I was scared. For a long time:
“I don’t want to write about one thing. I like all the things.”
The idea of just writing about one topic scared the 💩 out of me: I did not want to be confined to a niche prison. What if I wanted to write about something different?
Well last week, after some gentle coercion by a peer, I finally announced I was “niching down” with this newsletter. (If you missed it, read about it here).
My finger was trembling. Nervous as hell. (Cue climactic music)…
Then I hit ‘send’.
The email went out — and it was a complete unlock.
It’s true what they say: “constraints unlock creativity.”
Here’s how accepting the constraint of niching down opened the floodgates of ideas and opportunities.
Quick story: I run a lot.
It’s my highly-leveraged meditation/fitness/ideation session. Last week after I hit send on the email announcing my newfound “focus”, I went for a run — and ideas began flowing.
I’ll often get ideas while running, but this was different: they wouldn’t stop. I was recording each idea as quickly and often as they came. My minutes-per-kilometer took a backseat to my…