Finding what to do with your life

Uncertain about what you want to do with your life? An essential question in any career orientation questionnaire is something along the lines of: “What do people ask you to help them with?“

Throughout my life, people have asked me to write everything from blog posts for product launches to university cover letters (I’ve also done fake bank statements, but let’s not get into that 🙂 ). And while I’ve often not gotten much in return besides a thanks, this helped me realize what I want to do with my life - to write.

So think about what others ask you for help with. Any tasks, advice, or support that you find yourself offering often? If your friends are asking you to do it for free, most likely someone will be willing to pay you for it.

And if you can’t spot anything, I’d suggest to start applying Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wonderful advice: be useful. Help others and you will soon find something that you are great at!

💡 Write with Ann Handley’s GPS framework

Since I mentioned writing, let’s look at Ann Handley’s Writing GPS framework for writing a piece of content, originally provided to Social Media Marketing World.

• Start by identifying the goal of your content - what result do you want to achieve?

• Understand the benefits of your content for your readers - what are they looking for?

• Choose the most effective format - where it will be published, what are the platform’s advantages and limitations?

• Don’t forget to add data and statistics - what information will strenghten and validate your arguments?

• Write a quick rough draft to get your ideas on paper.

• Take a break, then come back to it and start rewriting. Focus on improving the quality.

• If you struggle, write as though you are speaking to a specific person - either real or imagined.

• Edit your final draft - you can use free editing apps like Grammarly to catch grammar and spelling errors.

• Send it to a human (it’s best if they understand your niche) to review and give suggestions for improvement.

• Read the text out loud yourself to get a better feel of its flow and continuity.

• Publish! Remember: "published is better than perfect."

📚 Shelf Shocks 💥

1. Everybody Writes: Your New and Improved Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley

Speaking about writing, there are a few better books than Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes.

While it specialises in content marketing (Ann is an expert marketer), it covers many fundamentals that make up all great writing. She examines the essentials of storytelling, teaches you what should you do through the writing journey, drills down to specifics like word choice, grammar, tense, and much, much more.

What makes this book stand out is not only its depth of knowledge, but the ease and humor with which Ann shares her lessons, making this guide an utter joy to read.

2. You Are An Author: So Write Your Book Already by Matt Rudnitsky

Matt Rudnitsky decided to write and self-publish a book… and he succeeded. Now, he has put together a guide to help others do the same.

You Are An Author is a straightforward, practical work to write a book from start to finish. It will highlight the importance of action and sitting down to do the work, as well as more strategic decisions like choosing a niche, validating your idea, and going through the self-publishing process.

3. Working On My Novel by Cory Arcangel

Something fun to end with - Working On My Novel is… a collection of tweets from authors who - while claiming that they are working on their novel, are actually tweeting about it.

As per the “Show, don’t tell“ rule, it will demonstrates how easy it is to get distracted and tell all your followers about your work… rather than show them you are doing it. So stay focused and don’t run off on Twitter to brag about your progress.

Fun Links

1. Get into the writing habit easily!

750words.com challenges you to write 750 words every day without worrying about the quality - just sit down and let you creative juices flow. The app puts a tick for every day you complete the quota and seeing those ticks pile up is a real confidence booster!

It also shares curious insights into your writing behaviors, like the tone and energy of your writing. Start with a 30-day free trial here!

You've reached the end of my newsletter. Hooray! If you’d like to see more of my work, you can GET MY BOOK Write Better: A Simple Guide to Better Business Writing or connect with me on LinkedIn for more fun and educational content.

If you have any comments or would like to share what you enjoyed the most, feel free to get in touch! See you in two weeks!