This is the ‘win with stories’ newsletter. Every week, I send an email with a message wrapped short story, one actionable tip and a recommendation so you can enhance your storytelling skills.
We don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy. But how much is too much? How can we ever find out?
The story below may have an answer.
How a ‘packing party’ changed Ryan Nicodemus’s life.
Ryan started making a six figure salary fairly early on in his life. He owned an apartment with two living rooms and upgraded his car every two years.
But he was anything but happy. In fact, he felt stuck.
Help arrived in the form of his friend, Josh. He introduced Ryan to a concept that meant ‘less is more’. You’ve probably guessed it already.
To declutter Ryan’s life and understand what stuff he actually needs, these friends came up with an interesting idea. They called it the ‘packing party’.
They got together one day and packed all of Ryan’s stuff in boxes and labelled them.
Over the next three weeks, Ryan took out only stuff that he actually needed. This meant toothbrush, sheets, some clothes, laptop, etc. But interestingly, 80% of his stuff stayed inside the boxes. He hardly had any use for them.
That is how The Minimalists was born. Today, Ryan and Josh propagate minimalism to millions across the word and the ‘packing party’ is a legit challenge that others take.
Apart from books, workshops and courses, they also have a popular documentary on Netflix. Do check it out.
Now for today’s communication tip:
I happened to read Ryan and Josh’s blog on how to write better and found this tip to be quite interesting.
‘Treat text messages like prose. Before hitting the send button, review your text: spelling, content, punctuation. Ask yourself: What am I attempting to communicate? What am I attempting to express? Be more deliberate with your most common form of casual writing, and you’ll automatically become more deliberate in other mediums.’
Somehow I have been following this for as long as I can remember. Let me know if this tip has helped you.
One book you could read:
Deep Work by Cal Newport:
This is a book I strongly recommend to everyone. In a world filled with instant gratification, focus is a superpower. The book circles back to the values of minimalism, of focusing on a few things that matter as opposed to scattering your attention away.
How can Deep Work make you a better communicator?
Well, Newport’s suggestion of going deep as opposed to going wide has helped me a lot in communication. If you are crafting a sales pitch, website messaging or investor pitch deck – the deep work approach definitely helps. Choose a few things that you want to communicate over everything else and then understand your messages deeply. This helps in assuring your audience that you know what you are talking about.
Hope you enjoyed this edition of ‘win with stories’ newsletter. If you have a question about business or personal communication, feel free to reply here or connect with me on Linkedin or Twitter.
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Cheers.
Sachin.
