5 Ideas For The Interested This Week - For The Interested

5 Ideas For The Interested This Week

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I created a course!

It’s called the Newsletter Accelerator and I made it to help people who publish newsletters or are thinking of starting one.

It’s an online course designed to help you grow your newsletter and get the most out of the time, effort, and resources you put into it.

The course features tips about everything from how to set up your newsletter, to how to find and attract an audience, to how to increase engagement, to how to promote and monetize your newsletter.

It’s packed with actionable and specific examples of exactly how I’ve grown this newsletter to 25,000 subscribers and is available on-demand starting TODAY!

You can check out the course and get instant access to it here.

Now, on to this week’s ideas.

1. What To Do When Your Creative Process Isn’t Working

“You can’t wait your way out of a creative slump — you need to create your way out of it.”

There comes a time when you feel like you’ve lost your creative mojo and I wrote this to help you get back on track when that happens.

I break down what to do when your creative process isn’t working including five specific tactics you can employ to get out of a rut such as to establish a system, catalog your influences, and employ a draw-down period.

Related: A manifesto for creative people.

2. Watch This Before You Make Another Decision

“You’ll never know what the alternative would have been. You pick one, and you never, ever, ever, even consider to look back.”

We often struggle to make decisions because we overrate the amount of control we have in their outcomes.

In this powerful five-minute video, Gary Vaynerchuk shares his perspective on how to make a decision and, more importantly, how to live with the decisions you make.

Related: How to make decisions like an optimist.

3. Life Lessons From A Year Of Discovery

“If the journey is not fulfilling, don’t fool yourself into thinking the destination will miraculously bring you fulfillment.”

This post was more than a year in the making.

Sam Andrew left his successful hedge fund job with no concrete plan and spent a year traveling around the world. He chronicles what he learned in these life lessons from a year of discovery.

They include that growth resides in the unconventional, to measure yourself against your own dreams and not someone else’s, and that entitlement is dead weight.

Related: 30 life lessons from a 30-year Harvard class reunion.

4. Measure Momentum, Not Accomplishment

“What I’m considering is not just were they able to hit the goal, but how is the momentum?”

This is a must-watch if you run a business or lead a team, but will likely be just as useful to you in re-framing how you think about your own individual work.

In a seven-minute video, Simon Sinek suggests you measure momentum instead of accomplishment and breaks down the ways in which most companies reward the wrong things and as a result incentivize the behavior they don’t actually want.

Related: Money is fuel.

5. Seven Ideas About Innovation Worth Stealing From Lego

“You have to accept the idea that people will initially hate your new idea.”

One of the reasons Lego has thrived for so many years is its ability to innovate.

Maija Palmer shares seven ideas about innovation worth stealing from Lego including to think big but start small, start testing before there’s even a product, and be a “diplomatic rebel.”

Related: Innovation is overrated — execution is what matters.

You’re missing out on half the fun!

Become an FTI All Access member to get an additional five ideas in each week’s newsletter. Next week those will include how to sharpen your writing, how to impress your new boss, what you can learn from Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters, how to learn to love reading, and how to make the people you know more trustworthy.

Recommendations

Newsletter

Box of Amazing curates articles about emerging technology, trends, and stuff to broaden your mind and challenge your thinking.

Song

Restless Year by Ezra Furman on the For The Interested playlist.

Book

Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!) by George Lois

People

Some of this week’s ideas came from Khe Hy, and Storythings.

Image via Alena Koval.