Jared Dees's Blog: The Latest from Jared Dees, page 35
March 30, 2018
Three Days Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday?
On what day did Jesus die and rise again?
In the Creed we say that “on the third day [Jesus] rose again,” but if Jesus died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday, isn’t that just two days?
In this video I explain the math behind the Resurrection and why St. Paul and even Jesus himself referenced the three days in the tomb between his death and Resurrection.
If the a day actually begins at sundown rather than midnight, it makes a lot more sense. Good Friday actually starts on Holy Thursday night....
March 29, 2018
How I Built an Email List of 40,000 Subscribers
Yesterday, The Religion Teacher email list passed the 40,000 subscriber mark. It is hard to believe that many people sign up to get emails from me or that there have been almost 60,000 people total who have signed up if you count those that unsubscribed.
Here are a few of the things that helped the most in building such a large list:
Start early: Everyone says this but it’s true. I wish I had started an email list during those first two years when I was blogging at The Religion Teacher. The...March 28, 2018
The Character Question: What do they want and why?
In an interview with James Altucher, bestselling author Brad Meltzer points out that the plot isn’t what captures the reader’s attention (or the author’s attention for that matter).
What really counts is the motivation of the character. That’s what people care about.
Meltzer asks himself about each character:
What does my character want? Why?If he doesn’t know the answer to these questions then he can’t include them in the story. He has to be able to identify what a character wants and why...
March 27, 2018
The Smallest Possible Task
The second to last item on my Daily Review checklist was to “organize your desk,” which includes the very large stack of papers in my Inbox. My Inbox, inspired of course by David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, is where all of my incoming papers go so that I can process them and decide what actions need to be done with them at a designated time.
Well, the papers kept piling up to the point that the stack was so overwhelming that I never did anything with them.
Then I adjusted that item on m...
March 26, 2018
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
“What does ‘abandon’ mean?” my daughter whispered to me during Palm Sunday Mass.
A more popular translation of Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes on the cross, is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” which he says in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (Mark 15:13).
“Maybe even Jesus felt alone and scared to die,” I whispered back.
“Why?” she asked.
This is the question I hope not to forget as Holy Week begins and we head into Easter weekend.
Why?
Why would Jesus die?
Why would Jesus d...
March 25, 2018
Getting in the Mood for Creativity
There is no such thing.
The environment will never be quite right.
Your emotional state is never going to be perfect.
If you wait for inspiration, it is likely never going to come.
Instead, push through.
Show up, sit down, and type (SUSDAT).
The magic happens most of the time after you show up. You write something bad and then your mind keeps working after you finish. You go about your day and suddenly realize what your little piece of bad writing really needs: a word, a phrase, a sentence, e...
March 24, 2018
Become What You Pretend to Be
“All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.”
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I find this truth to work in two ways, both good and bad.
If you pretend to be someone successful when you are just starting out and work hard to turn that dream into a reality, eventually you will become that person you are striving to become. I find that if you strive to be someone admirable, people will forgive you for the gap and help you become what you want to be.
But, you can also pr...
March 23, 2018
Prime Time Newsletter
While I’ve had email lists for years, I only recently started sending a regular email newsletter to them.
In the past my strategy had been to email the lists when I had something interesting to share or when I was launching something.
Unfortunately this meant frequent gaps that could be weeks long.
And that meant people easily forgot who I was and why they signed up for the email list.
People loved the emails. They often told me so at conferences and in replies. Every time I sent an email, th...
March 22, 2018
Find Your Whale Readers
In a recent podcast, Seth Godin talked about whales. He’s written about it before on his blog: “The management of whales.”
A whale is a person that consumes far more than the typical person.
In 2014 23% of Americans didn’t even read a book. There are some, however, who read more books on their own than almost everyone else combined. These people are the whales. They are reading dozens of books a year.
The challenge in marketing, therefore, is to find the whales and win them over.
A challenge...
March 21, 2018
Post-Presentation Panic
It comes without fail on the night after I give a presentation and even in the days that follow.
I can hear myself saying something in front of those hundreds of people that I spoke to earlier and feel a sudden urge of panic.
It is a strange feeling that no amount of positive encouragement or affirmation from people after the talks who were there seems to erase.
Is it a fear of rejection? A fear of making offense? A fear of being wrong?
Steven Pressfield would call this Resistance. Every arti...
