“If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn’t arrive.” — Ian Fleming
It’s amazing what can happen in a minute.
I’ve been thinking about this lately and it helped me come up with this 60-second routine to get more done every day.
Whether you adopt that routine or simply spend time considering how you can use a single minute to make your work or life easier on an ongoing basis, I recommend you give it a try.
You might be surprised what a difference a minute can make.
One other quick reminder:
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Now, on to this week’s ideas…
1. IGNORING YOUR LONG TERM GOALS IS THE BEST WAY TO ACCOMPLISH THEM
“The only way to accomplish the macro goal of winning the game is to 100% focus on the micro goal of a single possession.”
It’s great to set long term goals, but once you do you better figure out how to stop thinking about them.
In this post I explain why ignoring your long term goals is the best way to accomplish them and break down why the key to accomplishing things like writing a book, hitting an annual sales goal, or growing an audience is to block out your huge goal and concentrate on the small ones instead.
RELATED: Eight ways to improve your focus.
2. SEVEN USEFUL AND OVERLOOKED SKILLS WORTH DEVELOPING
“The ability to recognize that your wins might not signal that you did anything right in the same way your losses might not signal you did anything wrong is vital to learning something valuable from real-world feedback.”
It’s easy to get caught up developing surface skills and overlook the importance of less obvious, but equally valuable abilities.
Morgan Housel shares seven useful and overlooked skills worth developing including to learn how to respectfully interact with people you disagree with, have a 10-minute conversation with anybody, and get to the point when you communicate.
RELATED: The five most valuable skills you can develop for free.
3. HOW TO WRITE LIKE THE CREATOR OF JAMES BOND
“There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.”
The creator of James Bond knows what it takes to write things people want to read and not surprisingly he also knows how to explain the process in an entertaining way.
Emily Temple compiles some of Fleming’s advice to writers in this breakdown of how to write like Ian Fleming.
His tips include to avoid lingering on descriptive passages, write about what pleases and stimulates you, and create a vacuum in your life which can only be filled by creative work.
RELATED: How to improve your writing in six steps.
4. SIX WAYS TO GROW YOURSELF AND YOUR BUSINESS
“How close are you to achieving your potential? I was around five or ten percent. For the last 137 days, I think I got closer to about 60.”
This is going to fire you up to do more with your life and work.
In a 32-minute video, Ryan Kulp shares six ways to grow yourself and your business including how self talk, environment, deadlines, and tools can impact your efficiency and success.
RELATED: It’s not about work-life balance, it’s about work-life enablement.
5. 32 LIFE LESSONS LEARNED FROM A 32-YEAR-OLD
“You need a philosophy and you need to write it down. And re-write it and go over it regularly. Life is too hard (and too complicated) to try to wing it and expect to do the right thing.”
As someone who also publishes a blog post to share observations on his birthday every year, this Ryan Holiday post resonated with me.
He shares 32 life lessons learned from a 32-year-old including that there’s something special about re-reading, you have to know what you want your day to look like, and that it’s worth thinking about the things you believed strongly which you now realize you were wrong about.
RELATED: 43 ways I’ve learned to make life easier.
COMING NEXT WEEK TO ALL ACCESS MEMBERS…
Here’s a sneak peek at some ideas All Access members will get in next week’s newsletter:
• How to get what you want in a negotiation
• How to master aging
• The ultimate reading list for people interested in marketing and strategy
• What a psychologist learned from decades of listening to patients
• Step by step instructions for how to conduct a better brainstorm
If you’d like me to send you these ideas, sign up here to become an ALL ACCESS member before next Sunday.
WHERE I FOUND THIS STUFF
I got some of this week’s ideas from Thomas Oppong, Ryan Robinson, Jimmy Daly, and Jocelyn K. Glei — they’re awesome and worth checking out.
Image via Clay Matthewman.