies who are able to collect user data and use that data to improve the intelligence of their products.
8. HOW TO CREATE IMPACT WITH MICROINTERACTIONS
“Microinteractions are the magic little things that keep us coming back to the products we love. They’re the satisfying little details that happen when we perform a single task.”
This post is about product design, but it’s relevant to anybody that creates anything.
In it, designer Jennifer Tang shares the four components of a microinteraction and explains why it’s important to incorporate them into your creations. She points out that microinteractions have the ability to delight users with the unexpected, create memorable moments for your brand, educate users and more.
9. WHAT ELECTION CAMPAIGN MARKETING WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2020
“Imagine a candidate who now knows everything about you, who can reach you wherever you happen to be looking, and who can use info scraped from social media (and intuited by machine learning algorithms) to speak directly to you and your interests.”
As crazy as this year’s election was, just wait til the next time around.
This Peter Diamandis post outlines five technology trends likely to impact the next presidential election campaign including the development of machine learning, digital avatars, and micropayments.
Buckle up.
SPECIAL GUEST IDEA!
This week’s 10th idea comes from Amber Tozer, a comedy writer and the author of Sober Stick Figure, a hilarious illustrated memoir chronicling her life as an alcoholic who finds her way to recovery.
She was recently named one of Rolling Stone’s Top 25 Funniest People on Twitter and I highly recommend you follow her.
10. INSTANT GRATIFICATION: SIX THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU’RE BATTLING THE ADDICTION BEAST
“A lot of my discomfort in sobriety comes from not having something that immediately changes the way I feel the way a drink used to. It’s so easy to shift your feelings when you’re an active alcoholic — you pour a drink and you drink it. You pour another one and you drink it. BAM — you are on your way to feeling like an entirely different person, a very confident person who will make decisions you will regret the next day, turning you into a very insecure person — but hey, for NOW, you feel good. Feeling good right NOW is a core issue with addiction.”
This article is a hilarious take on addiction and offer some tips on how to deal with instant gratification. Although it’s geared toward alcoholism, it will be helpful to anyone with any type of addiction — social media, porn, food, gaming, etc.
It offers solid advice on how to work through those moments when you feel like giving up on the promise you made to yourself, and it’ll also make you laugh.
FLASHBACK!
In the May 29th edition of this newsletter, I shared ideas about why you should stop listening to people, one of the most inspirational videos I’ve ever seen, why sales people need to be stopped and more.