The Mix Tape, Vol. 46
Generational clarity, subverting what’s possible, fake-it-till-you-make it, and more.
Welcome! I hope everyone has a terrific 4th of July, if you’re in the United States. Actually, have a great one no matter where you are. The world could use a little fun right about now.
Defining generations
Pet peeve: People complaining about “Millenials” when they really mean Gen Z.
The problem: as we age, we all don’t update our generational frame of reference.
The solution: A handy generational breakdown by birthdate, not age, which is the consistent way to think about generational divisions:
Baby Boomers: Baby boomers were born between 1944 and 1964. They're current between 56-76 years old (76 million in U.S.)
Gen X: Gen X was born between 1965 - 1979 and are currently between 41-55 years old (82 million people in U.S.)
Gen Y: Gen Y, or Millennials, were born between 1980 and 1994. They are currently between 26-40 years old.
Gen Z: Gen Z is the newest generation to be named and were born between 1995 and 2015. They are currently between 5-25 years old (nearly 74 million in U.S.)
The next time you shake your fist in anger at the kids, at least you’ll have the right generational letter.
(Now get off my lawn.)
The Artist’s Way, Week Five
Recovering a sense of possibility
This week focuses on the limiting beliefs around what we can accomplish. If God is driving our creativity, and he’s limitless, then why would we dismiss what can be accomplished through him?
Key ideas: Limits
• We draw limited amounts of God’s power because we don’t consider how powerful he really is.
• God is unlimited in supply — we deprive no one with our abundance.
• We should be willing to receive our good from whatever source it appears in, and not from our preconceived notions of where it should come from
• The desire to appear worldly and sophisticated can block our source and creative flow.
• God will provide. We must listen for how.
• “You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want” — Margaret Young
In short: take the governor off your expectations.
The greatest value
The morning pages — writing ~750 words first thing each morning — remain massively valuable and drive about 90% of the book’s value.
Writing the morning pages clears out anxiety, limiting beliefs, and a bunch of other mental garbage you don’t even know you’re carrying around with you.
With your mind cleared, you’re freer to be productive and creative the rest of the day.
How to lead a writing group (when you don’t know what you’re doing)
With the help of some good advice (thanks Kevin!) I applied for, and later accepted, an alumni mentor role in the Write of Passage online course.
This cohort has over 300 students from 30 countries, including a two-time NYT best selling author, the founder of a major online newsletter company, and various others with generally intimidating accomplishments.
My role is to lead a weekly writing group of about 15 of these students as they work through the assignments and develop a lasting process for writing online.
For me, this is fake-it-till-you-make-it, out loud and in public.
So I jotted down my philosophy for leading my group:
And after God and my family, what keeps me going through a difficult and lengthy career transition is process.
In particular, the process of fitness training, and the process of writing.
There are a lot of parallels between fitness training and writing: the mental discipline, the consistency of effort, and the struggle and satisfaction of completing that day’s work.
I want to create that kind shared experience in our Write of Passage writing group.
We will lean on and lean into @david_perell’s process,
We will encourage each other to advance—at a speed that works for each of us individually
We will celebrate our efforts, and then surrender the results, letting a higher power handle the outcomes of what we publish.
Rigor, effort, encouragement.
We will take satisfaction in the effort and in helping each other advance and improve.
Handle those, and the results will take care of themselves.
I think they will, anyway. Stay tuned. 😂
Extreme facts
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