2019 power word: listen

today, on a podcast by noah kagan, i learned about creating goals. no no no — not those stupid annual, aimless resolutions that no one seems to keep through the third week of january.

i’m talking about massive transformative goals that will shape not only my 2019, but also the rest of my life.

he suggested we structure them like this:

think of a power word to live your year by. mine in 2019 will be listen.

in 2019, i’m dedicating myself to first, learning how to listen better and second, actually listening to people. yeah it seems a bit low-level, but it’s actually something i really struggle with / that i’m not proud of. i’m great at speaking and voicing my own opinion, but when it comes to others, i often shut them down. it’s my way or the highway — either with my work or my school projects or where to eat for dinner.

i’m an open book when it comes to people wanting to know about my life or me, but i don’t seem to reciprocate. i want to ask people why they think the way they do, how they’ve accumulated their worldview.

going into the future, as empathy becomes only more important in marketing and product design, listening will become a major strength of companies and people.

a few weeks ago, james altucher, one of my favorite authors, published a list of goals that he had for 2019 and one of them was to listen more.

if we truly want to learn, we never learn when we are talking. we only learn when we are listening.

i’m going to be reaching out and calling a shit ton of young entrepreneurs around the world this year. these calls will be great practice for my listening skills.

this post is also a call to anyone out there who might read this: focus on what the person across from you is saying. you can actually learn a lot from them.

sorry. 😅 every post in the 5 minute challenge may end a little abruptly. we apologize in advance for not completing our thoughts. this is just the nature of our five-minute challenge. we have exactly five minutes — no more, no less — to make an impact on the reader (YOU!).

we don’t have time to capitalize, spell correctly, or proofread. we write, save, and publish after 300 seconds. that’s it. simple.

join us in the 5 minute challenge! we appreciate your opinion and perspective.