This guest post is by Stephen Guise of Deep Existence.
Over the course of human history, nearly everything has already been written about extensively. Despite this, more people are writing than ever before.
It’s because there will always be more to say.
It is very challenging to write completely original content. Quite often, the best we can do is present known content in a new way or combine it with another idea. There is no limit to the number of ways you can say something, and yet some approaches are vastly superior to others.
Consider the following sentences that carry the same basic message (hint: one of them isn’t any good).
- I want to have good sentences.
- I want to convey information in a manner that is enjoyable to read and accurate to my intent.
Teach an old idea new tricks
A recent 50-word article from the brilliant Seth Godin laid out a single concept: you can’t have success without being willing to fail. I can prove this isn’t new. My second post was titled, “Are You Willing To Fail? It Is The Key To Success,” and you’ll find about 100 more posts like these via a quick Google search.
What Seth did to make his article unique was tie in the concept of innovation. He replaced “success” with “innovation” in the formula, and people loved it. They hadn’t thought about how innovation and failure relate to each other, even though it’s a simple derivation from the failure/success concept.
As soon as you say, “failure is not an option,” you’ve just said, “innovation is not an option.”
—Seth Godin
Overwritten, tired topics can be re-energized with a fresh perspective and choice words. Seth’s post was 90% recycled information, but the 10% of new material changed it as a whole. A nasty analogy is that...
