“Deadlines are actually our best friends.” — Jason Fried
I’m thinking about tweaking the format of this newsletter and I’d love your help.
Can you please take 30 seconds to answer this five-question anonymous survey?
It will help me continue to give you more of what you want each week.
Thanks!
Now, on to this week’s ideas…
1. HOW TO SET GOALS IN A WAY THAT HELPS YOU ACCOMPLISH THEM
“Nothing has a bigger influence on the fate of your pursuits than your ability to set a clear, measurable, and meaningful goal at the start of your journey.”
The better you are at setting goals, the more likely you are to accomplish them.
In this post I share four keys to setting more effective goals including to make your goal measurable, avoid confusing goals with results, and use clear goals to reveal the strategies necessary to achieve them.
RELATED: Set goals based on behaviors, not outcomes.
2. HOW TO HIRE THE BEST PEOPLE YOU’LL EVER WORK WITH
“Anyone who isn’t curious doesn’t love what they do. And you should be hiring people who love what they do.”
Marc Andreessen wrote this post about how to hire the best people you’ll ever work with way back in 2007, but it’s every bit as relevant today.
He explains how to run a hiring process and suggests the three most important criteria to judge candidates on is their drive, curiosity, and ethics.
RELATED: How to hire the right person.
3. HABITS ARE ALWAYS FORMING
“Most of the habits we have are habits we ended up with after years of unconscious behavior. They’re not intentional.”
This is only a six-paragraph post, but its impact is much greater than its length.
Jason Fried points out habits are always forming and suggests you be aware of what you do and how you’re doing it because your actions will form habits — whether you realize it or not.
RELATED: How to get the most out of your best habits.
4. HOW TO BE A BETTER WRITER
“When you’re done with your initial draft, take a hard, dispassionate look at those first few paragraphs. See if you can toss them out.”
It’s almost impossible not to pick up at least one valuable tip in this thorough post for writers.
Gareth Branwyn breaks down how to be a better writer and shares advice on everything from how to cultivate a writer’s mindset, to what tools to use, to how to edit your work and work with publishers.
RELATED: How to write something useful to others.
5. HOW TO FIND BETTER AIRFARES
“Pair two one-way tickets — even from different airlines and airports — to create an itinerary that could end up being less than a round trip.”
Whether you want to beat the system when it comes to booking flights or are just hoping to make it less of a hassle, this post can help you.
Brooke Porter Katz explains how to find better airfares including tips about when to book, when to fly, and how best to use mileage points.
RELATED: How to photograph your vacation.
6. HOW TO RUN ONE-ON-ONE MEETINGS
“My two favorite questions to ask direct reports are ‘if you were me, what would you do differently’ and ‘what don’t you like about the product?’”
If you ever have one-on-one meetings with a boss or employee, this will help you make those conversations more beneficial for both parties.
Mathilde Collin explains how to run one-on-one meetings and shares a list of questions you can use to guide the meeting.
RELATED: Seven ways to make your meetings better.
7. THE NINE ENVIRONMENTS THAT MAKE UP YOUR LIFE
“We are surrounded by environments. Everything you can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is an environment that is either adding energy to your life or draining energy from your life.”
Here’s an interesting way to take stock of your life and identify what’s working and what’s not.
Srinivas Rao explores Jim Bunch’s concept that there are nine environments that make up your life and that each of those environments either add or drain from you.
The environments include things like your relationships, finances, and network.
RELATED: How to rewrite the story of your life.
8. SIX WAYS TO MAKE YOUR MARRIAGE AWESOME
“We assume far too many things are obvious. And it’s often very self-serving. It prevents us from having uncomfortable conversations or having to ask for things that are scary.”
This post features marriage advice from a divorce lawyer — not sure if that makes it more or less dependable, but I’m guessing more.
Eric Barker shares six ways to make your marriage awesome including to define “a good marriage,” be hyper-honest, and get a life outside of your partner.
RELATED: Things healthy couples don’t fight about.
9. HOW TO MONETIZE A NEWSLETTER
“It is a scalable revenue stream as long as the audience scales.”
If you have your own newsletter or are thinking of starting one that you hope to monetize, this video is a must-watch.
Khe Hy and Kyle Westaway have an open and honest conversation about how to monetize a newsletter based on the experiments they’ve run with their own newsletters.
They touch on the realities of trying to monetize through ads, events, digital products, and more.
(By the way, if you have your own newsletter or plan to launch one, I invite you to join my Newsletter Creators Facebook group.)
RELATED: How to write a newsletter.
10. THE KEY TO CREATING SOMETHING GREAT IS ACCEPTING MOST OF YOUR WORK WON’T BE
“Most things aren’t great — no matter how much experience or desire you have.”
Of the 193 songs the Beatles released on albums, only 17 went to number one on the charts.
In this post I explain why the key to creating something great is to accept that most of your work won’t be and point out the only way to create great work is to avoid the urge to quit before you get there.
RELATED: 18 ideas about how to create a hit from the book Hit Makers.
WHERE I FOUND THIS STUFF
I got some of this week’s ideas from Thomas Oppong, Jocelyn K. Glei, Joi Sigurdsson, and Tomas Laurinavicius — they’re awesome and worth checking out.
Image via Victoria Borodinova.