The single most *powerful* habit for personal growth:

Daily journaling.

Over the past 5 years, I've journaled every single morning.

And along the way I've tested:

• Over 1,000 questions
• Every app, pen, & notebook

But I always return to a pen, paper, and these 5 prompts: For notebook & pen, I use:

• Muji 0.5 pens
• Leuchtturm1917 soft-covers

(More about these at the end!)

For my prompts, I use:

• The 80/20 Audit
• The Morning Kickstart
• The Evening Shutdown
• The Bottleneck Analysis
• The Compounding Projection

Let's dive into each:

For years, I rushed through my days without any self-awareness.

I repeated the same mistakes. I made zero progress towards my goals.

This all changed when I started my 15-minute End-Of-Day Check-In Survey.

Here are the 5 questions I use (and exactly why I ask them): 1. Rate the day -2 to +2.

I picked this up from Jim Collins.

This simple rating system allows me to end the day with a gauge of how it went.

This lets me track over time:

• How I'm feeling
• And look for patterns for improvement

The Father Of Advertising: David Ogilvy

In 1982, he penned an internal memo to his staff titled "How to Write."

In just 10 bullets he put together a masterclass in effective writing.

Here's a breakdown of each one: The memo starts with a clear *why*:

"The better you write, the higher you will go in Ogilvy & Mather.

People who think well, write well.

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well."

Replace "Ogilvy & Mather" with any company and this holds true.

X is a constant stream of free education.

But the algorithm buries all the best posts after 24 hours.

Here are 10 of my favorite posts (written by my friends) from March (these racked up millions of views): 1. @george__mack breaks down why envy is the reason we’re not getting happier as the quality of life improves:

https://twitter.com/2166434343/status/1764274146278519228

The key to making *rapid* progress in life:

Making quick (but effective) decisions.

Over the last 4 years, I've published hundreds of decision-making tips.

These 9 were the most popular and will help you make better decisions (start using these in the next 5 minutes): 1. The 7 mental models you need to make any decision:

https://twitter.com/1286341463597604864/status/1537434904656351234

The most powerful writing skill you can develop:

Copywriting.

But when I first started to learn the craft, I was completely overwhelmed.

So here's the 3-step learning process I wish I had (that you can start using today): Looking back, 99% of the things I did were complete wastes of time.

But 3 of them were life-changing.

1. Immersion into 1 copywriter's worldview

2. Reading 3 foundational copywriting books

3. Practicing copywork (to see what writing great copy *feels like*)

Let's dive in:

The way schools teach us to learn is horribly broken.

Textbooks, worksheets, flashcards—all of them a waste of time in the real world.

Instead, I use this simple 3-part framework to rapidly learn anything: The key to learning anything:

Seeing it as a game.

And this framework helped me become a:

• Pro speedcuber at age 11
• Top 100 Call of Duty 4 player
• College football player at Princeton
• Hedge fund trader at BlackRock
• And now a full-time digital builder

Here's how:

In February, my friends racked up millions of views on X.

Here are 10 of my favorite posts—on big life mistakes, $1 million digital businesses, the future of startups, and more: 1/ Timeless frameworks on how to set incentives from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, courtesy of @george__mack:

https://twitter.com/2166434343/status/1756594096276177016

How to use ChatGPT to generate 100 ideas to write about in only 5 minutes—even if you think you have nothing to say: By the end of this thread, you will:

1. Discover the topics you *want* to write about

2. Get *specific* on those topics so readers will trust you

3. Come up with *engaging* & *valuable* ideas for each topic

4. Then, you'll outsource the whole process to ChatGPT with my prompt

7 small habits I used to *vastly* improve my well-being (that helped me 10x my energy levels, lose 100 pounds, and build a daily writing habit): 1. Walking 20,000 steps per day

I'm convinced walking is the *single* best thing you can do for your health & creativity.

I used to walk under 4,000 steps per day—and I was miserable.

Why?

3 simple ways to spot viral-worthy stories in small, everyday moments—even if you think nothing *exciting* ever happens to you: If you can tell a compelling story, you can shape the world.

But first, you need to learn how to spot them.

In Storyworthy @matthewdicks explains 3 ways to build your story-spotting muscle:

• Homework for Life
• Crash and Burn
• First, Last, Best, Worst

Let's dive in:

The most valuable skill when scaling your business:

Leadership.

But schools teach you *nothing* about how to be a world-class leader.

So I spent 100+ hours studying legendary coaches & CEOs.

Turns out leadership is simple—if you follow these 7 principles: 1. Lead From the Front

Most "leaders" are actually bosses.

They see leadership as "telling" people what to do.

But this quickly creates a toxic culture of:

• Slow feedback loops
• Shaky operations
• Resentment
• Poor results

Instead, here's what great leaders do:

There is a limitless amount of free education on X.

But the algorithm eventually buries all the best tweets.

Here are 10 of my favorite tweets from December 2023, written by my friends (so I can find them later): 1. How to get creative from @george__mack:

https://twitter.com/2166434343/status/1733143206144123356

I asked 375,000 people for their favorite things of 2023.

• Books
• Podcasts
• Newsletters
• Lessons learned

Then, I spent *hours* compiling answers to create the Best of 2023 Curation.

Here's the recap of each one: Here's the link to the entire curation:



And each tweet after this will have the individual curation for each question I asked.

Here's to making 2024 your best year yet—enjoy!vine-perch-730.notion.site/Dickie-s-Diges…

I asked my 375,000 followers for their favorite podcast episodes of 2023.

Here are the 12 that came out on top: 1. 5 Ways To Make $1 Million As A Writer - Nicolas Cole | Deep Dive with @AliAbdaal

23 questions to reflect on 2023 (and make 2024 your best year yet): This list will help you:

• Recap the year
• Take stock of where you are
• And refresh your perspective heading into 2024

It's the exact process I used to do my Yearly Review.

Let's dive in:

I asked 375,000 people for their favorite book of 2023.

These 13 books showed up the most often (so they must be worth reading): 1. $100M Offers by @AlexHormozi

amzn.to/4aipTn5

A skill every creator needs to master:

Landing page copywriting.

Our Start Writing Online landing page has driven 10,000s of email subscribers and has a 60% opt-in rate.

Here's a breakdown of its 5 key elements (with a ChatGPT prompt to help you write your page in seconds): First, let's start with the one rule 99% of creators (and most marketers at multibillion-dollar companies) don't understand:

The Rule of One.

• 1 page
• 1 offer
• 1 choice

Here's why it's so important:

The *secret* to being a prolific Digital Writer:

The Lean Writing Framework.

Both Mark Manson & Malcolm Gladwell used it to write their critically acclaimed, bestselling books.

Here's how it works (and how you can use ChatGPT to help you become a prolific writer too): What do Gladwell & Manson's hit books have in common?

They both started as blog posts.

This is the Lean Writing framework in action:

1. Test ideas with short-form content
2. Double down on the ones that work best
3. Expand those ideas into long-form content

Let's dive in!

The *biggest* fear for all writers:

Staring at a blank page.

So I created an easy, repeatable system to generate hundreds of fresh writing ideas every month.

Here's a breakdown of how it works (and how I trained ChatGPT to become my Personal Idea Generation Machine): Finding the topics you want to write about starts with 1 simple question:

"What are all of the problems I've solved and topics I've learned about over the last 2 years?"

This is the foundation of The 2-Year Test.

Why 2 years?

Good question:

My paid “Write With AI” newsletter just hit $200k/year.

This is *double* my old Wall Street salary.

But that job required 80-hour weeks under fluorescent lights.

This newsletter requires two weekly emails which take less than 4 hours.

Here's the breakdown of how it works: In this thread, we’re going to cover:

1. Why we went with a paid newsletter (hint: because we’re in a free newsletter bubble)

2. An overview of the organic content funnel we use to drive subscribers

3. Our gameplan to grow it to $100k / month in 2024

Let’s dive in.