Intelligent Tuesday: Best of 2019

Welcome to a special edition of Intelligent Tuesday, from the people behind The Five Minute Journal and Productivity Planner. This Intelligent Tuesday is a Best of the Year list of resources that has enhanced our lives. We want to share these with you to spread joy, productivity, and self-fulfillment as we wish you all the best for the New Year!

• Video (8 minutes) - How To Wake Up Before 6AM Every Day by Matt D'Avella: Many successful people we admire are early risers who get more done in the first few hours of their day than most in an entire day. Matt D'Avella, a filmmaker who amassed a 1 million+ youtube following within a year, provides a great primer for becoming an early riser from someone who previously repeatedly tried and failed.

Article (4 Minutes) - Stop Doing Low Value Work by Priscilla Claman: With limited time each day, how do you cut out the BS busy work and get focused on more important tasks? This HBR article will show you how to redesign your job to move away from low value work towards work that makes progress on your larger goals.

• Video (12 Minutes) - "It's Not Cool To Be Positive" by Kevin Hart: As humans, we are prone to give more psychological weight to bad experiences than good ones. To us, positivity begets positivity. It's why we choose to focus on the good to counterbalance our negativity bias. Comedian Kevin Hart receives hate on a daily basis, and yet, he chooses to always be positive no matter what. In this podcast with Joe Rogan he shares his philosophy of positivity being cool. (Warning: Language).

• Video (7 Minutes) - Capturing 1,000 Human Moments In A Week: Too often we aim to compare ourselves to the best of the best that we fail to even get started learning a new skill. But what does progress over perfection (aka deliberate practice) look like in action? Nathaniel Drew wanted to get better at photography, but faced the common excuse of not having the time. To overcome procrastination, he aimed to take 1,000 photos in a week.

– Success Corner –

The unfortunate truth is that advice is almost always driven by anecdotal experience, and thus has limited value and relevance. Read a sampling of college commencement addresses, and you quickly realize each story is unique. For every entrepreneur who thrive by resolutely working on a singular idea for many years, there is another who pivoted widely. For every successful individual who designed a master plan in life, there is another who was deliberately spontaneous. Ignore advice, especially early in one’s career. There is no universal path to success.

- John Arnold in Tribe of Mentors