10 Ideas For The Interested This Week - For The Interested

10 Ideas For The Interested This Week

“Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off of the goal.” — Vince Lombardi

In 1958, the Green Bay Packers were the worst team in the NFL.

Then, they hired Vince Lombardi as coach.

In his first meeting with the team, here’s what he said:

“Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection. Knowing full well we will not catch it because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it. Because in the process, we will catch excellence. I’m not even remotely interested in being just good.”

Three years later they won the NFL title.

(This story originally appeared on the For The Interested Instagram account.)

Now, on to this week’s ideas…

1. TEN QUICK TIPS FOR BLOGGERS

“The answer to every question people ask you is a blog post ready to be written.”

Since readers enjoyed last week’s collection of 10 quick tips for creators, I decided to follow it up with this post featuring 10 quick tips for bloggers.

They include my thoughts about the most important sentence in a post, what your goal should be, and how best to leverage other people’s platforms.

RELATED: Lessons from 10 years of professional blogging.

2. BE YOUR OWN MENTOR

“The journeys that matter most rarely come with a map. When you learn to mentor yourself, you become the kind of person other people seek for mentorship.”

Most people don’t have the answers you’re looking for — especially if you’re building something new.

Wes Kao explains the value of learning to be your own mentor and points out there are three situations where it’s especially important to do so including when it’s too time intensive to explain the backstory of your situation to somebody else, your work is confidential, or you’re in a situation your peers have never faced.

RELATED: What nobody tells you about finding mentors.

3. THREE WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR LUCK

“Even if you think you’re the most unlucky person, you can do this — by taking little risks that get you out of your comfort zone, you start building a sail to capture luck.”

Luck isn’t the luck of the draw — it’s the result of concrete actions people take to attract luck.

In this 11-minute TED Talk, Tina Seelig shares three ways to increase your luck including to take risks outside of your comfort zone, show appreciation to others, and change your relationship with ideas.

RELATED: How to get rich without getting lucky.

4. LINKEDIN TIPS FROM 11 LINKEDIN EXPERTS

“If you’re just posting a link and moving on, you’re doing it wrong. Make sure your content is set up as the start of a conversation, not as a mere signpost to an article you wrote elsewhere.”

If you use LinkedIn you’re going to want to read this one (you’re also welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn as well!).

Social Media Today invited 11 LinkedIn experts to share their best tips for using LinkedIn.

Their tips include to never share a link to an article without adding context, post content that appeals to a broad audience, and make sure every post includes a question.

RELATED: How to get 25 million views on LinkedIn in four months.

5. HOW TO AVOID THE ORIGINALITY TRAP

“The biggest thing that creatively inhibits people isn’t necessarily the fact that they don’t have any ideas, it is because they judge the ideas they do have as unoriginal.”

Most people who struggle to be creative do so because they fundamentally misunderstand how creativity works.

Steve Chapman suggests creators get paralyzed by the originality trap and their quest to do something completely original prevents them from making something great that builds on the creations of others.

RELATED: How to develop a creativity routine.

6. HOW YOUR AWARENESS OF DEATH CAN HELP YOU ENJOY YOUR LIFE

“You are in a game right now and you can’t see the clock so you don’t know how much time you have left. And yet, you’re free to make the game as interesting as possible — you can even change the rules.”

Ready to contemplate your life (and death)?

This powerful five-minute video features an audio excerpt from Sam Harris’ Waking Up podcast over a compilation of footage from various movies in which Harris explains how your awareness of death can help you enjoy your life.

RELATED: The five most common regrets of the dying.

7. A GUIDE TO THE BEST PRODUCTIVITY APPS

“There are apps — most of them free — you can download to make your life easier, more balanced, more productive, and most importantly, more in control of your time.”

If you need help making the most of your time, there’s probably a bunch of apps that can help you.

Check out this HubSpot guide to the best productivity apps including recommended scheduling, focus, mindfulness, and workplace apps.

RELATED: My five favorite productivity tips of the year (in 140 words or less).

8. WE UNDERESTIMATED THE IMPACT OF REALITY TV ON THE WORLD

“Aren’t the people spewing preposterous political talking points they’ve been paid to disperse just like those kids on The Real World who knew why they’d been cast and played their roles with gusto?”

There are a lot of challenges facing society at the moment, and many of them may have been heavily influenced by the rise of reality television.

Kitanya Harrison suggests reality TV mattered and we should have realized it, pointing out the shift from documentary-style reality television to fake reality television has enabled our current media and political climate.

RELATED: How CNN makes us dumber by treating politics like sports.

9. FIVE FACEBOOK AD MISTAKES TO AVOID

“In Facebook’s algorithm, the more engagement that you get, the more comments, the more likes, the more people are interested in what you have, the cheaper it’s gonna be to show that to everyone in their feed.”

I’m a huge proponent of Facebook ads and believe they’re by far the most cost-effective way to market your product or service…as long as you know what to do with them.

This eCommerceFuel post can help you figure that out thanks to its breakdown of five Facebook ad mistakes to avoid.

The suggestions include to avoid creating ads that feel like direct response messages, think about behavior when creating target audiences, and leverage social proof.

RELATED: How to grow your audience using Facebook.

10. NOBODY CAN STOP YOU FROM GETTING YOUR DREAM JOB

“Stop looking for reasons you can’t do the work of your dreams. Start looking for ways you can.”

You’ll get your dream job after you start doing your dream work.

In this post I explain why nobody can stop you from getting your dream job and offer some suggestions about how to make it happen.

RELATED: Career advice for The Interested.

WHERE I FOUND THIS STUFF

I discovered some of this week’s ideas from the newsletters of Dean Yeong, Christopher Penn, and Connect 4 Insight — they’re awesome and worth your time.