#22: fresh perspectives
What's on my mind
How often do you ask someone less experienced than you their opinion on a topic?
Regardless of how good you are, they have two things you don't:
A different point of view.
And a broader imagination on that topic. In other words, they make fewer assumptions about what's not possible.
Don’t underestimate the power of fresh perspectives over years of experience.
And value imagination over knowledge.
Because knowledge is limited to what we understand.
But imagination encompasses everything there will ever be to learn.
👋 Welcome to the 22nd volume of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter promoting ideas to help get 1% better everyday in work and life.
In this issue:
📚 Man's Search for Meaning (by Viktor Frankl)✍️ Your blog doesn't need a niche👓 Optimizing your personal narrative👋 Fernando Nikolic
📚 Man's Search for Meaning (by Viktor Frankl)
Notes on suffering, paths to success, and choosing attitude
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The great task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. There are three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.
The more you aim at it and the more you make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
This book is one of the classics I keep going back to for constant reminders.
✍️ Your blog doesn't need a niche
The decision to have a niche for your blog depends on your intention behind starting one.
A defined niche might be a good starting point, but eventually you'll want to outgrow it and talk about other topics not directly related to that niche.
Most niche blogs exist to generate demand for a product or a service. Is that your goal?
If not, although there are challenges with starting a blog without a niche, if your intention is to explore your interests by writing about them, then you don't necessarily need a specific niche.
To start and grow a blog without a niche, focus on:
experimenting liberally,
putting quality first,
and then adding SEO and social into the mix.
👓 Optimizing your personal narrative
Stories are more memorable than a dry list of facts.
And the same applies to when you talk about your own narrative.
How can you construct a memorable and compelling personal story?
Define your current goals
Look for past anecdotes from your work. Think of examples of an epiphany, a surprising solution, or gathering allies.
Practice telling your story
📚 A line from a book that stuck with you
People will hide behind the walls of consistency to protect themselves from the troublesome consequences of thought.
Influence (by Robert Cialdini)
📰 A newsletter you look forward to
🐦 A Twitter account to follow
🎧 A song you'd listen to all day on repeat
🤔 A question that's been lately on your mind
How to find the perfect balance between agility and consistency
👋 Follow Fernando
Final Thought
My good friend (Nate) and I decided to share our writing journey through the On Deck Writer Fellowship (and beyond) on a weekly podcast!
Last time I started a podcast, it took me a few weeks to launch.
This time, we started before we were ready.
Start today,
Reza 🍋