051 - How to improve as a speaker in just 5 minutes

Also, how to grow your career with the magic loop, what Elon can teach you about process improvement, four questions to reflect on for happiness and how to use affirmations to boost your confidence.

Here are this week’s links…

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Tiago Forte’s blog on Ultraspeaking (link)

This is the 2nd time I’ve heard this course recommended by someone I follow. I was curious what made it so noteworthy.

Here’s my attempt to reverse-engineer the magic:

• What are the main messages you want to communicate?

  • (The key takeaways you want to leave people with.)

• Turn these into an idea bank for any speech.

• Then, take those ideas and set a timer for 3 minutes and talk about them to someone.

• Reset the timer for 1 minute, keeping the phrases and stories that worked best.

• Then set the timer for 30 seconds, and pick one thing to leave an impression on your audience, to have them walk away different than how they walked in.

Talks are made of messages and stories – with each message having one or more stories to support and illustrate it. A short talk could constitute as little as one message with one story.

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Lenny’s Newsletter on the Magic Loop for career growth

This reminded me of Jocko Willink’s leadership advice for building a relationship with your boss.

Volunteer to help, even with small stuff. Build your relationship capital with the boss until they feel comfortable letting you run the good stuff.

The Magic Loop

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Trung Phan on Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography

This section on “The Algorithm” has stuck with me. I think this could work for improving any process in a company, not just manufacturing.

Here’s my rephrasing of it:

1. Requirements must have owners. Actual people who have to defend it. Not departments.

2. Delete parts of the process to reduce bloat. You need to be able to go to the requirement owner to be able to argue why it should be deleted.

3. Related to 2. We tend to optimize before trying to delete.

4. Find ways to increase cycle time

5. Only then automate it.

6 thoughts on "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson

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Healthygamer on How to Pause and Reflect for Happiness

Four questions to increase your ability to reflect and act less impulsively.

1. How did you feel before the activity or achievement?

2. How did you feel during the process?

3. How did you feel afterward?

4. How long did the contentment last?

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Nir Eyal’s Morning Affirmations (link)

Affirmations have always seemed woo-woo to me. Seeing Nir’s post with the science backing them up was a surprise and has turned me into a convert.

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Thanks for reading,

Andrew