20 Essential Blog Posts from July 2009

Just a reminder: These are blog posts that I enjoyed reading, for whatever reason. Perhaps they were valuable for me, merely entertaining, thought provoking, were about something I’m interested in or potentially something I thought you all would enjoy. As always, I would love feedback. Did you catch these posts during July? Did any of these resonate with you? What are some of your most recent favorite reads? Even better, what’s your favorite thing YOU wrote during July? Share it with me in the comments section.

First and foremost, I want to call attention to my good friend Charlie Hoehn’s First Ebook, “Recession Proof Graduate.” It’s a phenomenal read for anyone who’s currently job seeking, whether you’re fresh out of school or stuck in a dead in career. The ebook explains why the methods you’re using are outdated, and Charlie’s alternative approach that’s enabled him to obtain awesome gigs with Ramit Sethi, Tim Ferriss, and Tucker Max (among others.)

I realize these first few posts are from June, but I discovered them in July and didn’t want you to miss them.

The Pyramid Method: A Simple Strategy For Becoming Exceptionally Good – Cal Newport (Study Hacks)
“I think Steve Martin put it best when he noted that the key to breaking into a competitive and desirable field is to “become so good, they can’t ignore you. In other words, there’s no shortcut. If you want the world to pay attention to you, you have to provide a compelling reason. It doesn’t care about your life goals.”

Success & Motivation – 2009 – Mark Cuban (Blog Maverick)
“The new job you just took that you thought would be amazing, will be amazing. Most probably it will be amazing for about 3 months. Then you will realize its not so amazing and you will need to find something else that is amazing. Thats ok. You don’t have to be right everytime. You just have to be right one time.”

Calling Bullshit on Social Media – Scott Berkun (The Berkun Blog)
“It’s hard to come across as authentic if you promote a revolution that you personally stand to benefit the most from. Much writing about social media is PR people writing about the importance of PR – see a problem of authenticity here?” and “Recognize good marketing will not make up for bad products or incompetent services.”

Five Myths of Community Management – Amber Naslund (Altitude Branding)
“Community management as a discipline is evolving. It’s not just moderating boards and forums anymore. It’s becoming a pivotal and cross-disciplinary role inside companies that are bridging a social communications presence with their offline world.”

How to Have More Self Discipline – Penelope Trunk (Brazen Careerist)
“Most of our happiness is actually dependent on our self-discipline. For example, we are happier if we exercise, but the barriers to getting to the gym are so high that it takes a lot more than missives from the Hedonic Psychology Lab to get us there. When it comes to success, self-discipline is much more important than self-esteem.”

The Generation M Manifesto – Umair Haque (Harvard Business Blog)
“What do the ‘M’s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It’s a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday’s way of everything.”

300 Opinions – Mark Twight (Gym Jones)
“If you weren’t given the gift you can’t get the gift so the best you can do – if your goal is important – is work as hard as you possibly can, pay attention every hour of every day and then maybe, maybe if you’ve done enough and been smart enough you’ll emerge from the muck of mediocrity to shine a bit brighter than you shone before.”

Grit, Grinds and Living the Low Stress Life – Cal Newport (Study Hacks)
“The grind lifestyle involves filling most days with an unhealthily large amount of work. It treats the overwork itself as the goal, not its results. This chronic overwork, in turn, generates stress and deep procrastination. Grit, on the other hand, is about persistently accomplishing a reasonable amount of hard work.”

Content is a Service Business – Andrew Savikas (O’Reily Media)
“Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business. Look at iTunes: if people paid for content, then it would follow that better content would cost more money. But every song costs the same. Why would people pay the same price for goods of (often vastly) different quality? Because they’re not paying for the goods they’re paying Apple for the service of providing a selection of convenient options easy to pay for and easy to download.”

How to Start a Business that Works – Al Pittampalli (SAMBA Blog)
“Most businesses fail. Not because the product wasn’t any good. They failed because not enough people knew about it. In other words, the marketing failed. Not only is marketing important, it’s pretty much everything.”

Shrinking the Stuff I Really Care About into a Box – Ben Casnocha
“Be intense about things that matter, super laid back about everything else. Maybe one part of growing up is picking your battles, winning the ones that matter, and seeing the others as much as possible as non-zero sum endeavors.”

The Agency Side of Business: Shiv Singh, Razorfish – Valeria Maltoni (Conversation Agent)
“I seek out mentors who provide me with valuable advice and guidance. I also follow their careers so that I can understand not only how they think but what decisions they make and why.Secondly, I try to practice what I preach and get my hands as dirty as possible.
And thirdly, I believe in the Woody Allen philosophy that 80% of success is showing up.”

Do You Have These 11 Traits of Highly Creative People? – Dean Rieck (Copy Blogger)
“Creative people Like to PLAY, since humor and fun are the ultimate creative act. We all have goals, and quotas, and deadlines, but it’s not life and death. When you enjoy yourself, your brain relaxes and is able to produce more and better ideas. One of those ideas may be just what you’re looking for.”

Yes, Your Social Media Strategy Needs Design – David Armano (Harvard Business Blog)
“It may be time to approach social business by design. This means moving beyond our current definition of ‘social media’ as a PR tool and thinking of it as something that can evolve the way we work, communicate, interact and collaborate at a core business level.”

The Big Question: Are You Better Than Yesterday? – Chad Fowler (The Blog of Tim Ferriss)
“The secret is to focus on making whatever it is you’re trying to improve and make better today than it was yesterday. That’s it. It’s easy. It’s possible to be enthusiastic about taking real, tangible steps toward a distant goal. So, make your improvements small and incremental but daily. Small improvements also decrease the cost of failure. If you miss a day, you have a new baseline for tomorrow.”

What They Say About Winners – Chris Guillebeau (The Art of Noncomformity)
“Criticism is often motivated by the discomfort some people feel when others succeed. It’s easier to bring winners down a notch than it is to rise to their level. Winners who possess self-confidence and focus are often labeled as arrogant by those who lack both qualities.”