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I Done This Support

How Dan Pink Invested in iDoneThis

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This story is inspired by this week’s Startup Edition question:  How did you raise money for your startup?

“Email Dan Pink.”

That task sat on my to-do list, undone for weeks. I somehow managed to move everything else around it to my done list while that one task languished. I was too scared to reach out.

If you don’t know who Dan Pink is, he’s a five-time bestselling author and thought leader on the changing world of work. His latest, To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others, which gives a definitive look at modern sales, is a #1 New York Times business bestseller.

I had to sell to the guy who had literally written the book on selling.

I finally worked up the courage to send Dan an email, and we set up a call. Then, I gave him a horrible pitch — I fumbled my words and my nerves paved the way to tangents that made no sense. When we were done, I hung up, dejected and I felt sure that I’d blown it.

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Announcing the iDoneThis Newsletter and A Hammy, Bookish Giveaway

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We put a lot of effort at iDoneThis into our content, because we write about what we care about: productivity, teamwork, creativity, and happiness at work. But as we quickly found, while quality content is vital, its life is incomplete without distribution, the pumping of publishing’s heart.

In these busy times, it’s as easy as blinking to miss one of our pieces amidst the fast current of content and an ocean of a squillion blog posts. We knew we could do a better job of delivering the best of our content to people who care about the same topics we do. So for us, the newsletter is the missing piece of the content network puzzle that somehow got lost under the couch cushions.

We’re particularly excited about the prospect of doing a better job of developing an iDoneThis community. The thing is, email is people. While spammingly and carelessly abused as a communication method, email can still be done well. And when it is, it can be a quieter channel that knocks on your door and leaves some homemade muffins for you if you’re not home.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!

And since we’re pretty hammy (and not spammy!) here at iDoneThis, we’re giving away some awesome prizes for new subscribers who sign up for the newsletter by Sunday, August 18, 11:59 pm EST.

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Management, Leading and Success: The Best of the Internet

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Weekend edition of link love! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week! 

8 Myths Startup Founders Hate

LinkedIn CEO’s Unconventional Meeting Technique

Brainwriting:  the solution to brainstorming’s loudmouth problem.

12 Things Successful People do Differently

3 Differences Between Managers & Leaders

imageDundee’s Tip of the Week: Sign up for our very new newsletter for thoughtful posts on how to work better, useful tips, & exclusive content here.

 

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s Unconventional Meeting Technique

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Silicon Valley is all about metrics, metrics, metrics. The numbers tell us what’s wrong, and then we fix them. That’s why I was surprised to learn that the CEO of one of the Valley’s flagship companies has a different perspective on what’s important to discuss at weekly staff meetings.

Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO on sharing small wins to start meetings

While Valley dogma says that meetings must be kept as short as possible and that discussions must focus on hard numbers and data, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner avoids talking about metrics at all when starting off meetings. Before getting down to focused business talk, Weiner actually requires every person in the room to share something that’s soft and mushy, not rigorous and quantifiable. He asks each of his direct reports to share their “wins” — “one personal victory and one professional achievement” — from the past week.

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The Benefits of a Power Nap: The Best of the Internet

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Make it CountFriday link love! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week:

Why Does Your Work Matter?

The Science Behind Why Small Teams Work More Productively.

Why You Shouldn’t Scale Your Startup

Technology: “For everything we gain, we lose something in return.”

Microaggression & Mismanagement

Naps are amazing. ‘nuff said.

imageDundee’s Tip of the Week: We’re working on the start of an I Done This newsletter. Interested in being that super special person who will give us helpful feedback and suggestions?

 

Loneliness at Work: The Best of the Internet

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you'll never knowWeekend edition of link love! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week! 

Sending this one email to your boss can change your career.

Loneliness at work is everyone’s problem.

Vanquish procrastination. Seriously.

Face your weakness. Boost your confidence.

The API of You.

imageDundee’s Tip of the Week: We’re working on the start of an I Done This newsletter. Interested in being that super special person who will give us helpful feedback and suggestions? Sign up for some test runs until we learn how to fly here.

 

Send One Simple Email to Make Your Job Better

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For better or for worse, bosses don’t spend much time thinking about your needs and worrying about to helping you with your career advancement. Bosses, like most people at work, are busy people with their own jobs, their own lives, and their own concerns.

That’s obvious. But the upshot is a harsh reality: your boss most likely has very little sense of what you’re accomplishing or even what you’re doing with your time. If you aren’t proactive about reporting your accomplishments, you’ll never get recognized for your good work.

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The Power of One Simple Email

For many people, the thought of being more proactive about sharing accomplishments at work can be daunting and a real turnoff. Eric Barker at his blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, provides an elegant solution to this problem that takes minimal effort and doesn’t require you to turn into a loudmouth braggart.

Every week, Eric writes, send one simple email to your boss that’ll make your life better.

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Making Happiness a Habit: The Best of the Internet

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bearHappy Friday! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week! 

Why you should stop keeping score at work.

You have to fight to make your distributed team a competitive advantage. And your right to party.

How to attack the dark heart of mismanagement and chronic stress.

Don’t be a Productivity Pinocchio.

Make happiness a habit.

imageDundee’s Tip of the Week: Display a list of entries over a span of time by clicking and dragging over the days you want to show on your iDoneThis calendar. Your chain of progress will show up on the right! You go, you!

 

Boost Your Productivity! The Best of the Internet

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keep goingHappy Friday! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week! 

Priorities that come in threes are the magical productivity boost. Triorities!

How WooThemes makes distributed culture succeed.

70% of organizational change efforts fail.

The 3 basic elements of productivity and happiness.

4 Lies to stop telling yourself about productivity.

Quality is not a tradeoff.

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How WooThemes Makes Distributed Team Culture Succeed

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The multi-million dollar company WooThemes started with a single email, as a small side project of Magnus Jepson in Stavanger, Norway, Adii Pienaar in Cape Town and Mark Forrester, then in London.

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From that one email sprouted a bootstrapped company that produces a rich catalog of WordPress themes and plugins, serving 450,000 users. And this impressive success emerges from a distributed team of only thirty people, spanning seven countries.

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