SOAK #3
This week on SOAK, we dive into diversification
Hey beautiful people! (a good thing about having a small email list is that I can say that without lying! 😎)
Can you believe we’re already in a double-digit month?
I tend to prefer the last quarter of the year. The weather gets cooler, there are fewer people in the streets, and we start wrapping up the year while making plans for the next one.
But before starting a new cycle we need to close the old one, so let’s make a final effort to make this year memorable! We have 90 days, it's still enough for us to do something meaningful, but not too much to sound the alarms of our consistency surveillance system (aka, that voice in our head saying we can’t keep up with something for too long).
So here’s to a grand finale to 2021!
🧽 What I’m Soaking In
I’ve been pondering a lot about Youtube lately.
Probably because of all the zoom meetings I’ve been having this last month with Write of Passage, I’m starting to lose that camera inhibition that is so common to most people.
I’m an apologist of focusing on one medium at a time to prevent burnout, but I’ve been writing online for almost 3 years now, and I guess I can group my Website, Medium, Twitter, and this Newsletter as Writing Content, so I have been writing for some long, hence starting on a new medium like Youtube can be the right thing to do.
There is a ton of resources about starting a Youtube channel, so I’m trying a bunch of them, but if you have any experience on this I would love to know your recommendations!
🦉 Soaking Up Knowledge
While researching for an article that I’m writing, I’ve ended up diving into the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy explains why we tend to follow through with something if we have invested resources into it, even if the costs outweigh the benefits.
Imagine you’re at a restaurant having a good meal and you had more than enough but there’s still food on the plate, and you think “well, I paid for it, so I better find some room for it!“. Chances are you’re going to have a terrible night because of that extra food, not to mention the extra pounds that will last even longer.
We make these choices because our emotions often make us deviate from rational decisions. We feel bad for investing money, time, and other resources in an endeavor and then pull the plug, so we resist doing it, even knowing that more resources will be wasted by following through.
Fighting this is hard, as it is with every inherent cognitive fallacy, but being aware of its existence is a big step to do it.
Some research also shows that older people tend to avoid this fallacy more often because they cherish time more deeply due to their perception of it as a more scarce resource, so congratulations wise people!
✍️ Writing
Last week I got an invitation from NEWSBREAK to join their Creator Program. They don’t usually do this for creators outside of the US (I have been rejected before), so I accepted to see if it’s worth it.
The Creator Program is not as good as Medium’s, at least when starting out, because it requires the writer to have a minimum of 10 published articles and 100 registered followers before applying for monetization, while on Medium you can start earning as soon as you publish your first piece.
I’m not investing much in NewsBreak, at least until I can get a better vision of its earning potential, so I just republished a dozen of my articles, since they allow that, and I’ll keep adding a couple of stories every day to see if I can get those 100 followers (right now I have 27).
Even if the outcome of this doesn’t get to be meaningful, it just proves the point that you can create once and benefit multiple times from your creative work.
So if you have published articles on your blog or on another platform, give it a try with NewsBreak, you can cash in some extra $$ without much effort.
✔️ Fun Trivia
Currently, the world population is 7.9 billion, and it’s expected to hit the 10 billion mark in 2057.
Worldometer.info shows you this and much more. For example, this, where you can see a representation of each single living person on one very loooong page!
👓SETHences of the week
I love Seth Godin, he’s amazing.
I’ll be sharing some of his greatest thoughts every week.
The best way to get unstuck
Don't wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves.
This is precisely why you're stuck. (…)
The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.
(…)
You might not end up with perfect, but it's significantly more valuable than being stuck.
Don't just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.
Seth Godin | NOVEMBER 3, 2012
🏁Finish Line
And that's it! Issue #3 is wrapped up, I hope it brought something positive to you.
This week was more challenging to do this, things are not always easy and life happens, but committing to something involves overcome obstacles.
Thank you for doing this with me, I hope I’ll see you next week!