Jared Dees's Blog: The Latest from Jared Dees, page 40

Vision Setting Exercise: See, Say, and Feel

We all want our projects to succeed, but two problems almost always occur while we are working on them:

We don’t actually know what success looks like. While working on a project, we get stuck without a clear idea how to move forward.

Whether it is a book, a screenplay, a song, a speech, an online course, it doesn’t matter. We have to overcome these two problems.

I have found that the best way to avoid problem #1 and overcome problem #2 is to answer three questions.

These three questions ma...

Why I’m Not Worried about the Flu

We could all get sick tomorrow or the next day. By writing this, I probably jinx myself and the family.

I don’t consume the news, or maybe more accurately, I don’t let the news consume me.

My wife rolls her eyes every time I talk about the news. I just can’t handle the fear-inducing headlines that news outlets use to get attention. Whether it is the flu “epidemic” or giving an ordinary Midwest winter storm a name like a hurricane, the news spreads fear to get people to pay attention.

The flu...

The True Goal of Influencer Outreach

There is a lot of talk and a lot of articles out there about the need to do “influencer outreach” as a part of marketing and launches. Most of these articles share tactics to help you get the attention of influencers so they will promote your products. Approaching influencer outreach with this kind of self-centered mindset is never going to work.

Understand, instead, what the true goal is in doing influencer outreach.

First, reach out to the right influencers.

I like the way Ray Dalio describ...

First Principles Book Marketing

Elon Musk is a well-known proponent of first principles thinking. His best-known explanation of reasoning from first principles is in this interview with Kevin Rose. The basic idea is that you ignore basic assumptions as popular opinion. Instead of reasoning by analogy, which will lead you to make something slightly better, you get to the basic principles that makes something work and as a result you can make something new, different, better, and cheaper. This is how Musk was able to successf...

Failed Experiment: A Weekly Pre-set Schedule

A couple of months ago I wrote about creating a schedule for myself like a student’s schedule at college. The idea was to dedicate 30 minutes of time each week to one of my important but not urgent priorities and strategies for the year.

This did not work.

Here is what my pre-set schedule looked like:

Do Things Daily

The first thing I learned from this experiment is that a daily routine works really well. I didn’t miss the morning blog post. I didn’t skip the writing time or the Daily Review...

Take More Shots

“My goal is to make four baskets,” my daughter proudly announced to me before her second 3rd grade basketball game.

This would be a pretty audacious goal considering it was only her second game ever and the final scores of her games do not tend to be very high.

My wife offered another suggestion: “How about you set a goal to take twenty shots.”

The great thing about this goal is that it would be hard to keep track. We told her not to count and that we would count for her. All she had to do wa...

Writing Lessons from My Editor

Last week I returned a manuscript with a number of changes requested by my editor. Responding to her comments and questions made me a better writer. Here are some of the things I learned from her about my writing habits:

What works online may not work in print.

I have a lot of bad blogging habits. When I write a blog post or online article, I keep paragraphs to 1-3 sentences each. That’s a habit I learned not to use in books a long time ago, however, I continue to bring bad blogging habits li...

Long-term Oriented Thinking about Projects

I heard Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, say something interesting about the projects he is working on.

When someone congratulates him on a good fiscal quarter, he thanks them but it doesn’t really make much of an impact on him. The results from this quarter were already determined by the work he did three years ago. He won’t know the results of the projects he is working on now until three years from now.

He called this a discipline. This is something you have to train yourself to do.

So . . .

Wha...

How do you respond to editor feedback?

First, look at feedback as an opportunity to learn and grow.

None of the comments or changes are meant to be personal attacks. Ignore the tone of brief comments. Don’t read into it. This person just read your entire book. Be grateful and recognize that editors are making the work and you better.

Second, tackle each change one at a time.

When you first get a manuscript back from your editor, the amount of work in terms of fixes and rewrites can be a little overwhelming. A good editor is going...

How I Accidentally Got into the Best Shape of My Life

I debated about writing this lesson, but in the interest of documenting my journey I think it is worth sharing what I learned last year about health and physical appearance.

By “best shape” I don’t mean my ability to run fast or long distances or by the amount of weight I can bench press or anything like that. This is based solely on how I look and feel. I lost a little more than 5 pounds last year. At the beginning of 2017 I accidentally purchased khaki pants that were a size too small. I ha...