I wanted to share with you a video I came across over the summer. It resonated with me, both in my writing activities and in my actual writing. I have found I’m inundated with different requests and collaboration opportunities. Some of them are easy to dismiss, but for others I was having difficulty separating the opportunities in which I was actually interested from the opportunities that just seemed OK. This video helped clarify things for me.
I think it applies not just to opportunities, but to our actual writing a lot too. Often times we have an idea for a book or an idea for a plot line within our book, and we’re not entirely thrilled about it. Just remember this advice from Derek Sivers as relayed by Tim Ferriss in this video: “If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a no.” If you’re not completely enamored with the idea, just drop it. If you’re not passionate about it, the reader likely won’t be either.
I’m not able to embed the video unfortunately. You can find it here: https://www.inc.com/video/tim-ferriss/decision-making-if-its-not-hell-yeah-its-a-no.html.
Enjoy! Keep focusing on the things you’re passionate about.
Find more writing and publishing tips at Nothing Any Good.
Well said, Dan! Now if I could just get rid of 500,000 junk emails all at once… 😉
That is my nightmare! I get stressed if my email gets longer than 15-20 that I have to take care of!
Well, I got screwed when Gmail started moving all the social media notifications and ‘sales’ type of emails into their own folders within the inbox. I was forced to buy more storage space so I wouldn’t miss any incoming emails that were important. It just snowballed from there, and when I hit ‘select all’ and I try to delete, it freezes up and doesn’t work. Gahh!
I’m not sure what to do next to get them out of those folders and trashed, but if you know a techie with a good shortcut, let me know. I’m still a Luddite in some ways. Believe it or not, I compose my stories sometimes via pen. I know…shocker! 😉