Hi Friends

I hope you have been keeping well wherever you are.

I've been putting the final touches to my group coaching course over the last couple of weeks. I have 3 spaces left! If anyone is interested in jumping aboard and building a professional web presence that will send many opportunities your way like it has done for me, hit reply and let me know.

Our kick-off call is happening this Friday and we'll be starting in earnest on Monday. It will take only only 30 minutes a day, Monday to Friday, and I'll be there to help every step of the way.

Here's what we'll be covering:

• Week 1: Getting clear on your goals, who you're writing for, the topics you're going to write about, the science of habit formation and finding your voice.
• Week 2: The easy website setup, understanding idea generation, organising your files and note taking.
• Week 3: The 5-day writing workflow and publishing your first post.
• Week 4: Sharing and networking online, self-promotion done right, writing a great profile and reviewing your goals.

Reply right back if you're interested in jumping aboard.

Now onto the links—some great ones for you this week!

Best,
Andy

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✨ Personal Growth

How you can increase your motivation to change something. Motivation is fleeting. Here one minute (bought a new gym membership in a height of excitement) and then gone the next (shamefully not using it). This article is a curious way to think about reclaiming that motivation, or finding it in the first place when motivation is elusive. Motivational Interviewing is a counselling approach used by psychologists, but which you can use on yourself. Choose an area of your life you want to improve, and use the tools to explore your desire, ability and reasons why there's a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. The result: your motivation to make a commitment and take action will be higher.

​How to motivate yourself to change (13 mins)

Work out how much time you waste on distracting things. This website lets you insert the time you spend doing various distracting activities (gaming, watching TV, social media, etc.) and compare that with the time you spend on growth activities (exercise, learning, being in nature, etc.). Then see what you could do with that time after 6 months of accumulation (learning a language, reading more books, training for a marathon, etc.) And the website has some tools to help you improve, like an app that helps you get in nature more often (Geocaching) or an easy way to track your habits (Habit Tracker++) .

​Make Yourself Great Again (5 mins)

Sapiens the book condensed into a blog post. Sapiens by Yuval Harari was my book of the year in 2020. It changed so many ways I see the world. It was with delight that I stumbled across this blog-post-lengthed version of the book—an article that you can read in 30 mins or less. I still recommend reading the full version, but this is a great little read to get lost in one evening. Enjoy!

​If Sapiens were a blog post (27 mins)

My writing: three things that changed me in 2020. This is one of my latest blog posts on my personal website. I follow the writing workflow that I teach in my course. I'm on week 7 of writing every day and posting something new every week.

​3 life-changing mindsets I adopted in 2020 (2 mins)

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👔 Professional Development

On choosing a career that places purpose before profit. I've been channeling my writing to Twitter these last two weeks, instead of my blog. I would like to grow this newsletter, so I'm taking advantage of the potential viral effect from social media. Nothing has gone viral yet (!) but it's one of those things that have unlimited upside and no downside. Here's my thread on choosing a big problem to tackle and what I've learnt in doing that myself. Click below to read the entire thread.

Andy Narracott 💥 @AndyNarracott More and more people are seeking purpose before profit in their career—doing work that matters. It's partly driven by seeing previous generations in the 9-to-5 living lives of quiet desperation. Partly by climate change. THREAD: on why you should choose an impact-first career. June 18th 2021 1 Retweets 9 Likes

How writing clearly can help humanity. Here's a thread on the imperative for clear writing in development. Write with clarity, precision and unambiguity so life-saving information can be understood by the people who need it most.

Andy Narracott 💥 @AndyNarracott Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals is in the hands of Thinkers and Builders. But they suck at communicating with each other. Information that could improve people's lives requires clarity, precision and unambiguity. Pick up some tips on your writing below 👇 June 25th 2021 0 Retweets 3 Likes

Why we buy into the culture of overwork. I’ve often observed people around me who subscribe to the overwork mantra. It seems that they're working for some time in the future when they can enjoy a better lifestyle or higher status. But what about the present moment? How can we be better people today when we’re frazzled and all we can do is melt our brains in front of Netflix? This is an in-depth exploration into the culture of overwork. Great article.

​Why do we buy into the ‘cult’ of overwork? (8 mins)

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📡 Tech and Social Entrepreneurship

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Try this fun way to organise your travel. You're probably thinking about travelling again one day. Start dreaming with this website. It's a fun way to do travel planning, and could have other uses like planning field research.

​Travis | Powering the world’s travel stories​

A free resource to help anyone, anywhere learn to code with the help of a mentor. You may not be into coding but for many people spread across the planet, it provides a route out of unemployment or low-income. This is a non-profit offering free teaching (in English) to code in 50+ programming languages. It's aimed at people from all backgrounds, as a tool for economic and social mobility. Who do you know who could be interested in this? Forward this to them!

​Exercism | Code practice and mentorship for anyone​

I’m constantly blown away by what you can get for free on the internet. Take this extensive twitter course by Blake Emal and start growing your Twitter influence online.

​Transform your Twitter account into a thriving community​

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🦩Fun

How long does it take to crack your password? This scary graphic shows you how long it takes a hacker to crack your password using brute force. If you haven't got a password manager installed already, then maybe this will prompt you into action. I use Dashlane on all my devices and pay an annual subscription of $24 but there are many others.

​How long would it take to hack your password?​

Create your own paint-by-numbers pictures. Just upload your image and select 'process image'. You might have to play around with the settings until you're happy with the number of colours, but endless fun!

​Create Your Own Paint By Numbers From Your Photo​

Alternatives to "How are you?" Next time you're in a meeting, try a few of these:

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I'm a consultant in water, sanitation and hygiene and love all things social entrepreneurship and tech. I offer the Finding YOUR Impact newsletter freely but if you enjoyed it, please could you share it (with one thing you liked) on either LinkedIn or Twitter to help me reach more subscribers? Thanks so much!

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With your feedback, I can make this newsletter better for you. Click on a link to make a vote and feel free to add an anonymous comment on how I could improve one thing:

• ​👍 That helped me. Thanks!​
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