5 Ideas For The Interested This Week - For The Interested

5 Ideas For The Interested This Week

“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.” — Oscar Wilde

Don’t ask someone how their thing became successful.

Instead, ask them about the thing they did before the thing that became successful.

Because there’s always a thing before the thing and it usually didn’t work out too well — that’s why they started the new thing.

You’ll discover the lesson they learned from the thing that didn’t work drove the eventual success of the thing that did.

Now, on to this week’s ideas…

“Use this halftime break to get off the ‘field,’ assess what worked and what didn’t in the first half of your day and come up with a strategy for the second half.”

The other day I had a realization: Work days should have a halftime ritual the same way football games do.

That was quickly followed by a deeper realization that if you structure your work week like a football coach, you’ll probably get more out of it.

In this post I share six productivity tactics you can learn from football coaches and apply to your own work including to develop a situational playbook, create a season and games based on your goals, and run a system that amplifies your strengths.

Related: My most productive days are a result of these five choices.

“The divers make a splash, but they aren’t necessarily better swimmers. Getting in inch by inch is perfectly fine.”

Read this if you want to stop waiting and start making.

Beth Lapides suggests 10 simple ways to start the thing you’ve struggled to start including to accept the fear, set a timer, and wade into the shallow end of the pool.

Related: What will happen if you start today.

“Don’t try to sound interesting. Just do what nobody does: Be honest.”

That headline’s not a typo — this one actually includes 281 tips to help you write better collected by Matt Rudnitsky from a wide variety of people and sources.

The tips cover topics such as how to evaluate ideas, find your voice, deal with criticism, find an audience, and a LOT more.

Related: 10 writing tips from the founding editor of The Onion.

“The ability to turn an opportunity into momentum, and momentum into longevity is what separates artists who have a ‘moment’ from those that have a career.”

Over the course of a multi-decade career in the entertainment industry, talent manager Brian Medavoy has learned a lot about what drives a successful career and what doesn’t.

In this post he breaks down how to make the most of a career opportunity and offers three tips to turn a break into momentum and another three tips to turn that momentum into career longevity.

Related: The five qualities successful people share.

“After doing the exercises, the team gets a common language to describe what their company is about — and all subsequent squishy decisions about visuals, voice, and identity become way easier.”

No matter whether you’re launching a new brand or just feel like you need more clarity about your existing brand, this will be a game changer.

Jake Knapp outlines how to figure out your brand in three hours including six exercises you can go through to determine your brand’s values, audience, and personality.

Related: Your audience is your brand.

• The best nonfiction books of the last 25 years

• How to tell the story of your work to anyone you need to care about it

• How to optimize your failure rate in order to learn quicker

• How to attract an audience that will purchase an expensive product

• How to spot a genius in any field

Become an FTI All Access member and I’ll send them to you next week.

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Newsletter

Total Annarchy by Ann Handley

Song

California by i said yes on the For The Interested playlist

Book

Contagious by Jonah Berger

People

Some of this week’s ideas came from Bailey Richardson, Creative Mornings and Storythings. Image via Hannah Reding.

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