“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” — John Keats
When people ask me what Sources of Insight is all about, I tell them, it’s about helping people “stand on the shoulders of giants.” I find and share the wisdom of the ages and modern sages by drawing from books, people, and quotes. I turn insight into action and focus on solving real problems with an emphasis on mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun.
Ultimately, I want to empower every Underdog in the world with better skills for work and life.
Books, People, and Quotes
Unfortunately, I don’t think this message was coming across clear or simple enough on Sources of Insight. I think you had to work too hard to find the collections of books, people, and quotes. My bad. So I took another crack at it and added the following to my menu bar:
I think this helps say in a very simple way that Sources of Insight draws from books, people, and quotes to lift you up.
Energized Differentiation
These changes are my attempt to breathe some new life into the blog, better surface some of the existing value, and test the art of energized differentiation. Energized differentiation is about communicating excitement, dynamism, and creativity. While there may be nothing new about books, people, and quotes, what I’m doing is turning wisdom into action. By focusing on patterns and practices and drawing from multiple sources, I’m helping people make the most of what they’ve got. I’m putting science on your side, along with wisdom of the ages, and giving you a system to put it all together. The world’s not fair, so this is your unfair advantage. Knowledge is power and it’s how you can level the playing field.
Trading Up to Stay in the Game
Every choice comes with trade-offs. To make this happen, I had to move some things around. I pushed my Lists collection to the Resources page. I moved my Archives from the menu to the sidebar. I bubbled up Categories on the side-bar. This meant pushing down my Best of Sources of Insight list of posts. While I was at it, I expanded my Best of list from 5 items to 10, to resurface some old gems. I also expanded the size of my Sources of Insight Amazon Shop. And, for good measure, I added a video of Alik on Getting Results the Agile Way. You’ll notice that while my sidebar is longer now, it should still be very easy to scan and find what you need.
Keeping Things in Check Using Scenarios
As a guideline to keep the changes on track, I evaluated against the following scenarios:
- User can quickly subscribe to the blog using RSS or Email.
- User can find and browse the Archives.
- User can quickly find and browse the Categories.
- User can quickly find the popular posts (Best of Sources of Insight)
- User can quickly easily discover what the blog is about.
- User can easily find out about me.
- User can easily contact me.
Keeping things simple and easy to find will be an on-going challenge. Keep in mind, I’ve got almost 700 posts, several hundred quotes, free E-Books, free productivity training, hundreds of lessons from people, guests posts from best-selling authors, and the list goes on.
… and yet the party is just getting started.
Happy Thanksgiving
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