From just four Tweets.
I level up as a marketer and writer consistently from social media. Specifically Twitter.
And it's mostly due to how I've curated my feeds from the people that I follow.
Matthew Kobach (@mkobach) is one person who repeatedly delivers value and inspiration onto my Twitter feed. He manages social media for large brands but he's mostly known for being the Head of Social Media at the New York Stock Exchange.
Skill mastery and boosting my creativity are two topics that are important to my well-being and career progression.
The following four tweets are profound lessons and simple-to-follow checklists for remaining in an inspired state, amplifying your creativity, and compounding the value that you can bring to the world through your skills.
10 Creativity Boosters That You Can Immediately Try:
These are pretty simple habits to test. However, your intention and self-awareness is important if you want to see the benefits in your own life.
By the way here's a 3 step checklist for testing any of these creativity boosting habits:
1. Have clear intentions behind the habit. What do you desire to be the outcome?
2. Just do it. Test out the habit.
3. Take the time to reflect and observe how you feel or think differently
Skills don't add, they compound.
The compound effect is the idea that small actions build up over time.
Darren hardy, Author of ‘The Compound Effect’, defines the compound effect this way;
“It’s the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. Success is earned in the moment to moment decisions that in themselves make no visible difference whatsoever, but the accumulated compounding effect is profound.”
We can apply the concept of compound interest with money to knowledge and skills.
Here is an anecdote from mathematician Richard Hamming from a talk he gave at Bell in 1986 about doing Nobel-level work: (h/t Kottke.org)
"Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode’s office and said, “How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?”
He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, “You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.” I simply slunk out of the office!
What Bode was saying was this: “Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.” Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former.
The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity — it is very much like compound interest. I don’t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime."
Lean into your curiosity and let that drive you to developing more skills.
A quote I continually use:
"If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Take inspiration, ideas, and motivation from others. There's no shame in that. Stealing from one person = plagiarism. But stealing from dozens of humans is creativity.
Austin Kleon author of 'Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative' said in his book,
“What to copy is a little bit trickier. Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.”
Our social media feeds are often where we consume the most content. So we should be intentional in curating the content to accounts that we can learn from and be inspired by.
I've had the pleasure to meet Matthew in person thanks to Bryn Jones. Matthew has always been a very giving person.
If you want to learn about human behaviors, social media, and learn about inspiring people, you can start curating your feed by following Matt Kobach on Twitter!