Maar denk eens verder. Gaan we de wereld beter maken door verder te groeien? Dat willen ondernemers. En daar zijn neveneffecten aan verbonden. Uber is zogenaamd idealistisch. Ze willen de klant een betere en goedkopere taxirit bieden, maar hun chauffeurs worden uitgebuit. Met Airbnb kun je een leuk zakcentje verdienen, maar woonwijken worden hotels zonder sociale patronen. Facebook is één grote fake-news-show. Amazon is zo goedkoop dat ze alle kleine ondernemers van de weg drukken. Musk wil ons naar Mars brengen. Dat gaat zeker gebeuren, maar wat gaan we daar doen? Maakt het ons gelukkig? Waarom kiezen we er niet voor om elkaar en onze natuur op deze planeet vooruit te helpen?

Een graai in de geschiedenis leerde hem dat elke beschaving ooit in verval is geraakt. ‘Dat is nu ook het geval. Het stomme is: het is allemaal voorspeld. De Club van Rome heeft in de jaren zeventig modellen gemaakt over onze productiviteit, de hypergroei, levensverwachting en de limits to growth.We zijn de planeet aan het leegroven. Die modellen kloppen tot op de letter. We gaan er allemaal in mee, want ach, het komt toch wel goed? Iemand lost ons probleem toch wel op? Toen het Romeinse Rijk in verval was dacht men ook jarenlang dat het prima ging. Niet dus.’

Ondernemen is een leuk spelletje, maar ik geloof niet dat het de wereld beter maakt.

But what should you write about? Simply ask yourself, What's bothering you most right now? Write a post where you work through that—and get to a conclusion. This is how I start every time. Writing is therapy that you publish for the world to learn from.

Call a friend, tell them what's on your mind, and jot down the interesting remarks you both make. That'll generate talking points to write from.If you're passionate about an idea but you lack the interesting insights, you need to consume before you produce: Read blogs and books on your topic, highlight interesting parts, and bank good ideas to pull from when writing your first draft.

I have two shortcuts for finding topics you're passionate about:The problems that bug you — To identify your strong opinions, consume other people's opinions (via Twitter, editorials, and conversations) and note when you strongly disagree with them. Then sit yourself down, crack open a laptop, and argue your position while you feel the drive.The fun stories you tell — Readers love being privy to vulnerable stories from your life. Take a story you'd excitedly tell a best friend over dinner and write it down with as many cliffhangers as possible.

Instead of worrying, strategize solutions to manage anxiety:Add a disclaimer to your posts: "I'm sharing my rough thoughts as I explore ideas that interest me. I encourage readers to leave comments sharing their own experiences."Instead of claiming ownership over the ideas in your posts, curate other people's ideas and attribute them. Many newsletters, blogs, and Twitter accounts exclusively curate third-party content. Over time, weave in your original thoughts alongside the curated ones. Continually increase the original proportion until you're comfortable being the dominant voice in every post.Write under a pseudonym. Widely-read blogs like Slate Star Codex and The Last Psychiatrist don't publicize their authors' names. It hasn't deterred millions of readers from loving their work. Later, as you become comfortable with readers' reactions, you can consider appending your real name.

You don't need multiple novel ideas to start. Good ideas emerge in the process of writing:Choose a topicWrite your intro, and use it to brainstorm talking pointsGet feedback on your introCreate a starting outlineExplore talking points within your outlineRewrite for clarity, succinctness, and intrigueCycle between rewriting, resting, and receiving feedbackCopy edit for grammar, word choice, and flowThere are many good ways to tell a story. Be satisfied when you’ve found one that you'd want to read yourself.

Key learnings from this guideYour goal is not to foster the writing habit. Your goal is to fall so in love with ideas that you can’t not write about them. Find your objective and your motivation.Don't fully think through your ideas before writing. It's inefficient. The best way to think is by writing. It compels your brain to connect the dots.Avoid guessing what readers want. Instead, be a proxy: Selfishly entertain and surprise yourself, and you'll entertain and surprise many of them too.Your writing is clear once your thoughts are self-evident.Your writing is succinct once everything unimportant is removed.Your writing is intriguing once the average reader effortlessly makes it to the end. A hook, peak, and satisfying ending are your trifecta of intrigue.Treat feedback as a science. Measure your scores and iterate. Remember that the best feedback often comes from you with fresh eyes.Rewriting your thoughts to be clear, succinct, and intriguing is a lot of work. You won't love writing until you find a way to love rewriting. Make a game out of it.

Place gold coins along the path.– Roy Peter Clark

poignantly summarize how your ideas are relevant to the reader’s life going forward.

these two principles guarantee readers enjoy your writing:Have a captivating intro that buys goodwill.Have at least one peak of insight or surprise.Have an ending that satisfyingly justifies why the piece was worth reading.That’s it. There’s your formula for intriguing writing.

Step 4: Remove redundancyRe-read your article. Delete and re-order ideas as needed to remove unnecessary repetition.

Repeat the (1) word removal and (2) rephrasing from scratch process for every paragraph. When you’re done, your article will be a third as long and less boring.

Step 3: Rephrase paragraphs from scratchYour last step is to succinctly rephrase what remains. This means removing descriptions of things that aren't critical to your central point. Don't describe what doesn't need to be described.

Step 2: Remove unnecessary words

Step 1: Rewrite entire sectionsYou cut filler from your writing with a three-step process.For each section:Read all its paragraphs.Take an hour-long break.Rewrite the section from memory — focusing only on key points.

Takeaways for clear writingIf you write something unclear, you're writing for an audience of one: yourself. You might as well be writing in your diary.Instead, be clearer than you think is necessary. Use simple wording, use simple sentences, and provide examples. Simple language doesn't weaken your writing. It strengthens your points by helping what matters stand out.If you imagine you're writing for an audience of thirteen-year-olds, you'll deliberately think and write more clearly.

A few tips for providing examples:Provide before-and-after examples, or counterexamples, to clarify what you don’t mean. Help readers orient themselves on a spectrum of right and wrong.If you make examples fun and topical, readers pay more attention.Examples with many moving parts should be diagrams.Don't waste time with examples if you're confident your point was self-evident.

While talking to children, you instinctively simplify:You use plain phrasing.You use fewer ideas per sentence.Use these techniques in your writing too.

Clear writing starts with clear thinking:What am I really trying to say?What is the key point I need to make?How can I make that key point easy to understand?We'll explore two tools for increasing clarity: Simple sentencesExamples and counterexamples

The process of writing your second draft is the process of making it look like you knew what you were doing all along.– Neil Gaiman

So they rewrite it in pursuit of four objectives:ClaritySuccinctnessIntrigueLogicThe enemy of those objectives is being precious about what you’ve said and how you've said it.

Provide next stepsAsk yourself, What about the world can my readers better appreciate thanks to my article? Share where they go next to continue the journey they started with you. For a writing guide such as this, I might conclude by sharing the bloggers whose work I enjoy. Then I might urge you to reverse engineer their articles and study what makes them great.

Writing an outroOutros are optional. If you include one, it should frame why your article was worth reading. There are two tricks for doing this.Share a poignant takeawayIdentify your article’s significance by re-reading it and asking, “What was this really about? What was I trying to say?” Distill the answer into a single, punchy sentence. Make readers think, “I should memorize this witty advice.” You can also include a relevant quote from someone your readers respect.

The brain is no place for serious thinking. If you're thinking about something important and complicated, write it down.– Jack Altman

The first draft processHere’s the process you'll explore:Choose an objective for your post.Write a messy braindump of your ideas.Transfer your best talking points to an outline.Write your first draft using that outline.

Step 2 — Outline your talking pointsBy this point, you’ve generated intriguing talking points to support your argument and explore its significance. But your points are buried in a messy brainstorm.Now, extract the points that most intrigue you. Then, order them into a loose outline.

Your voiceSomething wonderful happens when you focus on what interests and surprises you: your voice emerges. Readers begin to notice:What you care about.The perspectives you see the world through.Readers love this. It makes your writing feel personal.

Generate surprising talking points using Paul Graham’s Method: First, learn all the basics on a topic. Then, if you can find new information that surprises even your knowledgeable self, it’ll surprise laypeople too. Again, you are your audience's proxy. There's no need to guess what will surprise them. Hunt for something that surprises you, and you'll surprises them too.

Sustaining your momentumWhen ideas stop flowing, ask yourself:How can I make my point more convincing?What are the interesting implications of what I just said?Repeatedly ask these two questions and keep moving in whichever direction interests you most.

The myth is it that expertise is what makes nonfiction writing great. Nope, it's curiosity. And, poetically, curiosity is the shortest path to career expertise.

It’s normal if not many ideas come to mind immediately. You’ll discover that the majority of your ideas arrive while writing — not before. You write in order to think.You'll discover even more ideas by resting and reflecting on what you’ve written. The act of writing compels your brain to draw connections between ideas.

Your ideas will come from a few places: Hooks — Answer the captivating questions raised in your intro.Experience — Reflect on observations and anecdotes.Research — Acquire knowledge.Experiments — Run tests.Brainstorming — Voice-record then transcribe your thoughts. Mental models — Think critically.

Step 1 — Write down your initial thoughtsStart by writing down half-formed thoughts. Brainstorm without structure. Uncork your mind to see what floods out. Your only goal at this stage is to get something slightly interesting onto the page.

An objective reveals what your article must accomplish to be successful. You can work backwards from it to identify your talking points. Every argument has two types of talking points:Supporting points — Which points are needed to make my argument? Resulting points — What are the implications of my argument being true?Writing your first draft is the art of generating these two talking points.

Start with your objectiveBefore writing, choose an objective to focus your thinking.

When you write a first draft, you write it for yourself. When you rewrite it, you write it for everyone else.– Stephen King

Our writing processThe goal of your first draft isn’t to say things well. Save that for rewriting.Your first draft is for generating ideas: Brainstorm talking points.Connect dots between those points to learn what you’re really trying to say.This works best when you’re exploring ideas that most interest you. The more self-indulgent you are, the better your article.

Hooks save timeIt gets even better.When hooks are the first part of your article, you have a critical opportunity to ask others for feedback: “After reading my intro, do you want to keep reading?”If they say no, you saved yourself from writing an article no one cares about.If they say yes, you'll have confidence you've found an interesting perspective.

Question examplesIf you’re writing about bodybuilding, interesting questions might include: Can you build a significant amount of muscle within three months? How do all the celebrities playing superheroes do it?Turn this into a hook → Yes, you can build a significant amount of muscle in three months. I’ll walk you through how celebrities do it.Is it possible to build all that muscle without going to the gym? Can you buy affordable home equipment instead?Turn this into a hook → You can build that muscle without going to the gym. There’s affordable home equipment that makes it possible.‍

How to generate hooksYou create hooks by finding questions you want answers to:Ask yourself, “If someone else wrote my intro, what are the most captivating questions they could pose to make me excited to read this?”Write those questions down. Even if you lack the answers. Rank your questions by how much they interest you.The top questions become your hooks: Pose them in your intro and don't reveal their answers.You and your audience evolved the same storytelling machinery in your heads, so questions that hook you will hook most of them too. When generating hooks, you discover what both you and your audience genuinely care to learn about.

What exactly is a hook?A hook is any half-told story:Questions — Pose an intriguing question, but don’t give the answer.Narratives — Share the beginning of a narrative, but withhold the conclusion.Discoveries — Highlight new findings, but only a portion.Arguments — Present your case, but not how you arrived at it.Hooks tease your best talking points. They urge readers to keep reading by triggering the storytelling machinery in their heads.

Your real objective is to hook readers into reading more. It doesn’t matter how you hook them, so long as you later fulfill your hook. A hook is not a gimmick. It’s a fundamental psychological principle: A great intro — like an electrifying opening to a film — buys goodwill with your audience.

First, choose your topicThe best topic to write about is the one you can’t not write about. It’s the idea bouncing around your head that urges you to get to the bottom of it.You can trigger this state of mind with a two-part trick. First, choose an objective for your article:Open people’s eyes by proving the status quo wrong.Articulate something everyone’s thinking about but no one is saying. Cut through the noise.Identify key trends on a topic. Use them to predict the future.Contribute original insights through research and experimentation.Distill an overwhelming topic into something approachable. (This guide.)Share a solution to a tough problem.Tell a suspenseful and emotional story that imparts a lesson.Now pair that objective with a motivation:Does writing this article get something off your chest?Does it help reason through a nagging, unsolved problem you have?Does it persuade others to do something you believe is important?Do you obsess over the topic and want others to geek out over it too?That’s all that's needed: Pair an objective with a motivation. Now you have something to talk about.

Essentially, their belief is the same as Dr. Lipton’s: The first seven years are critical to who we become for the rest of our life.    Theta Theta, as I understand it, is a state of hypnosis. Before you can become ‘conscious,’ you need to go through theta (occurs during childhood from 0-7 years of age) via observing others, yourself, animals, society etc. It’s essentially a mega download of life through your own interpretation – perception is the reality, which is interesting because this perception stays with you for life; and yet it is formed when you have little to no context on most things ( 0 to 7 years of age).   Dr. Bruce Lipton states that we are being programmed for our first seven years, and that 95% of the results in our life come from that programming of the subconscious. In the interview, he goes on to explain that wherever you are struggling in life, your subconscious has been programmed not to support what you are going after (ambition, etc.). Basically, you’re subconscious is saying ‘Hey, this isn’t what you were designed to do. This is unrealistic. This isn’t for you…’  The programming you underwent as a child may be causing internal grief and/or success today. Dr Bruce Lipton explains that we can consciously learn from reading new books, going to lectures, courses, apprenticeships, etc., but we have to get into the subconscious mind to truly rewire our first seven years and the mindset that period etched in our brain. This is changing what I call our hard wiring. To rewire yourself, you need repetition of a new thought/way of thinking and self-affirmation. This form of repetition will change the way your subconscious functions. There is no magic pill or solution to turn yourself into a business person, happy individual, entrepreneur, philanthropist, etc. overnight. If you’re not one today but want to be, it is going to take reps – just as it would if you are in the gym trying to resculpt your 300-pound fatty body into a triathlete.

one’s ambition, attitude, and motivations are determined early in life… the first seven years to be precise. Making changes later in life to your subconscious (rewiring your brain), which is programmed in the first seven years, takes a ton of effort and self-awareness. As an adult, that internal change — meaning the way your subconscious works and parts of your belief system — is needed. No one is perfectly wired.  I think we all have one or two things (or more) in our subconscious that could be holding us back in certain aspects of life.  In this video, Dr. Bruce Lipton explains what theta is, something that before I watched his interview, I couldn’t articulate. Essentially, theta is a lower vibrational frequency than your conscious from a brain activity perspective. It is a beautiful thing, and it runs your world from 0 to 7 years of age, Lipton explains. Theta is the catalyst for childhood imagination and sculpting the subconscious, which is perceived reality from age 0-7. Imagination and the real-world are one and the same for youngsters.

De kunst van mediteren is om je gedachten te laten komen en gaan, en te blijven focussen op je ademhaling. Blijf proberen, oordeel niet. Na een tijdje merk je dat je van een afstandje naar je gedachten kunt kijken, en het steeds minder druk wordt in je hoofd.

Hoe begin ik?Je zoekt een prettige houding, bijvoorbeeld de kleermakerszit. Belangrijk bij de zittende houding is dat je je ruggengraat recht houdt: je hoofd blijft in lijn met je rug. Vervolgens concentreer je je op je ademhaling. Je ademt rustig in en uit. Raak je afgeleid? Geeft niets, je pakt gewoon de concentratie op je ademhaling weer op. Dat is alles, je hoeft nergens aan te denken. De kracht van meditatie is juist dat je even loskomt van het denken.

Wat doet mediteren met je?Mediteren kan je veel brengen. Niet alleen helpt het je om tot rust te komen, het brengt je ook meer in balans en geeft je inzicht in wie je bent en wat je wilt. Door te mediteren leer je je gedachten te observeren: je beseft dat je niet je gedachten bènt, maar dat je gedachten hèbt. Ook ontwikkel je door meditatie meer mededogen –je wordt niet alleen milder voor jezelf, maar ook voor je medemens.

Wat is mediteren eigenlijk?Mediteren is een vorm van spirituele oefening. Het woord komt van het Latijnse meditatio, dat ‘overdenken’ betekent, al is meditatie grappig genoeg vaak meer een oefening in stilte, in simpelweg zijn. Het wordt gebruikt voor allerlei doeleinden: om te ontspannen, jezelf beter te leren kennen en te leren om je aandacht te focussen.

People always ask me if the books I carry around are for school because they’re full of notes, flags and folded pages–why would anyone work so hard on something they were doing on their own? Because I enjoy it, because it’s the only thing that separates me from ignorance. These are the techniques have allowed me to leap years ahead of my peers. It’s how you strike out on your own and build strength instead of letting some personal trainer dictate what you can and can’t be lifting.

Remember: we read to lead for moral and practical lessons. The point is to take what we've read and turn the words, as Seneca says, into works.

“My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application–not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech–and learn them so well that words become works.”

Here’s the full template so you don’t have to scroll for days to find it. But keep reading to see how to build each line:1. CHOOSE A TOPIC2. WHAT'S MY POINT OF VIEW ON SAID TOPIC?3. THE TITLE4. THE INTRODUCTION5. SECTION 1- What is this section about?- Why does it matter?- Research or Examples- Takeaways6. SECTION 2- What is this section about?- Why does it matter?- Research or Examples- Takeaways7. SECTION 3- What is this section about?- Why does it matter?- Research or Examples- Takeaways8. THE CONCLUSION