Live Like Fiction: thank you for helping turn my blog posts into a book!

Dear Friends,

As a few of you may already know, I was given the opportunity to turn my viral blog posts here on Medium into a book called Live Like Fiction. It’s filled with inspiring stories, practical strategies and thought-provoking activities to help uncover the best version of yourself.🙌

The book will be released mid-July. In the interim, I am starting this newsletter to share with you stories that combine purpose, inspiration and storytelling. These are the ingredients you will need to turn your dreams into reality! Each weekly edition will include six articles relevant to the topics discussed in the book — a system I’ve created called ENGAGE.🦄

Thank you for your continued support throughout this journey. I very much hope you will enjoy these readings — as I’m very excited to embark on this adventure with you!🌎

All my best,

Francesco ⚡✌

E: Explore your meaning 😍

Hunter S. Thompson Typed Out The Great Gatsby & A Farewell to Arms Word for Word

• Do you want to be a great writer? Simple tips like “write every day” and “don’t try to imitate someone else’s voice” are common lessons, but American journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson took his dedication to the next level.
• “You know Hunter typed The Great Gatsby,” an awestruck Johnny Depp told The Guardian in 2011, “he’d look at each page Fitzgerald wrote, and he copied it. The entire book. And more than once. Because he wanted to know what it felt like to write a masterpiece.”

N:Narrow Your Goals🎯

The inside story of how Amazon created Echo

• This week’s release of the Apple HomePod reminded me of an incredible Business Insider profile of how Amazon created the Echo.
• The detail that still remains stuck in my head had to do with Jeff Bezos and “latency”. The initial Echo prototype had a latency of responding to your voice of 2.5–3 seconds. The team laid out a reasonable goal of improving the time down to 2 seconds. Bezos told the team, “I appreciate the work, but you don’t get to where it needs to be without a lot of pain. Let me give you the pain upfront: Your target for latency is one second.”
• That goal of 1 second latency seemed impossible to the team, but they rallied around it and it, and for anyone who is a fan of a voice-enabled speaker, that determination to reduce latency is certainly one of the major factors that made the Echo successful and created an entire new product category.

G:Gain Endurance💪

A toolkit for predicting the future

• The Economist’s Daniel Franklin has just released a book, Megatech: Technology Trends in 2050.
• Tom Standage, the Deputy Editor of one of my favorite publications, wrote an introduction to the book that explains how “to see what lies ahead in technology, look to the past, the present and the imagined futures of science fiction.”

A:Anticipate Roadblocks🚦

Craig From Craigslist’s Second Act

• In between birdwatching and continuing to answer Craigslist customer service emails (yes, the 64-year old billionaire still does that), Craig Newmark has taken on an entirely new challenge. The soft-spoken man who many newspaper executives once accused of destroying the business model of newspapers is doggedly working to combat the new scourge of fake news.

G:Gain Endurance💪

How Ariana Grande’s Manchester Benefit Came Together So Quickly

• Scooter Braun might be most famous for discovering Justin Bieber singing sidewalk covers on YouTube, but the power of the network he’s built over years in the music business expresses itself in even more inspiring ways.
• After last month’s horrific attack in Manchester, Ariana Grande wanted to perform back in the city that experienced the tragedy. Thanks to a network built over an entire career, led to Scooter Braun booking Justin Bieber, Chris Martin, Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, Robbie Williams and Liam Gallagher all in less than 24 hours.

E:Elevate Yourself🚀

Storytelling Should Be the Number One Skill You Want to Improve

• A theme near and dear to my heart, Jon Westenberg lays out a number of critical lessons, along with some helpful TED Talks on how to incorporate storytelling more deeply into our lives. A must watch!

Thanks for reading! Live Like Fiction

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