Nicolas Cole 🚢 Profile picture
Mar 9 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I've journaled for 30 minutes every morning for 14 years straight.

No fancy journal. No complex rules.

Just a pen, paper, and 4 simple prompts to help focus my mind and find clarity.

Here's the dead-simple system I use every day: Image
Question #1: "What did I do yesterday?"

The very first thing I do is reflect on the past 24 hours:

• What did I do yesterday?
• How did it feel?
• What did I learn?

I like this prompt because only the most important things come to mind.

Pay attention.
Question #2: "What am I working on?"

A big part of journaling for me is repeating things I want to internalize:

• Repeating goals
• Repeating mindset patterns
• Repeating feelings & lessons

The more I repeat it in my journal, the more I think about it during the day.
Question #3: "What's coming up?"

Next, I look toward the future.

• What's around the bend?
• What can I start proactively processing through now?

This helps prepare the mind in advance for feelings, challenges, or obstacles—and helps you not feel so "caught off guard."
Question #4: "What am I grateful for?"

I end every journaling session with a Thank You.

I thank the path in front of me.

I remind myself I am grateful for every opportunity to learn, whether it's difficult or not.

And I welcome the day to come with open arms.
I started journaling deliberately like this when I was 19 years old.

I'd just gotten back from a rehab trip, and felt extremely lost & confused.

I didn't know what I wanted out of life, or whether I would amount to much.

So I wrote to myself about it.
This has become my favorite part about journaling over long periods of time:

You can literally see the progress in front of you.

Things I journaled about when I was 19, I don't journal about anymore. I've grown out of them.

Keeping a journal documents your growth as a human.
I will keep this habit until the day I die.

I attribute a significant portion of my success over the past 5 years to my daily journaling practice.

There is no better way to hear yourself, become conscious of your thoughts, and take actionable steps forward.
4 Morning Journaling Prompts That Will Change Your Life:

1/ "What did I do yesterday?"
2/ "What am I working on?"
3/ "What's coming up?"
4/ "What am I grateful for?"
That's a wrap!

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Get it here: x.startwritingonline.com/?utm_source=co…

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More from @Nicolascole77

Feb 24
Why do most creators burn out and quit?

Because they are always creating *new* content.

But repurposing is a social media cheat code.

Here’s how I doubled my reach by taking my proven X content and putting it on LinkedIn (0 to 44K+ followers):
Step 1: X Library Audit

Repurposing content is arguably the greatest “growth hack” on the Internet.

• Go to your Analytics
• Sort by Impressions

Now you have a list of all your most translatable writing.

What's next?
Step 2: Start At The Top, And Work Your Way Down

Take your most-viewed:

• Long-form
• Threads
• Atomic Essays

And, quite literally, copy/paste them over to LinkedIn.

The beauty of building a library of content is that timeless writing doesn’t lose its value. Image
Read 8 tweets
Feb 23
95% of ChatGPT content is clichéd and boring.

So I use the 10-80-10 Rule with ChatGPT to write posts that don't suck (in 7 simple steps):
Here's a breakdown of the 10-80-10 Rule with ChatGPT:

• You do the first 10% of the work coming up with the idea
• ChatGPT does the middle 80% of the execution
• You handle the last 10% of edits to polish before publishing

Here's how you do it step-by-step:
Step 1: Clarify What Your Reader Wants

Jump into your reader’s shoes for a minute.

• What do they really want?
• What keeps them up at night?
• What do they daydream about during boring Zoom meetings?

Start with a goal you know your reader wants to accomplish: Image
Read 12 tweets
Feb 21
Over the last 3 years, I have posted hundreds of small (but powerful) Writing Tips.

These 19 accumulated more than 1,000,000 views and thousands of comments & shares: Image
1. Find clarity with bullets. Image
2. Delete the word “that.” Image
Read 23 tweets
Feb 11
After writing online for 10+ years, I have written 1,000s of hooks.

But when I sit down to write, I don't come up with a new hook from scratch.

Instead, I ask ChatGPT to write them for me.

I call it my personal AI Hook Generator—here’s how it works:
There are 3 questions you need to ask when finding a perfect X hook:

• What makes YOU stop scrolling?
• What gets YOU to click?
• What are other readers clicking on?

Every post you “templatize” should make people stop scrolling and generate clicks.

Here are the steps:
Step 1: Follow 50 interesting accounts

• Browse your “For You” feed
• Search for universal topics: Health, wealth, and relationships
• Use Advanced search for top posts and people in your niche

(Here’s a 60 second crash-course on how to use X Advanced search):
Read 10 tweets
Feb 9
There are 1,000,000+ freelance writers on Upwork & Fiverr.

And 95% of them are stuck:

• Charging $18 per hour (or less)
• Charging $50 per article (or less)
• Charging $0.05 per word (or less!)

They haven’t moved up The Relative Pricing Pyramid.

Here's how it works: Image
Instead of setting your prices based on:

• Your gut feeling
• Or the competition

You can think about pricing it in terms of:

1. Urgency
2. Importance

These are The 4 Levels of Relative Pricing:
Level 1: Commodity

• You're solving a non-urgent problem
• You're easy to replace

For example, a company is hiring content writers for their company blog.

It’s a luxury, not a necessity.

A zillion content writers can solve this problem.

Let's go to the next level. 👇
Read 9 tweets
Jan 31
We’re only 4 weeks into 2024, and my friends have already racked up *millions* of views on X.

The sad thing is X buries all the good content way too quickly.

So here are 8 of my favorite posts from the last month (so I can find them again later):
1. @fortelabs on the importance of going DEEP with one skill:
@fortelabs 2. This epic thread from @nathanbaugh27 on 7 sentences from fiction to make you think:
Read 11 tweets

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