Why I'm Writing A Book, TikTok Influencers, Career Changes & Top 5 Regrets | #124
📚 Life, work & what matters
January 16th, 2020: Greeting from Mexico City and welcome to 37 new subscribers and special shout out to Ted for becoming a paid subscriber.
📚 I put up a post for paid subscribers of my favorite books from 2020 and also pulled together a long list of 150+ essays, podcasts and other links on my site aggregated from all the newsletter issues in 2020. Enjoy!
If you’re coming across this from the web, subscribe and join the other 3,247 brilliant curious humans:
#1 Why I’m Writing A Book
Earlier this year I stumbled upon Amy McMillen’s writing and ended up interviewing her and highlighting the book she wrote chronicling her journey leaving the default path early in her career. The book was self-published, was around 100 pages, and I loved it! All I could think was that I wish there were more of these types of books. Deeper than typical blog posts but not a 250-page book filled with made up frameworks to fill pages.
I then realized that given how much I encourage people to take action on creating things this would likely be something I should really do myself. Scratch my own itch if you will.
Over the last found months I’ve had dozens of curiosity conversations and I tested the idea of writing the book in various ways. At least five or six people were enthusiastic supporters and that’s usually more than enough to motivate me to get started.
Reflecting in my annual review I realized I had a big opportunity to blow out my consulting skills course and try to make a lot of money. However, when I reflected on why I might do that the answer was that “so I could spend time writing.” Since I' can just do that now I decided not to focus on the course and write this book instead.
I mentioned this at the end of my year end review newsletter a few weeks ago but I buried it at the bottom of 3,000 words because I was a bit scared to say more.
So here I am with a little more courage. I’m offering it for $9.99 in the pre-sale and then will likely offer it at $14.99 for the digital and I’ll work on paperback and hardcover options as well (likely through Lulu) if there is enough interest.
I have a few simple goals with this project:
I’m writing it for you. Specifically the readers of this newsletter and people I have been in conversation with over the past several years. You’ve made my life better and I am obsessed with helping to make sense of my own journey in ways that might be additive to yours as well.
I’m writing it to see where my writing can go and what it can enable me to see more clearly about my own story. I’ve hired a writing coach to help push me a bit and I’m excited to see what emerges.
I am trying to “walk the walk” of what I talked about in my Issue #100, “we need 100x more creators.” I think the power of the internet to enable more voices and more creators into the world (with or without the pursuit of profit) is completely underappreciated. I don’t think we’re going to find meaning from our political parties or news networks but those seem to be better suited at capturing our digital attentions right now. However, when given much more options I do have faith that people want to go deeper, think, dream and create. Hopefully this inspires a few people to follow my lead.
Given my proclivity for non-traditional channels and paths I likely will experimenting with different ways of sharing this, gifting it to people, and publishing it. If you have any fun ideas or want to get involved, let me know.
📘 Click here to read more detail and check out the pre-sale.
#2 What’s Happening On TikTok?
I haven’t really paid much attention to what’s been happening on TikTok and haven’t downloaded the app yet. However, I realized that it was much more than the random weird dancing videos that keep popping up on other social channels when Michael McBride reached out for a curiosity conversation a few weeks ago.
He left his job last year to focusing on making content for TikTok (though he started on Instagram) and his channel took off with him now having over 500k followers (wild stuff). He’s making some kick-ass video pairing his energy with what he calls the “crazy, bizarre, disgusting, beautiful mess that is history.”
👂 Check out the podcast: Audio Links Or YouTube
👍 I also guarantee you’ll learn something interesting if you check out his channel and pick a random video. It may change your mind about the future of education.
#3 The Feeling Of Career Change
The hustle had a good essay sharing some interesting data on people that made career changes. It resonates with a lot of what I’ve heard from people over the past several years. A couple interesting charts worth sharing:
This one pairs well with my argument to work in the corporate world. It seems that many people have the desire to make a shift after they have either become really good at something and/or really bored with it. As you can see boredom is the number one reason (I would love to see what would have happened if you titled this “existential crisis.”)
Finally, although I’ve written about the fact that research says we rarely regret changes in our lives (we tend to regret things we didn’t do) I was still surprised to see the answer to this question be so dramatically split:
#4 Quote of the Week
My uncle sent me a quote this week coming from one of my favorite books, Unsettling of America.
It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.
#5 280 Character Thought Of The Week
I was trying to project what a “five regrets of the dying” might look like if it was written in 2075. Half-joking, half-serious of course.
What am I missing from this list?
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