How to Write Compelling Articles That Get Read and Shared

How to Write Compelling Articles That Get Read and Shared

   February 06, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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Photo by Burst

5 steps I’ve followed to craft trending Medium articles

Recently, I was talking to a friend who was feeling disappointed with her blog posts. She’d publish a post, and all she’d hear were crickets. Even after promoting her posts, hardly anyone was commenting or sharing her articles.

Most of us writers know what that feels like.

When I began my blog a few years ago, I set out to write blog posts that would inspire and help fellow writers. But after spending days crafting a post, I would only receive a handful of comments.

Many of those comments were positive, though, and they encouraged me to keep going. Still, I felt a little discouraged. I wanted my posts to reach more readers.

After a while, it occurred to me that maybe the problem wasn’t with my content but with the way I was presenting it. So I decided to study the rules of copywriting and read every article I could get my hands on about how to write powerful blog posts.

As I started implementing what I was learning, my posts began receiving more and more comments and shares (one even went viral on StumbleUpon). I republished my posts on Medium, and many have become trending articles in numerous publications. And my email list grew from 200 to over 2,000 subscribers in just a year.

In this post, I’m boiling down into five steps everything I’ve learned about writing articles for the web.

Please note: This isn’t a guide to writing viral posts. Rather, this is a guide to writing compelling articles that will resonate with your readers and add value to their lives.

1. Craft a Strong Headline

Imagine you’re browsing through the newly released books at a bookstore. You don’t have enough time to stop to look at every single book. Most likely, you’ll only pick up a book if it has an intriguing title and cover design.

The same is true of blog posts. People’s social media feeds are flooded with a constant stream of articles and online content. In order to make yours stand out, you have to have an attention-grabbing headline: something that offers value to the reader in exchange for their time.

David Ogilvy, known as The Father of Advertising, is said to have stated,

“The headlines that work best are those that promise the reader a benefit.”

A benefit could be anything from entertaining someone to teaching someone to inspiring someone to helping someone solve a problem.

Take for example my top three posts from 2016:

• How to Keep a Writing Notebook: A Peek into the Notebooks of Famous Writers & Thinkers
• 5 Rules for Writing Well: C. S. Lewis’s Letter to a Young Writer
• 15 of the Best Free Web Applications for Writers

Each of these headlines states a clear benefit to the reader.

As you write your blog post headlines, keep the 4 U’s of headline writing in mind:

1. Unique
2. Ultra-specific
3. Urgent
4. Useful

Usually, you won’t be able to cover all four of those U’s, but if you include at least one or two you should be able to come up with a strong headline. List posts perform well because they are ultra-specific, and how-to posts do well because they are useful.

You can run your titles through the Coschedule Headline Analyzer to see if there are ways to tweak them to make them more powerful.

Bonus Tip: Once you’ve come up with your headline, you should also choose a lead photo for your post that illustrates your headline in some way. This is the photo that will appear when your post is shared on social media (or in your readers’ Medium feeds) so make sure it is eye-catching.

Unsplash is a fantastic website where you can find beautiful, royalty free photos to use.

If you’re posting on Medium, I also recommend including a subtitle.

2. Open with an Irresistible Introduction

You’ve caught your reader’s attention with your headline, but does your post deliver what it promised?

The first paragraph of your blog post should draw your readers in and make them want to read more. This is where you lay out what they can expect in the rest of the blog post.

There are three elements of a powerful introduction:

1. The Hook
2. The Transition Section
3. The Thesis Statement

This is the same formula I used when writing introductions to college essays, and it is very effective for blog posts too.

In the hook, you grab your reader’s attention with a memorable story or fact or question. Usually, in the hook, I set up a problem that is facing the reader. Often I like to address the reader directly with a question. For example, “Does it ever feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day for everything that you want to accomplish?”

Next, I’ll transition into a story about a famous person or even a story about myself. In this transition section, I’ll dig a little deeper into the detrimental effects of the problem. Then, I’ll explain that I have found a way to solve the problem.

Finally, I present the thesis statement: a one-sentence summary of the post and how I will be helping the reader solve their problem. For example, “In today’s post, I’m looking at five different ways we can carve out time for writing even when it seems like there are no more hours left in our schedules.”

My examples are from a how-to post, but you can adapt this formula to any type of post that you are writing.

3. Follow the Story Structure of the Hero’s Journey

Stories add another dimension to our writing. This fascinating Infographic shows how the human brain is hardwired to respond to storytelling differently than other forms of writing.

You can use stories to illustrate your main points, and you can also use the elements of storytelling to structure your entire post.

When I write my posts, I follow the outline of the hero’s journey, a term coined by American scholar Joseph Campbell to describe one of the most common storylines in literature. Think of the plot of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, or The Odyssey.

Here’s the basic outline:

• A hero is called to go on an adventure to solve some kind of problem. (Every good story has some kind of conflict driving the plot forward.)
• She may be reluctant to accept the call but eventually realizes that if she doesn’t solve the problem, her life will spiral out of control.
• A mentor helps her prepare for the adventure.
• After facing a series of challenges, the story reaches its climax. Will the hero overcome the problem or not?
• The hero emerges victorious and returns home transformed.

How can you use this storyline to write your blog post?

Use the body of your post to take your readers on a journey. Your hero is your blog reader. You are the mentor. Share the steps you took to overcome a problem that the reader is facing. Then show the reader how they will be transformed once they implement those steps.

My post below shares eight more tips for writing powerful stories that will connect with your readers:

4. Make Your Post Easy to Read

Even if you write a wonderfully compelling or incredibly helpful post, people might still not stay around to read. Most people glance over a post quickly to see how long it is. Others are wary of click bait, not wanting to invest their time in something that won’t benefit them.

Here are three steps you can take to make your post more convincing to read:

1. Break your post up into short sections with subheadings

The subheadings give your reader an outline to follow, and the short sections make a long post much easier to digest.

However, you want to make sure that the subheading doesn’t give too much away or people won’t bother reading each section. Notice how each of my subheadings in this post are short teasers to what follows in the paragraph.

2. Use short paragraphs and sentences

Long blocks of text are intimidating to read, especially if you are reading on a mobile device. I try to write paragraphs that are no more than three to four sentences long.

3. Evaluate your post’s readability

I use Grammarly to catch any typos or grammar errors I might have made. And then I evaluate my post against a readability score.

A readability score tells you roughly what level of education someone would need in order to read your piece of text easily. It will help you write with a more conversational style. I try to write my posts as if I were talking to you in person over a cup of coffee in a café. Would you like another latte?

You can use this website to measure your text readability. Or if you have a self-hosted WordPress website, I recommend downloading the Yoast SEO plugin. It will help you optimize your content for the web and has a built-in readability analyzer.

Here are several more tips from Kurt Vonnegut on how to improve your writing:

5. End With a Call to Action

You’ve taken your readers on an incredible adventure. Now what should they do with that information they’ve just learned?

I usually title the conclusion of my blog post “The Takeaway”. It’s where you can emphasize the most important lessons of your post.

Next, give your readers a clear call to action to follow. Maybe you tell them to implement the steps they’ve read about in your post (stress the dangers if they do not take action).

Finally, you have a chance to build a relationship with your readers.

I like to end with a question and encourage readers to answer it in the comments. You could also create an additional resource to accompany your post that readers can download by signing up for your email list. (You can embed an email subscription form in your Medium post using Upscribe.)

And don’t forget to ask readers to share your post on social media if they enjoyed it. At the bottom of my Medium posts, I ask readers to click the heart if they found the article helpful.

The Takeaway (and a free checklist!)

No matter what kind of article you are writing (a how-to, a listicle, a personal narrative, a book review), you can use these steps to make your article more powerful and engaging. Adapt them to your style and your topic.

Ultimately, you want to keep your readers in mind. How will your post add value to their lives? Is there any way that you can dig deeper and add a unique perspective to your topic?

When you implement these five steps, you will transform your posts into content that will truly impact your readers. They will be eager to share and read more of your work.

Nicole Bianchi

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Make Life Easier on Yourself by Accepting “Good Enough.” Don’t Pursue Perfection, Pursue Progress

Make Life Easier on Yourself by Accepting “Good Enough.” Don’t Pursue Perfection, Pursue Progress

   January 29, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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Photo by danny howe on Unsplash

Becky Beaupre Gillespie once said, “Good enough is the new perfect.”

Stop chasing perfection.

Perfection suggests a state of flawlessness, without any defects.

To be perfect implies a condition where your action or performance attains a level of excellence that cannot be exceeded.

Voltaire once observed, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” In other words, instead of pushing yourself to an impossible “perfect,” and therefore getting nowhere, accept “good.”

Millions of people are obsessed with perfection.

This obsession makes it difficult to make a decision without wasting too much time analyzing every detail.

Seth Godin explains:

Perfect is the ideal defense mechanism, the work of Pressfield’s Resistance, the lizard brain giving you an out.

Perfect lets you stall, ask more questions, do more reviews, dumb it down, safe it up and generally avoid doing anything that might fail (or anything important).

You’re not in the perfect business. Stop pretending that’s what the world wants from you.

Truly perfect is becoming friendly with your imperfections on the way to doing something remarkable.

Perfection is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough, that we should keep try again, and again and again without getting to done.

In The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, Brené Brown says, “Perfectionism is not the same thing has striving to be your best. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. It’s a shield. It’s a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from flight.”

Perfection is a moving target. It’s an illusion.

Done is better than perfect

The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists.

It rewards people who get things done.

Give yourself time in your life to wonder what’s possible and to make even the slightest moves in that direction.

You will screw up in the process of getting anything worthwhile done, but it’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up for making a mistake or making a wrong choice.

It will only lead to self-destructive behavior.

It’s okay to screw up as long as you are willing to try again.

Non- conformists and originals screw up a lot. But they move on, knowing that at some point, the breakthrough will happen.

Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, “No matter how many hours you spend attempting to render something flawless, somebody will always be able to find fault with it. (There are people out there who still consider Beethoven’s symphonies a little bit too, you know, loud.) At some point, you really just have to finish your work and release it as is — if only so that you can go on to make other things with a glad and determined heart. Which is the entire point. Or should be.”

No matter how many mistakes you make, or how slow you progress, embracing good enough, and sharing your work is still better than everyone else who is waiting for flawless art.

Free yourself from the fear of mistakes

When you follow your own true north you create new opportunities, have different experiences and create a different life.

Don’t let the fear of making mistakes be greater than the excitement of getting things done and shipping.

Screwing up does not mean you will never, ever be successful. Trying and failing is better than doing nothing.

Making a mistake will not irreparably damage your credibility or reputation.

Remember, being completely terrible at something is the first step to being pretty darm good at it.

Heidi Grant Halvorson (Social psychologist at Columbia’s Motivation Science Center, speaker, contributor for HBR, Fast Company, Forbes, 99u and author of No One Understands You and What to do About it, recommendations the following steps to shifting your mindset, and freeing yourself from the fear of mistakes:

Step 1: Begin a new project by explicitly acknowledging what is difficult and unfamiliar, and accepting that you will need some time to really get a handle on it. You may make some mistakes, and that’s ok. That’s how ability works — it develops. (Repeat this to yourself as often as needed.)

Step 2: Reach out to others when you run into trouble. Too often, we hide our mistakes, rather than sharing them with those who could give us guidance. Mistakes don’t make you look foolish — but acting like you are a born expert on everything certainly, will.

Step 3: Try not to compare your own performance to other people’s (I know this is hard, but try.) Instead, compare your performance today to your performance last week, last month, or last year. You may make mistakes, you may not be perfect, but are you improving? That’s the only question that matters.

Don’t wait until your work is perfect

You can’t help it. It’s one of the biggest reasons most people can’t ship or launch anything meaningful…yet.

Creative professionals put so much pressure on themselves to create something that is 100% perfect.

But guess what, perfectionism is unreachable. Don’t wait until it’s perfect.

You may be doing it wrong, but at least you’re doing it.

And once you’re doing it, you have a chance to make it better.

Waiting for perfect means not starting at all.

Release and show your work when it’s good enough to be shared. You can always adapt, grow, and adjust along the way.

Progress is better than waiting for a perfect day to ship.

Don’t hold yourself back by telling yourself it’s not ready yet when you know it’s good enough to share and iterate.

You’ll learn more by doing than planning.

Creativity flourishes when you don’t seek perfection.

Focus on getting stuff done. Just do. Start. Move, make, create, ship, do.

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well”, says Agatha Christie.

Just start. What you do matters, not what you think or plan.

Stop telling yourself your work is not good enough

“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.” — Henry Ford

Fear sucks.

It can range from mild to maddening to career-killing.

Most people can’t show their most amazing work to the rest of us because they fear criticism. They feel inadequate.

They are scared people will think it’s not good enough.

Others are living in their comfort zones because of fear.

You don’t act because you are afraid of too many things that could go wrong.

Don’t be afraid of the unknown, because everything is unknown.

Keep doing what you love, even if no one buys it, sponsors it or shares it. It matters that you show up and create.

You’ll suck at most things in the beginning. It takes time, persistence, and patience to create your most amazing work.

Every magic happens outside your safe zone.

Pursuing creative work comes with some level of discomfort.

That shouldn’t put you off.

And it shouldn’t take away your creative expression either.

The fear of failure never goes away. It can prevent you from putting yourself and your work out there.

Use fear to your advantage.

Ship and don’t look back

When you ship, momentum happens. You evolve.

Your creative processes gets better.

If you aspire to be a great writer, just start writing.

You can’t be an amazing artist if you don’t enjoy the intense process of sharing your work with the rest of us.

So if you don’t like writing, trying to become a famous writer might not be the best career choice.

Author Kurt Vonnegut says, “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

It’s so easy to focus on the results — the revenue and the outcomes of success.

It’s easy to sit around and read inspirational stories but that won’t prepare you for the career you want.

But the real world rewards those who ship. Those get work done. And not those who are perfect.

Start something you deeply care about and don’t look back. Don’t stop because it’s not perfect. Don’t stall because it’s not good enough to ship.

Shipping is the antidote to uncertainty, and fear of failure.

Paul Jun, author of Connect The Dots: Strategies and Meditations on Self-education encourages us to ship, and learn in the process.

He writes, “Shipped projects are essentially a reflection of how your skills and mind are evolving. Each project is a step up from the last. Your first project, say, is a level one — not so great. But as long as that project ships, as long as you learn from it and poured your heart into it, your next project can’t help but be better.”

You don’t need to be perfect to be successful, so don’t stress yourself, perfectionism often leads to micro-managing, procrastination, low productivity, depression, stress and anxiety.

Sometimes being a perfectionist can even prevent you from achieving your goals, so try to avoid obsessing over every little detail and focus on the bigger picture instead.

Pursuing progress allows you to celebrate each step that feels like an accomplishment, leading you to stack achievements as you grow.

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5 Ways to Grow Your Brand, Be Creative and Become the Expert in Your Field

5 Ways to Grow Your Brand, Be Creative and Become the Expert in Your Field

   January 28, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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“Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” — Charles Mingus

The best lesson you’ll ever learn is that your education in life should never stop. Not only that, but the best education you’ll ever receive will most certainly not come in the classroom. You’re going to learn through your personal experiences, family, relationships and competitive ventures. And even when you think you have all the skills you need, you have to remind yourself that you always need more.

As a lifelong learner, I’m always looking for new ways to increase my knowledge and skill. I’m always looking for an edge — something to help distinguish myself in my field and to grow my brand. Great ideas can last a lifetime, though some ideas are ephemeral. They serve a purpose for a while, and then they go away. They grow stale. You need to rejuvenate, keep thinking, ideating and coming up with something new.

Here’s the thing — if you’re reading this article in this great publication, you probably recognize that your personal growth is a lifelong journey. There will be mistakes, adversity and many bumps along the way. In order to keep growing, you can’t rely on what you learned at home, in grade school, high school or even college. There may be no rush for you to go out and get a Master’s degree, either.

There are an abundance of resources at your fingertips thanks to the Internet. I’m encouraging you to be a player. Life is a contact sport, meaning, you can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and think the game is going to come to you. You’re going to have to get out there and get your hands dirty to make the plays that will bring satisfaction to your life.

The more I’ve made strides in my writing and coaching careers, the more I’ve encountered adversity in a variety of forms. But this adversity has been eclipsed by my successes. I’ve persevered through the tough times and I’ve grown because I’ve been willing to stick it out and learn. The more I feel I’m staying in the same place, the more I desire to keep growing — and keep learning something new.

Don’t sit back and think that you’ve become the expert just because you’re getting by in your job. You literally and figuratively cannot afford to do so, particularly when the world around you is constantly evolving. Technology changes, and smarter, more efficient processes enter the workforce. Bold, new ideas from incredibly creative people replace old ideas.

If you truly want to get what you want, you have to be willing to put yourself out there, find a way to dedicate time and get by through the help of others. I’ve detailed five ways to get where you want to be. We live in an expert’s world. The experts are the ones who are sought out for their expertise, because they’re the most knowledgeable and best at what they do.

We should strive to live happy, fulfilling lives that lead us to becoming the best person we want to be. There are plenty of opportunities for you to live this life. Here’s some methods to get started:

1. Dedicate 5 Hours per Week to Using Your Creative Imagination

“Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought.” — Albert Einstein

I’ve found the absolute best way to do this is to immerse myself in solitude. It could be meditating early in the morning when it’s still dark out and the kids haven’t woken up yet. It could be finding 45 minutes of piece during a midday break from work. But I strongly prefer solitude. I like thinking of the things that I love, things that inspire me and sometimes listening to music.

But most of the time the most creative ideas that come to my mind are when I’m in solitude and able to reflect on the things in life that motivate, inspire and get my adrenaline going. I’m most creative when I’m in the zone about doing what I love, dreaming of the end goals that I’ve set out and thinking of celebrating in the winner’s circle.

When I wrote my first book, The Value of You, I often did so in solitude. I thought deeply about what each value meant to me. I thought about what inspired me most in my life and how my dream was always to become an author. I kept going and kept writing. Now, I’m on to new goals which I truly believe I’ll only be able to achieve if I use my creative imagination to imbue them with beauty and color.

Use your imagination. We’re all blessed with a beautiful mind that can create incredible things.

2. Take Advantage of the Online Courses at Your Disposal

This goes back to the idea that life is a continuing education and we are literally continuing this when we keep learning something new. I’ve taken courses online that taught me how to create a WordPress site. That’s how I created my first blog. I’ve read a lot online about branding and marketing, because I never had a formal education in these subjects.

I recommend Udemy, Lynda and Coursera. But bear in mind that this industry, like every other, is constantly changing. Something new always comes along that’s better, more user-friendly and perhaps even cheaper. Take advantage of YouTube and all the great learning videos there. And remember, Google is your best friend. There’s absolutely nothing stopping you — unless it’s a poor Wi-Fi connection!

3. Learn How to Master Social Media

If you’re looking to become the expert in your field in 2018 and beyond, you absolutely must use social media. That’s a must. It’s simply non-negotiable. If you want a seat at the table, you must start there. But it’s not just about starting and getting your seat. You need to learn how to differentiate yourself. First, it’s worthwhile to brainstorm on how you want to position your brand.

I can tell you that if you’re a writer, you’re going to want people to hear and see your most authentic voice when you’re posting and sharing on social media. Build your strategy around authenticity, around your passions and what makes your expertise unique. You will never, ever go wrong with this strategy.

One of the best lessons I ever learned is that the world absolutely needs you. It wants you to be YOURSELF and to be truly unique. And it most certainly doesn’t want you to sit on your butt and waste your talents. Be yourself and like anything, learn from the experts of who is succeeding at creating beautiful, inspiring messages on social media.

Emulate them, take what you can and then make it your own. This is the essence of creativity!

4. Develop One New Connection Each Week that Becomes a Mutually Beneficial Relationship

None of us make it on our own. We live in an interdependent world and our successes are the byproduct of the loving, nurturing seeds that others plant in our lives. Speaking of social media, get ready to use Linked in to your advantage. Go out and meet people. Be willing to ask someone for help. You have to be bigger than thinking people will just come to you.

Also, be willing to offer something. You may be looking to become a social media genius, but perhaps you have an awesome background in web design that you can share with the person you’re meeting. Offer something. Receive in return. Repeat. Once you meet more people, you’ll keep learning and growing. And you’ll gain allies and fans of you that will help you build your brand.

5. Focus on the DOING and Keep Going

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” — Sylvia Plath

Keep Going. Keep Going. Keep Going. Persistence and perseverance are absolutely paramount in becoming an expert and living life on your terms. Think of anything you’ve succeeded at, and look at the examples of people you admire. The common thread is unequivocally that you and they kept going to achieve your goals. This is plain to the eyes to see.

Yet, it’s not always easy to do. Focus on what you love to do, what you want to become and keep on doing. Keep producing, even on the days when you feel like lying on the couch and watching Netflix ’til you pass out. Eliminate time wasters like unhelpful perusing on Instagram and Snapchat. If you’re going to spend that time on social media, use it to grow YOUR brand!

Whatever it is you’re doing, if you find yourself at the intersection of passion and natural talent, please continue to keep going. Pour your all into what you’re doing and never, ever give up. Instead of looking up to the experts, one day, you’ll count yourself in their company.

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The Voice All Creative People Will Understand (and must overcome)

The Voice All Creative People Will Understand (and must overcome)

   January 26, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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“I am garbage.”

That’s what I thought when I first saw the message.

Feedback had finally come back on my big writing project. Long story short — my client didn’t like where we were going so far.

In the note he said this:

“It doesn’t move me.”

Which, probably, is the worst thing any person who does creative work could ever hear. The proverbial knife to the heart.

What’s worse?

After I read it, the cold realization struck: I had been expecting this.

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On some level, every creative person is waiting for someone to tell us we are crap.

We are P.T. Barnum, fooling our consumers until one of them says “hang on, this isn’t quite right.”

At which point, we are relieved to give up the ghost:

“At last. THIS person understands me! Thank God you’ve identified me as the fraud I really am!”

It’s as if every demon from your old gym teacher, every breakup, every doubt, every admonishment from your parents is waiting in the corner of your mind, waiting for you to slip up.

See, I just tried and failed 3 times to spell “admonishment” correctly. A part of me wondered if a real writer would have that problem.

Blah.

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So what to do?

Hustle your way past it?

I’ve tried that before. The string always snaps.

Pretend the voice doesn’t exist?

HA! Maybe I will also remove one of my fingers.

Choose a different career or calling?

I wish. The fact of the matter is I simply cannot. Were I to choose a management career at Burger King, I would be writing tweets on napkins, scribbling poems on packets of ketchup, and daydreaming during cleanup hour.

Instead, I like to think of what artist Sol Lewitt told a sculptor Eva Hesse, when she was struggling with her work, with feelings of doubt and disgrace, of angst and agony.

“Maybe you need your agony to accomplish what you do.”

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Art will never be a simple task. Its very nature demands a new effort from you — not once, not twice, but EVERY time.

You die EVERY time.

You challenge assumptions EVERY time.

You hear the voice EVERY time.

You become a new person EVERY time.

(This is what happens if you’re doing it right)

I can’t pretend your journey is going to get easier.

All I can do is say this:

I understand. I feel it too.

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There’s another line in Sol Lewitt’s letter. It goes like this:

“Maybe you need your agony to accomplish what you do.

“But it is painful, I know.”

Lewitt is well known in the art world. Among other things, he had success in photography, building sculptures, drawing on walls, and architecture. His work is in museum. Perhaps the strongest testament to his legacy is this — he is dead, and we am still talking about him.

Despite all that, he still felt the voice. He knew what it was like to feel less than enough.

And that makes me a little less lonely.

Much love,

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The Most Important Skill in Your Life

The Most Important Skill in Your Life

   January 18, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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Humans have a tendency to overweight surface-level benefits.

Everybody wants to be more productive. Everybody wants to learn the hard skills that will make them more successful. Everybody wants to know how they can build smarter habits and cultivate better routines.

These skills have a visible reward that’s very apparent once they’re mastered, and as a result, they get a lot of attention and resources dedicated to them.

If you learn how to manage your time better, you’ll be more equipped to do something useful with it. If you learn to code or to write, you may have a career ahead of you that you can pursue beyond an office. If you build better habits, you can make a lot of difficult tasks easier.

These rewards are clearly valuable. That said, they’re ultimately not the highest leverage skills that you can nurture in yourself. In fact, the skill that is perhaps the most potent of all is also the most neglected.

It’s one that we all already engage with, but it’s also one that very few us of have truly mastered. It’s both easy and difficult at the same time.

The most important skill in your life is knowing how to think.

The Fundamental Meta-Skill

Much of western philosophy can be traced back to the mind of Socrates.

The only problem is that Socrates never wrote anything. The only record we have of the man comes from other writers and philosophers who knew him and engaged with him, most notably Plato.

In Plato’s work, much of the writing is presented in the form of dialogue, and a good portion of the dialogues are of Socrates engaged in conversation with others, which generally end with him out-reasoning them.

He is known to modern society for his Socratic method, which is essentially just a process of asking “Why?” over and over again until you have broken the argument down to its core. In a way, this simple method helps us get to the core promise made by philosophy.

The promise being that it will teach you more than just how to live well. It will teach you how to think, a skill perhaps even more important.

Unfortunately, however, this skill while responsible for everything from how you make decisions to how you face challenges is becoming increasingly disconnected from the institutions that are supposed to teach it to you.

Although the internet has helped by democratizing knowledge, there are few places that provide you with processes for making sense of it.

More than ever, it’s on us to hone this ability. Fortunately, there are ways you can do that. Here are three methods to improve your mental processing.

1. De-Habituate Yourself From Instinct

Most of the responses that we give to our surroundings are habitual.

We sense a cue in our environment, this cue is associated with something in our memory, and whatever is in our memory produces an automatic response.

Although this is efficient when it comes to tasks that don’t require a thought out response, it can be detrimental when applied to other situations.

Psychologists often differentiate between fast thinking and slow thinking, and fast thinking, while convenient, isn’t always completely optimal.

Whether it’s trying to control your anger or it’s making a deliberate effort to better evaluate an important decision at work, it’s worth reminding yourself to look at things like you’re seeing them for the first time.

A beginners mind, coupled with detached experience, produces a far better result than just an instinctual reaction to an event. It forces you to slow down and ask questions before proceeding to a final solution.

This not only works as a way to second-guess an otherwise rushed reaction, but looking at things like a beginner also helps you see and think about different outcomes from a unique and, sometimes, better angle.

2. Take Time to Think About Thinking

What is the core mental representation that you have of the world? How do your thinking patterns connect and interact with each other? What’s the process you go through when you make a decision?

These are important questions, and very few people take time to actually think about them. It’s worth creating some space to do that.

The relationship between the different mental models you have in your mind and how they interact with the world shapes everything else that occurs in your life. It’s the lens through which you make sense of reality.

It’s not something that should be happening in the background of your mind.

It’s something you should actively take time to understand and connect. It’s something you should deliberately manipulate by reading things of value and learning from people who are smarter than you.

As Warren Buffett says, “I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business.”

You should know how your brain works so you can better influence it.

3. Routinely Reflect on Your Decisions

Your day to day decisions are ultimately the core product of your thinking.

You can judge the quality of someone’s mind by the track record of their decisions over an extended period of time. If the record is consistent, then their mind is likely sharp. If it’s inconsistent, they have work to do.

Naturally, context matters, and so does their perception of the world, but generally speaking, your decisions tell you a lot of about yourself.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to record every single choice you make, but you should routinely take moments to reflect on how the big things in your life turned out relative to your intention.

If things went well, you should trace back to see why they did so and how you can replicate that in the future. If they went poorly, the dissection of that decision will teach you about a blind-spot that you can avoid in the future.

It creates a feedback loop which, if approached well, self-corrects over time.

The best thing about the past is the wisdom it gives you to improve yourself for the future. That said, for it to do so, you have to actually seek it out.

Why Is It So Important?

While things like productivity and habit building can take you pretty far in life, alone by themselves, there is a limit to what they can do for you.

No matter how you spin it, everything in your life begins in your mind.

The personal outlook you have is shaped by how you think about the situations that you’re engaged with on a daily basis.

The choices you make are influenced by the thinking patterns that guide your attention when you’re deeply lost in thought.

The skills you learn are influenced at their core by what you currently understand about the world and how you reason with it.

In the words of Einstein,

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

Every idea, ambition, and possibility in your life is directly connected to your ability to adequately make sense of your interactions with reality.

There is no set place that’s going to teach you how to think, and it’s not just something that’s restricted to a particular time period in your life. It’s a skill that demands ongoing effort and commitment.

Fortunately, if mastered, it changes everything.

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How to Become More Passionate About the Work You Do

How to Become More Passionate About the Work You Do

   January 18, 2018       Hardik Gandhi

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Photo Credit: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/12/the-greatest-showman-review-hugh-jackman-musical-1201906828/

What’s crazy is how this all began — with a simple YouTube comment.

I’d spent the weekend satiating my adolescent thirst for obnoxiously upbeat and positive music with The Greatest Showman soundtrack.

One particular video stopped me in my tracks.

Beneath that video, one particular comment jumped out.

In that comment, one particular word burned my brain.

“Passion.”

Someone was talking about Hugh Jackman’s passion.

After pandering to the Marvel comic lovers as a ripped, self-healing mutant, it seems Wolverine is now making the movies he wants to make.

It took passion to spend nearly 20 years playing a character the public wanted him to play. It took passion to make action flicks when he would rather sing. It took passion to see his current blockbuster to fulfillment, even though it took over 7 years to make.

But why should you care about Hugh’s sacrifice?

Because today, we believe passion can be developed in a few days (maybe hours!). It is often treated like a light switch — is it ON or OFF?

Unfortunately, that is rarely the case.

I can’t tell you the science behind it. I can’t give you a formula.

All I can tell you is this:

The strength of your passion is almost directly related to the number of sacrifices you make.

It is nearly impossible to develop a burning passion without first setting aside other creature comforts. These desire-building choices are not between what “should” or “shouldn’t” be done, but between what “could” and what “must” be done.

In college, I quit sleeping in on Sunday in exchange for spending time in the computer lab to write. Later that year, I got my first viral hit.

In 2015, I quit fiction writing (something I loved dearly) to focus on non-fiction. Almost 15 days later, my following online grew from 3,000 to 15K in 48 hours.

In 2016, I stopped playing video games. Then wrote a post which grew to #1 in the world on CNBC (a news channel my parents actually knew!)

And now, in 2018, instead of taking what should have been $40,000 in cash for a project, I took equity in a company.

At first, giving up things for my art was hard.

Now, it’s less so.

Why?

Because I know what is on the other end of sacrifice.

And it’s worth it.

Much love,

— Todd B

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Passion + Ideas = The Future

In today’s world, creative people hold the keys to the future.

More often than not, those keys take the form of ideas.

If you’re a creative person looking for a way to excel, I think you’ll like my free book — The Ultimate Guide to Infinite Ideas. You can get it for the price of an email address.

Grab your copy right here

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