Austin Kleon, one of my favorite authors and inspiration to keep making stuff, recently issued a challenge to suck less.
His words: “
Something small, every day, adds up to something big over time.
What should you practice? Whatever you want to suck less at.”
Go to his 30-Day ‘Practice and Suck Less’ challenge page and download his PDF. Two copies are printing out as I’m writing this…assuming my printer is on…then again, maybe it’s not printing out because I’m too lazy to get up from my standard morning ergonomically-challenging, splayed-across-the-bed work position…
You might be asking, ‘so what do I practice?’.
- Writing copy
- Sketching
- Brainstorming
- Researching online with a five-minute constraint
- Speed reading
- Scanning/copy/pasting from a web resource into a document you can use
- Text-to-speech [Your blog posts/sales copy into audio.]
- Audio creation
- Video creation
- Editing/paring down your copy
- Making your creative/side hustle tasks a bit more fun.
Keep your sessions short and snappy.
Go ahead and suck less!
***
And now, time for my book recommendations…
These seven titles are go-to sources of inspiration and valued experience. These are affiliate links which, if you use to preview and buy the product, won’t raise the product’s price and will earn me a commission. At that point, I’ll be that much closer to buying that unclaimed island in the Caribbean. Please don’t ask for the island’s coordinates. It is mine and you can’t have it. ;->
- Keep Going (Austin Kleon) Perfect kick in the pants for when you’re stuck.
- Show Your Work (Austin Kleon) The world is waiting for your stuff, even if it’s not (especially if it’s not) perfect.
- Side Hustle: Idea to Income in 27 Days (Chris Guillebeau) One of the first, and most reliable, ‘bibles’ for this niche.
- Atomic Habits (James Clear) This guy makes so much sense, even if he was spitballin’, but he backs it up with research as well. In other words, don’t even try to counter with any ‘yeah-buttals’.
- Poke the Box (Seth Godin) The message of this book: Get started. And keep the mindset throughout.
- The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) I love the formats of both of Pressfield’s books in this list. Some pages are only a paragraph long (perfect for my attention span). But this message is: I’ve made my point. And I’m moving on. And his main point? Resistance is pervasive and powerful and destructive to our dreams. But it can be defeated…but usually just one day, or one hour, at a time. Steven Pressfield’s books guide us through these same battles.
- Turning Pro (Steven Pressfield)
This list cuts across so many lines of productivity and accomplishment. Whether you use my links or go elsewhere, get your hands on these.
Side Hustle Curator 