TL;DR Original thinking is the currency of the future. If you rely on social media to make a living, this post will make you rich. If not, you’ll learn to think more deeply and creatively by using this week’s tool.

April has been tumultuous so far, hasn’t it?

I’ll be helping you navigate the uncertainty, starting with a new feature, “Tool of the Week.”

Also, FYI, I’ll soon be merging Bold Words with my other newsletter, Ithaka. For the past year, Ithaka has been a special “insider’s” newsletter geared towards achieving a major life goal in 12 months or less.

You don’t have to do anything. Just enjoy the content that you’ll now receive on both Tuesday and Thursday each week.

Feature: How to Write Original Content On Demand

The internet is filled with people like you and me.

You post your stuff on social media. Some of the people who see it are interested in learning more.

They follow the link in your bio and sign up for a newsletter or schedule a call. From there, you sell your products or services.

This process worked well in the past because there weren’t many people doing it.

But now there’s so much content floating around that many would-be entrepreneurs spend hours and hours every day just trying to remain visible.

There’s an easy way out of this. A new way to consistently create original, compelling content.

This is a process that will make you smarter in your own life, along with giving your creations a level of quality and recognition akin to that of Dan Koe, Josh Johnson, or Elle Cordova.

Let’s break down the problem, and then we’ll solve it. (You can scroll down to “Tool of the Week” if you’re short on time.)

The Content Curation Dispute

Last month, a certain “content marketer” was preaching that curation is the future. I enthusiastically disagreed.

Curation is the practice of reading or watching something brilliant. Then you share a summary or a takeaway with your readers and followers.

There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a useful service. It also gives you an unending stream of fresh, interesting content without a lot of work.

If you’re trying to launch a newsletter or build your presence on a new platform, curation is a way to jumpstart your plan.

But curation will not be the future. If anything, it could be the end of yours.

If people only follow you to get a digest of information around a common interest, they’ll soon be using bots to curate things for them.

Worse still, curation trains your mind to be a narrator and deprives you of original thought. If you’re not careful, you’ll become another repercussion in your own echo chamber.

Think of curation as an emergency boost. Use it when you don’t have anything else, but don’t make it the major feature of your work, as some internet gurus are advocating.

So what should you do instead?

Grow Your Mind, Grow Your Business

The way to stand out and grow online is by creating original content.

Original content comes from original thinking.

You have plenty of original thoughts every day. You probably don’t have a habit of consistently capturing and sharing them.

More to the point, you (hopefully) read, watch, and hear things that stick. You find ideas and tidbits of information that are inspiring, useful, or at least interesting.

You connect those ideas and tidbits to knowledge you already have.

And you have personal opinions about why those tidbits are interesting, useful, and inspiring.

There’s gold in those connections and opinions. That is the start of original thinking. Original thinking leads to original content.

The good news is you’re doing it already, but you may not have realized it. Here’s a process to write original content on demand.

The magic of original content comes from your answer to the question, “so what?”

Without even trying, your answer is going to:

• Give practical, actionable advice based on the content

• Tie it in with your personal experience

• Explain how this content supports or refutes a popular idea

• Use it to illustrate something that another writer/influencer recently said

• Reach a conclusion that nobody has ever though about before

As you practice writing original content, you’ll discover your mind is flexible and creative. Give it space and you will constantly surprise yourself.

Do this often enough, and soon other influencers will be “curating” you.

That wraps it up for now. If you have any questions or comments about this issue, hit the Reply button and tell me what’s on your mind. I may not answer you directly, but I read every one.

Always keep growing,

Jacob Bear