You don't need a system.
You don't need a "hack."
You don't need a motivational quote.
You don't need luck.
The only thing you need to change your life is to want to more than you don't want to.
Now, on to this week's ideas...
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"I scheduled every minute of my work week for the past two weeks and am blown away at the impact of doing so."
I've done a lot of life and work experiments over the years, but I'm not sure any have had as immediate an impact as this one.
I break down how it enabled me to be more productive, tackle projects I previously avoided, take more breaks, and improve my time management.
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"The quality of the attention we received from our primary caregivers can affect the intimacy and sustainability of our adult social connections – which are a major determinant of wellbeing, physical health and even life expectancy."
The University of California, Berkeley offers an online course in the science of happiness (of course it does) and this Guardian article explains what students learn in the class.
The 13 steps to becoming happy include to recognize gratitude is the killer happy app, happiness has nothing to do with meaningfulness, and that happiness isn't a feeling, it's a practice.
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"Every Pixar movie has the exact same story structure that you can identify in six sentences."
You might not pitch an animated movie any time soon, but that doesn't mean you can't learn valuable lessons from this two-minute video.
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"Committing to writing a list of influences and inspirations can help us clarify our pasts and show us potential paths for the future."
You may think you know your influences, but do you really?
Quartz explains the power of cataloging your influences and suggests writing down the people who influence your work can help you notice patterns, identify a lack of diversity in them, and give you humility in your work.
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"The purpose of the 5 whys isn't to place blame, but rather to uncover the root cause of why something unexpected occurred. Additionally, it helps a team create small, incremental steps so that the same issue doesn't happen again."
You can't solve a problem until you understand its cause.
Buffer created its five whys process to help determine that and explains how you can use the system to solve problems in your company, work, or life.
The process involves meeting with anybody involved in the issue and collectively answering a series of five why questions to uncover the root of the problem and its potential solutions.
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"Search hashtags, click them, look at the account, then see how you can bring them value. DM them, go in soft, bring value, rinse and repeat - two, three, four, five thousand times."
The real way to unlock value on Instagram has nothing to do with posting selfies.
But don't take the wrong lesson from this - like Gary says, the point isn't to go spam and annoy people. It's to find ways to provide value to them.
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"Even on weekends, we avoid ourselves. We're so used to being someone else, it's hard for us to be us. So we escape into pleasures. We numb ourselves with drugs, Netflix, or the newest Marvel movie."
This one might change the way you think about what it means to have a case of the Mondays.
Drake Caeneus suggests the reason you don't like Mondays may not be about your job as much as it's a reminder you spend too much time operating in a system where you feel like you can't be yourself.
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"Start small and try many things. Test many ideas quickly and cheaply. Try different messages to different audiences. Play around with your offer, your messaging and your targeting until you hit something that clicks with your customers."
Sometimes it feels like everybody's a marketer these days and they've all got a strategy to share. But some of them are actually good.
Yitzi Weiner asked 20 marketers to share their best digital marketing strategies and the result is this post which features tips including to dominate a single platform, differentiate your product or service, and review your digital strategy every quarter.
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"We get so much work, but they don't teach the time management skills to deal with it."
This Prince Ea video titled "What Is School For?" is a little tough to explain, but more than two million people watched it in the two weeks since its release and there's a good reason for that.
It's a subject worth thinking about.
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"There are reasons for people to choose you and your work over other available options and the better you understand these reasons, the more likely you are to succeed."
Everybody has a competitive advantage, but too often people struggle to recognize theirs.
In this post I explain how to find your competitive advantage and suggest eight questions to ask yourself including if you have a combination of skills most other people don't and if you have a process most others don't.
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WHERE I FOUND THIS STUFF
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Josh
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