Adam’s Daily Post

Many creators struggle to understand what freedom means.

Freedom means you get to choose.

You can choose to spend your time building a better product, or marketing your existing one.

You can choose to invest your resources into long-term opportunities, or cash out and spend them today.

YOu can choose to study and expand your mind at home, or can go out and network with others.

Neither decision is necessarily right or wrong.

And if you’re really lucky, you’ll have freedom to change your mind, too.

What’s wrong is making a decision then envying those who chose otherwise.

Things get really easy when you stop caring what others think, and do you.

Sometimes… when you’re hard at work on work that matters…

It’s easy to forget to stop and look at just how much progress you’ve made.

Some days remind you to stop and look. To pause and take it in.

To see just how wonderful things have become.

So if you’ve not had a reminder lately… consider this yours.

Look.

Keep it up, champ.

Hope is a lousy strategy when building your project.

And stressing about the thing you’re hoping for is even worse.

I call it 'hope-straining'…

And hope-straining is only a good strategy if your goal is to get a hernia.

But is sure is tempting, when:

• You dabble in several marketing strategies
• You discover how much work is in each of them
• They all seem to be really, really hard to do well

But when hernias look tempting, it’s a good sign we’ve missed something.

Unclench your posterior, for there is a solution:

• The strategies aren’t the problem
• The problem is the same regardless of strategy
• That problem is: you’re being samey, boring, and unremarkable

Consider this:

When was the last time you texted a brand marketing asset with a friend because you thought they’d really like it?

Doesn’t happen often, does it.

But when it does, I’ll bet it was something unique, entertaining & remarkable.

I cover this topic in more detail in The Productoon Newsletter this week. Give it a look.

Hype and sustainability don’t get along very well.

When one of my projects picks up too much steam, I slow it down. I’ve watched what happens to projects that get too much hype, and it’s not good.

And yet going too slowly starves a project of life and energy that right-fit people would love to see in your work.

Too fast and it dies. Too slow and it doesn’t get to live.

As with so many things, it’s a balancing act.

Whichever you’re currently experiencing — hype or sustainability — don’t envy the other.

Both have problems.

Pursue balance.

That’s where the longevity comes from.

We’re taught to think these are good things, but I’m not convinced:

‘Hope’ is thought of as good. But it builds a rift between how things are and how you’d like them to be.

‘Expectations’ are thought of as good. But they’re worse than hope, where you claim imagination as your own.

There being a ‘Point’ to thinks is thought of as good. But it attempts to bring order to things by looking for a bigger meaning in things that have none.

‘Craft’ beats ‘Hope’. It re-focuses aspirations toward the commitment to the work of your hands. This is something you control, which makes it more dependable.

‘Discipline’ beats ‘Expectation’. It gives us the ability to create alternate realities, but stays focused on the present, which is all we have.

Making peace with ‘Chaos’ beats there being a ‘Point’. While we can bring order to our days and our work, it frees us of our superstitious habits of looking for patterns where none exist.

Embracing the present and revering that which is in our control breeds peace and resilience.

And those are pretty handy things to have in a world like this.

Look around.

Observe your competitors.

Observe how great you think they’re doing.

90% of them won’t be in business in the next ten years.

Not sure if you believe it?

Think about how many of them were in business ten years ago.

Or how many powerhouses of the last decade have since faded away.

Sometimes, all you need to do to win is to survive.

If you prefer to do 1 thing really well than 1,000 things you just kinda feel you have to do, this one’s for you.

When you have 1,000 things you kinda feel like you have to do, your priorities took a vacation.

And I’ll bet a lot of those 1,000 things have something to do with generating business. (Mmmhmm, s’alright I see you over there.)

But it doesn’t need to be 1,000 things.

It can be 4 things.

Wanna know what they are?

One, know your one audience really well.

Two, show up in one way they’ll be delighted to see you where the street party’s at (whether that’s on a particular social network or wherever it is)

Three, give them a ticket to come back to YOUR party. Make sure it’s something really special that they’ve not experienced before.

And four, Throw that party, where if they want to experience more of that, they can sign up and continue the party for as long as they like.

That’s all there needs to be. Now yes, you need your special sauce on each step, but listen: it’s just 4 things. You think you can’t do 4 things better than you can do 1,000 things?

Go get those 4 things done, champ.

Promise you it’ll be a whole lot more fun.

Many creaters and founders hate hearing this:

The world spins on without your business if or when it comes to an end.

Your corporate mission statement matters to you, but barely registers to others.

The world won’t miss your scheduled thought-leadership tweets when they stop.

And this is as it should be.

For your world to require a single entity (which is led by humans no smarter than you) in order to function would be terrible (as some less fortunate parts of the world would attest, were they to have permission to an unfiltered internet). Overzealous corporate mission statements creates zealots (which take leave of their faculties) not fans (which are just having a good time). Thought-leadership is often better left to the thoughtful authorship of books designed to broaden our body of knowledge, rather than to flippant quips designed to get ‘likes’.

We don’t need to change the world.

We just need to do a great job at our thing, for our choice of market, for a fair price.

It’s a whole lot easier to get creative and build exciting new things when you take all that weight out of it, don’t you think?

Conferring with AI in your business yet?

If you review the media with any frequency, you may start to feel as though you’re one of the remaining few who don’t.

But while this makes for good clickbait, it doesn’t make for useful discussion.

It may be part of our future.

But so was the iPod, at one time.

The iPod since faded into other matters. So too may AI.

The goal for businesses then wasn’t to be the best iPod reseller, or iPod game producer.

The goal for businesses was to be a reputable voice in music and tech, or a beloved house of good quality, platform-agnostic game design.

Don’t marginalise your work by pandering to tomorrow’s trends.

Elevate your work by revering what makes it great in the first place.

I did a words-per-minute typing test “for fun” last week.

And I tested my speed on multiple keyboards, ’cus why not.

First, my mechanical keyboard with brown switches. I thought this would be the fastest run, not least of all because it’s a blast to type on.

Second, one of Apple’s magic keyboards from the box of not-in-use-right-now tech. I thought this would be the slower one.

To my surprise, I was faster on the magic keyboard.

And not by a little. But by quite a lot.

Even though I “feel less accurate” on it, I’m actually faster on it.

Even though many enthusiastic keyboard Redditors would say it’s impossible, I’m still actually faster on it.

Even though I kind of wanted it to be the other way around, I’m still actually faster on it.

Take-away: Use not what others say is best for you, or best for most people, with the best reviews and ratings. Use what is actually best for you.