Writing, crafting, and telling your story can supercharge your personal and professional life (if you allow it to).
When I was a young chap, growing up in Lagos, I had very simple priorities.
Play basketball.
Make sure my all-white Air Force Ones remain “all-white.”
And 1 more thing – stay cool, watch mixtapes.
Books were just a necessity. A means to an end to keep my parents happy.
Textbooks were rigid blocks of paper, containing words and equations, that I and my friends memorized just to pass exams.
Why? To keep our parents happy.
I had friends that took it upon themselves to read books at leisure. I used to think: “You mean you read a book in your free time? Wow”
My 12-year old self could not understand it.
Let’s not talk about literature class.
It was already bad enough to struggle through english class, now you want to include poetry? “Nah, I’m good. I’ll rather listen to DMX and Plantashun Boiz in my fresh white Nikes”
Reading was not my thing, neither was writing.
Fast forward 20 years later, I was moving apartments from San Mateo to Oakland, California. In the depths of the closet, I found a dusty Nike box.
I stopped.
I dropped.
Dusted it off and opened up the box.
Oh..no….It was filled with little black notes.
Stacks of my used moleskines.
Years of writing and journaling had replaced my cool sneakers.
I had grown, switched careers, released music, started a business – and writing played a significant role in my development.
And it can in yours too.
Finding Your Flow
It’s hard to find meaning in life.
In an era of abundant choice, happiness continues to evade us.
Our screens have sucked us in.
Our dreams are left to flee.
Sometimes you work and see no results.
Others do nothing and it comes in all at once.
The world is filled with inconsistency – uncertainty is the only certainty. So we search for order. There are two ways to do it: through flow or pleasure.
One is enjoyable and leads to growth. The other is a fleeting state that makes you feel good in the moment but most times leaves you worse than you were before.
Most people have experienced it, pleasure goes something like this.
“I should work on my business. Let me do a quick scan on twitter or LinkedIn.”
You unlock your phone. Click on the icon. As the page loads up, you get a rush of dopamine that floods your brain. Your mouth might water like a human in Pavlov’s laboratory.
You begin the scroll.
20 minutes later. You have this sudden realization. “Wait, what am I doing here?”
If you’re good enough, you catch yourself.
“Oh yeah, my business.”
But now you’re tired. Your mental energy has been drained.
“Let me go for a walk. I’ll work on it later.”
This is a constant cycle of pleasure and pain.
Now let’s talk about the other experience. The one that puts you in flow. It goes like this.
“Let me work on my business.”
“I’ll spend 15 minutes doing it. I really don’t want to at this moment, but I’ll sit down and start” It feels challenging. Resistance flows in.
“Oh let me do some research.” You catch yourself. You resist. “No let me start”
You begin.
30 minutes later. You catch yourself “that wasn’t that bad.” You might have noticed that time disappeared. “I feel better than I felt 30 minutes ago”
Flow leads to growth.
Pleasure leads to more pressure.
Flow happens when you do any activity that is slightly above your skill level. Something that challenges you and pushes you out of your comfort zone a bit.
A daily habit will do this for you.
Writing will train you to change your life.
Write To 5X Your Goals
Writing is an easy tool that you can pickup to exercise your mind.
When you develop a simple writing practice, you get clearer thoughts, sharpen your communication skills, and facilitate your personal and business growth.
Here are the 5 main benefits of writing
1. It builds habit and confidence
Your thoughts become words
Your words become actions
Your actions become habits
Your habits become character
Anything worth building requires a habit.
Want to build a business? You need to validate your product/service in the market, consistently.
Want to write a book? You need to write consistently.
Want to build meaningful relationships? Habits.
Habits are built on consistency and writing is a simple way to build a habit. When you write, you create an opportunity for consistency in your life.
You get to assemble, arrange, and refine your ideas.
You also get to express and refine your stance on the world and how you fit into it.
Write to build sustainable habits.
2. It builds clear thoughts
Writing isn’t just words on paper, it’s how you create new information.
When you write more, you generate new ideas. A lot of people think it’s the other way. A false notion that you need perfect thoughts to write. When in reality, you need to write to generate ideas.
Writing is how you externalize your thinking. It’s a canvas to reflect your thoughts and refine them. This gives you clearer thinking and sharper thoughts.
Most people start off with “how don’t have much to say.”
Then they start writing, they generate new ideas, then write some more, then more ideas, and so on.
Once they get the ball rolling they soon say “I have so much I want to say.”
Before you know it you’re impressing people with your prolific novelty.
Write to create new ideas.
3. It allows you to persuade at scale
Writing improves your communication skills.
I’m reading a book called “The Notebook: The history of thinking on paper.” When paper notebooks were invented in what is today modern-day Baghdad, there was an intellectual explosion. It was the Islamic golden age.
It was all due to the availability of paper for people to build their thoughts and pass on information.
Writing is the foundation of all intellectual tasks.
Want to build:
Emails: writing
Proposals: writing
Pitch decks: writing
Newsletters: writing
Landing pages: writing
Text messages: writing
Marketing video scripts: writing
Good writing is effective communication. It conveys action and evokes emotions.
If you want to inspire action from your colleagues, employees, bosses, children, you have to learn persuasive communication.
The only other option is manipulation.
Writing allows you to train your persuasive skills. Writing online gives you the opportunity to persuade a large network of people, in turn, scaling yourself.
Writing is how you scale yourself, mission, and values.
4. It creates more options
When you write online, opportunities come to you.
Tired of reaching out to people? Always needing a referral to chat with someone? Not knowing whether those ideas you have have any hope?
Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.
Writing online does just that. Most people think writing online is about going viral. It’s about creating easy opportunities to say hello.
The more you write, the more you clarify those you want to help (benefit 1 & 2). When you write online, you create a discoverable body of work. A public content library that people can always refer to.
You write about music: musicians reach out to you.
You write about innovation: scientists and entrepreneurs reach out.
You write about founding an organization: founders, investors, and talent reach out.
Your online brand is how you digitize your reputation.
Writing online is how you do it. It increases your options of who you want to interact and work with.
5. It helps you lead
Writing is leadership.
The most important person you’d lead is yourself. Until you learn to clarify your intentions and focus your attention on that intention, it will be hard to lead anything else.
When you write, you refine your intention and train your attention.
When you write online, you show leadership.
Most people are too concerned about what other people think about them. Like someone else is going to live your life for you.
A lot of people consume content and complain about what they consume.
It’s so easy to create now but only a small percentage do.
When you go from “consumer” to “creator”, you will be immediately perceived differently by peers in your industry.
If connecting with industry leaders and people you look up to is a priority for you, become a creator as well.
You don’t like what you see out there.
Don’t complain, go create.
Go and lead.
But lead yourself first.
Start writing.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
