Make the Brutal Into the Beautiful and the 5 hour workday | Dana's Weekly Roundup Issue 38
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ISSUE #38Dana's Weekly RoundupHi everyone!I've been binge listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's podcast Magic Lessons, based on her latest book Big Magic. This episode featured Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans of New York, sharing his experience in doing things before you're ready, or perfect, or even "good enough".Enjoy!Dana
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Magic Lessons Ep. 202: "Make the Brutal Into the Beautiful" Featuring Brandon Stanton
Elizabeth Gilbert advises Anne, a photographer in Pennsylvania. For the last few years Anne has been documenting her brother's life. He's a veteran with PTSD and a recovering drug addict. She imagines turning all this material into a photo-essay exhibit or book, but she's afraid to take the next steps to make it happen. To help guide Anne, Liz calls up her friend Brandon Stanton, the photographer and creator of the photo series "Humans of New York.”MKTG
How to write a creative action plan you'll actually follow
A Creative Action Plan (CAP) is a document that you add to and access regularly that contains action items in 10 key areas of your business so that you always have steps you can take to move forward.IRL
What Happened When I Moved My Company To A 5-Hour Workday
I moved my whole company to a five-hour workday where everyone works from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Over a year later, we're sticking with it. Here's why, and how we made the change work.
Stop Yourself from Becoming Content Fried and 5 Waiting Traps That Kill Your Dreams Slowly | Dana's Weekly Roundup Issue 26
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ISSUE #26Dana's Weekly RoundupHi everyone! A great article from Christine Kane on waiting traps. No one is going to grant you permission to do the thing. As a content curator, I do get content fried due to the massive heaps of content I consume weekly which does affect my productivity. These tips could help combat content overload.Enjoy!Dana
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11 little known Facebook marketing features to try and how New Yorker Cartoonists generate 500 ideas a week | Dana's Weekly Roundup Issue 24
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ISSUE #24Dana's Weekly RoundupHi everyone! Great article on how cartoonists from the New Yorker generate ideas. Buffer always shares detailed how to articles, and this one about Facebook marketing is very helpful, especially if your new to Facebook Marketing.Enjoy!Dana
Ratu, a 14-year-old Sumatran rhinoceros, sits next to its newborn calf at Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia.TAKE ACTION
How To Know Which Skills To Develop At Each Stage Of Your Career
At the start of your career, chances are good that you'll be hired primarily for your "hard skills"—the stuff you know that's relevant for the job.But what no one quite tells you is that while you might've been initially hired for those hard skills, they gradually matter less.MKTG
11 little known Facebook marketing features you can try today
In the spirit sharing, here are 11 hidden Facebook marketing features for social media managers and marketers to try today!IRL
Idea Sex: How New Yorker Cartoonists Generate 500 Ideas a Week
How to Come up with a Good IdeaBob Mankoff describes the cartoon idea generation process as “idea sex.”
On Creativity and Fear, The Conjoined Twins of Creation
I just listened to “The Source of Creativity” episode on NPR’s TED Radio Hour which covered ideas about where creativity comes from, why we all have it and how we find it.It takes courage to be vulnerable and say “This is me and I made this.” Especially if you created something that you put a lot of yourself into.I challenged myself this past year to do just that. Create something – from idea conception to final result and push it out into the world. No external obstacles, no managers or committees to answer to, no one instruct on what I should do and how I should do it. This is me and I made this.I listened to many business and entrepreneurship podcasts from other people who created something – a product or a business, including Seth Godin’s Startup School, Mixergy, Startup and I learned a lot from all of the stories of trials and tribulations of people who put themselves out there like that. The main thing I learned is just f#$%^@g do it. Get out of your own head, remove the idea that you have to strive to a level of perfection that doesn’t exist and just do it. Stop talking about doing it and just try it.Watch my favorite motivational 1 min video.And of course there were all the negative thoughts that come along with being vulnerable like that. What should I create? What if it sucks? What if people call me a fraud? What if it just gets ignored completely? What if I’m wrong?But as Ken Robinson says “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.”I decided to treat this project as an experiment; an experiment in creation. And if it flops, at least I would have learned through the process.I started narrowing down my options. I didn’t want to create a physical product because I know nothing about that and it seemed to be a very expensive experiment to conduct. Instead, I opted to create a knowledge product, based on things I know – no need to recreate the wheel for my beta experiment. I decided on creating an online course about Marketing since I’ve been a marketing professional for almost a decade. But Marketing is a pretty broad term so I needed to narrow it down even further. I was seeing a lot of websites that looked pretty but really didn’t have any substance or optimized for getting customers. And I heard from talented designers and developers that were telling me that they knew how to design a site or develop the site, but they didn’t know much about the strategy side of creating a website. So, I thought I could help with that and I created an online course on website strategy called: “How to Create a Website That Doesn’t Suck.”The challenge was to ship it – to put it out into the world before I talk myself out of it, even if it wasn’t perfect because as the maxim attributed to Sheryl Sandburg goes “Done is better than perfect.”I didn’t want to give in to the fear, I wanted to learn and I wanted to try.This is why I was really struck by Elizabeth Gilbert’s view on how creativity and fear are intertwined.“I think what stops people from doing [creative work] is always exactly the same thing, which is fear. What I've discovered over the years is not that you have to be fearless because I don't believe in fearlessness and I don't advise it.I think the only truly fearless people that I've ever met were full blown psychopaths or really reckless 3 year olds and I don't think we want to aspire to be either of those things.I think instead what you have to do is recognize that fear and creativity are conjoined twins. And what I see people doing in their lives is they're so afraid of their fear, that they end up trying to kill it and when they kill it they also kill their creativity because creativity is going into the uncertain and the uncertain is always scary.So what I've had to figure out how to do over the years is to create a mental construct in which I make a lot of space to coexist with fear.To just say to it: "Hey fear listen, creativity and I, your conjoined twin sister, are about to go on a road trip. I understand you'll be joining us, because you always do, but you don’t get to decide anything about this journey that we’re going on. But you can come and I know that you’ll be in the back seat in panic, but mommy's driving and we're going anyway. And you just take it along with you and that seems to work for me.The rest of the time for me it’s just been about showing up every day for the work. And I find that what actually happens is that you begin the work just from a place of diligence and discipline and then if you’re lucky through that process you’ll have moments where inspiration will come in and meet you.”Gilbert’s approach to fear and creativity really struck a chord with me. Don’t try to be fearless, instead, accept the fear as an integral part of the creative process and don’t give into it.And the results of my experiment? I’m putting the final touches on my course to be released before the end of the year, as I promised myself.
I was also honored to present my talk at WordCamp this year, a global conference for WordPress designers, developers and users and I received great feedback from the attendees. It was a great opportunity to test-run my course and learn from all the wonderful creative people who attended. I am very happy to be part of the WordCamp community.
What is fear stopping you from creating?