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10 Ideas For The Interested This Week

“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” — Coretta Scott King

I know a 7-year-old boy who needs help.

His name is Benjamin, and up until a few weeks ago he was enjoying the summer just like any healthy and happy kid would.

But out of nowhere, what started as a headache turned out to be much more.

He was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an aggressive type of childhood cancerous tumor that forms in the brain stem.

As he and his family battle this condition, they will need help and I’d love for The Interested to help them.

You can read more about Benjamin and how you can help him here.

If you can afford to make a donation, that would be amazing.

If you can’t donate but can share their GoFundMe page on social media to spread the word to others who may help, that would also be amazing.

Thanks for anything you do.

Now, on to this week’s ideas.

1. ONLY DO IT IF YOU’RE WILLING TO DO IT 100 TIMES

“When you approach work with a long-term mindset, you free yourself to judge the results of that work in a similar time frame.”

The most successful things I’ve done have one thing in common: I’ve done them at least 100 times.

That realization inspired me to write this post about the 100x Method which is the concept of only working on projects you’re willing to commit to do 100 times.

I explain how doing so saves you from starting projects you shouldn’t, forces you to think long term, helps you push through the dip, and gives you a metric you can control.

RELATED: How to finish what you start.

2. HOW TO SIMPLIFY YOUR ONLINE LIFE

“Digital minimalism is a philosophy that helps you question what digital communication tools (and behaviors surrounding these tools) add the most value to your life.”

Technology is meant to make our lives simpler, but that’s not how it’s playing out for most of us.

To counter that, Dan Silvestre has compiled a collection of ways you can simplify your online life including how to use your computer, phone, email, and the internet in more mindful ways.

RELATED: How I stopped checking my phone and started using it with intention.

3. AN EASY WAY TO LOWER YOUR SPENDING

“The rule is simple: After I buy something, I log the transaction on my phone, recording the price and what I bought. The idea is to increase the pain of paying, especially with a credit card, by forcing myself to take note of what I’m spending.”

Credit cards make it easy to spend money so one of the best ways to combat that is to add a little bit of pain to the process.

The Atlantic suggests an easy way to lower your spending that involves recording each purchase when you make it (or even better, before you make it).

Doing so gives you more clarity on how you spend your money and can help you spend less overall.

RELATED: How to build a budget you will stick with.

4. FOCUS ON MASTERY INSTEAD OF METRICS

“Gaming the system is not a sustainable long-term strategy to build an audience for your work. If you commit to mastery, eventually the metrics will improve. But if you commit solely to metrics, it’s unlikely you’ll ever reach the point of mastery.”

Here’s a counterintuitive (but accurate) take on what to focus on when building an audience.

Srinivas Rao suggests if you want to build an audience you should focus on mastery instead of metrics because attention doesn’t equate to value, and it allows you to put efforts into what you control as opposed to what you don’t.

RELATED: How to get meaningful attention for your work instead of meaningless publicity.

5. HOW TO BE BETTER AT PARTIES

“There’s the sense that we should arrive fashionably late and with a posse of friends, but in fact, the very best time to get there is right when the party starts — before everyone is ensconced in conversations and you find yourself in the position of having to work your way into established groups.”

This one proves there’s a strategy for everything these days.

The New York Times explains how to be better at parties including tips about how to figure out what to wear, what to bring, when to arrive, and how to mingle.

RELATED: How to ask better questions and have more interesting conversations.

6. HOW TO RESPOND TO PEOPLE WHO ASK TO PICK YOUR BRAIN

“The problem with coffee date brain picking is that the advice you give (along with the time spent giving it) is lost into the ether. Helping one person at a time — for free — isn’t terribly scalable. But what if the advice you give one person could help two, ten, hundreds, or even thousands of people…without the impossible effort of sit down to coffee with each individual person?”

This is a must-read if you often get asked to share your expertise with people and have a hard time saying no.

Alex Hillman shares his magic response to people who ask to pick your brain which includes to ask them to email specific questions they have in advance, leverage your answers into formats where they can help others, and offer advice via video calls as opposed to in-person meetings.

RELATED: Unconventional advice for entrepreneurs, life lessons, and the one question I ask everybody.

7. HOW WARREN BUFFETT AND STEVEN SPIELBERG LAUNCHED THEIR CAREERS

“Spielberg snuck onto soundstages and sat in editing rooms, soaking up as much information as he could. Some days he’d smuggle an extra suit in his briefcase, sleep overnight in an office, and change into the fresh clothes the next morning and walk back onto the lot.”

Nobody succeeds by accident or on raw talent alone.

Darrah Brustein shares two quick stories about how Warren Buffett and Steven Spielberg used strategic relationships to launch their careers in a fun and inspiring read.

Spielberg’s story is especially amazing.

RELATED: 12 lessons about life and business from Warren Buffett.

8. ORDINARY PEOPLE FOCUS ON THE OUTCOME, EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE FOCUS ON THE PROCESS

“Pressure is the result of limitations we put on ourselves to produce outcomes we don’t control. When we focus on the outcome, we begin to expect things out of our control, which sets us up for failure.”

You know what most successful people have in common? They’re more focused on process than outcomes.

Anthony Moore breaks this concept down and points out the difference between outcome and process.

He points out you don’t need to pressure yourself to win, true champions focus on what they can control, and outcomes are always out of your control.

RELATED: How to live the life you want right now.

9. FIVE COMMON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING MISTAKES

“Start slow. It’s better to win on one platform than to lose on ten.”

Matt Sokol may be relatively new to social media marketing, but he’s clearly learning the right lessons.

His top five social media mistakes include to listen to the hustle and ignore the patience, build on the wrong platforms, and assume low engagement means a post is a failure.

RELATED: Eight not-so-obvious concepts that will improve your social media posts.

10. HOW TO GET OVER YOUR FEAR OF SELF-PROMOTION

“The promotion of work that provides value is a generous act, not a selfish one.”

Too many creators fear promoting their work because they worry how they’ll be perceived if they do so.

In this post I explain why those fears are unwarranted and break down how to get over your fear of self-promotion.

I point out there are only two reasons promotion makes you uncomfortable: Either you’re too insecure to recognize the value of your work or your work doesn’t provide actual value to people.

Either way, there’s a simple solution.

RELATED: Get more attention for your creations by telling your three stories.

WHERE I FOUND THIS STUFF

I discovered some of this week’s ideas from the newsletters of Postanly, Creative Mornings, and Startup Resources — they’re awesome and worth your time.

Image via Anna Kolosyuk.