GET DOING THINGS.

nteresting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

Over the next couple of days I’m going to be talking about making things, and about the power of action. 

Generally there’s two types of people: makers and planners. One or the other isn’t wrong or right, but most people fall into one of them. 

Over the years, after extensive experience of both planning and just making stuff and trying both approaches, I’ve come to believe that just starting is better. 

If you just start something, you can learn faster, and you get the added momentum and nice feeling of doing stuff. 

Planning is mostly just guessing for future situations you can’t control.

Today I talk about repurposing content.

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

When you create your content, you can reuse it in a variety of ways. It isn’t always the obvious ways either. 

If you make a podcast, you can make a video (joe rogan). If you write a blog, you can make a podcast. 

What I do with my content: theme > outline > podcast > twitter thread > email

Think about themes instead of the end result. 

How can you then apply that theme to each medium?

Sometimes it can mean changing it only slightly (Gary Vaynerchuk)

Finally: how my morning experiment is going

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No matter how much you love being a creative, it's still just your job.

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

You’re not going to want to hear what I’ve got to say today, but it’s the truth.

When we first meet somebody new, we always ask: “what do you do then?”

Once we’ve discovered their job and career, we start making judgements.

In our modern society, a person is solely judged on their career choice.

We’ll make all kinds of judgements: lazy, driven, failure, successful, rich.

But at most, our job is just 40% of us. It doesn’t completely define our personalities.

I used to be like this. I was a designer completely defined by being a designer. This dictated my entire personality and I was proud of it.

Then I got a bit older, wiser, and read lots more books, and realised how wrong I was.

No matter how interesting your job is or how much money you make, it’s still a job.

If you’re a designer, that’s just your job, no matter how much you love it. There’s everything else about you that’s getting neglected. Your hobbies, your passions, your personality, your interests.

No, your job can never be your only hobby. This is a recipe for burnout, bitterness and anger.

A complete creative is not defined by just their job or status. It’s everything else that matters too.

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Anything you do matters. How you do it is how you do everything.

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

I read an article today by Benjamin Hardy that blew my mind how good it is. It was like a checklist of everything I try to do in my life.

There was one line in there—just one sentence—that inspired this whole podcast.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

Anything you do matters. How you do it is how you do everything.

How you approach your mornings, your eating habits, your relationships, your punctuality, your writing. It all matters.

All of those things—the things you do—build your reputation.

Just being a good creative isn’t the entirety of you. If you’re an amazing designer but you can’t do anything else, you’ll never be more than a shadow of your potential.

Being a good speaker, writer, raconteur, and a personal hype machine will make you a better designer than you’ll ever be by just being a designer.

Having interesting hobbies and attacking these with the same passion as your job will make you better.

Attack everything with the same passion as your job.

Everything you do makes you better at being a creative. So do everything as well as your job.

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It's true. Bold statements are more powerful.

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

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If you’re working in the creative industries, there’s one skill that’s more important than anything else.

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

I’ve been reading Principles by Ray Dalio lately.

If you’re working in the creative industries, there’s one skill that’s more important than anything: being adaptable. 

Your job will change. Your career will change. The things you know now will become useless. This is fact. 

Our industry moves quickly and you need to be one step ahead of it at all times. 

Always scan the horizon. Read. Follow important people on Twitter. Follow the trends. 

If you choose not to evolve inflation will push you out of the industry. Everybody else will get better around you and you’ll be stuck with old skills. 

This is happening every week. If you stopped learning when you left formal education, you’re already behind. 

Learning is a lifelong pursuit and not something delegated to institutions. 

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As we’re becoming increasingly more digital in our interactions, we need to hold on to being human. 

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

As we’re becoming increasingly more digital in our interactions, we need to hold on to being human. 

It isn’t easy to hold on to it.  It’s tempting to boot into the power of anonymity the internet provides and become something lesser. 

But when we’re building our reputation and we want to be known for good things, we have to be human. 

Joe Rogan's podcast where he talks about 49% vs 51%

I always think that how I easily I could be a bastard on the internet. Then how easily it would be to find out where I live and do damage. 

It’s the path of least resistance to build love and do good things. 

Do good things. Say nice things. And if you can’t be nice, say nothing at all. Be human. 

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Your reputation is all that you have.

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

I was listening to an episode of Timm Ferris podcast with Richard Branson, and Richard came up with a powerful phrase: Your reputation is all you have.

We don’t own anything else. We don’t own our business, our friends, the way life goes. We do own our reputation though. 

Our reputation is solely created through OUR actions.

It’s interpreted through other people’s eyes, and some people may think you’re a knob. But mostly, it’s our doing.

It’s a powerful statement because it throws away all the other stuff about being good, nice, hard working etc.

It frames it as: what do you want to be known as? What do you want to be known FOR?

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Today’s episode is for #NationalStressAwarenessDay. Obviously, it’s about stress. Let’s start easy: with my stress story.

Interesting Conversations episode 2 is out now!

John Kershaw's tweet about stress

I don’t claim to know all the answers, but I can share the mistakes I made.

It took me a long time in my life to realise this. Your job, your money, your whatever: none if it is worth stressing out over.

It all hit me about 5-6 years ago. I was working too hard and stressed out my body (it’s not just your mind that can get stressed)

I was stressing my body and brain out by working too hard. Doing too much.

Side note: it might appear now that I still do too much, but trust me I don’t. I learned my limits.

Side note too: there’s 2 types of stress: mental stress and physical stress. Physical stress can be caused by a long-term poor diet.

I started suffering from panic attacks. It wasn’t good.

How did I fix it? At the start, I didn’t work less. I stupidly didn’t make the connection.

I exercised. I started running. A few years after I’d lost a bit of weight, I got into weight lifting and other things.

I got into the best shape of my life (and maintain it now). My stress is gone, my anxiety gone. Is that a coincidence?

I don’t think so. Your health is SO important. Your health is MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE. Seriously.

Good health = you’ll be less stressed.

It isn’t the complete picture: you’ve got to not work so hard, avoid letting things stress you out (isn’t always easy though)

Stress is terrible for your body. Long term: it makes you hold on to body fat, makes you age quicker and ruins your body.

Work too much. Don’t exercise. Don’t eat properly. Live a selfish lifestyle. This will increase stress.

Meditate. Exercise. Eat healthy. Practice a stoic lifestyle. This will reduce stress.

Don’t be like I was. Nothing is worth the stress.

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