“Every once in awhile, someone steps up and makes something better. Much better. When it happens, it’s up to us to stand up and notice it. Which means buying it and consuming it with the very same care that it was created with.”
What Happens When You Give up Shopping for a Year
“Once I got the hang of giving shopping up, it wasn’t much of a trick. The trickier part was living with the startling abundance that had become glaringly obvious when I stopped trying to get more. Once I could see what I already had, and what actually mattered, I was left with a feeling that was somewhere between sickened and humbled.”
How to Quit Bad Habits by Creating Friction
“The harder it is to perform a habit, the less you will want to do it. You want it to be as frictionful (yes, that’s a made up word) as possible.”
Innovation Is Overrated — Execution Is What Matters
“Pragmatic iteration is overlooked as the boring rehashing of old things, while exciting ‘moonshots’ and 10X leaps are fetishised. However, the opposite is often true: the most successful companies in the world focus on nailing iterative execution, not constant reinvention.”
Three Methods to Get Your Writing Published
“The big secret to climbing the blog world is to get in on the ground floor, trade up.”
Content Promotion Is About Meeting Your Readers Where They Live
“Every content team vastly overestimates the percentage of their total readership that has read, applied, or even remembered any individual article.”
The 2017 Smart Binge Guide
“Tips on what to watch, what to stream, what to documentary, what to check out, etc.”
10 Ideas For The Interested This Week
“Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.” — Maggie Kuhn
My 20 Most Popular Posts of the Year
It’s been quite a year for me on Medium.
I’d like to take a moment to thank all of you who have followed, read, shared, and clapped for the 70 posts and 52 editions of my For The Interested newsletter I’ve published on the platform.
Following are my most popular posts of the year — I hope you learn as much from reading them as I did from writing them.
(And if you’re curious, here are my most popular posts from 2016.)
20. “You’re not going to trick people into getting what you want.”
19. “Your audience isn’t the number of people who consume a particular creation, but rather the number of people you can count on to consume your NEXT creation.”
18. “What connects them all is an ability to consistently inspire, educate, and entertain readers.”
17. “The difference between a good idea and a great one is often the removal of an element.”
16. “What we consider to be rules are often just a set of expectations from others about how things are typically done — they’re rarely the only way things can be done.”
15. “Our goal should be to serve our audience, not to use our audience to serve ourselves.”
14. “Your personal brand isn’t defined by you — it’s defined by your work.”
13. “Life’s too short to not do things we love on a daily basis.”
12. “The best way to ensure our lives change in the directions we want is to reflect on the choices we’ve made and make deliberate decisions moving forward.”
11. “Stop saying yes to things that waste your time, or out of a false sense of obligation or guilt.”
10. “You need to do things. Not enough people do things.”
9. “This decision to stop posting links has been the single biggest driver of increased reach for my Facebook posts.”
8. “Rules are created to protect the status quo — not to spur innovation.”
7. “Experience is the foundation of great writing and the more we acquire, the more we have to draw on.”
6. “The process of communicating an idea we’ve consumed in different formats — speaking, writing, and condensing it — forces us to absorb the idea in a much deeper way.”
5. “Ideas that allow us to acquire skills, experience, and build assets regardless of their ultimate success, are ones worth pursuing.”
4. “Our inbox works for us — not the other way around.”
3. “The first step toward accomplishing something is always a small one. We dip our toe in the water.”
2. “You have to put in the work. Improvement comes from action, not intention.”
1. “When I watch TV now, I keep my phone on a table across the room so I’m never tempted to pick it up. Turns out the only thing stronger than the allure of social networks is the allure of not getting up off the couch.”
Want to see what next year’s posts will bring?
Subscribe to my For The Interested newsletter and come along for the ride!
Six Secrets of People Who Keep Their New Year’s Resolutions
“People who are successful realize that resolutions are not a one-time change.”