This post is the 2nd part of series that outlines things I’ve learned post 100 notches on my blogging belt. Pun, anyone?
The first post provided insight into what I’ve learned about continuity and how to avoid heading to the 19th hole after 4 posts. Here I’ll outline the process I’ve arrived at and why I’ve found effective.
Before Writing the Post:
My workflow is heavily reliant upon a moleskin notebook and google docs.
Everywhere besides places I have to wear fancy pants, I carry a moleskin notebook to record ideas, thoughts, and observations. A lot of this serves as ammunition to store in my blogging war chest. Every 2-3 days I review and transfer my notes from my moleskin to a series of …
Continue Reading
This is my 100th blog post. I thought I’d take this as an opportunity to share some things I’ve learned about blogging. I previously wrote on why I think everyone should blog here which speaks to a lot of things I’ve picked up about the benefits of blogging. In this series of posts I’ll focus on what I’ve learned about continuity, process, audiences, and a few other things.
Continuity:
Don’t Make It About the Outcome
Feedback loops are important to creators. They allows us to refine our work. They helps us identify which audiences our creations resonate with and why. They confirm that the work we do is worthwhile, thus motivate us to continue creating.
In the blogosphere, the main feedback loops are comments, …
Continue Reading
Your pitch goes perfect, the guy on the other side is fired up…this one is in the bag!
But what unfolds is different than what you expected. Your emails go unreturned. Your calls are ignored. You’re left scratching your noggin at the radio silence.
This ever happen to you? It has to me plenty and in retrospect it could have been potentially avoided.
Usually you start by pitching one person. What I’ve come to realize is that even when this person is the decision maker they still might need to get buy-in from multiple people. This could be the rest of their team, an adjacent department, or even the CEO. It’s great to make this person you’re champion, but that doesn’t mean you …
Continue Reading
I did my first Tough Mudder event in the Poconos this weekend with my buddies Derek and Mark. It was awesome. I have a lot of friends who seem interested so I thought it’d be useful to highlight things which I would have liked to know going into the event.
Training
Dude 12 miles!? – The average Tough Mudder is around 12 miles, but you don’t need to be able to run 12 miles straight to finish it. Between the rocky terrain, obstacles and bottlenecks, it was next to impossible to run the entire thing. If you’re goal is to finish completing all the obstacles doing light jog the entire time, you should be able to pull this off if you can …
Continue Reading
I thought it might be useful to highlight some products I use on the reg for BD.
Rapportive
For those that aren’t familiar, Rapportive is a gmail plugin that populates social profile information attached to an email address in your inbox. It sharpens my BD blade in a variety of ways:
Context/Rapport Building – People are constantly eliciting relevant events or things they’re interested in through facebook and twitter. Rapportive helps me identify these signals which can be used to add a personal touch to an email.
For example, if someone was writing me an email right now, rapportive might inform them that Mashable just covered the newest release of the YP App and the extension of our partnership. This is news they might …
Continue Reading
I LOVE trying new things and am addicted to the upside that accompanies the unknown. But when faced with too many choices, my adventurous aspirations relinquish and I find myself retreating to familiarity. I noticed this multiple instances over the past week:
Dinner at Gracefully – The market at my house has 30+ different sandwich options. I looked at the menu chock full of interesting combinations for 5 minutes and ended up ordering a boring italian hoagie.
Restaurant Recommendation App – This app recommended 10 places to eat dinner in East Village. After looking at each one, I ended up going to someplace I’ve been before that wasn’t even recommended by the app.
Why does this happen?
My mindset as a consumer …
Continue Reading
This post is part of my Weeklongs Project.
This week was about letting internal signals direct eating instead of external cues.
As an undersized college football player, I ate constantly. My 5’10 frame was not going to stop me from trying to look like Lattimer from The Program. I didn’t stop eating when I was full and didn’t wait until I was hungry to start. I’d end up eating 4-5 meals a day. In retrospect eating seemed almost more like part of a regimen than an act to satiate my hunger.
Despite the fact that I’ve hung the cleats up, I’ve noticed I still behave this way. Between the hours of 12-2 I’ll go eat lunch – not always because I’m hungry but because you’re …
Continue Reading
Fact: Any decision that requires self-control drains your energy.
Not buying ice cream I just saw in the deli = -1 energy
Writing this post instead of cruising facebook = -2 energy
Going to the gym instead of drinks = -3 energy | +5 energy tomorrow
Regardless of the choice I make, so long as I’m struggling with temptation, I’m exerting energy.
As our energy diminishes, so does our willpower because it requires energy to exercise self-control. Think it’s coincidental that people eat sweets, skip the gym, or overindulge in alcohol at night vs. the morning? It’s partially because a day of decision making causes the tides to fall in our energy reservoir. And when we lack energy, we opt for the path of least …
Continue Reading
