The Sunday Letter, 2 December 2018
Heyy Pixie Friends, can you believe it’s December already?
We are literally only a few weeks away from the long-awaited (dreaded?) Christmas/Summer break. We’re closing down from 22 December until 7 January, and will be in Slow Mode during the summer, to take advantage of beautiful beach days, opportunities to travel and visit friends, and generally enjoy life.
And we hope you are doing the same thing. :)
We’re hosting our final Pixie event on the last day of the year - 21 December - and will very soon be issuing invitations. Our paying subscribers have already got theirs (it’s one of the perks of subscribing!). If you aren’t one of them, reply or comment to let me know you want to be added to our list.
Have an amazing week this week, won’t you?
~ Leticia Mooney,
Queen Pixie at Brutal Pixie
Tip of the week
Be aware that there are industry-standard rates for content folk, particularly writers, editors, videographers, photographers, and artists. Make yourself familiar with them so that you know what your budget needs to look like in the new year. A good place to start is the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s freelancer rate table.
The Sunday Five
Here are the best articles we’ve found from the past week. If you find any gems during your week and would like to see them included, email them to hello@brutalpixie.com.
[ People] The CEO of a startup that just raised $25 million asks every potential hire the same question, and it has nothing to do with work
Tally is a US-based startup that consolidates your credit card debt and charges you a lower interest rate. The question the CEO asks of people is, As a human are you happy? It’s not a trick question, but one designed to get to the heart of what deep motivations drive their potential hires. The reason? To find out if their values align with the business. Read this article here.
Key takeaway: Getting to the deeper reasons why people work with you is a surefire way of working out whether they’re more or less likely to work well with you.
[ Goals ] An Intentional System for Working with Goals
If you’ve been a reader for a while, by now you’ve worked out that I am a big fan of Leo Babauta. And if you’ve ever set goals in your life (I hope you have!) then you’ll know that they’re not all they’ve cracked up to be. It’s more about using goals to bring wonder back into your life. And that is something that Genevieve Bell would encourage all of us to do. Read this here.
Key takeaway: Bringing your actions back to the present is a better way to work with goals, because it makes them more flexible.
[ UX ] UXMas 2018
This is a super-fun and awesome site that is a UX advent calendar. I wanted to link you to 1 December’s article but couldn’t - so you get the whole calendar instead! On 1 Dec, Tim Broadwater presents Tips for UX Battles: A Game Walkthrough. It’s THE BEST. From the introduction: “This game walkthrough provides three tips for safely negotiating UX battles which The Team may encounter throughout your career. Ready. Set. Fight!” Get it here.
Key takeaway: Navigating the UX battles you’ll face in your career (or that your team will face in theirs!) requires the right weapons, the right choices, and persistence against difficult bosses. If you’re a boss, read this!
[ Content ] Instagram Study: We analyzed 9 million posts and here's what we've learned
Quintly learned a lot by studying so many instagram posts. They learned that you get maximum growth with 1000 - 10,000 followers; that carousels are most used by influencers; that you get more interactions with videos; that you get more interactions without hashtags (unless you already have more than 10 million followers)…and more besides. You have to sign up to get the full report, but if you leverage Instagram it is worth your while. Read this here.
Key takeaway: You could do what everyone else is doing, or you could learn from the data and break out on your own to do something different.
[ Decision-Making ] The danger of using your preferences instead of data to make a content‐related decision
This is a deep-dive article about decision-making, including rigged and biased decisions. It illustrates how we make rigged decisions about our content and marketing without even realising it, and talks about the difference between this bias and real instinct. It also gives you a short, sharp and shiny method of getting a functional decision-making framework in place. So much gold! Read this here.
Key takeaway: When you have a decision-making framework in place, you’ll never have to wonder what you should do next.