The dominant media narrative of the day

The thing the media is talking about, in heavy rotation.

The breaking news, the one you’re required to give an opinion on.

The thing is, if it’s not for you, about you, or something you need to engage in, then who put it on your agenda?

The media benefits from turning you into their product, once you give them your attention.

Feel free, but do it because you’ve chosen to.

Here’s something to consider: the world doesn’t get better when you spend more time engaging with mass media. That’s pretty clear.

But it does get better when you spend more time doing things that matter. Actions matter.

Fixing your email promo folder

Your promo folder is broken, and our fix for it is a bit stuck.

If you use Gmail, you probably have thousands of emails in your promo folder. A quick look will show you that there are dozens of emails moved there by Google that you probably wish you had seen. In the last week, I found several personal notes, several calendar invites (including ones for Google’s own calendar), and newsletters from Tim Ferriss and others.

We are finding that 20% of the Slack invites we’re sending to people are ending up misfiled in the promo folder as well.

Most of us live with the misfiling because we don’t know about it, because we save so much time on the junk that disappears, and partly because we don’t know how to easily fix it without dragging emails over one at a time.

Enough of the writers and orgs I work with were frustrated by the incorrect filing of important mail by Google that I decided to work with my team to build a simple system that with just a few clicks, would move many of the emails you’re missing out of the promo folder back to where they belong.

It does this without signing you up for any new lists, without sharing your data with anyone, without reading your email.

All we’ve done is built a list of good stuff (our gold list), senders you might have signed up for but are missing.

And it’s free.

Compromise

People talk about compromising like it’s a bad thing.

But we’re always doing it.

Even the most ardent vegan is killing tiny creatures in a glass of water.

There’s no economy on earth that is completely unregulated, nor is there one that’s completely state-controlled.

We’re never completely at an edge. We can’t be.

So now, the question isn’t whether or not to compromise. The question is where we’re going to be on the spectrum.

That’s a more useful place to start the conversation.

Priorities

It’s comforting to use someone else’s priorities to guide our work. It lets us off the hook.

But the only way to do our best work is to realize that part of what it means to do our work is to own the priorities as well.

Your boat, your compass.

Yes, marketing does matter

Because marketers make change happen.

That’s the work. Not to run ads, not to sell crap, not to invent hoopla.

Marketing makes change. If you’re not proud of the change you’re making, do something else.

It turns out that smart marketing is significantly more effective than the other kind. It turns out that showing up with the right work for the right people in the right way is a powerful tool in making change happen.

The other kind of marketing gets a bad rap, and that’s well deserved.

But real marketing, the marketing that makes things better by making better things–that’s what we need more of.

As you might have guessed, it’s time for The Marketing Seminar. We’ve run this live digital workshop eight times already. More than 8,000 people in fifty countries have been transformed by this proven group workshop. We only run it a few times a year. Your boss will pay for it. You’ll work hard and you’ll get back far more than you put into it. The typical student gives and gets more than 500 pieces of feedback in just the first month. (Click the purple circle to save on tuition).

The seminar also has a #1 bestselling book, if that’s more your speed. And a video-only course. Do what works for you.

We keep doing it because it works. This time it’s your turn. I hope you’ll take a leap and join us.

Falling behind vs. streaks

The culture punishes people by reminding us that we’re falling behind. The camera focuses on the person who is winning the race instead of the one who is trying harder than ever before. The bank sends the dunning notice to the person behind on their rent and the lousy grades go to the student who hands in a paper a day late.

Fear of falling behind is a good way to enforce compliance.

But it turns out that real progress comes not from measuring ourselves against everyone else’s pace, but in building habits. And habits come from streaks.

You’re almost certainly never going to win a 26-mile marathon, but if you train every day, you’ll finish one.

In building the Akimbo workshops (like The Marketing Seminar, which is open for enrollment right now), we’re committed to creating a learning system where you don’t have to feel like you’re falling behind–at the very same time we’re making it likely that you’ll embrace the posture of seeking a streak. Show up every day. Do the work, return tomorrow.

Drip by drip, day by day. Habits lead to commitments and commitments create learning.

A culture of streaks can’t help but be mutually supportive. If there’s no behind, then there’s no ahead. But if we’re supporting each other in building new habits, we discover that opening the door for someone else also benefits us as well.

“This will change your mind”

How often is that true?

Not very.

Changing a mind is difficult work. It won’t happen with a standard intervention, and it probably requires enrollment on the part of the person you’re engaging with as well.