Plants gone potty!: A new look.

"Successful design is not the achievement of perfection, but the minimization and accommodation of imperfection."

- Henry Petroski

Everything is a work in progress.

That includes this newsletter.

You may notice I tweaked the design of this issue to simplify it and introduce a new Recommendations section at the bottom of the newsletter.

I hope it makes for a more enjoyable (and valuable) read for you.

Now, on to this week's ideas...

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1. Be Specific

"Specificity is a skill. The ability to be specific about what you want, say, and do directly influences your ultimate success."

There may be no more reliable indicator of your ultimate success or failure than your ability to be specific in everything you say and do.

In this post I share five areas of your life and work where it's important to be specific including with your goals, communication, and requests.

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2. You Are Who You've Been Looking For

"Treat yourself like someone you love."

I don't share a lot of spoken word poetry in this newsletter, so when I do it's because it's a pretty powerful piece of work.

In this five-minute video, Adam Roa suggests you are who you've been looking for.

Watching it may change how you think about yourself, but more importantly, it might change how you treat yourself.

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3. Three Ways To Be A Better Conversationalist

"We're all pining to be heard. If you can make your conversation partner feel heard, you'll foster a deep connection that will persist long after the conversation is over."

You don't have to be a natural conversationalist to have a good conversation.

Ozan Varol shares three ways to be a better conversationalist including to listen with a goal in mind, use the phrase "tell me more," and not be afraid to ask uninformed questions.

Related: How to be funny.

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4. How To Motivate Employees

"The question we should ask ourselves isn't, 'How can I motivate my team?' but rather, 'How can I create an environment for my team members to motivate themselves?'"

One of the secrets to motivating employees is to recognize you can't and instead make it easier for them to motivate themselves.

Claire Lew breaks down how to motivate employees including why you should individualize everything, create choice, and clarify expectations for them.

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5. How 25 Famous Women Get Their Ideas

"If you're a creative, find a business person. If you're a business person, find a creative. It's the blend of the two that creates success, and the two of you will sort of police each other and beat [the idea] out pragmatically."

All successful people have their own unique process for coming up with ideas and there's a lot to be learned from how they do it.

Julie Ma shares how 25 famous women get their ideas including quotes from women like Taylor Swift, Amy Poehler, and Judy Blume about how their creative process works.

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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: The best way to use email professionally, how to figure out the right answer to a multiple choice question, how to build an audience, how to approach building a career, and how to get more website visitors to give you their email address.

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Recommendations

Newsletter

Garbage Day surfaces weird, random internet awesomeness.

Song

Check out The Persuasions cover of U2's The Wanderer on the For The Interested playlist.

Book

The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway

People

Some of this week's ideas came from Khe Hy, Paul Metcalfe, Tomas Laurinavicius, and Greg Roth. Image via Alice Acterhof.

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